Ten Minute Bible Talks Devotional Bible Study - How God Changes People | Torah | Genesis 38

Episode Date: April 5, 2022

How likely are you to make assumptions or judge others for their mistakes? Do you believe God can change anyone or are some people too far gone? Tanya shares how Genesis 38 tells a story of God using Judah's shortcomings to mold him into a changed person. Is God working to change you? Your support makes TMBT possible. Ten Minute Bible Talks is a crowd-funded project. Join the TMBTeam to reach more people with the Bible. Give now. Like this content? Make sure to leave us a rating and share it with others, so others can find it too. Use #asktmbt to connect with us, ask questions, and suggest topics. We'd love to hear from you! To learn more, visit our website and follow us on Facebook, and Twitter @TenMinuteBibleTalks. Don't forget to subscribe to the TMBT Newsletter here. Passages: Genesis 38 Your support makes TMBT possible. Ten Minute Bible Talks is a crowd-funded project. Join the TMBTeam to reach more people with the Bible. Give now.

Welcome to 10-minute Bible Talks, where we connect the Bible to your life and the time it takes to get to work. I'm Tanya Wilmeth. Right now, we're going through the first book of the Bible, Genesis. Do you ever stop to think about how many assumptions you make, like what people drive, how many kids they have, where they live, what church they attend, what sign they have in their yard, who they go out to dinner with? We take in and take in information and make assumptions.

The problem is we don't really know these people we make assumptions about. We may know everything about them, but we don't really even know them, but we think we do. Today's story is a spicy one. It has everything in it that we really don't want to talk about on our way to work or school. Or maybe you do, depending on how long your drive is. The story itself in Genesis 38 kind of seems like an interruption of the narrative we've been in. It falls smack dab in the middle of what's happening with Joseph. But God doesn't do things unintentionally.

So this story is right here between Joseph being. sold into slavery and making a name for itself in Egypt for a reason. Genesis 38 takes the focus away from Joseph and spotlights a different brother named Judah. Let's do a quick recap. The covenant promise was given to Abraham and passed down to Isaac and then Jacob. Jacob had 12 sons. These will be the 12 tribes of Israel. Judah is the fourth son of a crazy, dysfunctional family that God chose to work through. Judah is the one who lied to his father in the last chapter and said Joseph was killed by wild animals. Judah made some bad choices leading up to Genesis 38, including the people he chose to hang out with.

He also left his family, he left his land. He had wicked friends. He married a woman who was outside of God's will. And in Genesis 38, we find out that Judah had three sons, Er, Onan, and Shela. Er was the oldest, and he married a woman named Tamar. Now remember that name because we're going to come back to her in a little bit. But Err was wicked. And verse 7 says the Lord put him to death for his wickedness. Now, it was the custom for the brother-in-law to take his brother's wife after she was widowed. So Onan was supposed to do that.

But he too did something very wicked in the Lord's sight, and he was, put to death. Okay, let's pause here. First, if you want to know what Onan did, read Genesis 38, 9 to 11. But the point is that God saw it and God punished it. And that's hard for us to grasp. In fact, anytime someone is immediately punished for their sin in the Bible, it is hard for us to grasp. It makes us confront the reality of what we really deserve, and it's humbling. We want a God who is all love and no judgment. But that's not the Holy God. of the Bible. A. W. Tozer said, what comes into our minds when we think about God is the most important thing about us. God doesn't conform or change course to who we want him to be. He is holy.

He holds us accountable. Understanding this should make us that much more aware and grateful for what Jesus did on our behalf. Okay, so with two dead, there's only one brother left to marry Tamar, the firstborn brother's wife. And somebody had to marry her because, because the firstborn's offspring was the one to receive the family birthright. Now, Judah should have offered the youngest son, Shayla, to Tamar. This was God's way from Deuteronomy 25. But Judah ignored God's command, like he had done before, and he ignored Tamar. If this happened today, we might say he ghosted her.

He knew she was there, and he had responsibility and accountability to her, but he walked away and hoped she would go away. but she didn't. Tamar took things into her own hands. Whether she completely knew and understood God's promise to develop his family through her, or if she just knew she needed to have a family of her own for her own safety, she decided to do something about it. Now, it was the shearing season, and Tamar knew her father-in-law, Judah, would be walking down a specific road to shear his sheep.

She also knew what kind of man Judah was, and thought he might be looking for some female comfort on the way. So she covered herself in a veil and dressed herself as a prostitute and waited by the road. When Judah saw her, he asked her what she wanted in exchange for her services. And since he had no money or goat to offer, she said, just give me your signet and your cord as a promise that you'll pay me later. He went into the tent with her and she conceived. Now, in the meantime, while the baby is growing and

Tamar's womb, Judah finished his shearing and he sent a servant to find the supposed prostitute and exchange a goat for the safe return of his signet and cord. But the prostitute couldn't be found. So a signet and a cord, they were like identification badges, very specific to a family and an individual. It would be like leaving your driver's license and credit card in a place that was too embarrassing to walk back into to retrieve them. so when they couldn't find the woman he'd lain with Judah told them to forget about this and just move on fast forward three months Judah found out that his own daughter-in-law was three months pregnant

listen to verse 24 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 This reminds me of the men who wanted to cast the first stones of the woman in Jesus Day. Self-righteous.

Judah sleeps with women, he thinks are prostitutes, but he wants to have Tamar burned for infidelity. Now here's the crazy twist. You've got to love that God chose Tamar to be part of this story. As the reader, we know that she has the signet and cord, but Judah has no idea. So, just as he's in the middle of his self-righteous speech, Tamar comes out, and presents the signet and cord and asks for the rightful owner to identify them. The Bible is not a book about perfect people. We've talked about that.

It's a book about a perfect God. And it's filled with stories of imperfect people who act just like we do. Man, we want Judah to be trapped. We want him to be punished for what he did to Tamar. Just like we want people in our own life to be trapped and punished for the things they do. We forget. we forget that we do the very same things we want other people to be punished for. This is the very essence of our self-righteousness.

The Bible is full of people who are still in their struggles, but is also full of stories about God who uses people and changes people. Listen to what Judah said when he stepped forward to collect his things. Then Judah identified them and said, She is more righteous than I, since I did not give her my son, Shayla. Judah had been despicable, but Judah was on the cusp of change. He just owned up to his sin and his self-righteousness in public. This was the beginning of Judah's development into a brother who would ultimately act as a righteous man and offer his own life as a pledge to save Joseph's

life later. The hidden hand of God was at work in Judah's life, the last place we would expect. where we rooted for his failure, God was restoring and growing. We can spin our wheels, filling in gaps, making assumptions, and judging people for where they are, or we can look at God to let our minds and hearts be shaped by Him. In Philippians 213, the Apostle Paul, whose whole life course was changed by Jesus, on the road to Damascus, wrote, for it is God who works in you, both to will be able to and to work for his good measure. You are a work of God, and it is for God's glory. He will change who he will, and he will do it for his glory. Can we then stop assuming that other people are the problem,

that we are the victims of circumstance while others are to blame, that we are too far gone for God's mercy, that someone else is? Can we instead shift our focus to God who surprises us with his changing grace. What a holy God he is to work in the hearts of his people for their good and for his glory. Before you forget, sign up for the brand new TMBT newsletter. Hit the link in the show notes and you'll get an email every Wednesday that will help you beat the midweek slump and go deeper in your walk with Jesus. Thanks for listening.