Background:
· In Genesis 37, Joseph was persecuted by his brothers as they stripped his coat off and threw him into a pit and then Judah coolly hatched the idea to sell Joseph into slavery for money.
· Then the story reaches a climax as the brothers deceive their father Jacob by sending Joseph’s bloody coat to him. The account ends with Joseph being sold into the house of Potiphar, Pharaoh’s captain of the guard in Egypt.
· At the beginning of Genesis 37, the author let us know that this section is an account of the generations of Jacob – the generations of Israel, the beginning of God’s people.
· In this section, we see how God uses Joseph and Judah and then later a drought and a Pharaoh, all to work His plan of redemption in and through the people of Israel.
· This story of Judah in chapter 38 serves to show how Israel is being corrupted by the Canaanites while Joseph is in Egypt and how God needs to get the people of Israel out of Canaan for a time to protect and preserve them from the growing influence that the Canaanites are on Israel’s children.
· This scene also paints a stark contrast between Joseph and Judah. We see Joseph’s chastity contrasted with Judah’s immorality.
· Both men are in the process of being changed through God’s providential orienting of their circumstances.
· In this chapter, God works through some bad choices, sinful and unlikely people to bring about His plan of redemption.
Main Idea: God works His plan of redemption no matter what
· God’s plan is unstoppable. God has made a promise and God has a plan and God will bring about His purposes despite the unfaithfulness of His people.· And in this account, at the very outset, we see some bad choices. Judah makes many mistakes. But by the end of the chapter, we see how God was at work, even through bad choices.
1. God works- even through bad choices
· Judah foolishly leaves his family and goes to marry and live amongst the Canaanites
· This chapter highlights the contrast between the faith, chastity and godly leadership of Joseph and the failure of Judah
· It shows us the result of the folly of marriage outside of God’s chosen people and living like one desires instead of how God commands
· It also shows the dangers of removing yourself from the covenant family, taking yourself out of God’s plan and intentionally going your own way.
· In this chapter, Judah is not only heartless but he is selfish and disloyal as well.
· He was selfish and disloyal because he left his family and his brothers and he went his own way.
· Judah, as one of the chosen race, should have remained amongst his own people and yet, he goes his own way and in a way that seemed right to him
· Not only did Judah go his own way after he helped to sell Joseph into slavery, he married a Canaanite, something that Abraham and Isaac and Jacob all prohibited and feared for their sons.
· In verse 6 we see that Judah continued to make bad choices and he chose a Canaanite wife for his son Er.
· Judah fails and makes bad choices as a brother; he fails and makes bad choices as a son and heir of the promise; he also fails and makes bad choices as a father and takes a Canaanite woman, Tamar, for his son
· But, God takes Judah’s failures and He is a work through them, even though Judah made bad choices and was sinful.
2. God works- even through sinful people
· Ever since Adam, God has been at work through sinful people to bring about His plans.
· In fact, if sinful people were able to thwart God’s plan then God’s plan would fail and God would not be God. But this is not the case. Instead, God works even through sinful people, because He is over all the plans of man and He is working all things together to bring about His purposes for His people.
· God worked His purposes through Abraham, and Isaac and Jacob, even though Abraham, Isaac and Jacob were all sinful and failed in so many ways.
· His working in and through them was often despite them, because even though they had remarkable faith in Him, they were still sinful. But God is not hindered by sinful people.
· Instead, we see God continuing to work through Judah and his sin.
· Now, this truth, that God continues to work, even through sinful people, it isn’t meant to let people off the hook. On the contrary,there are some extreme consequences at times that come as a result of people’s sin.
· There is separation from God with Adam and Eve, there is the destruction of mankind in Noah’s day, there is the creation of a ethnic line of people hostile to God’s people through Abraham’s sin
· There is family hostility and painful separation and suffering and hardship - all that result from sin
· So, sin and sinful people are never condoned and there is no divine hall-pass. We see in these verses that Judah’s sons are evil & God kills them
· We don’t know what it is the Er did but apparently it was so evil that we see here the first account in the Bible of God singling out an individual to kill him specifically.
· Judah tells his son Onan in verse 8, to "Go in to your brother's wife and perform the duty of a brother-in-law to her, and raise up offspring for your brother."
· In that culture, because Judah was the one who took Tamar to be Er’s wife, Judah would have been responsible for her. According to Ancient Near Eastern laws and laws later detailed in Deuteronomy and Ruth, it was expected for the brother of a deceased man to marry his wife, so he could raise up a name for his brother and continue his brother’s line
· Since only two brothers remained, Onan would have gotten half of the inheritance once Er died and the right of the first-born would have passed to him as well.
· But now, instead of Onan getting half of the estate, he would have only gotten one third of the estate if he fathered a son in his brother’s name and the offspring would be the heir and retain the rights of the firstborn.
· Onan was greedy and selfish and only thought of himself and not his father’s wishes nor Tamar’s integrity nor of the law of the land.
· Onan went in to her and had sex with her– and the implication of the phrase that we have in English as “whenever he went in”, is that he did this often, and he used her for his own purposes without being honest with her. He defrauded her and kept her from being provided for financially.
· The whole purpose for the law was to provide for the woman and ensure his brother's name lived on but instead, Onan deceived and defrauded Tamar and yet still had sex with her
· Onan used his brother's wife for his own sexual gratification and yet defrauded her and did not give her a child as the law required.
· He did what most sinners do and he happily embraced pleasure but he did not take the responsibility that went with it.
· He also denied his dead brother the carrying on of his name and he desecrated his sacred duty by withdrawing and wasting his semen on the ground to make sure he didn’t get Tamar pregnant.
· In doing so, he abused his brother’s name, disobeyed his father and abused Tamar and all this was wicked in God’s sight.
“By this Onan figuratively raises his fist in protest against heaven since his deeds ultimately attempt to block God’s promise to give Jacob many grandsons (35:11). Thus, the Lord strikes him down (38:10).”
-R.C. Sproul
· So, God put Onan to death for his wickedness
· Judah responds in fear and not faith and sends Tamar away, falsely promising to give his son to her
· Judah didn't really intend to give Shelah to Tamar from the beginning. He was afraid that he would be wicked like Er and Onan and so die too. And Judah didn't want to lose his only son, so he sends Tamar away
· In sending Tamar away, Judah was mistreating her, because as the one who had legal authority over her, he should have cared for her and provided for her well-being and status in their family.
· Judah shamefully sends Tamar back to her father’s house as if she were an outcast but also made her unable to remarry because she had to wait for Shelah.
· A long period of time probably passed and yet, Judah still hasn't given his son Shelah to the woman.
· Tamar knew that Judah had no intentions of Shelah marrying her and this would have been a despicable thing to a faithful Israelite but Judah is unconcerned and went out to a celebration of sheepshearing.
· The time of sheep-shearing was a huge party time and Judah was going up to party with his friend in Timnah – the same place where later Samson would see a daughter of the Philistines and marry her.
“Sheep-shearing was a festive time, when sexual temptation would be sharpened by the Canaanite cult, which encouraged ritual fornication as fertility magic” – Derek Kudner
· Tamar, unlike Judah is still grieving – she is wearing widow’s garments of mourning
· Clearly Shelah was not going to be her husband because he was of age and yet had not been given to her
· Although she tempted Judah, scripture commends her as being more righteous than Judah because she was seeking to correct what Judah had wrongly done.
· Tamar also had refused to take a Canaanite husband and was committed to being a part of God’s chosen people despite their problems
· And in that time, if no brother was available it would have been acceptable (and perhaps expected), that if the father was still alive, he would father a son by the woman
· I this case, Tamar was justified in her actions to seek an heir although Judah was unjust and should have made sure she had a husband and children.
· Judah sees her and he thinks she is a prostitute but verse 16 makes it clear that Judah is not intentionally violating his daughter-in-law and committing adulterous incest by having sex with Tamar outside of marriage. We also see later that he didn’t sleep with her again.
· But Judah was a profane fornicator and he bluntly asks her to sleep with him
· He obviously didn’t come prepared because he had not brought any money to sleep with a prostitute but he was led astray by his passions. So, in verse 17, Judah promises to pay her with a young goat from the flock
· In verse 18, Tamar cleverly asks for a pledge of the most identifying objects he had with him, his signet and staff, so that she could prove she had slept with him
· In both cases, the items would have been highly recognizable by those who knew the owners and they would have been unique to the owner so that there was no mistaking their identity.
· It was the ancient equivalent of taking his credit card and drivers license for proof of his ID
24 About three months later Judah was told, "Tamar your daughter-in-law has been immoral. Moreover, she is pregnant by immorality." And Judah said, "Bring her out, and let her be burned."
· Judah doesn’t ask any questions and he doesn’t seek to care for his daughter-in-law and instead, he leaps at the chance to get rid of her and he chooses an unusually harsh means – even for an adulterer – he is going to burn her alive.
· And because he thinks she has been immoral, he prepares to have her be killed
· Judah is awfully quick to condemn others for the same crime he himself had committed
· And we are tempted in the same way, to condemn others for the same things we are guilty of – if not the exact same sins, we are guilty of the same root desires that give birth to those sins.
"I am tempted to think that there are some sins for which I have no natural taste… so that I need not fear temptation to such sins. This is a lie,--a proud, presumptuous lie. The seeds of all sins, are in my heart, and perhaps all the more dangerously that I do not see them.” - Robert Murray McCheyne
· Judah’s hypocrisy was clear and we know from Hosea 4:14 that God clearly did not have one standard for the men and another for the women and the Lord didn’t condone Judah’s own immorality.
· God doesn’t condone sinful Judah and God doesn’t condone what he did or his gross hypocrisy either – but God does work – even through sinful people like Judah
3. God works- even through unlikely people
· God has always been about working through unlikely people to bring about His purposes
· In this case, God uses a Canaanite woman, the last person that an Israelite would have expected to be the hero and the person who God would work through, to continue the royal line for Judah
· And God not only used unlikely Tamar – he used some unlikely means.
· Both husbands were dead and Shelah was not marrying her and so, God used Tamar, as she tempted Judah, so that she could secure an heir to the promise.
· Judah goes into what he thinks is a prostitute and promises a goat with his signet and staff. Tamar goes back into mourning
· Judah tries to retrieve his signet and staff but they are gone and he knows he is tricked somehow.
· Tamar is pregnant and Judah tries to kill her for being immoral
· In verse 25, Tamar sends Judah’s signet and staff and asks him to identify them. Ironically, Jacob had deceived Isaac with his clothes, Judah had deceived Jacob with the cloak of Joseph and now, Judah was himself revealed as a deceiver with his own signet and staff.
· Judah discovers he is the immoral one and repents. Judah clearly recognized the items and acknowledged that Tamar was right and in fact, she was righteous and he wasn’t, because he didn’t give her to Shelah as he should have.
· Judah obviously is repentant because he takes the public blame for what he did and exonerates Tamar
· But who would have thought that a Canaanite woman – who normally would have been the downfall for the children of Israel – would be the one to rescue the line of Judah?
· Who would have thought that God would work through such an unlikely woman as her – and yet, God did and all along, God was working to redeem, because that is what God does.
4. God works to redeem
· Tamar gives birth to two sons for Judah, thus redeeming for Judah the sons who were killed
· God changes Judah through hardship, suffering and sin
· Judah had learned what it meant to want to protect his youngest son, as his father Jacob did
· And Judah had learned through hardship and sin and he had become humbled as a man.
· Judah was a hard a callous man who sold his brother into slavery and who we have no account of mourning for his two sons and then we see him wanting to burn his daughter-in-law.
· This chapter shows how God used hardship to transform a hard, selfish man into a humbled man, softened by trials.
· Obviously Judah is a changed man, because later, in chapter 44, we see that Judah is the one who offers to be a slave in place of his brother Benjamin. And this chapter serves to explain the transformation from slave-trader to one willing to be enslaved.
· This chapter is all about how God works to redeem and changes character
· It is also about how God works to bring about His justice for those who have been misused and badly abused relationally, financially and sexually like Tamar was but still have faith in God
· Yet again the theme of the older serving the younger is repeated in verse 29, when Zerah sticks his hand out, but Peres pushes him aside somehow and comes out first.
· It is reiterating that God does not chose people based on human conventions but God brings about His choice despite human preferences and traditions.
· But this chapter really is a testimony to God’s redeeming grace.
· According to Revelation 21:12, Judah still has his name written on the gates of the heavenly Jerusalem.
· His life is a testimony to God’s redeeming grace. He had failed as a son of the covenant. He had failed as a father and he failed as a father-in-law. But even the worst of sinners can be saved by God’s redeeming grace.
· Tamar – although she was mistreated and she was used and abused, God redeemed her life and rewarded her loyalty to the covenant family.
· God redeemed Judah’s offspring, through David and then Jesus
· We find out when we read the beginning of Matthew that the line of Jesus came through Tamar.
· In fact, the genealogy of Jesus in Matthew only names four women besides Mary, the mother of Jesus – Matthew named –Tamar, Rahab, Ruth and Bathsheba)
· All of these women came from outside of Israel – they were all Gentiles. And all of them came from questionable backgrounds of some sort – but God redeemed each one of them and because of their faith and His grace, they each carry on the royal seed that would culminate with Jesus the Messiah Himself.
· What hope for all Gentiles, that God would redeem us too. What hope that God can redeem even the worst situations and backgrounds.
· God ultimately redeemed Judah and instead of fail being written over his name, God takes Judah’s name and writes it on the gates of the heavenly Jerusalem. God works to redeem our failures
· God redeemed the unlikely Tamar
· And what a testimony to God’s redeeming grace in the lives of imperfect people, changing them and bringing about his purposes.
· God works His plan of redemption no matter what
Psalm 103:2-4 2 Bless the LORD, O my soul, and forget not all his benefits, 3 who forgives all your iniquity, who heals all your diseases, 4 who redeems your life from the pit, who crowns you with steadfast love and mercy..
Potential Application Questions:
1. How does it encourage you to know that God’s plan to redeem His people cannot be stopped by bad choices or either unlikely or sinful people? 2. When has God redeemed any of your bad choices in the past?
3. Where are you tempted to feel like your bad choices have kept you from God? How would you apply scripture to the way you think about these areas to renew your mind with His word?
4. How does it affect you to think about the fact that all of the punishment we deserve has already been poured out on Jesus and no further punishment or condemnation remains in any way?
5. Where are we tempted to judge others for the same sins that we’ve committed? Are you currently aware of any area you need to repent for judging others hypocritically?
6. How does seeing that God uses “unlikely” people to bring about His plans change the way you view people you think are “unlikely”?
7. Tamar was honored in Matthew’s genealogy, along with 3 other women who came out of questionable backgrounds. How should the fact that Jesus’ bloodline came through woman like this encourage us?
8. God used whatever means necessary to conform Judah into His image and now Judah’s name is written on the heavenly gates. How does this change the way we view circumstances in our life?
9. How has your understanding of God’s grace increased as you’ve meditated on Genesis 38?
10. Read Psalm 103:2-4 aloud. How can you apply Psalm 103:2-4 to your life daily?
