Promiscuity, Hypocrisy, Hope

Parents, I tried to give you due warning last week. I hope you read the passage. I'm encouraged to already have some conversations with some families about this text. We do not apologize for anything in the Bible. It is inspired by God. But this is a sensitive text. This is not a PG or even PG-13 text. It may even be more upfront than Sodom and Gomorrah or Shechem. Mainly because the sinfulness is detailed and made more graphic. So, listen to the text now. I hope you had conversations with your children beforehand. I hope you will have some afterward. Why is this story in the Bible? All of Scripture is produced by God. All of Scripture is breathed out by the Holy Spirit. It is all good and profitable for us. Why is this text profitable? Well, I can tell you this text is in Scripture because of us. This text is going to make sin very in your face. It's in there because we're sinners. God wants to make our sin clear so that we can see His grace clearly. God wants us to see our offensiveness to Him and His holy order clearly, so we can see His love clearly. The Bible portrays us as rebels, perverse and evil. We need to come to grips with that, we need to be able to be faced with that, to see it in stories such as this, so we can see the gospel all that much more clearly, so that we can know we bring nothing to the cross but our sin and receive forgiveness and love. Our message this morning is from Genesis 38, and the message is this. We must trust God to use our sin for our good and His glory. We must trust God to use our sin for our good and His glory. Now let me go ahead and just stop you from thinking something. This does not mean we are to sin more so grace will abound more. Paul makes that very clear in Romans 6. We are not to sin more to see what God can do with it. That's not what we're called to do. We are created for good works. We are created to glorify God. We are created to enjoy Him and life will be more enjoyable if we commit ourselves to love and obey Him. The main point here is that sin does not keep us from the love of God. Our rebellion and perversion and offensiveness does not keep us from God when He wants to pursue us. Our sin doesn't stop God. God is amazing in His power that He's able to even use our sin for our good. It's supposed to stop us in our tracks and worship. So to begin this morning, we're going to be considering the great comfort that even while we are sinners, God loves us. Let's look at our text. Our first point this morning is this. Guard your passions and your brotherhood. Guard your passions and your brotherhood. Let's look at Genesis 38 verses 1 through 5. It happened at that time that Judah went down from his brothers and turned aside to a certain Adulamite whose name was Hara. There Judah saw the daughter of a certain Canaanite whose name was Shua. He took her and went into 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 Shezeb when she bore him. Now, a couple of things as we first look here. And it happened at that time Judah went down. I believe this is a physical descent. He comes down from the mountain into the land of the valley of the Canaanites. But it also symbolizes a spiritual descent. This is supposed to parallel Genesis 39. If you look over, Joseph was brought down to Egypt. As Judah, who is going to be the son of Israel, the child of Israel, through whom the Messiah comes, he is descending down into a spiritual descent. Joseph. The instrument of God who's going to redeem Israel temporarily and then in the more immediate future, he is being brought down to Egypt. These stories are paralleling one another, and we'll see that more next week and a little bit more in the sermon today. Notice the action. He turned aside from his brothers. He was leaving the covenant family. He is not making his brothers his primary fellowship. He's turned aside from his family. It's from his brothers. He's forsaking the family. He's forsaking the covenant. This is the one son upon whom the promises are supposed to be fulfilled. Judah. And he's forsaking the family. He's forsaking the promises of God. So he doesn't just turn from his brothers, who should be his primary commanions, his primary watch cares, he turns to an Adulamite, a Canaanite pagan. Now we have to ask ourselves here, where is his father? This is the same father who let Dinah go into Shechem. He hasn't learned his lesson yet. Where is his father? Why isn't his father watching over his children? Why isn't his father protecting the covenant as well? It's amazing how dysfunctional this covenant family constantly was. And how God remained faithful to them. You know, when I was growing up, I got in a lot of trouble in high school. On the good fridge, there was not good grades hung. There was a list of people I was not allowed to hang out with. The Goat Fridge didn't have good grades and accolades from school. It had a list of warnings and dangers. I wonder how many fridges my name was on if other parents described that. But anyway. Parents, guard your children's relationships. Be on watch for who they spend time with. Their peer groups are extremely important. How they are encouraged, how they are managed. It is your responsibility to know who your children are spending time with and how they're spending it. Now, it's interesting here, Judah, while he's hanging out with Harah, the Canaanite, he goes into town and he meets a girl. And notice just how he saw the daughter of a certain Canaanite. And then notice in verse two, he took her and went into her. Now, we just read the Shechemite account weeks ago. That's the same language for rape. He took her and went into her. There's no love here. There's no commitment. He's a man of impulse. He's a man of passion. He's a man who makes porous decisions. He's not wise. He's uncontrolled. He lets his passions overwhelm him and he takes a woman and he goes into her. Now, as you think about this, there's actually a lot of application here. First, who are your friends and how do they influence you? Paul says very clearly in 1 Corinthians 15, bad company corrupts good character. Bad company corrupts good character. Children, trust your parents concerning your friends. If they see someone and they can see that as you spend more time with them, it's affecting you negatively, trust your parents. Evaluate your friends based upon their character and their virtue, not based upon how much fun they are. A wise man once wrote on friendship. And he argued, I think clearly and successfully, that friendship, true friendship, can only take place between good men and good women. Friendship has to have in its foundation a love between two parties that are both virtuous, honest, free of greed and lust, and true for friendship. You can't be a friend of someone unless you are selfless. You can't be a friend of someone unless you are virtuous, unless you are caring, unless you are loving. We need to make sure we are presenting ourselves as good friends to others. We make sure we are guarding ourselves against being friends with those who aren't promoting godliness and good character. See Fred, I'm a church membership guy. I preach church membership that it is a faithful call to all Christians. I don't think it's so to the point we need to be isolated and tunnel vision in church membership that there's not a world out there. That's why I pray for other churches constantly. That's why I try to make friends with their pastors. But I think we should try to have our best friendships within a local church. Church membership is really just the DTR. Church membership is just whatever we say. I'm defining the relationship. This is who I'm committed to. I'm making public that I'm committing to you. I want you to make public you're committing to me. I want to make sure that I am being watchful for others and they're being watchful for me. Scripture gives so many commands of how we're supposed to treat other Christians. You can't do that for the church universal. Church membership is comforting. It focuses in on who you surrender your life for. It focuses in who you love, the way Christ loved the church. If we think about our friendship, where are your best friends? Who are they? I would like to appeal to you to consider making your best friends those that you fellowship with at a church. You share so much that will be deep and impacting on your friendship. Hearing sermons together, taking communion together, regularly fellowshipping together. I hope you have friends that are outside of the church, but make sure you're committing yourself to loving others within a defined body and you're trying to make sure that relationship is defined. Secondly, we need to be self-aware about what our idols are and how they turn us away from God. Sexual sin is prevalent. We need to be on our guard. It will destroy us. We're going to look more at this next week when we look at Potiphar's wife and Joseph. We need to guard our eyes, guard our ears, guard our imaginations. What we think about, what we look at, is what we're going to love. The more you think about something, the more you look at something, the more you dwell upon something, the more you're going to love that thing. Guard your eyes, guard your ears, guard your imagination. Now, the good news is that our hearts are idle factories. But God loves us and corrects us and seeks us out. We need good friends who know us and know how to protect us from ourselves, that know how to protect us from our vices. We need friends who are willing to throw interference in on us to stop us from making the wrong decisions. We are self-deceptive. We're going to see self-deception in the story itself. We are self-deceptive in terms of how good we think we are. We need brothers and sisters. We need friends who are going to tell us what's wrong with us, when to repent and when to seek forgiveness. Our second point this morning, it gets scarier. God judges selfishness and laziness. God judges selfishness and laziness. Let's look at verses 6 through 11. And Judah took a wife for Eir, his firstborn, and her name was Tamar. But Eir, Judah's firstborn, was wicked in the sight of the Lord, and the Lord put him to death. Then Judah said to Anon, 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 Anan knew that the offspring would not be his. So whenever he went in to his brother's wife, he would waste the semen on the ground so as not to give offspring to his brother. 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 Shelah, my son, grows up. For he feared that he would die like his brothers. So Tamar went and remained in her father's house. Here, Aaron and Tamar, they marry. They're both Canaanites. They're both pagans. Judah's not protecting his family. He's following like his father. It's interesting, though, if we compare that to Abraham and Isaac and how they really sought to make sure their children didn't marry among the Canaanites. Abraham gave such warning, make sure he does not take a wife from the Canaanites. Here, Judah's just kind of what he's, it's who he's hanging out with, it's his friends. Why not? Now, it says that Er is wicked. His name actually is evil spelled backwards. We don't know what his wickedness is. What we do know is that God is always a just judge. And so, Er did something that was worthy of death. But think about all the wickedness we've seen from the people of Israel thus far. They raped an entire city, Shechem. They've killed and slaughtered. Think about how evil the people of God have been. They, too, were worthy of God's judgment. They, too, were worthy of God and His wrath. They, too, were worthy of death. So why does God kill Heir so quickly and prematurely and not Abraham and Isaac and Jacob and Joseph, the brothers who stole their brother and sold him into slavery? Well, it's because God is sovereign in his love and his wrath. God is good, and he always makes good judgments. God is good and just, and we are all worthy of his judgment. But for some reason, God and his sovereignty and his sole authority chooses to show mercy. The thing about this, we really should be scared. Is God being patient with you right now in the midst of your sin? Is God not exercising a clear judgment against you right now, even though you know you're sinning? Even though you know there's a pattern of behavior and choices that are not wise, that are worthy of God's destruction, worthy of death? Is God being patient with you in His grace? And you're taking that for granted. Friends, his patience doesn't wear out, but he does go to other means to correct his children. Be fearful of letting God's patience be taken for granted. Be afraid of your sin and the consequences of it. Be afraid that God will not hold back anymore and he will let you suffer the consequences of your sin. Let's look at Anon. Tamar is handed to him after Er dies. And this is a cultural way of thinking. Having a lineage, having a people is extremely important in the mindset. And so if a brother dies before he's able to have children, the next in line is supposed to provide an offspring for him. Judah follows the pattern. He says, Anon, I need you to go and go into your brother's wife and therefore give your brother a son. Anon's selfish. He doesn't want to do that. It'll actually hinder his inheritance. Right now, he's going to be the first born status. He's the oldest brother. He's going to get the best piece of property. But if he gives his brother a son, that's not going to be his son. That son will then get the first rights. And the property will be divided against Onan's favor. So, he wastes his theme on the ground. I'm not sure this is supposed to be primarily opposed to birth control. I think the real issue is how selfish we are. It was his duty, it was his responsibility to give his brother an offspring. He's not willing to do his duty as a brother. Instead, he's motivated by selfish gain and profit. And it gets worse. Judah says to Tamar, go back to your father's house. As soon as my youngest son comes up, I'll give him to you. We will give you another man to hopefully have an offspring. But you know, because the text reveals this, he's afraid that his other son's going to die as well. Judah's not wise. He's not observant. He doesn't get it. He blames Tamar for his son's death. Not his son's wickedness. He's blind to his own children's sin and the reason they really died. But Tamar is the easy scapegoat. It's not his own child. He thinks Tamar has bad mojo. So he tries to hide her away. Now, the father-in-law, he could actually release her. He could say, you know what? This isn't working out. You go back to your father's house, find a new husband, maybe become a temple prostitute. Whatever you want to do, I'm going to release you from my family. That's his power. He doesn't release her. He just says, go and hide out over there. Quit being a burden to me and my family. Don't kill another one of my sons. He blames her when it's really his own son's fault. What's amazing about this is we're going to look ahead. Tamar is the hero in the story. She reminds you of Ruth in many ways. She is more faithful to the covenant and the covenant people than the covenant people themselves. Here we see a woman being presented as a hero in a male-dominated society because of the way God has ordered things. Let's look at point three, verses 12 through 26. We must be watchful of our blind spots and hypocrisy. We must be watchful of our blind spots and hypocrisy. In the course of time, the wife of Judah, Shura's daughter, died. When Judah was comforted, he went up to Timnah to his sheep shears, he and his friend Harah the Adulamite. 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 Enayim, which is on the road to Timnah. For she saw that Sheolah 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 into you. For he did not know that she was his daughter-in-law. She said, What will you give me that you may come into me? He said, 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 into 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 Adulamite, to take back the plaids from the woman's hand, he did not find her. And he asked the men of the place, where is the cool prostitute who was at Anahim? at the roadside. And they said, no court prostitute has been here. So he returned to Judah and said, I have not found her. Also, the men of the place said, no court prostitute has been here. And Abraham 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. Judah's unnamed wife dies. It's actually interesting how quickly his mourning is over. We don't know how long he mourns, but Tamar is still mourning for her dead husband. before his wife died and after. His mourning appears to be short. Again, he's a man that has no deep love, just a man who follows his passion and impulse. Tamar's in mourning. She takes off her widow garments whenever she finds out that Judah is going up for the sheep-sharing festivities. This time of year, the Gods would be entertained by humans having relations with one another. And the idea there is that they believe that gods would bless their land with fertility. And the way that you entice the gods to bless their land with fertility is to entice them to be fertile. And so, what they created was a system where there would be temple prostitutes that men could go have relations with, that God would watch that, and then they would be fertile as well. It's a control system. That's kind of where we don't function as gross as this may be, maybe, but our sinfulness causes us to want to control God. This is a way of controlling God who controls the crops and the fertility. To say more, she hears about Judah coming. She takes off her widow's garments. She puts a veil on her face, knowing this is the sign of a temple prostitute. This is a way to connect with the gods, if you're a man as well. Judah sees her and is grossly blunt and to the point. Let me come into you. He's not a wise man. He doesn't make wise decisions. He is ruled by his passion and by his impulse. He does not discipline his desires for God and against sin. And as we will see, this leads to danger. This always leads to danger and destruction. Tamar is going to outwit him. She asks for a pledge. He says, I'll give you a goat. That seems like a hefty promise. That seems like a hefty wage for the prostitute. She asked for a pledge and he says, I'll give you, well, she asked for these three things, the signet and the cord and the staff. Now, it's interesting, these are great symbols. Remember, Judah fools his father with a cloak. The story before this, Judah takes the coat of many colors and says, look, an animal has devoured your son. Judah uses a garment to fool his father. Here, he's going to be fooled by a garment. He's going to be fooled by the prostitute's veil. Contrast this with the garment in the next chapter over. Joseph is tempted by Potiphar's wife, and he leaves his garment. Those things are supposed to bring the symbolism to mind. You have a great contrast between Judah and Joseph. Judah, who is throwing himself into sexual sin and is fooled by a cloak, whereas Joseph, he flees sexual sin and is punished because of the cloak. He's not presented as all that smart, Judah. He's not aware of his circumstances. He has a fear of looking stupid, but he really just can't help himself. Let's look at what these three things are. The signet. This would be the sign of the seal, kind of the wax imprint you would put on a letter. It'd be the way you would make transactions. When the clay was soft over when you bought something or when you made a legal transaction, you would roll the signet in the seal. It was your personal mark saying, I agree or I am claiming this as my own. The cord will be the cord tied to the signal. It will be very personalized. Well, the staff, that represents the power. This is basically like someone asking you for your credit card and your social security card. The things that identify you the most in our culture and in our society. The things that someone can control you by. He gives them to her. Not wise. The one that really stands out, and I couldn't find anyone to comment on this, Giving up his staff reminded me of the promise to Judah in Genesis 49, verse 10. The scepter shall not depart from Judah, nor the ruler's staff from between his feet until tribute comes to him. And to him shall be the obedience of the peoples. That's a promise from Messiah. That promise is that the Messiah is going to come from Judah and it's symbolized with a staff and his Judah has given his staff to a prostitute. If you're an Israelite in the Exodus, you're reading this, you're thinking, no, Judah, you're supposed to have the staff. How do you give up the covenant promise? He's putting it all in jeopardy. He's putting our salvation in jeopardy. Well, thank you. Thankfully, God is much more powerful than him. There's also a sterling contrast here. Judah is more faithful to a pledge to a prostitute than to his daughter-in-law. He's supposed to have pledged a husband for Tamar, and he's not going to be faithful to that, but he's faithful to a pledge to a prostitute. He then sends a goat by his friend, the Edulamites. Hurrah. They can't find her because she doesn't exist as a temple prostitute. And then he says, well, we just need to stop because we're going to be laughed at if we continue. He's more interested in keeping his reputation. Now notice it says about three months later, there are definite time markers in this story. The first one is in verse one, it happened at that time. Verse 12, in the course of time, and now here is our third time marker, about three months later, Judah finds out that Tamar is pregnant. He jumps quickly to the most harshest penalty, burn her. He jumps to conclusion on a secondhand account. Now, if this woman you think is the cause for your son's death, she's a real burden to you. You don't want to release her, apparently. He doesn't want to release her, but he doesn't want anything to do with her. He doesn't continue to care for her as a father or a father-in-law. I think he's jumping at the opportunity to just get rid of her. Burn her. It's a quick judgment. But then, of course, the great turn of events. When the point where the tension of the story gets highest, she sends ahead her evidence. The staff, the cord, and the signet of Judah. Now, put yourself in Judah's place there. He has just stood up and said, burn her. And for however long it took to get the items to travel all the way back to Judah, he sees them. The man who I am pregnant by, these are his This is a social security card, this is a credit card, this is an identification. He's faced with a dilemma. He's faced with his hypocrisy. He's faced with his guilt. He's faced with the fact that he should die for what he's done. His declaration was right. She should be burned for her sin. She should be destroyed for her sin. And now he has to come face to face and say, I should die for my sin. We see the only wise thing Judah Sazer does in this entire story, she is more righteous than I. He's humbled. He doesn't humble himself. He is humbled. He is embarrassed. He is confronted. He is faced with his guilt. She is more righteous than I. You see, there's a dirty double standard. We can look at a story. We can look at one double standard. It's okay for men to be sexually promiscuous, but women can't be. That's a horrible double standard. If you stake that gentleman, it will destroy you. It's foolish. But the double standard I'm talking about is that we want people judged for the same kinds of sins that we're guilty of. But we don't want to be judged. We want God to judge other people who sin against us, but we don't want God to judge us for our sin. Judah, in this declaration, he is confessing his sin, I believe. He's confessing. He's humbled. We may even see here the beginning of his conversion, a confrontation of his own sin. See, friends, this text reveals the wickedness of humanity. This text is about us. This text is here for us today, this morning. It's here to show us the sin that is dwelling in our hearts, the sin that we too are capable of. This text is to make us afraid of our sin. Our sin is wicked, it is gross, it is perverse. This passage is extremely helpful because if we look at it, we should identify with it. We should see how selfish and perverse we are. We should see that we have forsaken our primary calling and glorifying God and loving God and obeying God. Our sin needs to stare us in the face. Now, those of you who are married, you have probably gone to a jewelry store to buy a diamond. And when you're at a jewelry store, it's pretty interesting what they do. They get on a black cloth. And what they do with the black cloth is they let the diamond glisten with that black backdrop. That way you see the beautiful contrast of the beauty of the diamond versus the black backdrop, the cloth. The backdrop. You see, we're not going to see the beauty of the gospel. We're not going to see the love glimmering and shining. We're not going to see the love of God that conquered our sin until we see it with the backdrop of our own sin. We need the darkness to be clear to us. So when the light shines, it illuminates us. It illuminates even more sin. It illuminates the power of the gospel. It illuminates Jesus Christ. The gospel only shines when it is seen with a backdrop of our sin. Without our sin being clear to us, the gospel is not going to be clear. The gospel is only sweet after tasting the bitterness of sin and death. The gospel is only light if we recognize it with darkness. Friends, if you do not think you are a sinner deserving God's wrath this morning, I don't think you're a Christian. If you cannot honestly look at yourself in the mirror and say, I have sinned and I am worthy of God's wrath, your confession of Christ is empty because Christ is only saving you from your sin and God's wrath and death. If you're confessing Christ, but not confessing that you deserve God's wrath, you need to take account of your confession. Friends, our last point. Grace abounds. Grace abounds. Verses 27 through 30. I've been very eager to get to this. 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 Zerah. Now, you can turn back now or later. Look at Genesis 25-24. The wording is exactly the same in verse 27 here. And when the time of her labor came, there were twins in her womb. It's the person who reminds you, oh, there's twins. Oh, this is just like Jacob and Esau. And in case you missed the wording, the scarlet thread reminds you. The first one that reached, she had a scarlet thread tied around his arm, just like Esau was red and hairy. But then the other brother, he wrestles him back. and comes out first claiming the firstborn rights. That's just fascinating in the sense of how the literary functions of symbolism. Here's the main point of our story this morning. God uses evil for good. Meditate upon that for the rest of the week. That simple phrase. Memorize it. God uses evil for good. This is a major theme from 37 to 50. The whole Joseph narrative can be summarized with this. God uses evil for good. And that's why this story is here, placed specifically in chapter 38. It's because this story, maybe even more than the story of Joseph, is about God using evil for good. Let's think about our evil. A man had sex with a prostitute, only it's not a prostitute. It's a woman deceiving about being a prostitute. It's a woman who had sex with her father-in-law. A father who is not being responsible for his family. He's abusive to his daughter-in-law. The tension is great in this story. There's adultery. There's fornication. There's this sexual promiscuity. There's a big ball of conglomerated sin. That's our evil. Let's look at God's good. How does he use this evil for good? Flip over to Matthew. First book of the New Testament. Page 807, if that helps you. Listen. The book of 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. Our Savior has this in his genealogy. This is the lineage. This is the kind of action that God uses to bring about His Savior. He doesn't use holy people. He doesn't use good people because there aren't any. This is amazing as we look at this. Prostitution, lying, incest. God uses this. These sins and these people to bring about His. Promised child, the seed we've been waiting on all along, the seed from Genesis 3.15, the offspring who's going to reverse the curse, who's going to conquer sin and death. This is how he does it? That's an awesome God. That's an awesome God who's able to look at our evil and not be overcome by it. Rather, he overcomes our evil with his love. This whole episode is gross. It's gross. It's full of ungodly sexual desire and perverse selfishness. But God uses it to bring about our salvation. You see, there's something beautiful about this. A dear saint and I were talking about how this world is a battlefield. It's us battling the evil one. It's us battling sin and temptation, but it's also a battlefield in the sense that God battles against us. We're His enemy. We are not naturally inclined to follow Him. We're naturally inclined to fight against Him. But that doesn't stop God from being successful in befriending us. That doesn't stop God from being successful in loving us. Even while we were still sinners, even though while we are still fighting and punching and kicking against God, He saves us. And then even when we're on His team, We're constantly committing treason by not obeying him. We're fighting against the king, and yet he uses us still. As we reflect upon the power of God to use evil for good, our minds have to go to the cross. The most evil deed in the history of man. An innocent man dies. Evil man put him to death. The one man who doesn't deserve death is put to death. The true son of Judah, Jesus Christ, the champion who has come down from heaven to save us. He was killed at the cross, but he wasn't conquered. Rather, on the cross, he was conquering. He was conquering sin and death. He was conquering our greatest enemy. He was innocent and did not deserve death. But He submitted to it for our good. Because without His death, we have no life. Without His sacrifice, we have no hope. Without His victory, we lose. But if we believe in Him today, we can have that life. We can have that hope. We can have that security. We can have that salvation. He suffered so that we might find joy, peace, and rest. Friends, as we close, let's meditate upon these words from Paul. Here's a trustworthy saying that deserves full acceptance. Jesus Christ came into the world to save sinners. Of whom I am the worst. Let me read that again. Here's a trustworthy saying that deserves full acceptance. Jesus Christ came into the world to save sinners. Of whom I am the worst. I pray we all confess that today. I pray we're all moved by that confession of Paul and reiterate it with him. Yes, Christ has come to save sinners like me. I pray you are so overwhelmed with conviction of sin that you say, I am the worst. And I pray that overwhelmed conviction will take you to see the overwhelming love that God has given us on the cross. If you're in deep sin this morning, if you're convicted of your sin, you know it is your enemy, you know it is destructive and destroying you. Friend, do not think you need to fix something before you come to the cross. There is nothing you can do to better prepare yourself. for the cross. There's nothing you can do to better prepare yourself to confess Christ as your Savior. Conviction of sin is all you need. Take it to Christ. Let Him heal you. And He will begin to fix you. If you're here and you're in need of Christian friendship and fellowship because your sin is haunting you, your sin is destroying you, commit here. Talk to me about a better place to commit. There are a number of healthy churches in Charlottesville. Praise God for that. But commit to being a dedicated member of a body of believers so that you are committing to watch over them and they are committing to watch over you. If you're a Christian this morning, be deathly scared of your sin. Not that it would embarrass you, but that it would embarrass the king. that our sin would bring shame upon the name of our Savior and our Lord. Confess your sin to Christ. Confess your sin to a brother and sister and hear the words, I forgive you. Let's go to the Lord in prayer. God, we thank you for texts like this that shock us about how sinful other men are. And I pray that it would shock us to reflect upon how sinful we are. Help us, Lord, to see the true depth of our sin and the true extent upon which You should pour Your wrath upon us. But You patiently wait with us. You're patient in Your steadfast love and Your faithfulness. We praise You, God, that even though we are such filthy sinners, You save us and then You use us for Your glory. Forgive us, Lord, for our sins. Help us, Lord, be a body that confesses our sins quickly, that shows forgiveness quickly, and glorifies You together in our meditation and focus on You and Your Gospel. In Your Holy Name we pray, Amen.