There’s a strange little feature of modern life: we have become very good at deleting things.
Delete the text. Clear the browser history. Empty the trash. Unsend the message. Delete the photo. Remove the post. Wipe the search history. Throw away the receipt.
Sometimes that’s harmless. Mostly, it’s mundane. It’s necessary from time to time.
Sometimes we’re not really trying to delete something. We’re trying to erase the evidence.
That’s where Judah finds himself in Genesis 38:20–23.
20 Meanwhile Judah sent the young goat by his friend the Adullamite in order to get his pledge back from the woman, but he did not find her. 21 He asked the men who lived there, “Where is the shrine prostitute who was beside the road at Enaim?”
Genesis 38:20-23, New International Version
“There hasn’t been any shrine prostitute here,” they said.
22 So he went back to Judah and said, “I didn’t find her. Besides, the men who lived there said, ‘There hasn’t been any shrine prostitute here.’”
23 Then Judah said, “Let her keep what she has, or we will become a laughingstock. After all, I did send her this young goat, but you didn’t find her.”
Judah had made a terrible moral choice. He had slept with a woman he believed to be a prostitute, not realizing that the woman was actually his daughter-in-law, Tamar. When he discovered she was pregnant, he assumed the worst and was prepared to condemn her.
But Tamar had something Judah didn’t know about.
Before they parted, Judah had given her his seal, cord, and staff as a pledge until he could send payment for the goat he had promised her.
Those items were evidence.
So Judah sent his friend back to find the woman and retrieve this evidence, but she was gone.
Judah decided to let her keep his things. On the surface, Judah’s response sounds practical. Let’s just move on. Don’t make this any bigger than it needs to be. No need to give people an excuse to talk about it.
But notice what Judah was trying to do. He was trying to make the problem disappear without ever dealing with the sin. He couldn’t find the woman, so he couldn’t retrieve the evidence. His solution was essentially, “Fine. Let’s just leave it alone.”
And that’s the danger of concealed sin. It can be hidden without being healed.
Judah could walk away from the situation, but he couldn’t walk away from what he had done. The guilt and consequences remained, even if the woman (Tamar) could not be found.
Judah thought the story was over, but it wasn’t.
Three months later, Tamar’s pregnancy became public knowledge. Judah was ready to pronounce judgment on her until she produced the very things he had tried to forget.
What he thought he had gotten away from had not gone away at all. That’s one of sin’s great deceptions.
We often confuse concealment with resolution.
The Lord doesn’t ask us to pretend our sin never happened. He invites us to bring it to Him so that He can deal with it.
The path to healing is in taking it to Him. Stop trying to hide what the Lord is asking you to confess. Maybe you’ve simply decided, like Judah, to leave the whole thing alone.
Don’t.
And if repentance requires making something right with another person, do that too.
You may not be able to control when or whether the consequences of sin catch up with you. But you can decide today that you will no longer protect your sin from the One who can forgive and transform you.
What we attempt to cover eventually resurfaces. But what we confess to God can finally be resolved.
You can’t hide sin forever. Thankfully, you don’t have to.
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