What a blessing to be here with you over the course of this weekend. I feel like I need to thank Scott Brown and all those helping him, not just for hosting this conference, but for hosting this conference in North Carolina in October. Can I get an amen? I think my children got tired of me yesterday driving in from Asheville saying, Look at that mountain! Look at those trees over there!

The majesty of God was just on full display as the sun shone on the various hilltops, and I was just in awe of our marvelous Creator. But we might ask ourselves if that's the case, if it's such a beautiful day outside and the majestic mountains are calling our name, you know, the hills are alive with the sound of music. What are we doing in here? What are we doing in this room with no windows, and why are we inside on a day like this? But the answer is this, that all of that majesty, the mountains, the fall foliage, while reflecting the glory of its Creator, all of that majesty is just merely the natural revelation of God.

And God has given us something even more than that. It's called the special revelation of God. The reason we call it the special revelation of God is it is special. Is it is special. It is His word by which He opens up to us things we could never know if He did not tell us.

How marriage works. How to raise your children wisely, and most of all, how God has sent His Son, Jesus, to die on the cross to save us from our sins so that all who trust in Him will never perish but have everlasting life. And so we have this marvelous privilege. It is a privilege. It is a special revelation.

We have this marvelous privilege of coming in this morning and partaking, of opening up God's Word, thinking about what God wants us to say, wants us to hear Him say. And so let us do that. Let's go to the Lord in prayer first. Father, what a blessing. What a blessing to be here together, to gather in Your name, to open up Your Word to us, revealing Your Son, Jesus Christ.

Help us, Lord. Help us from the youngest here to the oldest, to the newest Christian and the unbeliever, to the veteran Christian. Father, help every one of us, those who were this week involved in secret sin, those who this week found grace and strength to battle successfully against sin, Help every one of us, Lord, to come into this place and to hear from You by Your Spirit through Your Word about Jesus Christ. We pray these things in Jesus' name. Amen.

What a passage of Scripture to be considering together this morning, isn't it? I've been preaching through the book of Genesis at my home church, and although I have to admit to you, I was initially intimidated to do so just because of, for one thing, the size of the book and for another thing, the huge span of time covered within its pages. But it has been a tremendous blessing, not the least of which blessing has been the constantly recurring, and it shouldn't be, but the constantly surprising blessing of studying through and applying passages that I honestly would never preach from ever if I were not preaching through the book of… some book of the Bible. I saw some ministers like nodding their heads, yes, I know that feeling. Passages honestly that I wouldn't perhaps even dwell on personally if I weren't forced to study through them for the sake of my congregation.

And Genesis 38 is a perfect example. Here is one more reminder of how important expository preaching is because this is definitely not one of the passages we would run to personally or pastorally if we were not forced to do so. I read somewhere recently the wise warning, beware the Instagram Bible. While it cannot be… it can be helpful to post encouraging Bible verses, certainly ascribed in some beautiful font, imposed against some artistic background. That can be a great thing, but it can also be misleading and therefore deadly dangerous because the Bible does not only consist of encouraging promises of beautiful poetry.

It also contains some very dark, very painful passages, and it records some very dark and very sinful deeds. While the Bible does not approve of everything it records, That's important for us to recognize and think about as we read through the Bible. The Bible is not approving of everything that it records. Yet everything it records is a crucial piece of inspired Scripture. You will never see an Instagram graphic, I'm guessing, decorated with a single verse from Genesis 38, nor any passage from this chapter on a plaque at Hobby Lobby.

But it's no less important, no less important for us to consider than any other portion of inspired Scripture. So rather than our natural inclination, which is tittering nervously, squirming awkwardly because Genesis 38 does not fit neatly into our Instagram Bible, Let us rather with all seriousness and in fact eagerness ask of this passage, what does this passage tell me about myself? What does this passage tell us about biblical history? And most importantly, what does this passage teach me about Jesus and His gospel? Those are crucial questions, and we must keep them in mind because Genesis 38 is nothing less than scandalous.

Let's just put it out there, let's admit it. Genesis 38 is nothing less than scandalous. It is embarrassing to read through in mixed company. I'm so thankful somebody else was willing to read it for me. It seems a bizarre passage to come across in your personal devotions, and it definitely feels to be among the least helpful passages for evangelism.

Hey, I'm a Bible believer, and did you know, by the way, that one of the great patriarchs of the Bible committed incest? Well, at least he did it accidentally. He thought she was a prostitute. That's not exactly what you use on your opening line for the gospel, is it? Perhaps you are here today and you weren't familiar with this passage of Scripture and you were scandalized, actually, as it was being read.

Or perhaps you're a well-read Christian and you knew what Genesis 38 contained and you were a bit nervous just to see that Genesis 38 was even on the menu among today's messages. Honey, should we keep the kids home for this one? We'll just keep them in the room and then we'll come back for the next message." My own mother who lives with us, and she's a saint in every way, when she found out I was preaching on Genesis 38. She said with a mixture of pity and anger, well, I guess it's in the Bible, and you better get something good out of it, as if doubting whether to do so was even really possible. But I hope to show you that all of these reactions you will discover for yourself are misplaced because the fact is that none of our lives, none of our lives are as clean or as tidy or even as scandal-free as we would like to think.

Or at least pretend in front of everyone else, Right? We know down deep that there is scandal in my heart. But we like to pretend in front of everyone else at least that we're not those scandalous people. There is not a single person here, in fact, though, who would delight to see your thought life from just even the past week transcribed and placed on this screen for everyone here to see. Or the private moments of your life this week video recorded for everyone to watch.

I mean, can you imagine? That's what happens for these poor Bible characters. That's what happens. God takes their stuff, their secret stuff, and He splatters it all over the pages of Scripture for you and me even to read thousands of years later. What we like to tell ourselves, whether we're Christian or not, is, I'm a pretty good person, and that's why if there is a God, He is going to save me.

But Jesus meant it when he said, I came to save sinners, not good people. He could not have come to this planet to save good people because there weren't any. There's not a single one of us here today or listening to this message later who does not have some deep and dark scandals in our lives. Maybe the very kinds of sins mentioned here in Genesis 38, Sexual sins. I do a lot of counseling, a lot of one-on-one discipleship, and I've come to just assume that in a crowd this size, there are those among us who are wrestling with pornography addiction and or same-sex attraction.

And in fact, if you are wrestling with it, then praise God. If you're wrestling with it, I mean really wrestling with it, if you're going to God's Word for help with it, if you're confessing your sinful temptations to God and running to Him for help, if you're gathering other believers around you for accountability, If you're wrestling with it, then wonderful. But if you're giving into it, if you have been giving into it, if sin has a hold on your life, Then repent. And if you don't even, and you maybe even feel like, I've tried to repent, I've tried to overcome these things and they keep hounding me, they keep overcoming me. I invite you, if that's your situation, anytime during this conference to come up to me and say three words, I need help.

And I will drop whatever else is going on, whoever else I'm talking to, except my 16-month-old baby, I won't drop her, but I will drop whatever else, and we will have a conversation about the power of God that is sufficient to overcome the sins with which you're wrestling. Which you're wrestling. But even if not the scandal of outward, obvious sin failure, certainly the equally deadly sin of self-righteousness, of hypocrisy, of hidden sins, sins that we maybe don't even identify yet in our own heart, and maybe this very conference was meant to come in contact with you to show you some of those sins, of self-centeredness and of pride, or perhaps even all of the above, ironically. Scandalous outward sins and hypocrisy and pride, as we will see in Genesis 38 is the case with Judah. No matter who we are this morning, in other words, although a passage of Scripture that talks openly about scandalous sin might affront our cultured sensibilities.

If any of us think about it for more than just three seconds though, we come to realize that this is exactly the kind of Bible we would wish for. This is the kind of Bible we would hope for. A Bible that is about real sinners, real sinners, who make really big mistakes and mess up in horribly embarrassing ways just like us, who God nonetheless brings to repentance and even uses in His great…even uses in His great plan of redemption. Brings to repentance and even uses in His great plan of redemption. And that is precisely what the Bible is all about, God's great plan to redeem really, really messed up people like you and me for the glory of God.

In fact, if you try to theme together the Bible, I'm using the word theme as a verb, probably not grammatically correct but if you try to theme together the Bible with any other thread, it will not hold. The whole Bible will seem to unravel. If you, for example, read the Bible the way I did as a young Christian, thinking the Bible is the story of how God loves and blesses heroic and faithful people like, you know, David against Goliath, Daniel in the lion's den, three Hebrew children in a fiery furnace. If you think it's a story of how God loves and blesses heroic and faithful people, you will start to see as you read through the Bible that that idea is unraveling by Genesis 3. And it will absolutely fall apart by the time you come to Genesis 38.

But if you Read the Bible with this theme in mind. The whole Bible with this theme in mind. God is bringing about His great plan of redemption for real and ruined people through the Satan-crushing Messiah. Then, Genesis 38 does not seem at all out of place. In fact, it sews seamlessly together with the rest of the book of Genesis and the rest of the biblical narrative.

So we now will look at this small piece of this overarching Bible story of redemption unfolding as it does in Genesis 38. I'm assuming you have your Bibles with you and are going to follow along, so I'm going to mention verse references. First of all, we're going to see that Judah's sons sin in verses 1 through 11, just to give you a map of where we're headed. Then secondly, Judah sins himself in verses 12 through 23. And then finally, Judah confesses and Perez is born in verses 24 through 30.

But let's begin in verses 1 through 11 with Judah's sons sinning. Verse 1 indicates that Judah is not doing well spiritually. Although his brothers, let's be honest, were not the best of influences to be sure, they had just sold their brother Joseph into slavery, it was still worse, still worse for Judah to leave his brothers, his family, and go off on his own as he does here, because that meant surrounding himself with Canaanites who did not have even an outward measure of respect for the one true God of Abraham, Isaac, and his father, Jacob. Sure enough, in verse 2, Judah marries the daughter of Achananite. This is an act of blatant disobedience.

This is what Abraham had been so careful not to do. This is what Isaac had been so careful not to do. But now Judah just goes and marries a Canaanite woman from among the people of the land as he melts in to an unbelieving society rather than being a witness to it as he was meant to be of the one true God. Interestingly, Judah's wife, his Canaanite wife, is never even mentioned in Genesis, her name. Her name is never given to us, and it reminds us every deed not done in obedience to God for the glory of God is ultimately a temporary one.

It's ultimately a useless one. Verses 3 through 5 let us know that Judah and his wife, we don't know her name, had three sons together. Verses 6 through 7 then briefly, bluntly inform us that Judah arranges for his oldest son Ur to marry a girl named Tamar, and then that God kills Ur because of his wickedness. Wait, what? What?

Yes, God killed Judah's firstborn son Ur. Why? Because Ur was wicked in the sight of God. No further explanation is given than that. Just this, in God's sight, Ur was wicked, so God put him to death." That's all we're told.

We are immediately, unapologetically brought face to face with the sovereign God. God is the perfectly good God who created everything and everyone. But being our Maker then, He also has the right to unmake us, as it were, if we insist on walking contrary to Him. We are confronted immediately with this fact in Genesis 38, even in the opening verses, sin can and will be punished wherever God finds it. We don't even know what his sin was, and you know what?

It doesn't matter. God knew what his sin was. And sin can and will be punished wherever God finds it. But that's not the end of this lesson because we are taught it all over again in verses 8 through 11, as God also strikes down Judah's son, Onan. Onan did not fulfill the custom known as leveret marriage in bringing up a son on his brother Ur's behalf in order to keep Ur's lineage from dying out.

Onan should have married childless Tamar and brought about children with her. That was his obligation. But He refuses to do so because verse 9 says, he knew that the offspring would not be his. In other words, the child of Tamar would technically be considered the heir of Ur, and Onan didn't want to share his status or his inheritance with his brother. He knew the offspring would not really be his, and so he refuses to fulfill his obligation, and God therefore also punishes Onan with death.

Two brothers, Judah's oldest sons, both divinely judged for their wickedness before God. Now, if you knew ahead of time that the Messiah, the Messiah was going to come from the line of Judah, it sure doesn't look good right now, does it, for the messianic line right about now. There's only one son left. Judah and his unnamed wife have had three children, two of them struck dead by God because of their sin. Both of these sons, for their own wickedness, but both of them married to Tamar, Judah notices.

And so, although they died because of their own sin, Judah treats Tamar as if she is a black cat walking under a ladder with the number 13 painted on her back. Judah sends Tamar away making a vague promise that she can marry his third son when he gets old enough. Don't call me, I'll call you. But as we see, as the chapter unfolds, Judah actually does not fulfill this promise. He promises to give Tamar his third son in order for her to have a child, but he does not fulfill this promise." But that's no big deal, right?

No, actually. It's a very big deal. It's a huge deal. Renigging on a promise, not following through on an implicit obligation is so serious, in fact, that Judah later in verse 26 actually repents of this, This sin of not fulfilling His promise repents of this as His greatest sin, even more than His sexual sin. This is the sin that Judah repents of, ultimately, specifically mentioning This sin of not fulfilling a promise, if perhaps you are reading this chapter with a feeling of guiltlessness because you've not committed any of those scandalous sins lately, do not miss this fact that the great sin of this entire chapter is considered to be reneging on a promise, going back on your Word.

Have you ever done that? Are you perhaps doing that right now, wronging another person by withholding from them what is rightfully theirs. The Bible is remarkably unhysterical as it records even the most scandalous sexual sins. It's remarkably noticeably un-hysterical. It just sort of says this is what happened, this is how events unfolded.

Yet it is Shockingly serious, the Bible is shockingly serious about sins that we consider to be relatively harmless. Honestly, now how many of us come to Genesis 38 when we are reading in our Bibles and we are horrified, horrified by Judah's failure to fulfill his promise to Tamar. No, no, no, no. We're like, oh, I can understand that. We immediately can excuse that sin away.

This alone, I think, is reason enough to study Genesis 38, to be informed not only that scandalous sins can be forgiven, but also that sins that we didn't even think of as scandalous are scandalous before a holy God. The great sin of Judah that Judah confesses actually is not fulfilling His promise, His obligation. Judah then sins further in verses 12 through 23. Verse 12 picks up several years later now. Judah's wife dies.

He is a widower. He is lonely, but he will not, will not seek solace or comfort in God, rather in selfish pleasure. We know from Genesis 37 that Judah was a murderer, a slave trader, and a mercenary. He sold his own brother into slavery, plotted to kill him first just because he was envious of him, but then decided, no, let's make some money off this deal. He literally says, for profit's sake, let's sell our brother into slavery.

So we know Judah was a murderer, he was a slave trader, he was a mercenary. We learned all that about him in the chapter before. So it should not come as a huge surprise to know that he's also promiscuous. He is a man who is enslaved, enslaved by selfishness. The pursuit of personal pleasure and gain.

This man, Judah, listen. Sin is slavery. It is the prison Wall. Sin is the prison wall that keeps us from enjoying the beautiful presence of God. Repentance then, repentance, which is the theme of this conference, should have for us the sweetest of connotations.

Repentance is the removing of obstacles, of every obstacle, of any obstacle to fellowship and freedom with God. Sin is the wall that keeps us from the beautiful fellowship of God. Repentance is what removes the obstacles between us and God. So much appreciated the Bible passage Scott Brown chose to use in the promo for this conference and then preached on last night. It's from Acts 3 19 and 20 where Peter is preaching in Solon's portico to those gathered in amazement at the healing of a lame man.

In Acts 3 19 through 20, Peter says this, "'Repent therefore and turn back that your sins may be blotted out, that Times of refreshing may come from the presence of the Lord and that He may send the Christ appointed for you, Jesus. Repentance leads to refreshing. It leads to refreshing because it leads us into the presence of the Lord Jesus Himself. Judah we see, however, is a man still enslaved to his own personal pleasure and gain. And so, in verses 13 through 19, they detail how Tamar, having waited for years for Judah to fulfill his promise to give her Shelah as a husband, now approaches Judah directly.

Now the narrative says Tamar trades in her widow's garment for a dress and a veil. It doesn't explicitly say Tamar initially intends to be mistaken for a harlot or prostitute. The text simply says Tamar knew Judah was going to a certain area, that she went out to meet him wearing a veil. It's possible she only intended to remind Judah of his obligation to give her Sheila as a husband. But regardless, Judah mistakes her for a harlot and approaches her as such, basically says, what do you cost?

Tamar seems to see this as an opportunity to get from Judah what she has wanted all along, a child. Yet even as this bargaining between Judah and Tamar takes place, as Tamar presses Judah for any tangible guarantee that Judah will actually make good on his promised payment, it shows how totally untrustworthy she considers him to be by this point because he has not been fulfilling his obligation to her, his promise to her for years now. She does not trust anything, he says. Verses 20 through 23 tell us how Judah tries to make good then on his promised payment to her. But he discovers he's lost her phone number, as it were.

He doesn't know how to contact the one woman who he's had a one-night stand with. How do you even get a hold of her? Rather subtly, verse 21 introduces another dark note to this whole episode as the messenger from Judah specifically asks for the cult prostitute who was in this area. Cult or shrine prostitutes were a regular feature of pagan worship in the ancient Near East, a means of earning money to support the local temple. What a tragic idea.

But was Judah not only, in other words, then seeking sensual pleasure, but even maybe dabbling with false religion as he seeks out a cult prostitute? It certainly seems possible. Yet ironically, this passage ends with Judah declaring his guiltlessness in verse 23. Although he had hired a prostitute for his own short-term gratification, probably participated in pagan worship by laying with her, he considers himself an upright man because he did at least try to send the agreed-upon payment for her. In this section, we see Judah acting like a heathen and like a pervert, yet the passage ends with Judah proclaiming his own righteousness.

Isn't that telling? There is no end to our personal capacity to justify our sins to ourselves. We are clearly meant then to see Judah has not yet improved in character. But thankfully that is not the end of the chapter nor the end of Judah's story. And so, in verses 24 through 30, we see that Judah confesses finally and Peres is born.

In verse 24, the report of Tamar's pregnancy reaches Judah and he, in shameless hypocrisy, decries Tamar's immorality and calls for her to be put to death for it. I mean, get this, Judah knows himself that he participated in prostitution. And when the news reaches him that Tamar has participated in prostitution, He feigns horror. Burn the woman! Stone her to death!

Off with her head! It reminds Bible readers of Judah's descendant David, actually, who would similarly call for the death of someone guilty of the exact same sin he had himself committed. If hypocrisy is the number one turnoff for unbelievers that keeps them from considering the message of the one true God, then Judah and his descendant David are prime exhibits on why not to follow this God they claim to worship. What about you? What about you, though?

Are you claiming God, going by the name Christian, yet undermining the very message of the gospel by the way you live? By the things you talk about? Maybe not in front of other church members, but the things you do in private, the things you really and obviously treasure no matter what you tell your children, what you obviously treasure in front of your children. It's so easy, isn't it, to decry someone else's sin and especially their hypocrisy. Because we can see the disgustingness of it.

We see them with their mask on. That's what the idea of hypocrisy is, wearing a mask. We can see them with their mask, and we can see them turning around and trying to keep the mask on in front of everybody, but we can see underneath that and we can see the ugly. We can see how their profession is not meeting how they're living. And it's so easy to decry someone else's sin, someone else's hypocrisy as they move their mask around trying to cover the ugliness, but it's just so much harder to see our own sin, isn't it?

Our own hypocrisy. Thankfully, in verses 25 through 26, we see another similarity between Judah and David. When Tamar brings out the proofs of Judah's own sin, the items that Judah had given her as proof of his payment, Judah instantly crumbles and he confesses his sin. Like David would later do, Judah had compounded sin upon sin on top of sin by this point. But, as in David's case, it is never too late to repent and confess your sin.

This marks a major turning point in Judah's life as we see the rest of Genesis unfolding. Have you experienced that? Have you experienced this kind of turning point in your life, giving up on the layers of lies, the unbearable burden of personal hypocrisy, it's just so hard to keep the mask on, isn't it? In front of these people and then in front of these people, You know that there's no way you can be what everybody wants you to be, and especially, you know, what you're trying to do is keep what's inside from coming out in front of everybody. But just giving up on the layers of lies, the unbearable burden of personal hypocrisy, and just confessing your sin for what it is?

Sin! My sin! Nothing less, though, nothing less than this is required for the layers to stop piling on, for that burden to finally lift, nothing less than true repentance and confession of sin. Listen, one sin is enough to separate us from the perfectly good God. One sin.

We wouldn't want it any differently. We may think we do, but we don't. We wouldn't want God to be any less good. Best case scenario, this world is run by a sovereign God who is perfectly good. That's a best-case scenario.

We don't want that to change, even though we may think that we want Him to accept us with our sin, but we don't. One sin though, for such a good, perfectly marvelous, beautiful God is enough to separate us from Him because He's perfectly good and we're not. Every sin then is a scandalous sin, every sin. There are no acceptable sins. Let me say that again.

There are no acceptable sins. It is for this reason that repentance is necessary for salvation. But salvific repentance is always in Scripture paired with faith, as we heard so well last night from Dr. Beekie. There must not only be confession and turning from sin, but there must be trust in God's way of salvation through Christ alone.

This is how this chapter, this message, tie in with this conference's theme celebrating the 500th anniversary of the Reformation, and specifically regarding Martin Luther's call for genuine biblical repentance. Yes, Luther, on the first of his 95 Theses, insisted that when our Lord and Master Christ Jesus said, ''Repent, '' that He intended that the entire life of believers should be one of repentance. But if we're not careful, we will hear that the way Luther actually heard it himself earlier in his life. We'll take it in a discouraging way. You mean this whole life is to be a life of repentance?

That sounds miserable. What, we just keep repenting over and over and over again? Does it never work? Does it never accomplish anything? But no, it's the opposite, you see, because it does work, because it does actually give you victory.

You keep doing it because your sin is still with you tomorrow that you confessed and repented of today, and so you repent again tomorrow. And So the wholesome reality that Luther, of course, is equally known for, not just repentance but his doctrine of justification by faith, the wholesome reality is that Luther was not describing a lifetime of seeking salvation the way he had done, going up and down the stairs on his knees, whipping himself on the back just trying to somehow get good enough for God. No, the call to true biblical repentance is a call not only to turn from sin but turn to Christ alone for your salvation. You are justified by faith alone, not by your works, not by your repentance. Luther later sums the whole thing up beautifully this way.

You cast your sins from yourself. There's repentance. You're not embracing your sins. You're not excusing your sins. You're not calling your sins not sins.

You cast your sins from yourself and onto Christ when you firmly believe that His wounds and sufferings are your sins, to be born and paid for by Him. That's awesome. You cast your sins from yourself and onto Christ. Oh, Christ, take those sins. I can't bear them any longer.

I can't bear the weight of them any longer. And you believe that His wounds and His sufferings On the cross are your sins being born and paid for by Him. And this is not just what you do once, this is the point of what Luther was saying. You don't just do this once, it's what you do every day. You own up to, you confess your sins as your sins, but you also trust, you also run to Christ, and you trust that they are born and paid for by Christ.

It is that Christ, that Satan-crushing Messiah to whom all of Genesis is pointing, the Bible is pointing us. And we are reminded of that even in the closing verses of Genesis 38, this sin, this Satan-crushing Messiah. As in verses 27 through 30 they continue this positive trajectory after Judah confesses his sin finally, and the positive trajectory of the passage continues as the children born to Judah and Tamar are twins. What a blessing! As with Jacob and Esau, though, the younger will prove to be the one chosen especially by God.

Perez will appear along with his sinful father Judah and his mother Tamar in the messy line of the Messiah, recorded in Matthew chapter 1. What do we see then in Genesis 38 as we wrap up? God appropriately punishing sin in Judah's sons? Yes. Judah himself acting the religious hypocrite?

Yes. An almost unreadable tale of betrayals and deceit and immorality? Yes, yes, we see all those things, but against this dark, dark backdrop, we also see all the brighter, the truth of God's grace to undeserving, selfish hypocrites. God will forgive even these kind of reprobates when they turn to Him in confession and repentance, and God can bring even through them the beautiful overruling and unfolding of His divine plan, they can even be useful. From perverted, religiously wayward, self-righteous Judah and his sinful union with Tamar, God would bring the Savior Jesus whom Judah and Tamar and you and I so desperately needed.

Even in little baby Perez, we are reminded of God's grace as God will yet again choose the one who is not firstborn to eventually bring forth the firstborn of all creation. So there is so much sin and there's so much scandal in Genesis 38 so that there can be so much grace behind those simple words with which the New Testament opens detailing the lineage of Jesus Christ. Judah, the father of Perez, and Zara by Tamar. Matthew 1.3. God is not hiding the sin.

God is not hiding the scandal in Genesis 38 so that he won't hide the scandalous grace that forgives even people like this. If he only put heroic people in their heroic moments on the pages of Scripture, we'd think, there's no hope for me. But instead he records, plasters all over the big jumbotron of the Bible the sins of Judah and of Tamar so that you and I can say, even they, and so even me, can be saved by Jesus Christ. How can you describe amazing grace without first describing wretchedness? Both the wretchedness and the grace mirror so much of the same behind each of our stories, and so God so graciously gives us this special revelation of His Word, and specifically Genesis 38.

For God to become human, for God to become human in order to save us, honestly, it could not have been any other way. There were no scandal-free human lineages. The messy Messianic line is a reminder of exactly why the Messiah was necessary in the first place. And it is a reminder of why we, today, in our civilized, modern world, as we like to think of ourselves, are still so desperately in need of a Savior. Selfishness, hypocrisy, promiscuity, rebellion, idolatry, even gasp.

Not keeping promises. Yes, these things are things we're very familiar with, we're surrounded with all the time. We see them in our own lives. So as much as we would like to look down our nose at Genesis 38 and the events that take place there or keep it at arm's length, you know, we know good and well what it is like to struggle with some or all of these sins ourselves. So it fits perfectly, actually.

Genesis 38 fits perfectly with God's theme in writing the whole book of Genesis, the whole book of the Bible. The Bible is about real sinners who make really big mistakes and mess up in horribly embarrassing ways, who God nonetheless saves and even uses, uses in His great plan of redemption. Will you keep that message at arm's length? You know, just keep telling yourself, I'm not like Judah. I am, I mean, I'm okay, I'm not perfect, but I am not like Judah.

Or, will you like Judah, confess your sins, your scandalous sin, repent of it, and trust in the scandalous message that you are forgiven not because of who you are, but because of the Messiah God has provided in Jesus Christ? Will you, as Luther learned to do himself, cast your sins from yourself and onto Christ firmly believing that his wounds and sufferings are your sins to be born and paid for by Him. When you do this by faith, by grace, you will find yourself more than forgiven, more than forgiven. Forgiveness is sweet, but sweeter still, you will find that you have actually become useful in the hand of your Maker, your good God and your Savior, Jesus Christ. Let's pray.

Father, I pray that you would help us to see the scandal of our own sins, but also to trust in the scandalous gospel that through this messy messianic line of the Savior Jesus came the Savior Jesus and He is sufficient. And when we look at our sins on Him on the cross, help us to trust today and tomorrow and into the rest of our lives that He is able and that He is sufficient to cover it all. In Jesus' name, amen.