Professional speakers and trainers have long asserted that people make up their minds about people they meet for the first time within two minutes. Others assert that these first impressions about people take only thirty seconds to make.

As it turns out, both may be underestimates. According to Malcolm Gladwell, in "Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking," the decisions may occur much faster—think instantaneously or in two seconds. - https://www.thebalancecareers.com/why-blink-matters-the-power-of-first-impressions-1919374

However, as Gladwell points out in his book, we can be and are often wrong. We can be thrown off, we can misjudge people and situations. We’ve all probably at time been embarrassed at best, or have offended someone at worst when we made a judgement call about someone, only to later come to realize that we had it all wrong.

I tell you this as we come to the story of Jacob’s sons, in particular the two sons were focused in on this morning Joseph and Judah. It’s weird isn’t it? Moses starts telling us the story of Joseph, a story that will take the better part of the rest of the book of Genesis to tell, and right as he begins getting into the story, he takes a time out and tells this horrifically scandalous tale of Judah and his sons, an Tamar’s shaming of him. It’s weird right - maybe you heard the story of Joseph from Sunday School or saw the stage production of Joseph and the Amazing Technicolour Dreamcoat, and say down with your Bible to read the story of Joseph, and then you turn the page and suddenly - whoa! where did this come from? They didn’t talk about this in Sunday School! 

I think God knows something about how we judge individuals based on first impressions, and that God has something to show us about ourselves and about himself that we need to come to grips with if we are every going to truly understand and embrace the gospel of grace.