Bible Wonders - CLOTHING/ BETRAYAL THEME IN GENESIS

Did you ever wonder? Did you ever wonder?

I do. Did you ever wonder? Why the sun always rises, but the stars never fall?

Why dry land is never satisfied by water? And why fire never says enough? So, today on Bible Wonders, let's wonder about the word clothes as one of the major themes actually in the book of Genesis is that we take that up, obviously, with Adam and Eve, where, you know, clearly they didn't want God to see them naked, so they made themselves fig leaves, and then God made them these phenomenal clothes of skin, which is really something you can ponder about just on its own. But when you look at the word clothes in Hebrew, you have your choice, because both words are spelled this way, of either saying betrayal or deception, but really betrayal or saying clothes. Well, I don't know if you've ever considered how much clothes are sort of a deception, that Adam and Eve were trying to deceive God into what they really looked like by putting on these fig leaves, and he then made them a different kind of concealing, tried to cover them, obviously, with these skins from animals. But you don't have to read much further, and you're going to find that clothes become betrayal, you know, constantly throughout the book of Genesis. You know, another classic one is obviously when Jacob and Esau, you know, are wanting to get the blessing, and Jacob's mother, Rebekah, has Jacob dress up in Esau's clothing.

Or another cool one is when Joseph gets the coat of many colors, and their brother, his brothers take this clothing, again, put blood on it in order to deceive their father Jacob that something horrible has happened. You also have the case of Tamar, right, being Judah's daughter in law that wants to have children, and, you know, Judah's not giving him his son, giving her his son. And so, what does she do? She dresses like a prostitute, again, deceiving Judah into, you know, sleeping with her. And then there's obviously the clothes that Jacob's wife Leah wore that first night when she was, he was being deceived, that he thought he was marrying Rachel. And interestingly, when you see Joseph later with Potiphar's wife, what does she do? She takes his clothes and then deceives her husband into, that he was, that Joseph had tried to rape her. And so, he threw her in jail, again, once again is deceived. And then you see later on, Joseph's brothers are deceived by Joseph's appearance because he's dressed as the viceroy of Egypt, right?

So, they don't recognize this dude in these viceroy clothes. So, here you have this word, it means either betrayal or deception, and you have this concept of things are not as they appear, which when you think about it, faith comes by hearing, it doesn't come by seeing. Although, when you read the word, hopefully you're praying along with the word in your hearing a word. And so, overall, if you climb to 20,000 feet, what do we learn here from all these different times that people are deceived? And we see that you can't necessarily believe what you see, but hearing from God is where faith is, right?

Faith comes from hearing and hearing from the Word of God. But the other deception actually can work in people's favor. In other words, I remember when I became a salesman, they had me dress a certain way and you kind of fake it till you make it, right? Because I looked like a salesman, even though at that point in time I wasn't one. But I had on the little tie, and I had the suit, and I had my day timer in my pocket, and I had myself all disguised, in my opinion, as a car salesman. Well, it didn't take long, and I started to actually accept the image that I was actually portraying and began to study that kind of thing. And so it has long been Jewish tradition that are you to dress a certain role so that you can begin to accept that identity. Because how you dress very much has to do with your identity, and that is deceiving to people to some extent, but at some point you can actually deceive yourself as you step into that role and you actually become more God-like. Well, if you think about when I first read the Bible, I had this concept, God wasn't real, I had all sorts of things. So I was definitely doing the doing the thing like I knew what I was doing.

I was faking it. But as it turned out, the more I read, the more I became convinced, and I actually began to take on that identity of reading the Bible and take on that identity about learning God through His Word. So if a nurse puts on that traditional white hat that they wear and all that stuff, think about how they grow into that role as part of how God can use them. So it's no accident, I don't think, that the word for deceive or the word for betray is the same word as clothes, especially since Adam and Eve had betrayed God, and so they needed to be clothed. Well, the beautiful thing is, when you think about all the clothes that you get to wear, you will get bridal clothes in heaven. They're going to be white as snow. But in order for you to get that, the first thing you got to do is you got to be covered, right, in Jesus's blood, which then you walk around in that covering for very long and you begin to be the person that God is showing you through this covering that He's giving you, the blood of Christ.