Sermon Tone Analysis

“In the course of time the wife of Judah, Shua’s daughter, died.

When Judah was comforted, he went up to Timnah to his sheepshearers, he and his friend Hirah the Adullamite.

And when Tamar was told, ‘Your father-in-law is going up to Timnah to shear his sheep,’ she took off her widow’s garments and covered herself with a veil, wrapping herself up, and sat at the entrance to Enaim, which is on the road to Timnah.

For she saw that Shelah 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.

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 you?”

She replied, ‘Your signet and your cord and your staff that is in your hand.’

So he gave them to her and went in to her, and she conceived by him.

Then she arose and went away, and taking off her veil she put on the garments of her widowhood.

”When Judah sent the young goat by his friend the Adullamite to take back the pledge from the woman’s hand, he did not find her.

And he asked the men of the place, ‘Where is the cult prostitute who was at Enaim at the roadside?’

And they said, ‘No cult prostitute has been here.’

So he returned to Judah and said, ‘I have not found her.

Also, the men of the place said, “No cult prostitute has 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.’

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.’

Then Judah identified them and said, ‘She is more righteous than I, since I did not give her to my son Shelah.’

And he did not know her again.”[1]

Robert Gibbs, Press Secretary for the forty-fourth President of the United States, recently responded to a question asking why a speaking engagement for the President in Las Vegas was closed to the press, glibly replied “What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas.”[2]

Taken from the title of a book by Michele Daniels, that phrase expresses a common sentiment for many people.

The idea conveyed by the saying is that moral restraints no longer apply when one is away from home, or when one is not immediately accountable to family or church.

No Christian should imagine that he or she can sin with impunity.

No Christian dare imagine that sin will not be exposed.

For a Christian, there is no such thing as “private sin.”

Jesus warned His disciples, “Nothing is covered up that will not be revealed, or hidden that will not be known” [*Luke 12:2*].

The Bible is replete with warnings that sin cannot be hidden.

The biblical principle for all who worship the Living God is, “Be sure your sin will find you out” [*Numbers 32:23*].

We are aliens in a foreign land, awaiting our call to go to our eternal home.

While here, we are responsible to glorify God through a holy life.

How pitiful is the cry of sinning believers that is recorded by Isaiah, a mournful cry that could easily be offered up by far too many modern Christians.

“Our transgressions are multiplied before You;

and our sins testify against us;

for our transgressions are with us,

and we know our iniquities.”

[*Isaiah 59:12*]

God does not exempt His own people from divine correction when they sin.

Those individuals who claim to have a relationship to the Living Saviour while living in sin deceive themselves, for God will never leave His child in the condition in which He found Him.

Moreover, when a Christian sins and refuses to turn from that sin, he must know that God will correct His child.

We will do well to read again the warning issued in the Letter to Hebrew Christians.

“Have you forgotten the exhortation that addresses you as sons?

‘My son, do not regard lightly the discipline of the Lord,

nor be weary when reproved by him.

For the Lord disciplines the one he loves,

and chastises every son whom he receives.’

It is for discipline that you have to endure.

God is treating you as sons.

For what son is there whom his father does not discipline?

If you are left without discipline, in which all have participated, then you are illegitimate children and not sons.

Besides this, we have had earthly fathers who disciplined us and we respected them.

Shall we not much more be subject to the Father of spirits and live?

For they disciplined us for a short time as it seemed best to them, but he disciplines us for our good, that we may share his holiness.

For the moment all discipline seems painful rather than pleasant, but later it yields the peaceful fruit of righteousness to those who have been trained by it” [*Hebrews 12:5-11*].

God will not permit His people to hide their sin.

He will expose them so that He can demonstrate His mercy and His grace.

The Lord compares those who attempt to hide their sin to Sodom [see *Isaiah 3:9*].

There can be no hiding sin from God whose eyes see all that is done in the earth.

Indeed, we are cautioned in the Word:

“Whoever conceals his transgressions will not prosper.

but he who confesses and forsakes them will obtain mercy.”

[*Proverbs 28:13**]*

The life of Judah provides an example of a believer who sinned, only to have his sin exposed.

It took place during the time between the sale of Joseph into slavery and his rise to power as the second most powerful man in the Kingdom of Egypt.

The account is found in the *38th Chapter of Genesis*, to which I direct your attention at this time.

Judah was the fourth son born of Leah to Jacob.

In Hebrew, his name sounds like “Praise,” which is why his mother said, “This time I will praise the Lord” [*Genesis 29:35*].

It was through him that the Messiah would come, though at this time he could not have known that he was the progenitor of the Messiah.

At this time, his life was anything but praiseworthy; but God was working.

*Judah’s Sins* — Most people reading the account of Judah’s interaction with Tamar would say that his sin was fornication.

Some perceptive individuals would say that he sinned when he did not honour his word.

However, Judah’s sin as expressed in the text is the culmination of an even more egregious sin that is commonly committed by followers of the Lord Christ to this day.

Judah’s sin began many years prior to the incident recorded in our text.

In *Genesis 38:1-5*, we read, “It happened at that time that Judah went down from his brothers and turned aside to a certain Adullamite, whose name was Hirah.

There Judah saw the daughter of a certain Canaanite whose name was Shua.

He took her and went in to her, and she conceived and bore a son, and he called his name Er.

She conceived again and bore a son, and she called his name Onan.

Yet again she bore a son, and she called his name Shelah.

Judah was in Chezib when she bore him.”

The reference to going down from his brothers points to a time after Joseph was sold into slavery.

Judah was the instigator of selling his brother into slavery.

The brothers, jealous of Joseph’s favoured status with their father, determined to kill him [*Genesis 37:20*].

Presumably, Judah was party to this plot, which was averted only because Reuben prevailed in suggesting that they throw him into a pit where he would die of exposure [*Genesis 37:22-24*].

As they were eating their noonday meal, Judah noticed a caravan of traders passing by, and suggested that they sell Joseph into slavery [*Genesis 37:27, 28*].

The loss of his son devastated Jacob, and it would seem that Judah could not bear to see his aged father grieve.

Though the Bible does not specifically say so, it seems apparent that he was unable to watch the unmitigated and undiminished sorrow of his father.

So, he left behind the reminders of his perfidy and settled among the Canaanites.

You will recall that God cautioned Abram that “the iniquity of the Amorites” had not reached its fullness [*Genesis 15:16*].

Apparently, the wickedness of the inhabitants of the land was recognised, because Abraham made his servant “swear by the Lord, the God of heaven and earth,” that he would not get a wife for Isaac from among the Canaanites [*Genesis 24:3*].

Similarly, Isaac directed Jacob that he “must not take a wife from the Canaanite women” [*Genesis 28:1, 6*] as had Esau, in a move that grieved his parents [see *Genesis 26:34, 35*].

Nevertheless, and despite this history of caution in his family, Judah settled among the Canaanites.

Surely this could only lead to compromise and sin against the Lord.

I observe that *Judah sinned by settling among the Canaanites* and developing a close relationship with them.

I understand very well that in this present day the criterion for determining where one will live is determined in great measure by the desire for personal advancement.