It's filled with deception, failure, moral compromise, and yet it reveals two very profound truths.

First, God works through deeply flawed people to accomplish his purposes.

Judah's failures do not prevent God from bringing forth the lineage to the Messiah.

If you are somewhere in life feeling like God can't work through you

because you've done X, Y, or Z,

I would like to introduce you to all of the deeply flawed people of the Old Testament

because they are his covenant people and he still works through them.

He does not abandon them.

When they fail, he provides opportunities for repentance, get them back on the

path. God's grace is so much bigger than their human brokenness. He can redeem even the most

complicated of situations, and this is a complicated situation.

Welcome back to Fares. Come Follow Me for Old Testament year. I am Jennifer Roachleys, and today we are in Come Follow Me Week 11. We are going to focus on Genesis chapter 38. If you've looked at the text at all for this week, you might be thinking, well, that's an odd choice because it's not the well-known story that's contained in this

week's chapters. The well-known story is about Joseph. His coat of many colors, his brothers

sell him into slavery, he goes to Potiphar's house. You know this story

already. I'll run through them really quick and you'll see what's going to happen. Chapter 37,

Joseph is Jacob's favorite son. He gets this special coat. His brother sell him into slavery

in Egypt. Chapter 38 comes completely out of the

blue. Have you ever known a person who loves to tell stories and they tell you a story? And then

they're like, wait a minute, I have to tell you this other story first and then I'll go back

to the other story. It's sort of what is happening here.

Genesis 38 has nothing to do with Joseph.

It's this complete interlude.

...