Genesis: The Road to Timnah

All right, thanks, happy to have you here, die if

I haven't met you yet, and I'm glad you decided

to join us this morning. In Room online, we are

jumping back into our series through the Book of Genesis,

where we are attempting to follow, as like a bit

of a summary, we're following God's partnership with a specific

family and partnerships our word we've chosen to call that partnership.

God has a partnership with a specific family, starting with

a guy named Abraham, and this partnership is in order

to work together to bring his redemption plan for humans

into effect. So if you have not been here as

we've made our way through the Book of Genesis, or

you've missed a few or you just have a short

memory because it's been a few weeks since we have

been in this book, let me just give you a

super brief recap of the important pieces for us to

remember for today, and then of course I encourage you

go back and listen to messages you've missed. So God

calls this guy Abraham, who is not perfect, but he

calls him, and he finds in Abraham a guy who

is obedient, who is hospitable, and who is trusting, and

so God begins this relationship, this partnership with Abraham. He

gives Abraham a promise, and the promise is you will

have more descendants than you can count. Abraham, I'm sure

we can relate, gets on impatient waiting for this promise

to come about because he doesn't have any children when

God gives him that promise, So Abraham gets impatient and

takes matters into his own hands. He goes outside of

his marriage relationship with his wife. Instead, he sleeps with

her maid servant. This stuff is in the Bible. These

people are not perfect. It's not condoned, but it's in there.

Sleeps with her maid servant. They have a son named Ishmael.

This is not the promised child from God. This is

Abraham's way of bringing that promise to fulfillment. Eventually, he

and his wife Sarah do have a child. This is

the promised child that is I. Isaac grows up, takes

a wife name Rebecca. You're gonna have to really follow

along on names for a little bit here, but takes

a wife name Rebecca, and together they have twin boys,

Esau and Jacob. Esau is the firstborn, but Jacob through

deceptive means twice, takes from his brother his birthright, his

firstborn birthright, and the blessing that comes with being the firstborn. Jacob,

who's the deceiver, then runs from the family and meets

his uncle Laban, who's also a deceiver, and now Jacob

is the recipient of deception. He falls in love with

his uncle Laban's daughter. Yes, that means she's family. Her

name is Rachel. He agrees to work for his uncle

for seven years to get Rachel's hand in marriage, and

after seven years, his uncle pulls a switcheroo and gives

him her.

The older daughter Leah, as a surprise. Yes, ask all

the questions, how did he not know that?

Go back and listen to the sermon. But after the

wedding week has completed, he has.

Then also given Rachel, also.

Not condoned in the Bible, but it's there because these

people are not perfect. He now has two wives and

works another seven years.

For his uncle.

And if you were here for our last message, Brandon

delivered this message a couple weeks ago. Our last message

in Genesis was about breakthrough, and Brannon proposed to us

that breakthrough came in Jacob's life because he was willing

to admit that he was a deceptive guy, and he

went back and faced his brother who he had wronged

and made it right with him. Jacob then has twelve sons. Okay,

we're not going to go through every one of their names.

You're welcome, but this is through a combination of his

two wives and their two maid servants. This is a

complicated family.

Since Brandon is going to spend.

The next couple of weeks really digging into Joseph's story,

but that's what comes next. We're going to kind of

take this a little differently. So chapter thirty seven should

be the next chapter that we talk about here, and

that is the beginning.

Of Joseph's story.

Instead, we're going to jump into the middle of Joseph's

story and we're going to tackle chapter twenty eight or

thirty eight, and it is the story of Jacob's fourth son,

and his name is Judah.

And here's the thing.

Although this is Judah's story, I would like to propose

it's our story also because I think I can say

that every single person here is going to relate because

every person here or watching online has.

Made a mistake. We've all made a mistake.

I mean, we've all made lots of mistakes, but it's

probably also true that all of us have made at

least one mistake that we could say that was a

huge mistake, that was.

A big one.

It could be moral, it could be spiritual, it could

be relational, it could be financial.

You fill in the blank, but all of.

Us have the shared experience of mistake making. And I

debated using a personal story to illustrate this right here,

because I immediately had something that jumped into my mind,

and I just decided I didn't want to define it

too too narrowly for you, because I don't know what

comes to your mind or what jumps into your heart

when I.

Say huge mistake.

I don't know if for you that is words you

have said to your children, or unfaithfulness to your spouse,

or stealing from your employer, or maybe you've you know,

held a grudge, refused to apologize. Decide, I'm going to

go to my grain, never admitting I did something wrong.

You've lost your temper, lied, deceived, fill in all those things.

And maybe you're sitting here and you're kind of eaten

alive inside because of the effects of the mistake.

That you've made. And let's say this carefully.

Our mistakes have consequences that is not new for anybody here.

Our mistakes break relationships, Our mistakes break families. Our mistakes

and they don't all do all these things, but they can.

Our mistakes can cost us leadership opportunities or employment, or

friendships or family relationships. But I want you to hear

me say, where God is concerned, perfection is not required.

Where God is concerned, perfection is not required. He has

never put that mandate on You can work with mistake

makers if and what you should be wondering right now

is if what? And I think to find the answer

to that, we got to dig into Judah's story. But

before we do that, would you just bow your heads

with me as we pray? Lord, this is your word,

it's your story, it's your people. And I say this

often when I speak, and I'm gonna say it again today.

I have nothing to offer the people listening this morning

if it's not you. I don't have enough wisdom, I

don't have enough good one liners. I don't have enough

life experience, I don't have enough authority. But by your spirit, God,

I am asking that you would stir hearts to be

sensitive for even the most stubborn, for even the most resistant,

for even the most deceptive, For even the one that

has lied so deeply to themselves that they've done nothing

wrong that needs to be apologized for, or whatever it is.

We hold it before you, Lord, I pray you would

give us the courage to deal with it. It's in

your name, we pray Amen.

Again.

So Brandon is going to tackle Joseph's story. Joseph is

one of Jacob's twelve kids, and even if you don't

have a lot of church experience, you're probably at least

familiar with Joseph. You know about Joseph in The Coat

of Many Colors, or if you've seen the Broadway show

The Technicolor or dream Coat or whatever it's called, you're

probably familiar with Joseph. And though Brandon's going to dig

into that, to understand Judah's story, which is who we're

looking at today, we have to know a little bit

about Joseph and his brothers in order to understand it.

So I have a family tree for you just as

a quick reference.

This is also on.

Our What's Next page, So if you want to look

at this later, We've our talked about Abraham and Isaac.

Now we're talking about Jacob. Jacob has twelve kids by

four women. Two of them are his wives, Leah who

is the oldest, Rachel, who is the younger, the one

that he loved the most, and then they're two maid servants.

And what happens for these twelve children to be born

is like a big competition of who is the most favored,

because they keep having boys for this man. And so

that's why the two sisters offer their maid servants to

have children as well. The part that we need to

understand is Scripture has already told us that Jacob clearly

has a favorite wife and her name is Rachel. But

now Scripture is going to tell us in chapter thirty seven,

verse three, that Jacob also has a favorite kid. It

says Jacob loved Joseph more than any of his other children.

Now we're going to.

Talk about his children, leaving off Benjamin, the youngest, he's

too young at this point to really come into the story.

But that leaves us with ten siblings of Joseph, who

you probably all know Joseph is Daddy's favorite. As a result,

those ten boys hate their brother Joseph. They plot to

kill him. This is chapter thirty seven, so it's next

week's story. They plot to kill him, they decide they're

going to then they pivot and say, let's throw them

in an empty well and just leave him there to die.

And then and it's actually Judah's idea, He's the one

we're talking about today, to say, let's sell him. Look,

there's some Ishmaelite traders coming along. Let's sell our brother

to the traders who will then take him to Egypt

and sell him into slavery. Interesting note, Ishmaelites are relatives

because if you caught that name in the Quick family tree,

Abraham when he didn't wait for the promise son Isaac,

he went to his wife's maid servant. He had a

son named Ishmael. These are Grandpa's relatives. This is Grandpa's

brother's kids that they sell Joseph too to.

Be taken into slavery, into Egypt. I got to cover

it up.

So they take Joseph's coat, they kill an animal, they

dip it in the animal blood, and they take it

home to their dad.

And this is what they say.

Chapter thirty seven, verse thirty two. We found this, please

examine it to see whether it.

Is your son's robe or not. Verse thirty three.

Tells us that their father recognized it immediately and that

he then assumed a wild animal has torn his favorite

son to pieces. And chapter thirty seven concludes by telling us.

Jacob was distraught.

He mourned for Joseph deeply for a long time, and

his family couldn't console him. Okay, that's the summary we

need to walk into chapter thirty eight. I encourage you

open up chapter thirty eight on your phone, or if

you have your Bible, open it up. If you don't

have either of those, it'll the verses I highlight will

be on the screen behind me. But starting with verse

one of chapter thirty eight, it says, about this time

Judah left home and moved to Adlum, about this time,

about what time, About the time that the brothers, led

by Judah conspire to sell their brother into say slavery,

and take his coat and get blood on it and

take it home to their dad and say, I don't know,

do you recognize this? And Dad is destroyed and mourns

for a really long time. About that time Judah left

home and moved to a dolum and we're left wondering

why was there a rift in the family. Then, add

to that, this chapter is like a fast forward time

warp chapter because we're immediately going to see that Judah

then marries a Canaanite woman, and that's forbidden, by the way.

But he marries a foreign woman and.

They have three sons, and i'll just summarize the next

couple verses.

Son number one, I'll spare you his name.

So you don't get even more confused, is incredibly wicked

according to the Bible.

So God kills him.

But he's married to a woman named Tamar whose husband

just died. It's a very cultural practice at this time

period to then give the widow to the next son,

and the next son and the widow can have a

child and carry on the family line of the first

son who died. So Tamor is then given to son

number two. And Son number two is described as evil

in the Bible, and God strikes him also, which just

should make us pause. But both her husbands have died,

there is one son left, and so Judah does something

incredibly cruel. He says, I'll give you my next son

when he's old enough to be your husband, But for now,

go home to your father's house and wait. So she

is a part of his household, Judah's household. She is

his daughter in law, and culturally he's responsible for her.

And he has sent her away, which is incredibly shameful

and disgraceful. It's not her fault that the two men

die and she is sent away to her father's home.

And then Scripture tells us.

He never intended to give his thirds to tamorro Verse twelve.

Then says some years later, So years have gone by

and Judah's wife dies. We don't know anything about her,

besides that, we don't know how she died.

But Judah mourns for her. And after he mourns for her, Scripture.

Tells us he went up for the shearing of the sheep,

and Tamar got wind of this, so he finished his

period of morning. He's now going to go for this

shearing of the sheep, which is also a festival celebration,

and Tamar gets wind of it, and she's still living.

With her father.

Okay, years have gone by, she knows, and the Bible

tells us this.

She knows.

The third son has grown up, and Judah has not

fulfilled his promise, and she's still waiting, and she's still

wearing her mourning.

Clothes, the widow's clothing.

Now, there's no biblical description of how long you should

wear widow's clothing, truly speaking in this time period, it's

anywhere from a couple weeks to a year, regardless of

what it is.

It has been.

Years plural, that she's still waiting in her father's home

and still a widow in mourning wearing widow's clothing. Look

at verse fourteen. It says, so she Tamar changed out

of her widow's clothing. Why she heard her father in

law was going to be somewhere specific. She covered herself

with a veil to disguise herself. Then she sat beside

the road at the entrance to the village of a name,

which was on the road to Timna. So Tamar shrouds

her face so that he won't recognize her. She places

herself beside the road as a prostitute would. Bible doesn't

condone it. It's but it's in there now. The rabbis

have some fascinating things to say about locations here. Rabbis

like teachers of the Hebrew text, and we we have

a map that's not working for you, but it is

on our What's next page. If you want to look

at this, I will just describe it instead and use

my hands. A northern city is Shechem. That is where

this family is from. That's where Jacob and all of

his kids live, and that's where Judah has left. He

has gone south to a place called a dulum. We

saw that at the beginning of the chapter. What you

need to catch though, is that it doesn't say he

moved south.

It says he went down. He went down.

Now that's probably partly because he went from hill country

literally downhill.

It could be you know, like well south feels like down.

But the rabbi suggest that this has also got some

implication of like what's happening inside of him, Like he

went down hill, he went down. He's now at this

moment making a choice to go to Timna, and your

text might say up. But what the rabbis point out

is that there's like an intersection happening here. They say

that the location of Timna is not the focus here

at all. These teachers of the Hebrew tech say that

it's along this road where two people can meet and

intersect outside of appropriate boundaries. So if you think of

the metaphorical expression like you're at a crossroads, this is

where Judah finds himself. I mean, think about where he's

come from, and now he finds himself at this crossroads

where he's about to get on the road to Timna.

He's about to cross over into an area that is

deemed as inappropriate. Here's what one of the Hebrew commentaries said.

It said, it is somewhere around Timna where questionable sexual

and cross cultural activity occurs. It is here that Judah,

the fourth son of Jacob, descendant of Abraham, imperfect but

in partnership with God to bring people back into right

relationship with God, who has instigated the selling of his

brother into slavery, who has gone down literally and metaphorically

from his father's family, has married a Canaanite woman, has

had two wicked sons, has lied to his daughter in

law and treated her disgracefully, and now finds himself at

the crossroads turning onto the road to Timna, a probable

metaphorical description of a place he should not be in

order to go do things that he should not do.

And my question for us today that I just went

through my head all week long, is have you been

on this road? Have you found yourself on the road

to Timna? Are you on this road today? You've made mistakes,

or you've made a big mistake. You put your feet

on the road to go in a direction you know

you should not go, or you've already gone to do

things that you should not do.

This is where Judah is.

He's on the road to Timna, and it's on this

road that he sees his former daughter in law, although

he doesn't recognize her because she's disguised, and he propositions her.

In fact, the Bible.

Says he says to her, let me have sex with

you again.

Prostitution. It's in the Bible. It's not endorsed. These are

not perfect people, but here it is. They arrange payment.

The payment is going to be a goat.

And here's where I got to give Judah maybe a

hair of credit. I don't think he planned this out

because it says he doesn't even have payment with him,

so they agree on a goat. He doesn't have a

goat with him, So he says, I promise I'll pay you,

and she says, what are you going to give me?

As a collateral so that I know that you're going

to pay me. And Scripture says, he gave his identification

seal or your Bible might say signet r same thing.

It's the seal that you would use if it's a

ring or hangs around your neck to put like your

signature in wax on something. It's your identity, is what

it is. He gives her his identity in the form

of a ring or a.

Seal and a staff.

And staffs at this time period are not you know,

just like a piece of wood you grab it on

the side of the road. They're carved with your family,

you know, symbols or like your name is carved on it.

I mean, these are very much him.

It'd be like your passport and your credit card and

you signed it.

And I just am struck by how.

Flippantly he just hands over his identity to the prostitute

on the side of the road he shouldn't have been on,

but he does. Later, Judas sends a friend. I could

say a lot about this, but he sends a friend

to go, hey, go find that woman and pay her

the goat and get my identity back. And the friend

cannot find this woman anywhere, and he seems so utterly

unworried about it. And his response is something like, well, fine,

let her keep my identity. I don't need it anyway.

That's how far down the road he has traveled. Verse

twenty four tells us about three months later, Judah was told, Tamar,

your daughter in law, because she still belongs to his family,

has acted like a prostitute. And now because of this,

she's pregnant. And Judah, upon hearing that his widowed daughter

in law that he has sent off to go live

elsewhere and did not take care of, is enraged and

demands that she be burned to death. And as she's

being taken out to be killed, she sends a message

to her father in law with his identity, his seal,

and his staff.

She says, give him this message.

I am with child by the man to whom these

things belong. Please examine and see who's seal and who's

staff these are. What's the guy gonna do right? Caught

red handed? Will he lie? Will he make excuses? Will

he blame her or somebody else? Will he try and

talk his way out of it?

Will he slink away in shame?

Will he use what a man could use in this

culture and just use his maleness and say you're a liar,

even though the evidence is clearly there, and continue forward

and let her be killed to hide his own lie.

Nope.

Verse twenty six tells us that Judah recognized the items

immediately and.

This is what he said.

She is more righteous than me, or in other words,

she's right, I'm wrong.

And maybe it's possible.

I mean it's possible Judah is just the kind of

guy that gets caught in his sin, gets caught in

a lie, and admits it. I don't think so, because

this guy has piled on mistake after a mistake after

a mistake. He's already shown he's willing to leave his

family and go down metaphorically and physically go down and

live somewhere else and marry somebody outside of who he's

supposed to marry. And he's got kind of rotten kids.

I mean, maybe that's not all his fault, but he's

really not.

Got a good track record to this point.

I'd like to propose that something much deeper has just happened,

and we can't in our English Bibles, and we're gonna

need the help of the rabbis and the sages of

the Hebrew texts to understand.

So hang with me. Let's go backwards just a hair.

Are you still with me? Okay?

If we go back to where Judas story began for

us today, where Judas story began was that it was

his idea to sell their brother Joseph into slavery, his idea.

I just spent two weeks in Egypt, Brandon and I did,

and it's far away, and I just was struck by

how long it takes to get there for us, and

by airplane, but it takes a long time to get there.

And it is a you know this either you know

this because you've seen pictures or you've been there. It

is a radically different climate, it is a radically different culture.

It's a radically different religious faith system. The way people

dress is different, what they eat is different, the sunshine

is different, the ground, the dirt, which is all sad,

is different.

And I just was really struck while we.

Were there, how cruel it was that his brothers sold

Joseph into slavery, to be taken far from his homeland

into a foreign climate, a foreign culture, a foreign religious system,

and he was just a kid. How incredibly cruel and

Judah is the proponent of that idea. Selling their brother

was incredible cruelty, hatred, and jealousy. Judah is also one

of the brothers who devised the plan to take Joseph's robe,

cover it in blood, take it to their dad, and

hold it in front of their dad and say do

you recognize this?

And watch him wail with the pain.

That it caused him, that he lost his most favorite son.

That's also deep cruelty, and maybe Judah has felt this

long standing guilt eating him alive inside.

Maybe that's why he ran.

Or maybe something deeper is here, maybe something we just

read shook Judah to his core.

And brought about change.

The Rabbis point out something critically important here. They say

that when Judah, along with his brothers, take Joseph's robe

to their father and ask him to look and see

if he recognizes it, the Hebrew word used there for

recognize is nakar nakar to recognize.

And so they take.

Joseph's robe and they say to their father, look, see

do you nikar this?

Do you recognize this?

And then scripture says their father immediately in nicard, he immediately.

Recognized that robe.

And now in chapter thirty eight, Tamar sends a message

to her father in law while she's being dragged out

to be killed along with his seal and his walking stick.

And her message says that she is pregnant by the

man who owns these items. And the message is, look

and see do you Nakar? Do you recognize these items?

And scripture says Judah Nakar's immediately Nakar recognize own? Say

that's mine. Look and see do you recognize?

Do you own?

And I would like to propose to you that Judah

is now shook to the core by a phrase you

so many years before. In fact, in the Book of Genesis,

n car is used eight times. All eight are associated

with deception. We've already covered six times, we just haven't

pulled it out and pointed it out to you, and

two more are coming in the resolution of Judah and

Jacob's story coming in the weeks to come. But jolted

by his own words spoken so many years before, and

faced with the pain that he has caused, we can't

know for sure if he fled for this reason, but

we do know that his story is placed here for

a reason. Chapter thirty seven here's this Joseph guy. And

then chapter thirty eight let us tell you about Judah's story,

and then we're going to go back to Joseph.

Why is it placed there?

Why when you put chapter thirty seven and thirty eight

next to each other, is it important that they're next

to each other because that phrase is the key in

both chapters when you line them up. And I would

like you to notice that Judah changes.

How do we know?

Well, later in Joseph's story, we're going to see Judah again,

So that means he moves home.

So something happened here.

He moves home, and we're going to see that he

rejoins his family and that he is so changed that

he will be willing to offer his own life in

exchange for their youngest brother. We said in the beginning

of this story that God is not concerned with perfection,

and perfection is not required.

If and now we need to finish the sentence.

I think God can work with mistake makers if the

mistake makers will Nakar recognize own and turn from their sin,

mistakes and pain causing ways that was what was in

front of Judah.

Will you own this? Do you recognize this is yours.

It's your fault.

This isn't about blame casting, it's about blame ownership. This

was the opportunity for Judah to say, that's my fault.

She's more righteous than me. My contribution to this is

what caused this problem. Let me wrap this up. Here's

the part that blows my mind. And this is, I mean,

what a beautiful thing like. We had a very small

window on our Egypt trip where we were not packed

with things to do, and we were on a boat

on the Nile River, which is awesome, and I had

my Bible out and I didn't even know I was

speaking this week. I hadn't realized that yet, and I

didn't know what I was speaking on. And I just

happened to go down this rabbit hole that led me

to this, and how beautifully it ties in here. Though

Joseph is incredibly well loved and well known as a

Bible character, it's not through Joseph's line that God will send.

Them aside ya, Jesus, did you know?

It's through Judah's line, the mistake maker who owns his

mistakes so good.

It was Judah who learned to be humble.

It was Judah who learned to confess. It was Judah

who chose humility and confession.

Over power, and he could have used the power.

It was Judah who, when confronted with his wrong, owned it.

And it was Judah who will soon and will see

this in the weeks to come, willingly offer his life

for someone else. Through this line, the Messiah Jesus will come,

who will choose humility overpower, and who will willingly offer

to lay down his own life for others.

Judah's not perfect. We're not perfect.

But what sets Judah of heart, he'll recognize, he'll the

car he'll own, and he'll turn. And because of that,

this verse is true for every one of us who

belonged to Jesus.

Romans eight one.

There's no condemnation for those who are in Jesus. If

you know Jesus, there's no condemnation for you. There's still

consequences for the mistakes and the sin.

But if we will own it and.

Say, Jesus, I have nothing to give you but the mistakes,

and I admit it, I've made them.

They're my fault.

Jesus offers us forgiveness by the blood that he shed

willingly for you and for me. So my question this

morning is have you made a huge mistake.

And maybe you've made a huge.

Mistake and you've made it right and you're right before God.

It's awesome. And maybe not.

Maybe you're listening right now and you're like, I'm on

the road right now, I just made the mistake yesterday

or this week, or maybe you're at the intersection and

you're so tempted to turn down that road to the place.

You shouldn't go, to do the things you shouldn't do.

This message is for you.

God doesn't require perfection, but he does require ownership. To

recognize what we've done that breaks the relationships and own

it and there is so much freedom and restoration on

the other side of it. If we will, would you

bow your heads. I want to close by praying for you,

and in a moment, I'm gonna I'm gonna actually invite

you to come and pray with someone. But first, let's

let's do let's do the work here. If you're in

this place where you're online, your head is bowed. You know,

you know, you know the things, you know the mistakes,

you know the sin, you know the pride, you know

the refusal to own and if you just say I

want Jesus to cleanse me and forgive me.

Would you just raise your hand all over this room?

Yeah, come on, thank you. You can put your hands down.

Would you join me? Jesus, Thank you that in you

there is no condemnation. Father God, Thank you that you

do not require perfection from us, and thank you that

you require ownership. It's the only way we can walk

in freedom. Truly, it's the only way we can find joy.

It's the only.

Way we can have peace when we lay our head

on the pillow at night, is when we own the

ways that we've sinned, When we own the mistakes. When

we look, we recognize immediately, and then we confess. We

say that is wrong. So today, Jesus, we offer you

our sin, our brokenness, our mistakes, our shame, the pain

we've caused other people, the pain we've caused ourselves, the

pain we've caused you, And we say, would you forgive?

Would you forgive us? Forgive me? Across this room online

just say forgive me, forgive me, Jesus, forgive me. Jesus.

Thank you Jesus that if we confess our sin, you

are faithful to forgive us and restore us to right relationship,

and we want to be in right relationship where there's

no condemnation.

Those things are forgiven. For those in this place that

have all kinds of.

Broken relationships in their wake, Lord, I pray give them

the courage to face them and go before them to

bring healing.

It's in your name, we pray. Amen.

I'm actually going to close this myself this morning. Before

I let you go, I'm going to invite some of

our staff, prayer team deacons. If you're someone that can pray,

to come to the front. I'd like to invite you

before you go. If you need prayer, I'll be down

here too. We'd love to pray with you and encourage you.

There's no judgment in walking forward because remember we're all

mistake makers. I also want to invite you to check

out our What's Next page because you can do more

research and study there. We're here to help you. Will

you stand to your feet? I'm going to send you

out with a blessing. There is no condemnation for those

who are in Jesus, So go in freedom and write

relationship with the Lord and represent him well.

Amen.