The Choices That We Make

THE CHOICES WE MAKE

We are now in Genesis 38.

This is the story of Judah and Tamar.

Not too many preachers talk about this chapter because this is like a parenthesis from the story of Joseph.

One whole chapter devoted about the life and sin of Judah while Joseph was sold to Potiphar in Egypt.

In this chapter, we will talk about the CHOICES or DECISIONS we make.

Life is all about choices.

Do you know that our choices will affect our future destiny?

Many times, we make the wrong choices and ultimately these choices affect our lives.

There will be consequences for every bad choice.

Sometimes it is too late but we realized we have made big mistakes.

And when we make those mistakes in life, it is very difficult to recover and make a first start.

There are people who have not actually recovered and are not able to get up.

What is life?

They say it is from B to D.

From Birth to Death.

But what is between B and D?

It is "C".

So, what is a "C?"

It is a CHOICE.

Our life is a matter of choices.

Live well and it never go wrong.

Every choice you make will affect your future.

And so, in order to avoid the bad choices of life, we must learn to examine the good options of life from God's Word.

We have to look carefully at life's various choices.

There are good possibilities ahead if only you will open your eyes.

You can choose life instead of death.

You can choose health instead of sickness.

You can choose wealth instead of poverty.

You can choose wisdom instead of foolishness.

The alternative are endless.

Sad to say that many people have not discovered these great possibilities in God's Word.

In this chapter, we will focus at two things only that can affect our everyday choices.

Both starts with letter R - RELATIONSHIPS and RESPONSIBILITIES.

These two things are important.

Relationships concerns the people we associate with.

These are the people we choose to connect or involved with in our lives.

Once we make a choice on who they are, they can big impact to our future destiny.

While responsibilities refer to our personal obligations to God and family.

It refers to our reliability or dependability to our Christian duties in the home.

Most of us are good in the office but not good in the way we handle our families.

There are other things to consider in making the right choice, but due to limited time, these are the two most important things we will consider at this time.

These are the things that can affect our future.

These are the things that we can learn from this chapter of Genesis.

When we make the right choices with regards to our relationships and our responsibilities, then we do well with our dreams.

But when we made wrong choices in these two areas of our lives, we destroy our future legacy to others.

So, let us move on and learn from the life of Judah and Tamar.

HOW DO WE KNOW THAT WE MADE THE WRONG CHOICE?

1. CONCERNING OUR RELATIONSHIPS. When we acquire ungodly character traits though wrong associations.

Genesis 38:1-6 "At that time, Judah left his brothers and went down to stay with a man of Adullamnamed Hirah. 2 There Judah met the daughter of a Canaanite man named Shua. He married her and made love to her; 3 she became pregnant and gave birth to a son, who was named Er. 4 She conceived again and gave birth to a son and named him Onan.5 She gave birth to still another son and named him Shelah. It was at Kezib that she gave birth to him. 6 Judah got a wife for Er, his firstborn, and her name was Tamar. 7 But Er, Judah’s firstborn, was wicked in the Lord’s sight; so the Lord put him to death."

Look at those words: look, went down and stay.

These are signs of deterioration, degeneration and decay.

He left his brother's company.

He went down.

He stayed down.

This is a picture of a person enjoying his association with a wrong company.

The first thing we can notice here is that Judah had wrong associations with ungodly society.

He was declining in his spiritual life and he has not noticed it.

His situation was worsening over time.

The Bible says that he enjoyed, he took pleasure and appreciated his stay in the area.

He became so comfortable that he lingered, he remained and he settled there too long to marry a woman of the place and had children.

As he rubbed shoulder to shoulder with its people, he acquired their habits, their lifestyles, their practices and their wickedness.