Genesis 38

Transcript

We study through books of The Bible here at the Village Chapel, and we have extra copies. If you didn’t bring one with you and you would like one to follow along, raise your hand up real high. Somebody will drop one off at your row. Otherwise, you can also look up on the screen, you’ll see the network. If you have a Bible online, you’d like to use, there are many choices for you. I believe there’s one on our phone app as well. And you are welcome to dial into that network there and be able to turn to Genesis, which we’re studying our way, verse-by-verse, chapter-by-chapter, through this book, the first book of the 66 books in the library that we call the Bible. And it’s called Genesis, which means beginning. And so, we find here, and not only the story of the beginning, the original beginning. In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth and everything else flows from that.

But we also find that the Book of Genesis helps us to manage some of the really big questions that we’ve had since the beginning. Where did everything come from? Why is this the something that exists? What’s gone wrong and what can be done about it? So, we have turned to this ancient book and it has been so helpful for us. Now today, we’re studying chapter 38 and I want you to know that if you were looking for a nice religious experience this morning, I must apologize in advance to you. If you were hoping I would tell you about how God is sweet and nice and always wants you to be happy, and is the giant Santa in the sky, the doating deity, the kindly cosmic concierge whose primary goal is your happiness; I’m really sorry. Today is not your day. This is a tough chapter.

But what I love about the Bible is that it doesn’t sidestep the realities of the brokenness of our world. It’s not a Disney vibe, nothing wrong with Disney if you love Disney, but it’s not a feel-good book that’s designed to make sure we stroke the seekers, and massage the tithers, and try to get everything we can out of everybody else, blah, blah, blah. That’s not the Bible at all. The Bible is like a mirror, and it’s held up to show us what we need to learn about ourselves, as well as what God has revealed about Himself. And this is a fascinating chapter when we start looking for those kinds of things. The Bible is God saying there’s a grand narrative, and it runs from Genesis all the way to the end, the Book of Revelation.

We studied Revelation before we came to Genesis and we made the point all along the way that if you pull a loose thread in one of those two ends, all of the pages between will crinkle because the loose thread is the narrative, the story of God’s redeeming power. And that is good news that that’s actually great news, especially when you read a chapter like chapter 38 of Genesis. So, with all of that in mind, let me read the chapter and then we’ll try to draw a couple of points from it.

Before we do, let me pray: Lord, what we see not, I hope that You’ll show us. What we know not, I hope that You’ll teach us. What we have not, I pray that You would give to us. And what we are not, I pray that You would make us today in Jesus’ name, amen and amen.

Remember when we last left off, we have Jacob, we have his 12 sons. We have him showing favoritism to Joseph. Joseph telling his brothers and his father about the dreams that he’s had. And those dreams are stories of his having everyone else bowing down to him and worshiping him. And to them it seems like he’s having visions of grandeur. He ends up getting the brothers angry, and they grab him throw him into a pit and sell him to some slave traders that are coming through on their way to Egypt. Now it’s Judah that we’re going to turn our attention to, Judah that had the idea to sell Joseph as opposed to let him die in the pit, or as opposed to killing him before they threw him in the pit. It’s Judah that said, we should profit off this guy. Let’s make some money. He’s the one that had that idea. Now we turn our attention to Judah.

“It came about at that time that Judah departed from his brothers. He visited a certain Adullamite whose name was Hirah.” Adullam would be a cave, there’s a cave of Adullam down southwest of Jerusalem. If you were here for the women’s stay treat, you studied Psalm 34. Kim walked you through that Psalm a little bit and that Psalm was written in the cave of Adullam. It’s down in an area headed toward the Philistine cities. And there David fearful for his life because he’s being chased by King Saul who wants to kill him. He’s being chased by the Philistines, and he is having a real tough time, yet God inspires him. In the middle of all of that horrible set of circumstances, God still inspired him to write Psalm 34, which promised us things like the Lord draws near to the brokenhearted and saves the crushed in spirit, your broken heart, your crushed spirit.

These are magnets to the God of the Bible and His riches and mercy and grace. He is eager, no matter how far you’ve strayed from Him, to the cave of Adullam or wherever. No matter where Judah goes, God’s still in pursuit of him. Watch how this is revealed to us. But he’s down there visiting a certain Adullamite whose name was Hirah. “Judah saw there a daughter of a certain Canaanite whose name was Shua.” Now Shua is the name of the Canaanite. Let me clarify that for you. The daughter remains nameless throughout the story here. So, he sees a daughter of a certain Canaanite whose name was Shua. “He took her, and he went into her.” He took her as his wife. And whether this is a rape or whether the father of this daughter gave her, because back in these times it was very traditional, very normal for a father to give his daughter away.

It wasn’t a thing where people are going to different groups trying to see if they can find a spouse that they like. That wasn’t happening. This was more arranged marriages. And whether that’s happening here or not, I don’t know. But it’s what’s clear here is that Judah saw, he took what he wanted, and he went into her and she conceived. We’re told here in verse three, she bore a son and he, Judah, named him Er. Okay, so a lot of time passes here. Remember the birth of the child would take at least how many months? Yeah, likely nine months. That’s generally the way things would go. Well, verse 4 says she conceived again and bore a son and named him Onan. All right, that’s another nine. So, I got a year and a half at least, probably more.

And she bore still another son and named him Shelah and it was at Kezib that she bore him. And so, there’s a place called Kezib and now three children, three sons, have been born to Judah and the nameless woman that he has married and or taken for a wife. Judah took a wife for Er. Remember Er is the firstborn of the sons and her name was Tamar. So now, we’re given the name. And this is interesting because the storyline is going to be more about what she and Judah, the way that they interact moving forward. However, verse seven says that Er, Judah’s firstborn, was evil in the sight of the Lord. So, the Lord took his life. Period. Okay, now I read that this week and I have read this before. I’ve read it, I’ve taught through this book before, but it still kind of went past. But it hit me right in the face, and maybe it hits you in the face that way as well. I don’t know.

While we’re not given much in the way of specifics, he was evil in the side of the Lord. Not evil in the sight of the culture, not evil in the sight of the cancel culture, not evil in the sight of the flow of culture. But he was evil in the sight of the Lord. And so, what happened is the Lord took his life. Wow.” Judah said to Onan, ‘Go into your brother’s wife and perform your duty as a brother-in-law to her. Raise up offspring for your brother.'” And we read about this in Deuteronomy chapter 25. It’s called the Leverite law. Deuteronomy chapter 25 has not been written yet. The law has not been given yet, but sometimes the laws of God that are given, we find them woven into the culture and the traditions of life in ancient times.

God’s just affirming something that most people knew should happen in their particular time. Now, in their day and time, women were completely helpless in the sense that they needed protection, they needed provision. And so, their family context was very important to them. We talked about that even with Genesis chapter 34 with Dinah. And here we find that the promise that Tamar would have a child who would later be able to take care of her when she got older and that sort of thing, that promise is actually is on Judah’s mind. And he’s telling Onan, “Go into your brother’s wife, perform your duty as a brother-in-law. Raise up offspring for her.” Verse 9. “Onan knew that the offspring would not be his. So, it came about that when he went into his brother’s wife, he wasted his seed on the ground in order not to give offspring to his brother.”

So, you note his motive there. Okay, and I’m going to talk about this in a little bit. I know some of you have some questions about this particular chapter, but what he did, this is what’s really important, verse 10. But what he did was displeasing in the sight of the Lord, and here it is again. So, He, meaning the Lord, took his life also. Again … pretty sobering to think it, to hear that. Verse 11, “Judah said to his daughter, Tamar, ‘Remain a widow in your father’s house until my son Shelah grows up,’ for he thought, I’m afraid that he too might die like his brothers. So, Tamar went and lived in her father’s house.” This would’ve been socially quite a rebuke to her, a rebuff to her. She’s rejected. She has cultural right in a sense to have been protected by Judah.

And in some cases, it would have been Judah who should have stepped up to provide a legacy or a progeny for Er, his firstborn son, if his other son Shelah was indeed so young that he could not do that. But none of that happens. Judah doesn’t do that. Onan doesn’t do that. And the Lord finds that displeasing in his sight. And now Judah is basically saying he sees Tamar as the problem. He wants to send her away, and he wants her to go back to her father’s house and live as a widow. “Well, after a considerable time, Shua’s daughter, the wife of Judah, died.” And when the time of mourning was ended, Judah went up to his sheep shearers at Timnah, he and his friend Hirah the Adullamite.”

Timnah sheep shearing would have happened once or twice a year. It would have been a great festive occasion. Lots of adult beverages flowing, lots of festivities, all that sort of big party time. And his wife has just died and who knows what he’s going through, but he goes up to this big party. Timnah, by the way, will be mentioned later in the Old Testament as well, because Samson will go down to Timnah. All kinds of mischief happens in Timnah, evidently. “And it was told to Tamar though that ‘Behold your father-in-law, Judah is going up to Timnah to shear his sheep.’ So, she removed her widow’s garments, covered herself with a veil, and wrapped herself and sat at the gateway of Enaim,” another village on the road to Timnah. “And she saw that Shelah had grown up and she had not been given to him as a wife.”

This would have shocked her. She would have felt betrayed. She should have been given to Shelah to as a wife, so that she could be protected in her old age. “When Judah saw her”, remember he will not recognize her. She’s wrapped in these other clothes, “he thought she was a harlot for she was covered, she’d covered her face. So, he turned aside to her by the road and said, ‘Here, now let me come into you,’ for he did not know that she was his daughter-in-law. And she said, ‘What will you give me that you may come into me?’ He said, ‘Therefore I will send you a kid from the flock, a young goat.’ She said, ‘Moreover, will you give me a pledge until you send it.'” Give me something as a sort of earnest against the fact that you’re going to send I because you could have your way with me and leave, right? And I’d have no recourse. So give me something, some pledge.

Verse 18, “‘What pledge shall I give you?’” he says. She says, “’Your seal, your cord and your staff that is in your hand.'” Now this is essentially the same thing as saying your signet ring the seal of your word, this is like your ID if you will. Your staff, your signet ring. In other words, give me your driver’s license and your American Express card. I want everything that would entitle me to the claim I have on you. And I want physical proof of it. He then gave them to her, verse 18 tells us. “And he went into her, and she conceived by him.” Now again, time is passing.

“She arose and departed and removed her veil and put on her widow’s garments. Judah sent the goat,” the young goat, the kid “by his friend, the Adullamite, to receive the pledge from the woman’s hand.” He wanted to get his pledge back, his ring, his staff, all that stuff. So, he sent this friend to receive the pledge from the woman’s hand, “but he did not find her. He asked the men of her place,” that little area, Enaim, “’Where’s the temple prostitute who is by the road at Enaim?’ And they said, ‘There has been no prostitute here.'” And right about now that little servant is going, “Ruh-roh. I mean what am I going to do now?” There’s been no temple prostitute here. Verse 23. And Judah then says, “Well let her keep them unless we become the laughingstock. After all, I sent this goat but you didn’t find her.” And essentially he’s just concerned about his image publicly.

He says let’s keep this on the DL and I’ll just let that stuff go, make a new ring and get a new staff and whatever. That’ll never come back to haunt me. Ha-ha. “It was about three months later,” verse 24 says, “that Judah was informed, ‘Your daughter-in-law, Tamar has played the harlot. Behold she’s also with child by harlotry.’ Then Judah said, ‘Bring her out, let her be burned.’ It was while she was being brought out that she sent to her father-in-law saying, ‘I am with child by the man to whom these things belong.’ And she said, ‘Please examine and see whose sign ring and cords and staff are these.'” Ruh-roh. Is another ruh-roh moment, right? Yeah.

Judah recognizes them. And this is interesting. He said, “She is more righteous than I in as much as I did not give her to my son Shelah.” In other words, I didn’t fulfill my familial responsibilities. And it’s interesting that he doesn’t say “I took advantage of her. I treated her like property. I thought she was a commodity, that I could just be a consumer in this relationship”. And he did not have relations with her again. And that’s interesting. The narrator is telling us that. Something changes a little bit in disposition of his heart toward her.

Well, “it came about at the time she was giving birth and behold there were twins in her womb.” And we’ve seen twins born before, haven’t we, already in Genesis. “Moreover, it took place while she was giving birth. One put out a hand, the midwife took and tied a scarlet thread on his hand saying ‘this one came out first,’ but it came about as he [that first one] drew back his hand that behold his brother came out. And then she said, ‘What a breach you have made for yourself.’ And she named him Perez.” And that means breaking out, that’s what his name means. “Afterward his brother came out who had the scarlet thread on his hand and he was named Zara, which means scarlet,” it can also mean “thread,” an appropriate name given all that happens the end of the chapter.

Wow, what a chapter. All right, so again, I don’t know if you were raised in the church or not. I don’t know if you grew up going to children’s ministry. I don’t know if you been in youth group. I have no clue what the flannelgraph or the youth group skit would look like of this chapter. I mean Bella and Jamie and Ryan are going to have to work pretty hard to come up with those, I think, in our church. And we don’t pay them enough to do that kind of work. Anyway. Wow. There’s stuff to learn though, isn’t there here? Why is this chapter even in the Bible? I bet there aren’t that many churches around the world today studying Genesis 38. I know because every time I’m getting ready to do a Bible study, I read eight or nine commentaries on each passage and I usually go online and see whose stuff I can steal… I listen to my favorite preachers.

And usually, I’ll go to some of these sites that have 50 different preachers all at one website. And for Genesis 38, it’s like if you look at chapter 37, there might be 20 messages on it. If you go to Genesis 38, look on some of those sites, you’re lucky to find one or two messages on Genesis 38. People are backing away from the car. Whoa, I don’t know what they’ll with do this. But I think there are some lessons and I certainly don’t want to dodge the realities that God wants us to face sometimes. And I realize that we’re a church that is regathering after a long, difficult couple of years. You as people who come to a church, may have been coming here hoping and starving for something. And I can only say that God in His providence has brought us to Genesis 38 today.

And what can we learn? I think there’s some really good lessons to learn here. I’ll throw these up on the screen pretty quick and make just a few comments about each. First, the importance of establishing and maintaining a family context of commitment to the Lord. So, parents, the fact is you are passing down spiritual disposition whether or not you intend to, for good or for bad. If you are not married, but you have coworkers, roommates or neighbors, you are modeling a spiritual disposition for those within your sphere of influence. I seek to persuade each of us today that we are still here on the planet for a reason that’s bigger than just to get a paycheck. We are still here on the planet for a reason that’s bigger than our hopes and dreams. We’re here on the planet for a purpose that is actually massive. It’s huge. It’s bigger than you might imagine. Why? Because God’s thoughts are not our thoughts.

God’s ways are not our ways. His are so much higher than ours. And He wants to use you, He wants to use me, He wants to use all of us, inconsistent though we might be, broken though we might be, battered though we might be, victim though we might be, victimizer that we might be. He wants to redeem a people for Himself. And so, the story of Judah, which isn’t real beautiful right here and the story of Tamar, the story of Er and Onan and Shelah, these are important stories. We do not want to miss them. The importance of establishing and maintaining a family context of commitment to the Lord.

What would have happened if Judah hadn’t been so fascinated with Canaanite culture as to want to drift down that way and he so casually sees, wants and takes? What would’ve happened if he had stayed closer to Yahweh and leaned into that relationship with God a little bit more? What would Er have learned? What would Onan have learned? What would Shelah have learned? What would Tamar have learned if she had not had to go through that? Lots of questions and lots of hypotheticals, I agree. But I think that, at the very least, we can learn that there is a bit of a lesson here for us about establishing and maintaining, maintenancing, disciplining a family context of commitment to the Lord, or a friend’s context of commitment to the Lord, that might be okay for whatever your sphere of influence is.

Does anybody even know that you are a person of faith? Or do they just think, “Yep, he’s a really nice southern man. Awesome.” Yeah, I mean what do people think nowadays? What do people think when you go to that building, up to the old convent building up there, and you sing these songs? Are they just religious nuts up here? Do they just think we’re crazy because we believe something still and that we believe there is a God still, even though we get ridiculed publicly all the time? People are attempting very much to move God out of the way in our culture and institutions of higher learning, so to speak, no longer in pursuit of truth, just in pursuit of all kinds of things that I think are trivial to be honest with you. We need to be living this out in such a way that we are establishing and maintenancing a context of commitment to the Lord, because that is going to get passed along to those who are watching you. There are people watching you, there are people that are watching me.

The second thing I learned here is a divine prerogative to define evil and determine when God will put an end to it. There’s the sobering stories of Er and Onan. It is God who gets to define what is evil. In our day and age, we’ve been programmed and influenced to believe that it’s you as an individual that gets to determine what’s right and wrong, or it’s me as an individual. And the nice way that’s done is to tell you that the whole world is about us and our story.

There is a lot of truth to the fact that we need help with our self-understanding. I understand that I am not talking about that healthy version of that. We’ve gotten to the point now where there’s this cacophony of competing autobiographies saying I want what I want and I want it now. And you want what you want, you want it now, and we’re all walking over top of each other and treating one another as some kind of commodity. That is actually not new, that’s been going on for a long time. Judah treated Tamar as a commodity as he casually engaged her in a transactional relationship when it came to the act of sex.

Now this particular passage has been abused in some ways. Some people who are preachers and the like will say it’s about birth control. Others will say it’s about masturbation. Yes, I just said the M word, but it’s really not about either one of those. The it’s very clearly told us there by the narrator that the reason God was upset with Onan was that he refused Tamar a familial right that she had, to be protected to have a child and he refused that. He was casual about his human sexuality, just as Judah was casual, and trivialized human sexuality. So don’t hear me saying God doesn’t have anything to say about human sexuality. He does. Do hear me saying this isn’t about birth control or self-gratification. Okay? There are other passages where we can talk about things like lust and all that sort of thing. But this isn’t about those two things.

This is about the divine prerogative to define what is evil and then to draw a line when God seems to think it’s necessary. And ultimately, I do want to remind us of this because all the way in Revelation we studied this, there’s coming a day when God intends to set right everything that’s broken and wrong. That is called justice. And if you and I were to a ask for a, show of hands if you want justice, if you believe in justice, most of us would put our hands up because we believe that there ought to be a thing called justice. But what most of us want for ourselves? We want grace. For others, we want justice, but we do want justice. And that’s joining God in the way He thinks about this too, by the way. God loves justice. God hates evil because it’s destructive to His creation which was created to bring Him glory.

So when we are trivial about our human sexuality or we abuse others or we’re in some way embracing and relaying or reflecting racial prejudices or religious prejudices, we are dishonoring God. And one day so He intends to set it all right. And that’s what the book of Revelation tells us. And so, I’m one of the crazy guys that says, I’m excited about God’s justice that one day He will put an end to evil once and for all. I am eager for His righteous judgment to come. And some people don’t understand it because they can’t think about the divine prerogative. They cannot put that into their heads. He created it. He knows how it works best. He knows what the context ought to be for the enjoyment of it, and He’s the one that determines what’s evil and what’s not evil. It’s not up to the individual, because then we just get the cacophony of competing autobiographies and we step on each other and use each other.

Number three, we learn the grace of God in being interested in us even when we’ve not been interested in Him. So, we get a lot of those chapters in the Bible, don’t we? People who aren’t interested in God. And guess what? Our world in our day and time is filled with people who aren’t interested in God. And you know what? Some of them might be in this room right now, some of them might be in buildings like this all over the world. They’re interested in checking a cultural box by going to a thing called church, but they’re not really interested in God, and there’s a huge difference. But look at the grace of God on display here in chapter 38. Despite all the darkness of 38, we know that 38 is a piece of the jigsaw puzzle of redemption history. And so what we see is a God who in spite of 38, is still working out His plan. And you say, well I don’t see that in 38. And I say, I do. It’s at the very end of the chapter. The name is Perez.

And guess who Perez is? He’s an ancestor to King David, who’s an ancestor to a guy named Jesus. And so, through the line of Perez, the unlikely second one without the scarlet cord around his wrist saying he was first born, the unlikely one, the son of an incestuous, immoral, illicit, sexual relationship; that’s the one through which the line of Messiah is going to come. Oh God, You blow our minds using people no one else would use for Your glory, using even abused people for Your glory, using the most unlikely people for Your glory. We see the grace of God in being interested in us when we’re not even thinking about Him.

Fourth, we learn how easy double standards are to adopt when we are judging others. Has that ever happened? Have you ever been caught in this double standard thing? And this is what happens here with Judah. Let’s bring her out here, let’s burn her to death. But look, whose ring is this? Whose staff is this? I mean that is duplicity on display. And even Judah crumbles a little and says, “She’s more righteous than I am.” And he needed to. I mean we see he needed to. We recognize that as we read this whole thing. But what about me? What about you? How easy double standards are to adopt when we’re judging others? I can see the speck in your eye, but I got a board in my eye, as Jesus would describe it later. This is completely a reality; one I think that we all struggle with.

Fifthly and finally, we learn how God intends to accomplish His purposes, even if it means He chooses and uses people and events that seem undesirable and unlikely all along the way. Reading through some of the stuff that Abraham, Isaac, Jacob and now Judah had done, doesn’t it make you wonder at some point, why God keeps putting up with them? I mean I’ve thought that multiple times, “Hey, well, if he can use them…” I’m really kind of doing this self-righteous thing myself when I do that thinking I’m better than them. So, if he can use them, maybe He can, surely, He can use me. And I’m watching the little meter go up there like that. And this is again the grace of God at work in our lives. Most of you have read the Chronicles of Narnia. If you got to The Silver Chair, to hear Aslan say to Jill once, “You would not have called to me unless I had already been calling to you.”

It’s just mind blowing to me. The grace of God at work in the life of broken people, abused people, unlikely people, people chronically addicted to their own stuff and He uses us. That’s just so amazing to me how God would intend to accomplish His purposes that way. And that, my friends, is because He is indeed sovereign and, in spite of what you walk away with reading chapter 38 of Genesis, or some of you would be familiar with a book of Ecclesiastes and some of you would go, “Yeah, I got to back away from that car. That’s one of “All is vanity. All is vanity. All is vanity. All is vanity.” And by the end of the book some of you go, “All is vanity,” and you just want to go out and end it all. But that’s not the point of that book, by the way, one of my favorite books to teach through in the entire Bible, and our teachings on Ecclesiastes online for you.

But here’s what God does, in spite of all of the way we may feel in life and all of the crazy going on around us, here’s what God intends to do: The Bible’s promise all the way running from the beginning to the end is that this is all headed somewhere and that one day He intends to set things right. He has the power He can back it up with, it’s not just wishful thinking. He actually can bring it about. How do I know that? People like Perez continue to show me. People like Judah continue to show me, people that are battered and bruised like Tamar continue to show me that God is moving and working through human history all the way to Jesus.  They all point forward to and find their fulfillment in Jesus, and He’s the one that one day intends to come back and set things right and has the power to do it. So, let’s trust in him.

Why wouldn’t you do that? What would keep you from doing that? Why would you think something else, something trivial, something temporal, could be the answer or the solution? It’s not. We need outside help. God has come on the run with rescue in a redeemer and His name is Jesus.

Let me just close with a couple quotes. Lewis, again, he makes so much sense here. He says, “As regards my own sins, it’s a safe bet (though not a certainty) that the excuses are not really so good as I think; as regards to other men’s sins against me, it’s a safe bet (though not a certainty) that their excuses are better than I think.” What if we all thought that way about it and instead of reacting when someone treats us wrong or is mean to us or forgets us or abuses us in some way? Instead of that, what if we see our lives completely in the hands of a sovereign God who’s working all of human history, even the chapter 38 stuff, He’s working at all for His purposes. What if we all had that kind of perspective about everything? It would change not only the way we view living, but the way we view suffering. It would change even the way we view dying, wouldn’t it, if we really believed that.

John Stott, “For the essence of sin is man substituting himself for God. The essence of salvation is God substituting Himself for man.” That’s brilliant. “Man asserts himself against God and puts himself where only God deserves to be. God sacrifices Himself for man and puts Himself where only man deserves to be. Man claims prerogatives that belong to God alone, but God accepts penalties that belong to man alone.” This all He did in the personal work of Jesus. Even on the cross, Jesus died for our sins. We say it all the time. Guess what? He died for my sins. He died for your sins.

He put Himself in my place so that He who knew no sin became sin (2 Corinthians 5:21) so that I might know the righteousness of God in Christ Jesus. And so that you might know that as well. What kind of a savior is Jesus? He’s this kind. He’s a gentle and lowly Savior, as many of you have read a book of that title, by an author named Dane Orlund who says this, “What elicits tenderness from Jesus is not the severity of the sin, but whether the sinner comes to Him.” Just stop for just a second. You’re here today. You’ve done X, Y, Z. You know it. You’re well aware of it. Some of you are bruised and battered over it. Some of you are bruised and battered over someone else’s doing something to you. In either case, are you not looking for the tenderness of a Savior who would receive you no matter what, whether you are Judah or Tamar, or even Er?

“Whatever our offense, He deals gently with us. If we never come to Him, we will experience a judgment so fierce, it will be like a double-edged sword coming out of his mouth at us.” Read about that in Revelation. “If we do come to Him, as fierce as His lion-like judgment would’ve been against us, so deep will be His lamb-like tenderness for us.” Again, who wouldn’t want that?

Don’t know if you’re wrestling with a moral issue today and maybe you can’t seem to think of a way to deal with it. Get in the Scriptures, talk with other believers, get on your knees before the Lord. Lift up the empty hands of faith and receive from Him. Cry out to Him. Go to Him is the point from this quote. Don’t not go to Him. Go to Him. There’s nothing you have done that would cause Him to say, “Get out or I reject you.” He doesn’t do that. You come to Him, and He will in no wise cast you out. These lessons from the past, even the darker lessons, can renew our awareness of our need for God’s redemption. They can awaken our sense that something is wrong in the world, including right in here in my heart and your hearts. And it needs fixing. Hope arises as we study Scriptures, even like this, because they tell us God has done something about it. He has put on offer this good news that one day He will set everything right in the person and work of Jesus.

Why not turn to Him today? Let’s pray: Lord, thank You for this passage. Rough as it may be, difficult as it may be to understand and some of the questions that we might have about it, but I pray that we don’t miss the big picture, because the big picture is the big picture. You, in pursuit of us even if we’ve been running from You. Please Lord, seize us with Your great affection. Cause us to in faith, turn in repentance to You and receive this amazing grace that You offer in Christ Jesus. Give us the hope that one day You will indeed set all things right. We pray in Jesus’ name, for His sake, amen and amen.