Year 4, Day 37: Genesis 38

Theological Commentary: Click Here 

Discipleship Focus: Obedience

• Obedience: Genuine and satisfying obedience comes out of our identity.  Our true identity comes only from Father.

When we look at this chapter, of course we see sin abounding.  Onan refuses to give his sister-in-law any children because they won’t be his.  He is self-centered.  Judah marries a Canaanite woman and takes Canaanite women for his sons.  Certainly this goes against God’s directive.  Judah also looks for a prostitute when he goes to sheer his sheep and ends up impregnating his own daughter-in-law!  Sin abounds in this chapter.

Whenever we have a chapter where sin abounds, it is always reasonable to look at the idea of obedience.  When sin abounds, we have a case where people are being obedient to something other than God.  They are obeying worldly thought.  They are obeying their own self-centered desires.  Whatever the case may be, they are sinning because their actions are not proceeding out of their faith.  (See Romans 14:23)

Of course, the question that needs to be asked in order to resolve this issue of obedience is this: what identity is the obedience serving?  Certainly Onan is not serving any identity that comes from the Father.  Certainly Judah is not serving an identity that comes from the Father.  Whatever else we can say about this chapter, we can absolutely say that sin abounds in this chapter because the main characters are being obedient to an identity that is not from the Father.  We can clearly see the danger of such a pattern of life all throughout this chapter.

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