God's Grace is Bigger Than Wickedness | Genesis 38

Well, I don't have the pleasure of knowing you.

My name is Brandon Delage. I'm I'm the teaching team here

at Saint City. We're going to be teaching from

the Bible today in Genesis chapter 38.

Genesis 38 · chapter mention

So you have a Bible. Go ahead and turn.

There's the first book of the Bible.

I think it's on page 32 of 1 of the Bibles in front of you, Remy

in Genesis chapter 38. I'll meet you there in just a

Genesis 38 · chapter mention

moment. Now there's a story in the Bible

that if I were to ask you to read of people, you would not

want to do it. It is a story of betrayal, a

story of lies, of cheating, sex, death.

That is not like the tagline, no, no, no.

That is Genesis 38. That is Jesus's family tree.

Matthew chapter one verse one when describing Jesus, his

genealogy says this, that the genealogy of Jesus Christ, the

son of David, the son of Abraham.

Abraham was the father of Isaac, and Isaac the father of Jacob,

and Jacob the father of Judah and his brothers, and Judah the

father of Perez and Zerah. By Tamar.

At Christmas, we celebrate the arrival of Jesus through that

family line, through that family tree.

But for us to understand why Jesus came for Christmas, we

must understand whose family he came from.

And in Matthew chapter one, we just read a few names.

We read the name of Jesus, David, Abraham, Isaac and Jacob

and Judah. And then there's a woman there

by the name of Tamar that's curious.

You see, Matthew didn't list I, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob's

wives, Rebecca, Rachel and Sarah.

No, no, no, he listed, the first woman he listed was Tamar.

This month we're looking at the women in the genealogy of Jesus,

the five mothers of Jesus going back up his family tree.

We're kind of going to ancestry.com up in Saint City

for the next month, looking deep, deep into Jesus's family

line and story. What we'll find in Jesus family

tree is what you might find in many of our lives.

A broken family, a redeeming God.

And you'll discover that it was a sovereign Christmas.

Christmas changed everything because there might be some

skeletons in your or your family's closet today.

And how is it that you go about life?

How is he going to go through this Christmas season cleaning

up the wickedness that you've experienced or the wickedness

you've done in your life? How are you going to clean that

up? And I want to share with the

story of a woman in Genesis, Tamar Jesus is 35 times great

grandmother, by the way. That's how far back in the

family tree we went. We're here in Genesis.

We're right smack dab in the beginning of the story of

Joseph, the guy who you might know is the guy with the big

colorful coat that they made a Broadway play after.

We're two chapters in and this guy, Judah, is the fourth born

son of Joseph's dad, Jacob. His name is Judah.

It's about 500 years before Moses.

And as much as this is a sermon about Tamar, we can't miss that

before this chapter ends, Judah becomes the most morally

compromised person, the most morally compromised character in

the story. I want to read the stories for

you once, and then I'm going to help you understand what it

means for your life. Genesis 38 says this.

It happened at that time, at that time that Judah went down

from his brothers and turned aside to a certain, a dolomite

whose name was Hira. There Judah saw the daughter of

a certain Canaanite whose name was Shua, and he took her and

went into her and she conceived and Boris son and he called his

name, uh, she conceived again and Boris son, and she called

his name Onan. Yet again she bore a son and she

called his name Shayla. Judah was in Chezib when she

bore him. And Judah took a wife for uh,

his first born and her name was Tamar.

There's our main character, but uh, Judah's first born was

wicked in the sight of the Lord, and the Lord put him to death.

Then Judah said to Onan, go into your brother's wife and perform

the duty of a brother-in-law to her, and raise up offspring for

your brother. But Onan knew that the offspring

would not be his. So whenever he went into his

brother's wife, he would waste the seaman on the ground so as

not to give offspring to his brother.

And what he did was wicked in the sight of the Lord, and he

put him to death also. Then Judah said to Tamar, his

daughter-in-law, remain a widow in your father's house till

Shayla, my son, grows up. For he feared that he would die

like his brothers. So Tamar went and remained in

her father's house. In the course of time the wife

of Judah, Shua, Shua's daughter died.

And when Judah was comforted, he went up to Timna to his sheep

shearers, he and his friend Hira the Dolomite.

And when Tamar was told, your father-in-law is going up to

Timna to shear his sheep, she took off her widows garments and

covered herself with a veil, wrapping herself up, and sat at

the entrance to Anayam, which is on the road to Timna.

For she saw that Shayla was grown up, and she had not been

given to him in marriage. When Judah saw her, he thought

she was a prostitute, for she had covered her face.

She turned to her. He turned to her at the roadside

and said, Come, let me come in to you.

For he did not know that she was his daughter-in-law.

She said, What will you give me, that you may come in to me.

He answered, I will send you a young goat from the flock.

And she said, If you give me a pledge until you send it.

He said, What pledge shall I give to you?

She replied, Your signet and your cord, and your staff, that

is in your hand. So he gave them to her and went

into her, and she conceived by him.

Then she arose, and she went away, taking off her veil.

She put on the garments of her widowhood.

When Judah sent the young goat by his friend to the Adolamite

to take back the pledge from the woman's hand, he did not find

her. And he asked the men at the

place, hey, where's the cult prostitute who's at?

And I am at the roadside and they said there's no cult

prostitute that's been here. So he returned to Judah and said

I have not found her. Also the men in the place said

there was no cult prostitute that's been here.

And Judah replied, let her keep the things as her own or we

shall be laughed at. You see, I sent this young goat

and you did not find her. About three months later, Judah

was told, Tamar, your daughter-in-law has been

immoral. Moreover, she is pregnant by

immorality. And Judah said bring her out and

let her be burned. And as she was being brought

out, she sent word to her father-in-law by the man to whom

these belong, I am pregnant. And she said please identify

whose these are, the signet and the cord and the staff.

And then Judah identified them and said, She is more righteous

than I, since I did not give her to my son Shayla, and he did not

know her. Again, when the time of her

labor came, there were twins in her womb.

And when she was in labor, one put out a hand, and the midwife

took and tied a scarlet thread on his hand, saying this one

came out first. But as he drew back his hand,

behold, his brother came out. And she said, What a breach you

have made for yourself. Therefore, his name was called

Perez. Afterward, his brother came out

with the scarlet thread on his hand, and his name was called

Zarah. These are God's words for us

today. That is a crazy story.

I know. You're like you're preaching

that Christmas time. That's a crazy story, dude.

Yeah, I know. It's in Jesus family tree.

I want to help you understand what it means for life in the

form of a big idea. Write this down if you'd like to

take notes. That Christmas reminds me that

God's grace is bigger than wickedness.

Christmas, Jesus coming to earth from heaven to earth as a baby,

reminds me that God's grace is bigger than wickedness.

His grace is bigger than injustice.

It is bigger than evil. God's grace is bigger than it.

Grace, if you're unfamiliar with the word or I haven't thought

about its definition, is just getting something that you don't

deserve. Grace is getting something you

don't deserve. It's when you rage punch

somebody in the face and they give you a gift card to your

favorite restaurant. That's how ridiculous and

radical grace is. You get something you don't

deserve. And that's who God is in this

story, gracious. And God's grace is the best

thing going on planet earth. And I want to help you believe.

Embrace your life, what do it mean?

So what does God's grace help me believe?

I think it helps you believe two things amidst wickedness in your

life. The 1st is this, that when life

feels unfair, God still sees me. God's grace helps me believe

that when life feels unfair, God still sees me.

Look back at the text with me. If you could verse one, it

happened at that time that Judah went down from his brothers.

Now Judah is disobeying God here.

He is not supposed to be in the he's not supposed to be there.

He's not supposed to be in Canaan.

Judah is supposed to be with his father and his brothers, but

he's not. This is about 800 years before

King David, 1800 years before Jesus.

Yet even in Genesis chapter 38, God is quietly and subtly

Genesis 38 · chapter mention

shaping the line of the Messiah and Judah's disobeying him.

And in verse 2, he does something that a lot of people

in Genesis do. He sees something that he wants

and he takes it. That's always code for sin.

He saw the daughter of a certain Canaanite woman and he took her

and went into her. And so begins his family tree.

We don't even know this woman's name, but they have three sons,

Ur, Onan, and Shayla. I want to help you make sense of

this crazy Jerry Springer like moment happening in the Bible.

OK? They have three kids.

Uh, the first one, this dude is so terrible, so wicked that God

puts him to death. He's so awful.

It's on site. God puts him to death.

That's how bad of a husband Tamar's first marriage is.

That, uh, received God's judgement then and there.

I shudder to think about what was happening inside of that

marriage. And that's her first one.

We get a little closer look, though, at her second marriage.

You see, there's a marriage custom at this time that would

preserve the deceased brother's family line and help protect the

widow socially and financially. So she goes from ER to his

brother Onan. And Onan is understanding of the

reality that the baby that she's going to have will not be his.

He might be the one to have made it, but in no sense will be his

child. It will be his brother ER.

And so he does something also wicked and terrible and awful.

He does something horrible in secret that he thought only

Tamar would know. But God sees Tamar, and he sees

the wickedness of Onan, something he thought that he

could hide, God saw. So you have Judah with three

sons, ER, Onan, and now Shayla. And Tamar is told by Judah, hey,

when he grows up, he's yours. She's owed a husband legally,

and Judah does not deliver. So if you're Tamar, here's where

you're at in life. You've had not one horrible

husband, but two. You've been used, abused, and

completely neglected, completely written off, forgotten,

justified in your anger because you've been treated unjustly in

your marriage. And I wonder just how alone and

how hurt and how abused she felt, how deep her longing was

for justice. And that level of injustice

might feel unrelatable to you. It might feel extreme until you

realize that you relate to it Every time you say that is not

fair. Maddie and I, we take turns like

being the responsible one at bedtime, OK?

And Maddie will go through the routine that we always do.

This is teeth brush, pajamas on, go to the bathroom, get your

water bottle ready, say your prayers, read a book, light the

candles. I mean, there's so many things

that happen at bedtime. And thankfully, we have a list

that we go through on our wall and Maddie will go through those

things and she'll run the system and it goes great.

Now the next night, it'll be my turn.

I will do the same prayers. I will do the same order of the

routine. I will tuck the kids in

precisely how she just did. And suddenly the kids are very

upset about that. It is just not fair.

I would do the same thing Maddie does, and I don't get the same

result. Kids are awake, they're crying,

they're negotiating, they're asking questions that they

didn't even have until now. It's it's just not fair,

frankly, that I would give the same level of effort and they

don't respond in the exact same way.

And when this isn't fair, turns from like confusion into anger,

is where it actually becomes painful.

When the this isn't fair that this thing happened to me, that

I'm experiencing this suffering, this injustice, this wickedness

and this evil. When that happens to you and you

look out at other people's life and you go, this is not fair.

It's a cry for justice in the human heart.

It's your heart's way of telling you that you're longing for

something deeper. Because we get angry when we

don't get what we expected. We when we don't receive what we

thought we earned, when life doesn't pay us back the way we

assumed it would. We get angry and upset at the

lack of justice in our life and injustice.

That statement of this isn't fair, says the quiet part out

loud. That we believe that if we do

the right things, we get the right results with our life.

We can avoid the suffering, we can avoid the injustice or the

evil in our life. So we can't help but say it,

this isn't fair. Did you know something that God

put that there in your heart? That longing for justice, that

cry for things being right and fair.

God put that there. That's what justice is.

Now, there's two sides to the justice coin.

There's the first, which I think many of you would thinking of as

justice, and that's why you feel justified in saying this isn't

fair, is that you think justice is punishing evil doers.

That's how our courtroom sees it.

You do something wrong, you go to prison.

That's how justice works. But there's a deeper kind of

justice that is real justice. Yes, according to the Bible, we

do punish evil doers. That's a good thing.

But there's a deeper level to justice.

God's ultimate justice is restoring everything to, as it

should be said, simpler, putting things right.

That's ultimate justice. And in the Garden of Eden, when

God created the world, there was only justice, there was only

peace. There was no need even for

justice, really, because everything was already put

right. But then sin enters the world

and it goes haywire. There is suddenly a need for

punishing justice in the world, and there's a need for peace

everywhere. And it doesn't take long in the

book of Genesis to discover just how bad and how dark and how

wicked and how consequential sin is.

You see, socially, there's immediately injustice.

I mean, there's murder within the first family.

There's hatred internally, physically, their bodies already

begin to bear the consequences of sin with sickness and death

and decay. We need justice and for God to

be just, He must punish evildoer sinful people, bringing in the

punishing justice that is required.

But for God to be loving, He must bring ultimate justice,

putting things as they should be, putting things right.

And what will happen is, is as we await the Savior's arrival on

planet earth, you will see across the Bible people trying

to self justify trying to make things right in their life

without God. In fact, every major religion in

the world, you know what they're trying to do, telling you that

you can earn it, that you deserve it, that you're entitled

to the justice. But do you know how God solves

the problem of justice in the world?

Do you know the mystery of the gospel is that Jesus took on

punishing justice for you and for me so that we could receive

God's ultimate justice fully and finally.

That's what the wonder of Jesus is.

He took on punishing justice so we could have the ultimate

justice that our life, that our eternity we be put right by

himself and his offering for us. He made peace by the blood of

his cross. And that is the great wonder of

the Gospel, that the cross is where God is perfectly loving

and perfectly just, where his punishing justice and ultimate

justice collide. And the most beautiful and

horrific act in human history, that the God man Jesus would die

for sinners like you and I ultimately just in paying for

the evil, paying for the sin, paying for the wickedness,

loving, and that he took it upon himself.

And the most unfair moment in human history is not what you

are experiencing. The most unfair moment in human

history was the moment that Jesus Christ paid for a sin that

wasn't his for he who knew no sin.

He made him who knew no sin tibisin on our behalf that we

might become the righteousness of God.

God sees you, He sees the wickedness, He sees the

injustice you've experienced, and he sees you to the point

that He cared enough to die for you and your sins.

Now listen to me. There are going to be moments in

your life when people go back on their word to you that your

parent said they were going to be there for you in a certain

way and they were not. God sees that and He will not go

back on His word. There will be moments when

people cheat you, but God does not.

One of the greatest acts of betrayal that exists is cheating

on your spouse. And listen to me.

God sees you in the midst of that injustice, when people

forget you, that that friendship just disintegrated overnight and

that they abandoned you. God has not.

God still sees you when people cheat you, when they forget

about you, when they go back on their word, God sees you.

When life feels unfair, God sees you.

God's grace is on the way. And God's grace helps me believe

that justice is coming either in this life at the cross, or in

eternity. We filter it through the life of

Jesus, the one who'd come way later through Tamar.

And that's what every Tamar needs is the hope of Jesus.

Second, God's grace doesn't just help me believe that when life

is unfair, God still sees me. But second, when I fail, God can

still redeem. When I fail, when I sin, when

I'm the screw up in the story, God can still redeem.

The temptation is to read a story like this, and it's a

story, right? So you're going to see yourself

as a character, and the natural inclination might be to see

yourself as the victim, Tamar, in this story.

But there's a wisdom in seeing yourself as Judah, ER, and Onan

as well. And in our world today, Judah

would be Chris Harrison style cancelled for what just happened

in this Bible. OK, that's a bachelor reference

for those of you who don't know what I just talked about.

OK, I got you. So what happened in the story?

What happens next? Well look back at the text of me

verse 11. Judah said to his to Tamar his

daughter-in-law, remain a widow in your father's house till my

son grows up. And what stops him from actually

doing it? Look at the next part of the

verse. For he feared that his son

Shayla would die. Fear stops Judah from giving

Tamar his third son. He is not trusting God, he is

trusting the pattern. Not only is he trusting in the

pattern, he's trusting in his sexual desire.

So what does he do? He predictably responds to the

death of his wife in a way Tamar was totally expecting.

That says a lot about Judah, by the way.

Hey, how's this guy going to grieve?

He's going to go on a hook up with a prostitute.

So she dresses herself up shrewdly.

She goes to where he's going to be.

He's got no only fans or Tinder to mess with.

This is his only option. So what does he do?

He goes there and he sleeps with his daughter-in-law, not

knowingly that it was his daughter-in-law.

And he pays her off wallet keys, gives them to her and goes, hey,

this is this is security balance just in case the GOAT doesn't

come to you. But the joke's on him.

He was doing the wrong thing. He was disobeying God.

He was dishonouring his daughter-in-law, and this should

cost him everything. This decision should cost Judah

everything. He is now the most morally

compromised person in the story. He's the villain.

He's a moral deadbeat. And Genesis 38 teaches us that

God advances his promises not through a moral resume, not

through the people who look like they have it all figured out.

They're all together. But he also does not abandon

people because of moral failure, that all he has to work with are

broken, messed up, sinful people.

So that's who he uses. That's it.

And Judah, by all accounts, should be labeled a failure.

His kids are a disaster. His marriage couldn't have been

good. He should not be a character

that we know of or even preach about on a Sunday morning.

He should be written off. And you'd be surprised at what

the world would be willing to write off.

Here's a picture of Times Square in the 1970s.

It is not the Times Square that you know.

This is not a street where good things happen.

It was filled with porn theaters, with peep shows, with

prostitutes calling out in broad daylight, drug deals in broad

daylight. Rolling Stone called 42nd St.

the sleaziest block in America, not a back alley, the center of

New York City, which is, according to Hamilton, is the

greatest city in the world. By every measure, Times Square

had failed. Businesses left.

Investors walked away. Parents warned their kids to

stay away from it. City leaders were debating

whether or not they should tear it down.

Not save this thing. I mean, this was a place that

was known as unsafe, undisciplined and embarrassing

to the city of New York. It was a place you would have

written off, a place you'd forget.

And Despite that, with a little intentionality, a little vision,

a little effort, Times Square was transformed into one of the

most visited locations in the world.

Families, tourist, global clouds, global crowds.

Excuse me? It's a place to travel to, not a

place to run from. Reminding us that what the world

cancels, redemption can still reclaim.

Now, if you only judge Times Square by what it was in the 70s

and 80s, you'd never believe what it became.

And I wonder, if someone were to judge your life by its worst

season, would they assume what your future would be?

The world's definition of grace labels people as unredeemable.

Here's the amazing news of Christmas.

God's grace is Wilder and more radical than you can imagine.

Genesis 38 is more than just a story of injustice.

It is a story of Judah's transformation.

Let me give you a high level view of his story arc.

The chapter before 37. He's the guy who sells his

brother Joseph into slavery. That's his idea.

Now in 38, he does some bad things, but he recognizes, Do

you see that in the text that she is more righteous than I?

He says that in the text. That's his conversion moment.

And look what changes. You see in 39, we get the

contrast between Judah and Joseph, his brother.

Where Judah is sexually immoral, Joseph is sexually pure when

tempted with Potiphar's wife in chapter 44, Judah, where he was

once the brother who sold Joseph into slavery, that he actually

offers himself to be enslaved for his other brother Benjamin

in his place. And in Genesis 49, his

repentance brings about the ultimate blessing and redemption

that the King of Kings would come from Judah's lineage.

It is a story of transformation. And there are two people here in

this room today, those who like Judah, see their need for God's

grace, and a second person, those who are still blind to

their need for the same grace to enter their life.

Now, you may not have sinned the way Judah did here, but you are

in need of the same grace. You don't deserve it.

You couldn't earn it, but your unrighteousness needs the

righteousness of God. You have the same problem as

Him. And the invitation of Christmas

is not to clean yourself up, but rather to come clean before a

holy God. That is the call of Christmas to

you. It is the reminder that God's

grace is bigger than your wickedness.

St. City, listen to me.

You may have a broken family, but you serve a redeeming God.

You may have a broken story, but you worship a sovereign

Redeemer. There is no mess that Jesus

can't make a message. There is no test that he can't

turn into a testimony. There is no trial that he can't

turn into His triumph. Christmas proves to you once and

for all that God's grace is bigger than any wickedness that

you have committed. That is God's love for you

through Jesus Christ. It proves that once and for all

that the lion of the tribe of Judah has come to save you from

your sin. His grace has scandalously

changed many lives, and it can change yours too.

It sounds scandalous, doesn't it, that God could love Judah

and Tamar all the same, and yet that's His redeeming power.

That's what God can do. God can redeem it not because

you deserve it, not because you could earn it, but His

redemption payment is 1 you couldn't make.

It is a check you could not cash.

His redemption came through His perfect blood on a cross for

you, for every Judah who would ever live.

It's God's grace, and it helps you believe that when you fail,

God can still redeem it. This is the story of Scripture,

the story of God, that God with us, his radical love for us.

It can save ridiculously sinful people, messed up people.

It's the story of God with us. Judah's life proves that

redemption is possible, and Christmas proves that it's

personal. One last thing before I close.

The story of Tamar is a personal story, and nothing is more

personal than a name, right? When somebody knows your name,

you're like, man, we're on a personal level now.

Feels great. The name Tamar means something.

It means palm tree. That's what it means.

It means palm tree, which is a symbol in the Bible of

uprightness and fruitfulness. Whenever a palm tree is talked

about, that's what's symbolizing uprightness, meaning you live a

life of character and integrity, but also of fruitfulness.

And if you stopped reading the Bible in Genesis, you'd only

know that she got some earthly justice.

She got to have the baby, she got to have twins, right?

If you were an Israelite who got Genesis at the mount at Mount

Sinai when Moses came down the mountain with it, you would know

that Judah's line is going on through some crazy story.

That's what you'd know. But if you're here today and

you're hearing this and you're hearing the names, you're

hearing the story, you're hearing God at work and you're

thinking back to the beginning and you're like, man, my family

tree is messed up and I still feel ashamed.

Tamar, the mother of Jesus, has good news.

She has good news for you. Your family will affect you, but

by God's grace, it does not have to define you.

Your family and its dysfunction does not have to define you.

You can repeat it the same dysfunction, or you can rebel

against it, or you can receive the same grace every mother of

Jesus needed. It is a wonderful spiritual

advantage to be on this side of Jesus because we can know that

Tamar is a woman known for uprightness and fruitfulness,

that that justice was coming. And you know something that she

didn't that one day, thousands of years later, that justice

would wear skin. It would be Jesus Christ of

Nazareth, the Savior of the world, The story that is one of

the craziest stories in all the Bible.

God can redeem for good, the good of bringing His Son into

the world. Her story did not end in Genesis

because the most upright man, the most fruitful man to ever

live, Jesus Christ, would come through her line, and he can

bear the same fruit in yours. God can use your story.

He can use your life for great things.

Jesus Christ of Nazareth, His grace has come for the

wickedness of this world. He would come to save it.

His grace is bigger than wickedness.

Can you believe it? I'm so thankful for His word.

Would you join me as I pray and thank Him for it too?

Lord, would we be reminded this Christmas that Your grace is

enough and it is bigger, it is louder, and God, it is better

than anything else going on planet earth.

And so, God, I pray for every person here who is stuck in the

injustice right now, that their mind is trapped on what happened

to them. Lord, the thing that makes them

cry out, life is not fair. I pray God, for a sense of your

peace and your justice to sweep over their soul.

It's not fair. I have this condition.

It's not fair. They have the things.

It's not fair. I was born into this family.

It's not fair about my financial picture.

It's not fair. God, would that be flipped and

say, God, you, it's not fair that you've provided for me,

Jesus Christ. It's not fair that you can heal

what has been broken by the world.

But I don't deserve it. I couldn't earn it.

But God, you've given it and I receive it, Lord, for every

person here who has a sense of their inner Judah, the person

who's done terrible things that they wish they could clean up

like a stain they could wash away from their life, that there

is so much pain from it, so much hurt, so much shame and

embarrassment. God, would they let the grace of

God wash over them and flood their life?

That they would believe that your grace is bigger than their

wickedness, that it can redeem what the world calls lost and

broken. What the world would write off.

God, you would write in to the story of what you're doing in

the world. Oh God, would you do what only

you can do? And would you remind us that

your grace is bigger than our wickedness?

In Jesus name, Amen.