Good evening, and welcome to EBible Fellowship’s Bible study in the book of Genesis.  Tonight is study #16 in Genesis 38, and we will be reading Genesis 38:24-26:

And it came to pass about three months after, that it was told Judah, saying, Tamar thy daughter in law hath played the harlot; and also, behold, she is with child by whoredom. And Judah said, Bring her forth, and let her be burnt. When she was brought forth, she sent to her father in law, saying, By the man, whose these are, am I with child: and she said, Discern, I pray thee, whose are these, the signet, and bracelets, and staff. And Judah acknowledged them, and said, She hath been more righteous than I; because that I gave her not to Shelah my son. And he knew her again no more.

I will stop reading there.  Let us go to 2Corinthians 1:20-22:

For all the promises of God in him are yea, and in him Amen, unto the glory of God by us. Now he which stablisheth us with you in Christ, and hath anointed us, is God; Who hath also sealed us, and given the earnest of the Spirit in our hearts.

Notice the word “sealed” here, and we saw that “signet” is also translated as “sealed.”  We spent some time looking at the 12,000 of each of the 12 tribes being sealed in their foreheads, and the forehead is a synonym for mind, heart, and soul, so the “seal” is upon the soul.  He has sealed us and given us the “earnest of the Spirit in our hearts.” 

Going back again to Song of Solomon 8, we read this wonderful verse that has to do with the love between Christ and His bride.  It says in Song of Solomon 8:6:

Set me as a seal upon thine heart, as a seal upon thine arm: for love is strong as death; jealousy is cruel as the grave: the coals thereof are coals of fire, which hath a most vehement flame.

All the language of death, the grave, coals of fire, and vehement flame seems to identify with God’s furious wrath in His judgment.  And yet it says, “Set me as a seal upon thine heart,” a seal of God in salvation, and a seal to identify that this particular sinner is not like other sinners in the sense that his or her sins have been paid for, and the Law has nothing further to say against the sealed one because the Law’s demand for satisfaction for offenses has been settled.  The account is settled, and payment has been received in full.  Therefore this one is sealed with the seal of the living God, and he has the seal or pledge upon his soul, and God sees that pledge and will do him no harm. 

The elect child of God can go through the fire.  He can go through the furious anger of a God who has been provoked to pour out His anger on all the earth, and it will do no ultimate harm.  He will go through the fire.  That is the whole idea of “gold, silver, precious stones” going through the fire.  They will not be destroyed by the fire.

Let us look at one more verse in Ephesians 1, another wonderful chapter where God tells us that His election program is all by His grace according to the good pleasure of His will.  Then we read in Ephesians 1:13-14:

In whom ye also trusted, after that ye heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation: in whom also after that ye believed, ye were sealed with that holy Spirit of promise, Which is the earnest of our inheritance until the redemption of the purchased possession, unto the praise of his glory.

That is a big passage, but God is saying that we are sealed with the holy Spirit of promise, and this is the earnest, or the pledge, “of our inheritance until the redemption of the purchased possession,” which is this earth, and which is our bodies.

Let us go to 2Corinthians 5:5:

Now he that hath wrought us for the selfsame thing is God, who also hath given unto us the earnest of the Spirit.

When we look up the word “earnest” in Strong’s Concordance, we find it is Strong’s #728.  When you look up that Greek word, you find it is pronounced “ar-hrab-ohn',” and it is pronounced exactly like the Hebrew word that we were just looking at in Genesis 38 which is translated as “pledge” three times.  It is the Hebrew word pronounced “ar-aw-bone'.”   The Greek word for “earnest” in 2Corinthians 5:5 is not actually a Greek word, but it is of Hebrew origin, and Strong’s Concordance tells us that, and then it gives us the Hebrew Strong’s #6162, which directs us right back to Genesis 38, so it is tied to the pledge in Genesis 38, without any question.  That pledge that Judah gave to Tamar is the same word that God uses when He says that He “hath given unto us the earnest of the Spirit.”  And that is salvation.  It is the Holy Spirit that dwells within the elect child of God.

And Tamar received the pledge at that critical time when she was about to be burned, and it prevented that judgment upon her.  It would not allow for her to be burned.  Instead, Judah testified, “She hath been more righteous than I.”  Her righteousness was seen through the producing of the pledge.  Can you see why that is? 

In this time period God is going forth as Apollyon and Abaddon, the King of Destruction going forth to destroy the unsaved inhabitants of the earth, like the plague of the death of the firstborn that came upon Egypt in that dark night thousands of years ago.  The Destroyer went down the streets to the houses of the Egyptians, but when He came to the home of an Israelite, He would see the blood upon the doorpost and “pass over.”  That is the meaning of the Passover feast.  The blood caused the Destroyer, the wrath of God, to pass that house and go to the next home where there was no blood, and then the Destroyer would do His work of destruction. 

And that is how it is in this Day of Judgment.  God’s elect will endure to the end because they have the pledge of the Spirit, “the earnest of the Spirit,” and it is though God sees the blood covering His elect.  God sees the righteousness of Christ upon them, and He will not destroy them and cause them to perish.  The elect are sealed until the last day because that is when God will end this present earth and create a new heaven and new earth.  He will make His elect new creatures in our bodies, as He has done in our souls, and the “earnest,” or pledge, is in many ways a down payment or promissory note: “I have saved your soul, and now you will live for evermore.  Nothing will ever harm you.  Nothing will ever destroy you.  You cannot die.”  As Christ said, “And whosoever liveth and believeth in me shall never die. Believest thou this?” 

You have eternal life, and that life is now in your soul, but that is only the beginning.  This is the pledge for a greater fulfilment, and a greater and abundant blessing that will be bestowed upon you at the time of the redemption of the purchased possession on that last day.

This is the wonderful information God has given us, and we can see the beauty of Genesis 38 as God is giving this account.  It is rather odd that he paused the story of Joseph in Genesis 37, which He will resume in Genesis 39, and God inserts this strange account of Judah, the death of his two sons and the holding back of the third, and his encounter with Tamar.  But now we can see that it is just a wonderful and beautiful historical parable that teaches us of our safety and security in Christ, and what He has done for us in giving us that surety.  That surety is the pledge He has left with us that would become evident to God at the proper time, and it will deliver us from the final destruction as we go through the judgment.

As we continue in Genesis 38, there are more curious and interesting things here concerning the pledge that was left, and the children.  Tamar conceived and she was pregnant not with just one child, but two children.  She was brought before Judah for judgment, and afterwards she was found not guilty.  She was found to be righteous.  But before that, the twins in her womb came into judgment with her.  It was mentioned that she was over three months pregnant, and if she would have burned, they would have burned, but her producing of the pledge not only delivered her, but it delivered her children. 

What does God have in view here with this woman finally becoming fruitful after being a widow?  She was a widow who then had children, and that reminds us of some Scriptures.  Since God does liken a woman’s fruitfulness to salvation, think about the fact that God saved the great multitude just prior to the judgment, and we know the great multitude, as typified by the great catch of fish, were not immediately drawn.  It was after the Tribulation, which would be the time of Judgment Day, that Christ told the disciples to bring of the fish they had caught, and then they were drawn to Him.

In other words, the children will be born after Judah pronounced the judgment and the innocence of Tamar was proclaimed, as they were conceived at an earlier time.  To say it another way, there is no spiritual conception taking place once Judgment Day begins.  No one is becoming born again.  But we are looking at those that are newly saved and the drawing of them, and they are coming forth in that sense.  I do not know if I am laying this out properly, but it is something interesting for us to consider as we continue in our study of the book of Genesis.