Genesis 38 - Owning Your Responsibilities Matters

Main Idea: You’ve been given your body, possessions, and relationships to honor God and care for others.

(Vs. 1-5) Judah makes an irresponsible choice in his spouse.

(Vs. 6-10) Judah’s sons are evil & reject their responsibilities.

(Vs. 11) Judah abdicates his responsibility to care for Tamar.

(Vs. 12-19) Judah selfishly takes what doesn’t belong to him.

(Vs. 20-23) Judah has others do shameful tasks he should do.

(Vs. 24-26) Judah has hypocritical judgment, before realizing his failures and choosing to own his responsibilities.

(Vs. 27-30) God shows His superintending plans for our good.

1. GOD CREATED YOU FOR HIS PURPOSES, NOT YOUR OWN

   - We are created to glorify God, not ourselves. through our bodies.

   - We are created to say “Yes” to God’s desires, not worldly desires.

   - We are created to accomplish God’s will with our possessions.

2. GOD CREATED OTHERS FOR YOU TO CARE FOR, NOT USE

   - How you treat others should always invite them to Jesus.

   - How you treat others should reflect Jesus’ goodness & love.

   - How you treat others should be how you’d treat Jesus.

Sermon Transcript (Auto-Transcribed by Apple Podcasts)

Today, as we are walking through the latter portion of the Book of Genesis, from chapter 37 all the way to chapter 50, we began the series Character Matters in chapters 37 through 41 last Sunday.

And we're going to be going all the way through October, and I've kind of broken up those 23 chapters into, or it's not 23 chapters, 13 chapters, into some smaller series along the way.

But what we've been looking at for Character Matters is that the decisions that you make actually have importance, impact, values, and repercussions on the people around you.

I'm very thankful for the grace of God that can forgive us of our sins, that we can know that we are right with God positionally, but that does not mean that there ought not be an impact in the way we live as we consider what is right and what is

wrong. And there's perhaps no chapter that shows the ill effects of this more than Chapter 38. Most of Chapters 37 through about 46 or 47 detail the life of Joseph. You guys know him.

They made DreamWorks movies. You know, Joseph and the Technicolor Coats and all of those things. You know Joseph and his great life.

And we saw a little bit of that last week. We'll see it even more over the coming weeks. But as we look at Chapter 38, there's one little insertion of a person that we met last week.

If you guys remember, Joseph was one of how many sons of his father Jacob or Israel? How many kids, how many sons did Jacob or Israel have? Just shout it out.

He had 12 sons, 12 tribes of Israel, the 12 sons that he has. And if you remember from last week, we rehearsed a little bit of the family drama that they had had. And he had these 12 sons by four different women.

He had his first wife, Leah. He had his second wife that he liked better, Rachel. And Joseph was the son of Rachel.

And then there were two concubines, basically marital slaves, Bilha and Zilpah. And so Jacob had lived a very kind of immoral life. If you guys remember, what is God's command for how many people should be married together?

It's how many men in a marriage? And how many women in a marriage? One.

You're supposed to have one and one, not one and four. And so Jacob had lived a life where he did whatever he wanted to the neglect and harm of those around him.

We saw how this affected the children last week as the brothers of Joseph were envious of his favored status.

And so initially, they were going to kill Joseph, take the coat of long sleeves, many colors, a princely robe that his father had made and given to him.

They were going to take that, put animal blood or something on it, and say, oh, well, guess your favorite son is gone. Now your favorite son has to be one of us instead. But we heard someone speak up when Joseph was going to be killed.

First, there was Reuben, the eldest son, and he said, well, listen, you know, he's our brother. Let's just throw him into this pit. And scripture tells us that he was planning on going back to the pit later and getting Joseph out.

The brothers did put Joseph into the pit, but then, as a wandering caravan of Ishmaelites and Midianites had gone by, nomadic travelers and merchants, Judah says, oh, you know, Joseph is our flesh and blood, so, you know, we shouldn't kill him.

Let's sell him, because then at least we can get something for mistreating our brother. And it is the story of that guy, Judah, that we are going to be tracing today.

I want us to see from Genesis 38 this truth that owning your responsibilities matters. You and I have responsibilities in this life. We have a purpose for which we were made.

You can think I was doing some work here at the church with Owen the other day, and I had a drill with me in order to undo some screws. And is a drill, is its purpose to hammer nails into place. No.

Can you use anything to hammer if you really want to? Maybe it's not going to be good for its longevity. I see a couple of my more technically minded guys going, don't do that.

When you use things for the wrong purpose, when it's not owning its purpose, its responsibility, the reason why it exists, it leads to disaster.

And the same is no less true for you and I in our life, that God has given us our body, our possessions, and our relationships to honor God and to care for others.

You have been given your body, possessions, and relationships to honor God and to care for others. I'm going to do this right at the start. We're going to pray.

We're going to dive into the passage, be full aware. It's going to be one of the weirdest messages, one of the weirdest portions of scripture that you will hear in all of the Bible, but God has it here for our good and for our learning.

It's also not lost on me that we have several guests that are with us today.

And so just know that whenever a church or a pastor is preaching through scripture, occasionally you're going to get to the weird parts, and you just happen to get here on one of our weird days. And so we're thankful that you're here.

Let's pray together and ask for God to speak to our hearts. Dear Lord in heaven, we come before you, and we recognize our desperate need to hear from you. Lord, we pray that even through this time in the Word, that you would be glorified.

God, we pray that we would pay attention to what you have for us. Lord, I pray that you would speak to hearts.

Lord, as I prayed earlier, I ask that if there is anyone here today that does not yet know you as Savior, that today would be the day that they choose you. We love you, and we ask all of this day to pray for you in your precious name, Amen.

So you can see even there on your sermon handout this morning, there's kind of a little breakdown of the passage as we walk through. So I'm going to take those chunks kind of at a time. That way we can see what the passage has for us.

6:56

Judahʼs Marriage Choice

Beginning in verse number one, at that time, as Judah is selling his younger brother off into slavery, Judah left his brothers and settled near an idolomite named Hira. So remember, children of Israel, the children of Jacob, they are a family unit.

They are within the land of Canaan or Palestine. There are several different tribes and people groups scattered all across the land.

Jacob has inherited some small pieces of land from his grandfather Abraham and from his dad Isaac, but they don't have full lay of the land. So as they're going through, they're going to be interacting with a lot of the different people groups.

Here, Judah leaves the, if you will, family compound and he is off by himself. There, Judah saw the daughter of a Canaanite named Shua. He took her as a wife and slept with her.

Now, if you guys remember the biblical story, did God want Israel to intermarry with people that did not know the Lord and did not love the Lord? Yes or no? No.

So we're told right here at the beginning, this is a problem. If you remember, when Abraham was getting a wife for Isaac, did he pick from the people in the land? No.

He sent his servant to go and to find Rebecca, who would be Isaac's wife. Or when Isaac wanted a wife and Rebecca wanted a wife for Jacob, they sent him away as well.

Here, Judah, instead of, it was very common in those times for the parents to arrange the marriage for the children.

That way, there would be continuity, like there's even a level of respect and deference that is there, that I'm going to listen to the advice of my parents who love me, who care about me, who want the best for me. And so it was very common.

You would have an arranged marriage. Here, Judah doesn't consult dad at all, doesn't bring dad into the picture. He just says, I like this person, and so I'm going to marry her.

So she conceived and gave birth to a son, and he named him Er. She conceived again, gave birth to a son, and named him Onan. She gave birth to another son, and named him Shala.

It was at Kazeb that she gave birth to him. Judah got a wife for Er, his firstborn, and her name was Tamar.

Doesn't mean a whole lot to us nowadays, but even with the names Er, Onan, and Shala, were named after some Canaanites, gods, goddesses, like their culture. Er is named from the Semitic languages. It would be more Hebraic in nature.

And so there almost seems to be a little bit of a struggle within the household, that as you have Judah, whose name means Yahweh be praised, God be praised, and he has this wife who's a Canaanite, who doesn't worship the God of the Bible, the God of

Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, that he starts off and says, okay, yeah, my firstborn son, you know, saying it nowadays, okay, I'm going to name him a good Bible name, like Matthew or David. And then the next couple of kids, you know, it's named Zeus.

It's named Aphrodite. It's kind of the picture that you can have in mind of, it's a totally different worldview that these younger boys are being raised with.

But as these boys grow up into marraigeable age, Judah does the thing that he should have consulted with his father beforehand. And so he finds a wife for his son Ur, and her name was Tamar.

That name means date poem, and if that means nothing to you, it meant nothing to me as well. It's this kind of tree that you can find even in Israel today. It's a very beautiful tree, and one that can survive in a lot of different circumstances.

But through verses one through five, we see Judah, he makes here an irresponsible choice in his spouse that we're going to see over and over again as he doesn't realize what his responsibilities are, which is love God and love people, invite people

into relationship with God. Because he abdicates that responsibility, he just says, well, I really like how this girl looks, and so I'm going to marry her.

Can I tell you, it's a good thing to be attracted to your spouse, but if the only thing you have in common with your spouse is attraction, that's not going to be a lasting good relationship.

Instead, find someone that is madly in love with Jesus, because two Christians together who love the Lord, that is where good marriages happen and occur lastingly.

11:50

Er Onan Demise

Then in verses six through 10, we start seeing everything go downhill. Verse number seven, Now, er, Judah's firstborn was evil in the Lord. And you can see there some of those lowercase capital letters.

That's the covenant name of God, Yahweh or Jehovah. So now, er, Judah's firstborn was evil in Yahweh's sight, and Yahweh put him to death.

Now, as you read through that, even as we recognize God's lavish grace on us, we go, whoa, God can kill someone because of how wicked they were?

Yes, it doesn't happen all the time, but there are moments in people's lives, there are moments even throughout the scriptures, in the Old and the New Testament, where God says at some point when someone has kicked enough against God, there will come

a moment where God says, all right, your time is up. Now, there's no guarantee for any one of us when that last moment is, and thankfully, God doesn't say, okay, obey me, or I will put you to death immediately.

We shouldn't live in consistent fear of, okay, if I take a misstep, will God strike me down?

That's not what we are to learn from this passage, but even as you read through the rest of Genesis, and you think of all the people who sinned and did bad things, and God did not take them out, you have to wonder how bad was Err?

It says that the Lord put him to death. Then Judas said to Onan, so this is the second born son, sleep with your brother's wife, perform your duty as her brother-in-law, and produce offspring for your brother.

Now, this is a totally foreign concept to any of us today in America. This is the concept known as Leverett marriage. Can everyone say Leverett?

Yeah, think like a lever, Leverett marriage. Now, it looks like L-E-V-I-R-A-T-E, it looks like it comes from the name Levi, which is what I always thought it was from.

It's actually from a Latin word, meaning your brother's wife is the Latin term for it.

So in this setup, which was not exclusive to the Jewish people, though it would later be codified in the Law of Moses, this was very common across the Ancient Near East.

You have the eldest son, and they would be the one that's supposed to get the inheritance. They get like a double portion of dad's stuff when he's gone, and you would also have like a leadership role within the family.

You would be representative of your clan or your tribe.

So if the eldest son had a wife but did not have an heir, then the second born son was supposed to marry his dead brother's wife and was supposed to have a kid that would then be the one that would inherit all of the stuff.

So if you will, instead of the second born being in line to get the double portion of all of dad's stuff, and him having this great leadership role, it would actually be the child that he had would then be the one that was in charge.

Even less alluring for people of that time was that the dead brother would be considered the father of the child, even though it was the biological child of the second born. So people wouldn't even call any kid Onan's son.

It would be, oh, this is Ur's son, even though Onan was the one who had married and done all the work. Now, aren't you guys glad that we don't have this same process today? Like, are you thankful for that?

Oh, my goodness. Some of you are like, listen, I know my brother's younger or my husband's younger brother, and there is no way. So as Judah says to Onan, I want you to do your responsibility.

Basically, you're giving up on any chance of getting this double portion and having a really important role within the family. You won't have any of that because you need to do your duty, your responsibility.

But Onan knew that the offspring would not be his. So whenever he slept with his brother's wife, he released a semen on the ground so that he would not produce offspring for his brother.

Now I know you guys, you guys are all adults, like take a deep breath in, deep breath out.

Throughout Christian history of interpretation, people have done a whole lot of different things with this passage, and they've tried to say, okay, birth control or family planning must be against the Word of God as a result of this verse in

particular. Or as you think about various things, these are specifically prohibited because of this verse.

But when you look at the context of what is happening, what Onan is fighting against, that he does not want to have a child that would then force him out of the first born position with the honors and the wealth, and instead he's saying, I want to

enjoy all of the pleasures of being married to her, but I will not care for her. You can think back in those days, women would not just be able to go out and get a job and work if their husband passed.

Instead, in a very deeply patriarchal culture, you would have to rely on the goodness of the family of your deceased husband, or you would be sent back if your deceased husband's family wanted nothing to do with you, they would no longer care for

you. You would have to go back to your own father's house or your own old family's house. And that would be kind of a shameful thing for you. It would be like, well, listen, we sent you out into the world.

This family adopted you as their own, as you married. And then now they rejected you and brought you back here. Like, what is wrong with you?

But here is the actions that Onan has taken. What he did was evil in the Lord's sight, so he put him to death also. Then Judah said to his daughter-in-law Tamar, remain a widow in whose house?

Your father's house. Okay. Whose family did Tamar marry into?

She married into Judah's family. So he ought to be responsible for her. Here, if you remember, you have the larger, like, family complexes that are there.

It's not just husband, wife, and kids, and those are the only people there. You have larger groups of people that the patriarch of the family is supposed to be responsible for.

So any household servants, the patriarch would be ultimately responsible for housing and feeding and all of that for those people, and certainly for someone that used to be his daughter-in-law.

So he says, remain a widow in your father's house until my son Shayla grows up. He goes, okay, well, Shayla is the next one in line. I guess he has to have an heir.

But he thought he might die too like his brothers. Judah here has a blindness to the sin and failures of his sons and the rejection of God and his ways.

And so he thinks Tamar is the problem when over and over again, God has told us in Scripture, it was Ur and Onan that were sinning.

Let that be even a caution to our souls, that as we look from the outside at people's situations, we don't see everything. We don't know all of the minutia.

So let's have grace for people that are going through hard times that we might not understand everything that they're going through. It says, so Tamar went to live in her father's house.

Here, Judah is not making a legitimate statement of, I'm going to give Shailah to you. He's doing it as a ruse. He's doing it believing that if Shailah marries Tamar, he's going to die, too.

19:46

Tamarʼs Bold Action

After a long time, Judah's wife, the daughter of Shulah, died. When Judah had finished mourning, he and his friend, Hira, the Adulamite, went up to Timnah to his sheep sheers. So here, there's a time of grieving.

He's away on business. Tamar was told, your father-in-law is going up to Timnah to shear his sheep. This would be kind of a jovial time.

So she took off her widow's clothes, veiled her face, covered herself, and sat at the entrance to Anahim, which is on the way to Timnah. For she saw that though Shailah had grown up, she had not been given to him as a wife.

So now, though we read it just verse, verse, verse, a lot of time has passed that now Shailah is at a marriageable age, and yet Judah has not followed through on his responsibility to give him to Tamar.

When Judah saw her, he thought she was a prostitute for she had covered her face.

I thought some of the distance in time and location here was a little bit interesting, because most of the time when people think today about those engaging in sex work, they don't think, oh, those are the people who are totally covered up and who

veil their faces. But this is what it was like back in that time. He went over to her and said, come, let me sleep with you, for he did not know that she was his daughter-in-law. Okay, stop right here.

Again, everyone breathe. Should you solicit people for sexual work? No, absolutely not.

Here, Judah is proving over and over and over again that he is a dirt bag. Say it with me. I am a dirt bag.

She said, what will you give me for sleeping with me? I will send you a young goat from my flock, he replied. But she said, only if you leave something with me until you send it.

So she's like, hey, what's the price? He goes, oh, I'll give you a young goat from the flock. She says, you don't have a young goat with you right now, so you got to give me something so that I have proof until you send this.

He says, what should I give you? He asked. She answered, your signet ring, your cord and the staff in your hand.

Okay, the signet ring would be metal and it would have the seal of Judah so that whatever official documents that he would sign, whatever letters that he would send, so that people would know that it came from Judah, he'd stamp his signet ring in

there and everyone would know, oh yeah, this came from Judah. Here the staff in his hand, we read several, several months ago now, in Abraham's family, as each of the boys in the household became men, they had their names inscribed on the staff.

So staff that says Judah, signet ring that says this belongs to Judah. Keep that in mind. You're going to need that for later.

So he gave them to her and slept with her, and she became pregnant by him. She got up and left, then removed her veil and put her widow's clothes back on. When Judah sent the young goat, notice there, buy his friend the Adolamite.

Did his friend the Adolamite engage in the prostitution? No. You would think Judah, after his shameful, sinful actions, would at least have the decency to bring the goat himself to pay for what he had done.

But he sends his friend the Adolamite in order to get back the items he had left with the woman. It says, he could not find her. He asked the men of the place, where is the cult prostitute who is beside the road at Anaheim?

There has been no cult prostitute here, they answered. So the Adolamite returned to Judah, saying, I couldn't find her. And besides, the men of the place said, there has been no cult prostitute here.

Think of the absurdity of this. OK, remember Judah's name, Yahweh be praised. Is he doing anything that leads to the praise of God?

Anyone looking at the story going, man, God is so good. Like these people of God, the people that are called by the name of God, man, they're just doing such wonderful work there in Canaan.

No, it is sin after sin, abdication of responsibility, abject evil in every thought and action that they are taking. So much so that Judah has his friend like looking all around going, you know, here, Harlet, Harlet, here, prostitute, where are you?

Having to go up to people and being like, hey, do you know where the prostitute is? And they go, there are none here. How embarrassing, certainly for the friend, but even more embarrassing for Judah in this moment.

Judah replied, ah, let her keep the items for herself. Otherwise, we will become a laughing stock. Here we are, a couple thousand years later.

We're still laughing at you, dude. You did not make good choices. After all, I did send this young goat, but you couldn't find her.

Notice there, that accusatory you that's in the sentence. He doesn't say, we couldn't find her. She could not be found.

It's blaming Hiram for not finding the prostitute. About three months later, Judah was told, your daughter-in-law, Tamar, has been acting like a prostitute, and now she is pregnant.

If you have maybe an older or more formal translation, you might see the phrase there instead of acting like a prostitute, the phrase playing the harlot. It is acting like someone that engages in sex work, but doesn't do it for an actual job.

Tamar has been acting like a prostitute, and now she is pregnant. Bring her out, Judah said, and let her be burned to death.

Those of you who are in the Sunday School class today, does this remind you of a certain story in John 8 with Jesus, and as the Pharisees bring out this woman, and they say, oh, this woman who was caught in adultery in the very act.

And here, Judah, recognizing even his own sins and failures, he doesn't say, listen, all of us make mistakes, you know, who among us hasn't, you know, engaged in the pleasures of the flesh. Instead, he says, let her be burned to death.

Also, by what right does he have to say that she needs to be burned to death? Right now, as she has been promised to Shayla, that would technically be like a betrothal, an engagement.

And so there was an expectation of faithfulness, but Judah had refused to give Shayla to Tamar in marriage. And so he both says, you can't marry him, but also you can't be with anyone else.

Verse 25, as she was being brought out, she sent her father-in-law this message, I am pregnant by the man to whom these items belong. As Scooby-Doo would say, Ruh-roh. And she added, examine them.

Whose signet ring, cord, and staff are these? Judah recognized them and said, she is more in the right than I, since I did not give her to my son Shayla. And he did not know her intimately again.

Notice in there, it's at the end of the story, at the end of an awful story. But finally, Judah goes, oh, I had what I was supposed to do. I had my purpose, my responsibilities.

I shirked them. But then notice, he doesn't just repent for what he had done in saying, she is more in the right than I. He then says, I'm going to, from now on, take the right steps.

It's not just, I was wrong. It's, I'm not walking in that way anymore. He says, he did not know her intimately again.

This guy who even just encountering random prostitutes by the wayside was so involved with them, now he says, I'm going to turn my life around.

And we'll see this even over the coming weeks and months, that when we see Judah again, he is a changed person. He's no longer the person seeking to sell his brother for a buck. He's no longer the person that is soliciting prostitutes.

Instead, he begins acting in an entirely different way.

28:13

Perez and Jesus Ancestor

Now, you might ask, as many people have asked, why in the world is this story in scripture? The answer for this comes in these last few verses. When the time came for her to give birth, there were twins in her womb.

As she was giving birth, one of them put out his hand and the midwife took it and tied a scarlet thread around it, announcing, this one came out first. So remember, all of this has been the story of the first born. So there's the first born.

But then he pulled his hand back, out came his brother, and she said, what a breakout you have made for yourself. So he was named Perez, which means like breakout or breakthrough.

Then his brother, who had the scarlet thread tied to his hand, came out and was named Zara. Perez became a great-great-great-great-great-grandfather of Boaz, eventually Jesse, David, ultimately the Lord Jesus Christ.

As you read through Matthew 1, as you read through Luke 3 at the genealogies, you see four women's names show up within the genealogy of Jesus. It would have been a shocking thing at the time.

Listing a woman's name would not give a king or some ruler greater respect in the community. But the writers of Scripture said, we know exactly who Jesus' ancestors were, and actually we want to give some honor.

We want to remember how God is good to those that are imperfect. That orange looks delicious, man.

So as you look at the story of Jesus, Jesus included of all the people on planet Earth that he could have had stories, his ancestral family stories come through, Jesus included this family story in his life. Let that be a comfort to you.

Hopefully, none of you ever do anything this debauchery in your life. But if God can forgive and use and love Judah and Tamar and Perez, then he has grace for you, my friend.

I also love that Jesus, out of all of the different, you know, sons of Israel, of the tribes that he could come from, if it were up to us, we would say, oh, man, pick Jesus, the lion of the tribe of Joseph, because Joseph is such a great guy, and

we'll see over and over again in Genesis that that's the case. But Jesus is the lion of the tribe of Judah. This one who is flawed, sinful, greedy, lustful, abdicating his responsibilities over and over again.

God says, I will identify with the broken, with the failures, with the sinners. I am not scared of how bad you are because I know how good I am, and the beauty that I can bring out of this brokenness.

31:26

Live Godʼs Purpose

Today, just two main thoughts as we close, as we look at this passage. First is that God created you for his purposes, not your own. Judah did not live his life for the purposes of God.

He lived it for what he wanted to do, what he could get out of a situation, what he could get out of people. He wanted his purposes, not God's. But the truth today is that we are created to glorify God, not ourselves, through our bodies.

1 Corinthians 6 and verses 18 through 20 say, flee sexual immorality. Every other sin a person commits is outside the body. But the person who is sexually immoral sins against his own body.

Don't you know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit who is in you, whom you have from God? You are not your own, for you were bought at a price. So glorify God with your body.

This is something that as we look at our world today, for several decades now, even the dominant voice of our culture has been, do whatever you want with your body.

As long as you consent and the other person consents, you can do whatever you would like. But God says, I have set up intimacy and human sexuality for a specific purpose. One man and one woman in one committed relationship for their entire life.

That is the system that God has set up, that there is mutual respect and love and care and provision that is there within a marriage. So we do not have the right to say, well, I have my purpose in life. I really love this person.

I'm not going to commit to them, but I really like what this person can give me. No, my friend, you do not belong to you. You are the drill attempting to smash down a nail when God has a better purpose for you.

Live for the purpose of God, not for your own purpose. I love here what Pastor Matthew Henry back in the 1700s said about how Tamar sold even her own body.

He says, It added to the scandal that the hire of a harlot, then which nothing is more infamous, was demanded, offered, and accepted a kid from the flock, a goodly price at which her chastity and honor were valued.

Nay, had the consideration been thousands of rams and ten thousand rivers of oil, it had not been a valuable consideration.

The favor of God, the purity of the soul, the peace of conscience, and the hope of heaven are too precious to be exposed to sale at any such rates. The topaz of Ethiopia cannot equal them.

What are those profited that lose their souls to gain the world? My friend, as we look at scripture over and over again, God says, I have a purpose for your body.

It is not simply for you to be miserable and for you to be a monk up on some mountain somewhere, or a nun singing The Hills Are Alive with the sound of music somewhere. That's not God's plan for you. He has a good plan for you.

But my friends, may we not say, God, I know what you have commanded me to do with my body, but I'm going to do whatever I want. May the story of Judah tell us you belong to God. You have a greater purpose.

So follow God's ways and not your own. We can see there secondly that we are created to say yes to God's desires, not to worldly desires.

Paul tells Timothy, flee from youthful passions and pursue righteousness, faith, love, and peace along with those who call on the Lord from a pure heart.

You and I will have desires whether you are 18 years old today or whether you are 79 years old today or even older, as you know, we have some.

Whatever your age, you will have a desire to say and to do things that are against God's purpose for your life. It's not restricted to just sexuality, though that's what we're particularly seeing in the passage today.

But all of us will have desires to bite back and rage against someone. We will have a desire to shirk away from our responsibilities because of fear of accountability, even as Judah sent his friend Hiram to go pay the goat price.

But my friend, follow God's desires for your life, not your own. His plans are not to harm you, but to prosper you and to give you an expected end, a hope, and a future. So say yes to God's desires, not to worldly desires.

And we are created to accomplish God's will with our possessions. That when you think about it, who was the ultimate owner of Judah's ring, of Judah's staff, of Judah's name, and of the goat that he had?

Ultimately, who do all of our possessions come from and belong to? God. And with the name that God had given Judah, with God's name, God be praised, inscribed on his staff, Judah sold out.

My friend, everything that you have belongs to God. Use it for God's purposes.

Paul tells Timothy, instruct those who are rich in the present age, not to be arrogant or to set their hope on the uncertainty of wealth, but on God who richly provides us with all things to enjoy.

Instruct them to do what's good, to be rich in good works, to be generous and willing to share, storing up treasure for themselves as a good foundation for the coming age, so that they may take hold of what is truly life.

37:23

Treat Others Like Jesus

God created you for his purposes, not your own, and God created others for you to care for, not for you to use. How you treat others should always invite them to Jesus. Think of Judas' interactions.

He could not, after his sin, tell Hiram, you know who you should follow? Yahweh. Yahweh is amazing.

Like you should follow him. Hiram would go, I don't know, man, I've seen the way you lived, and it doesn't seem all that different than the way that I'm living as just a Canaanite in the land.

Can you share the gospel with maybe your significant other or your co-worker without it being weird? Could you invite them to church and what they hear the Bible say be true in your life?

Would they view you as a hypocrite as they hear what the Bible says about sex or responsibilities when they've seen how you live your life?

And can I tell you, if that's been you, that as you think about your life, you go, oh, I've not been living right. I've not been living for God's purposes. I've been living for my own.

The same God that chose to forgive and to use Judah is the same God that will forgive and use you within your life.

The God who transformed lustful, irresponsible Judah into the kingly tribe of Israel is the God who can transform your brokenness into Christ-likeness. How you treat others should reflect Jesus' goodness and love.

If you will, you should treat people with the actions that Jesus would treat them with. Are you treating others in your life how Jesus would treat them, or are you being sinful or cruel in your interactions?

We saw this in the hypocrisy of Judah, that though he was imperfect, though he was sinning, though he was sinning sexually, he did not have mercy or grace to give those who were struggling in that same way.

One great way to filter your words and your actions even this week is, instead of just saying something to someone, say, Jesus says you are whatever you are going to say, or Jesus wanted me to do whatever action you're taking to you.

When you face your choices, recognizing that you are made in the image of God, and you are supposed to be a Christian, a little Christ, it will change the way that you talk about and you treat others.

If you will, there is no moment in the child of God's life where we take off the Christian hat, and we just get to say or do whatever we want.

If we are truly indwelt by the Holy Spirit of God, then that means that the way that you treat your spouse, your significant other, your neighbor, your friend, your co-worker, the person across the aisle from you, you are intended to treat them the

way that Jesus would treat them. Instead, we treat people however we think they deserve. We like someone, man, we'll spend time on them. We will pray for them.

We'll give them gifts. We'll hang out with them. But if we don't like someone, oh, it's gossip.

It's back talk. We're going to insult them to their face and behind their back. My friends, we are never not a Christian if we are truly a child of God.

So choose whatever action I'm taking. I need to remember, Jesus should want me to do this, or Jesus wants me to say this to this person. And then lastly, how you treat others should be how you treat Jesus.

And think of Matthew 25. That Jesus says, the way that you treat the poor, the thirsty, the hungry, the imprisoned believers is the way that you treat Jesus.

That on that judgment day, as people go, Lord, when did we see you hungry or thirsty or naked or imprisoned? And Jesus says, whenever you have cared for the least of these, my brothers and sisters, you have done so unto me.

Can I ask you, as you interact with person after person today or throughout the rest of your week, realize that every person you interact with is made in the image of Jesus. Will you treat that person like you would treat Jesus?

Will you treat them with kindness and respect? Will you live your life in such a way that you could invite them to believe the Gospel or invite them to church without it being weird or hypocritical for you to do so?

You go, how in the world can I live that kind of life, that kind of life that is following Jesus? It is not done by your willpower. It is not done by your knowledge of all the great things.

It's not even done by your own self-control or discipline. It is done by the Holy Spirit of God, who has moved into the life of every true believer in that moment that we have repented of our sins and believed in Christ alone for salvation.

And with the Holy Spirit of God living in you, as we yield to him, as we say yes to him over and over again, we find out that our own lustful, sinful, irresponsible ways start fading more and more into the background.

And a following of Christ and obedience to him, we find easier and easier, the more and more we say yes to the Holy Spirit of God. Today, owning your responsibilities matters. You belong to God, body and soul.

He has given you your body, your possessions and your relationships to use for his purposes, his honor and his glory. How will you use what God has given you this week? Let's pray together.