Judah and Tamar
Download MP3You would open your Bibles to Genesis chapter 38. Genesis chapter 38. I believe the text is also in your worship guide. It happened at that time that Judah went down from his brothers and turned aside to a certain a Dulemite whose name was Hera. There, Judah saw the daughter of a certain Canaanite whose name was Shuah.
Joel Brooks:He took her and went into her and she conceived and bore a son and he called his name Er. She conceived again and bore a son and she called his name Onan. Yet again, she bore a son and she called his name Shelah. Judah was in Chesim when she bore him. And Judah took a wife for heir his firstborn, and her name was Tamar.
Joel Brooks:But Eir, Judah's firstborn was wicked in the sight of the Lord and the Lord put him to death. Then Judah said to Onan, Go into your brother's wife and perform the duty of a brother-in-law to her and raise up offspring for your brother. But Onan knew that the offspring would not be his. So whenever he went into his brother's wife, he would waste the semen on the ground, so as not to give offspring to his brother. And what he did was wicked in the sight of the Lord and He put him to death also.
Joel Brooks:Then Judah said to Tamar, his daughter-in-law, Remain a widow in your father's house till Shelah, my son, grows up. For he feared that he would die like his brothers. So Tamar went and remained in her father's house. In the course of time, the wife of Judah, Shua's daughter died. Then Judah was comforted.
Joel Brooks:When Judah was comforted, he went up to Timna to his sheep shearers. He and his friend, Hera, the Adullamite. And when Tamar was told, your father-in-law is going up to Timnah to shear his sheep. She took off her widow's garments and covered herself with a veil, wrapping herself up and sat at the entrance to Enaim, which is on the road to Timnah. For she saw that Sheila was grown up, and she had not been given him in marriage.
Joel Brooks:When Judas saw her, he thought she was a prostitute, for she had covered her face. He turned to her at the roadside and said, come, let me come into you. For he did not know that she was his daughter-in-law. She said, what will you give me that you may come into me? He answered, I will send you a young goat from the flock.
Joel Brooks:And she said, if you give me a pledge until you send it. He said, what pledge shall I give you? She replied, your signet and your cord and your staff that is in your hand. So he gave them to her and went into her and she conceived by Him. Then she arose and went away and taking off her veil, she put on the garments of her widowhood.
Joel Brooks:When Judah sent the young goat by his friend, the Adulamite to take back the pledge from the woman's hand, he did not find her. And he asked the men of the place, where's the cult prostitute who was at a name at the roadside? And they said, no cult prostitute has been here. So he returned to Judah and said, I've not found her. Also the men of the place said, no cult prostitute has been here.
Joel Brooks:And Judah replied, let her keep the things as her own or we shall be laughed at. You see, I sent this young goat and you did not find her. About 3 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.
Joel Brooks:As she was being brought out, she sent word to her father-in-law. By the man to whom these belong, I am pregnant. And she said, please identify who the whose these are, The signet and the cord and the staff. Then Judah identified them and said, she is more righteous than I since I did not give her to my son, Sheyla. And he did not know her again.
Joel Brooks:When the time of her labor came, there were twins in the womb. And when she was in labor, one put out a hand, and the midwife took and tied a scarlet thread on his hand saying, this one came out first. But as he drew back his hand, behold his brother came out and she said, what a breach you have made for yourself. Therefore his name was called Perez. Afterward, his brother came out with a scarlet thread on his hand, and his name was called Zera.
Joel Brooks:Pray with me. Lord, we recognize that this is your word. And with grateful hearts we receive it. Lord, we pray that Your Gospel would shine tonight, that you would bring forth your truth, your words from the text we have just heard. Give me clarity.
Joel Brooks:I pray that my words would fall to the ground and blow away and not be remembered anymore. But Lord, may your words remain and may they change us. I pray this in the strong name of Jesus. Amen. During my time in seminary, I had a preaching professor who would write down on sheets of paper, difficult texts from the Bible.
Joel Brooks:And he would put them in a fish bowl, and he would make all of his students draw from it. And whatever they drew from, that was the text they had to preach from. And that way he said, well you could blame the Lord, you can't blame me. He's the one who gave you the text. And, the fishbowl was passed around, and I remember reaching in there, and I drew 2nd Samuel 6, which is when Uzzah, reaches out to keep the ark of the Lord from falling to the ground, and he seems to help, but when he touches the ark he's struck dead by the Lord.
Joel Brooks:My friend next to me drew this passage, and he just, just sighed. And he looked at me, he goes, Joel, I know how much you love the old Testament and how much you love Genesis. Would you be willing to swap with me? And I said, not on your life. Genesis 38 is one of those, weird stories in the Bible you don't ever choose to preach from.
Joel Brooks:It has to come to you. And, and now as we're working through Genesis, it has come to me. And, we are going to have to work through it. And it came to me on child dedication Sunday, no less. The only thing that could be worse is if we have a bunch of first time visitors out there and just think this is what you guys talk about on a Sunday evening.
Joel Brooks:Actually, I contemplated whether or not to teach from this text. You know, we've just been hitting highlights through Genesis and, I was tempted to skip over it, not because of the, the adult content that's there. I was tempted to skip over it because I didn't know what the story was about. I mean, really, what, what, what is it all about? Why is it here?
Joel Brooks:You you just start in Genesis 37, the story of Joseph, one of the best stories in the bible, and you're just getting into it. And then all of a sudden it parts, and you have this kind of, you know, sorted tale here. And so I was just kind of curious. Why is this here? Does it teach us anything?
Joel Brooks:What's the purpose in it? I opened up one of my favorite commentaries through Genesis by a scholar named Walter Brueggerman and listen to how he introduces this chapter. This peculiar chapter stands alone without connection to its context. It is isolated in every way and is most enigmatic. It is not evident that it provides any significant theological resource.
Joel Brooks:It is difficult to know what context it might be of value for any theological exposition. For these reasons, my treatment of it will be brief. And so, obviously he didn't think, you know, child dedication Sunday is the appropriate context for this. But but when I read that introduction, it really piqued my interest. And I thought, it's it's got to be there for a reason.
Joel Brooks:Because if there is one thing that we have seen so far as we've gone through Genesis, and and Moses who has authored this, is that he has placed every single word exactly where he wanted it. Every sentence is in its perfect place and I have a hard time thinking that all of a sudden he comes to this and he's like, whoops, you know, I gotta fit this story in somewhere. He has planned this. If you remember when we were looking at the creation story, do you remember the complexity of the creation story that was there? In chapter 1, everything is grouped in sevens.
Joel Brooks:You, you have or sevens or in tens. You have, and God said is 10 times, and it was so 7 times, and God made 7 times. God saw that was good 7 times. God names and he blesses things 7 times. When you get to the 7th day of creation, Moses, he wants to show us the pinnacle and so he puts 35 words, which is divided by 7.
Joel Brooks:He has 3 clauses. Each one of these clauses is 7 words long and in each of these there is the word 7. And I mean, it's just some of the ways that he just really laid it out strategically and poetically to be studied and savored. Every word is where he wants it. So I cannot think that he's just starting this story on Joseph, and he's like, you know, I gotta throw in a story about Judah in there somewhere, and, you know, might as well just put it in here.
Joel Brooks:So why is it here? Well, for starters, back in Genesis 37, we read, these are the generations of Jacob. The generations of Jacob. And then we get Joseph introduced. Well, Judah is also, he also belongs to the generations of Jacob.
Joel Brooks:It's not, it's not just the generation here and we're just going to look at Joseph. Judah is a very valuable person who belongs in this genealogy and we're going to see next week and in the weeks of head ahead, how this story actually parallels a lot of what's going to happen in Joseph's life. The story begins with Judah leaving his brothers and his father's house and he goes to live with a a Doolamite. This is pretty remarkable that anyone would actually leave their father's house while their father is still living and go and live with what is essentially another clan. What this tells us about Judah is he is to a large degree abandoning his faith.
Joel Brooks:He no longer believes in the promised land. He doesn't believe that his family is going to turn into some great nation, And so he abandons the covenant family and he's just going to go live with a Canaanite family, with another clan. And this is going to lead to disastrous consequences. I mean, granted the family he is leaving is not the most spiritual, you know, safe and sound family. It's pretty dysfunctional, but still his father was a believer.
Joel Brooks:His father was growing in the faith. Still, they got to hear the covenantal promises, and were occasionally encouraged to worship. And to leave this and to strike out on his own is going to lead quickly to his downfall. I've seen this happen many times in church. Somebody might get fed up with all the sin and all the hypocrisy in the church, and so they're like, you know what?
Joel Brooks:I'm leaving. I'm gonna leave the church. And you know, I'm not I'm not completely giving up on my faith. I just don't have to go to church in order to be a follower of Jesus. I don't have to have that community.
Joel Brooks:And so they strike out on their own. And what they don't realize is faith cannot grow apart from community. At least not more than for a millisecond. You've got to have community to grow. I have, never seen anyone grow as a Christian apart from a local church body.
Joel Brooks:Never. Every church has its problems, but you see over and over again, we experience that God still works in our midst. And we should even expect that the church is going to have more problems in it than outside of it. We should expect that. You know, when people say, Hey, I'm just leaving the church because it's full of sinners and full of hypocrites.
Joel Brooks:Your response should be, that's absolutely right Because Jesus came to seek and to save sinners because he's a physician and a physician goes after sick people, not those who are well. Jesus didn't call the righteous. He called the unrighteous. Should we, so we should expect within the church, the church to be full of sinful people who Jesus is calling. And hopefully after years of sanctification, they will begin to look holy.
Joel Brooks:But we all came in as sinners, and so you should expect greed, bitterness, jealousy, gossip. You should expect those things in the church because that's who Jesus draws and begins to change. The author Anne Rice, who wrote, you know, Interview with the Vampire and and some other famous novels, she professed to become a Christian several years ago, and it really shocked, kind of the writing world. But since then, she has abandoned the church. She's abandoned the church fairly recently because she said the church was fulfilled with hypocrisy.
Joel Brooks:There was too much sin in the church and she just didn't want to be identified with it, but she was still going to be a follower of Jesus. And she kept saying that in the interviews, I'm still going to be a follower of Jesus. But if you read anything that she's put out now, you realize that even that is going away because you can't be a follower of Jesus apart from community. You can't And no one is left in her life, no voice of truth, to point to her in a relationship and say, you're going the wrong way. Because she has removed herself from that.
Joel Brooks:And she claims to be embarrassed by the church. Yet Jesus is not embarrassed by the church. Jesus is not embarrassed. The church is full of sinful people who listen to cheesy music. It's, it's full of people who wear cheesy t shirts like this blood is for you or, who put horrible church Marquise out there.
Joel Brooks:You know, the best vitamin for a Christian is to be 1 or do you think hell is, or do you think the weather's hot? Wait till hell. You know, just just all of those things that just make you kind of cringe. Understand Jesus is not embarrassed to call those people his own. He's not.
Joel Brooks:He's not embarrassed, nor should we. Despite the sin, despite the hypocrisy, Jesus's blood covers it all, and he uses the church. But Judah abandons this and he settles right into Canaanite life. He marries a Canaanite woman, and I love it. Moses doesn't even bother with her name.
Joel Brooks:It's like, you know, Mary's just some Canaanite woman, starts having kids, has 3 sons, Onan, and Shelah. He seems to have been even a worse father than his dad, because these children grow up and they're just wicked. I mean, look at verse 7. But er, Judas first born was wicked in the sight of the Lord and the Lord put him to death. I mean, we, we don't even know what the sin was, but it has to be something pretty bad that the Lord just smites him and kills him.
Joel Brooks:And then, unlike Jacob who lost his son Joseph and mourned and mourned and says he could not be comforted, You have Judah losing one of his son and sons, and not a word is mentioned about any grief. He seems to be growing callous in his heart. Eir dies, and then according to the custom of the time, it is now Onan's duty to step up to the plate and to keep his brother's name alive and to have children through his brother's wife. This might seem a little strange. It should sound a little strange to you, maybe a little disgusting.
Joel Brooks:But this is according to the custom of the day. You even find certain passages in scripture dealing with this. Onan, however, didn't want any part of it. He didn't want Tamar to have a child, and so he practiced a form of birth control. And you look at verse 10 here and it says, and after he practices this birth control says, and what he did was wicked in the sight of the Lord and the Lord put him to death also.
Joel Brooks:I mean, 2 brothers now just just taken off this earth. Now now what Onan did, he wasn't killed because he exercised using birth control. That's not why he was killed. If you want to have a birth control debate, you need to go to other places in scripture and you can have that, but that's not what this is dealing with here. The the sin of Onan is that he's being very selfish.
Joel Brooks:He's being very self serving in this. He knows that if you were to give Tamar a son, that son would now get all of the inheritance instead of him. The birthright would go back to that son. And so he has a lot, a lot of money, a lot of land, a lot of honor that he will lose if Tamar gets pregnant. He's going to take a enormous financial hit and so he tries to get around it.
Joel Brooks:And what he does is he puts forth the appearance that he's doing the noble thing. He he puts forth the appearance of of being righteous and and treating Tamar, in a right way and and trying to to give her children. But in the confines of their tent, when when no one else is looking, he deceives everyone. He's selfish and he repeatedly does this. Now this is actually reminiscent of another passage of scripture in the new Testament in which the Lord killed people.
Joel Brooks:In which in acts 5, he killed Ananias and Sapphira. If you remember this story, Ananias and Sapphira, they were put to death by the Holy Spirit because they sold some land and they gave the proceeds to the church and they kept some of it back privately, secretly. And they were asked about it. What, did you give all of the money? And they said, yes, we're giving you everything.
Joel Brooks:But secretly, they were holding back. And God, who knows the secrets of their hearts, killed them. And so we see here these these parallels, Ananias and Sapphira both withholding something. They're keeping the appearance of being righteous. Onan's keeping that appearance.
Joel Brooks:Ananias and Sapphira are keeping that appearance, but in the confines of their own rooms they're doing something quite secret and quite wicked and they're being selfish. And what they don't realize is, although they're being private about it, God sees it all. He's gonna strike them dead. The sin here is that Judah cares more for himself than his community. Given the choice between communal gain or personal gain, Judah wants personal gain, but he still wants the honor and the respect.
Joel Brooks:And the Lord strikes him dead. Well, after Judah lost his second son, whom he also does not mourn for, he gets a little suspicious of Tamar. He wants to keep his 3rd son away from her. She he thinks she is cursed, and so he sends her to her father-in-law or to her father's house. And he gives her some empty promise about, okay, but you know, when my oldest son, Sheila's, you know, or now oldest son, Sheila, when he gets old enough for marriage, you you can marry him.
Joel Brooks:But in the meantime, you just go back to your family. And this would have been extremely embarrassing, humiliating for Tamar to go back to her father's house after having lost 2 husbands, after not having any kids, being kicked out. It had been humiliating for her and she has to be there for a while, long enough for Judah to have a wife die and for Sheila to grow up. And when Sheila grows up and is not given to her in marriage for the first time, she no longer is passive. She becomes active.
Joel Brooks:All this time, she's not said a word. She's just been passive, but now she's going to do something. And so she dresses up like a prostitute Dresses up like a prostitute and hangs out at a place where she knows her father-in-law will be, and he takes the bait. Look at verse 16. He turned to her at the roadside and said, come let me come into you, for he did not know that she was his daughter-in-law.
Joel Brooks:Look how business like this is. I mean, it's just a transaction to Judah. There's in Hebrew, it's it's kind of vulgar. It's, hey, let's have sex. There's there's no, like, hey, what do you think about the weather?
Joel Brooks:You know, hey, how's it going? This is a business transaction. He sees her and is like, hey, let's have sex. She plays a part right back. Okay.
Joel Brooks:For how much? So they negotiate. And he says, you know, I'll give you I'll give you a goat. She's like, okay. Because there's just one problem.
Joel Brooks:I don't have my wallet. I don't have any cash on me. But I really want to do this now. So instead of me going home to get the goat, can can I just give you some something? She's like, okay, give me your staff, give me the, the necklace with a signet on it, which was his family seal.
Joel Brooks:This will be the equivalent of, hey, okay, give me your credit cards and your driver's license, and I'll hold those as collateral. And he says, agreed. Here you go. It's very similar to Esau selling his birthright for a, you know, for a cup of soup, for some temporal pleasure. That's what he's doing here.
Joel Brooks:And so he gives her these pretty valuable things. So they go and they have sex and Tamar gets pregnant. And when Judah finds out she's pregnant, he says, let's burn her. Let's burn her. I mean, he he is such a cold, emotionally detached person at this point in his life.
Joel Brooks:I mean, he doesn't even hear her defense. He doesn't wanna hear her fence or her defense. In Hebrew, he says 2 words and it's taker, burner. Right to the point. He is a horrible, horrible person.
Joel Brooks:So so this is what we know of the great Judah so far. This is what we know of him. In the previous chapter, this was the only thing Judah contributed. They're gonna kill Joseph and he says, no, no, no. Let's not kill him, because that wouldn't profit us.
Joel Brooks:Let's at least make money off him. Let's sell him into slavery so we can at least have something. So that's what we know of Judah from there, and then we know that he was pretty much a horrible father, raises 2 wicked children. He doesn't grieve over their deaths. He does not even take care of his daughter-in-law who is a widow.
Joel Brooks:He lies to her. He sleeps with prostitutes. He even gives his family seal away in order to do that. And then when when he finds out that his daughter-in-law is pregnant, he just says, burn her. I don't want to hear her excuse.
Joel Brooks:I don't want to hear anything about it. Take her, burn her. Let's get rid of her once for all. I mean, he is not a good person. Alright.
Joel Brooks:So why is this story here? Why is it here? It it is here to teach us of the dangers of leaving community. Leaving a community of faith. It does teach us of that danger.
Joel Brooks:It also teaches us just how wicked God sees selfishness, Selfishness at the expense of community. Just how wicked God sees the neglect of a widow. Those are 2 very important things. But but I think the big purpose, the overarching purpose here is that God works and is working a great, great thing throughout all of this evil, all of this wretchedness. His purpose cannot be stopped.
Joel Brooks:His promise to Abraham will be fulfilled. And so it might surprise you that this messianic line that we've been following in Genesis, you know, that everybody's kind of fighting over to be, to, to receive that special blessing, that messianic blessing, the Messiah is going to come through you. Am I surprised you that the Messiah does not come through Joseph, who's going to take up the rest of Genesis. The Messiah comes through Judah. Judah is going to carry the messianic line.
Joel Brooks:If Judah hadn't been so sinful, if Tamar hadn't pretended to be a prostitute, you would never have Jesus. And Matthew pulls this out in Matthew 1. If you, if you want to turn there, Matthew 1, the genealogies, you know, the, the chapters we typically just kind of skip over. Look at the first three verses in Matthew. The book of the genealogy of Jesus Christ, the son of David, the son of Abraham.
Joel Brooks:Abraham was the father of Isaac. Isaac, the father of Jacob. And Jacob, the father of Judah and his brothers. And Judah, the father of Perez and Zerah by Tamar. It's really interesting.
Joel Brooks:Notice that Matthew makes a point to name the wife or the the woman, Tamar here. Usually when you list the genealogy, you only give the name of the father. But here he makes it a point to bring Tamar in. Doesn't just list the father, doesn't just list Judah, but brings in Tamar. And what he's doing is he wants you to remember the whole story.
Joel Brooks:As we're going through this genealogy, remember the whole story here. He doesn't want you to remember the whole story of Abraham, or Isaac, or Jacob, but when we come to Judah and Tamar, he's like, let's take time and let's remember this story as we're going through the genealogy. And notice that there's several women in Matthew. In verse 5, he mentions, Rahab. And then he mentions Ruth.
Joel Brooks:And in verse 6, he mentions that sheba or he calls her the wife of Uriah. And so all of these women have had scandalous past. They've had some kind of sexual scandal in their history. You, you have, of course, Tamar who dressed up like a prostitute. Then you have Rahab who was a prostitute.
Joel Brooks:And then you have Ruth who who in the middle of the night she came as she laid down at the feet of Boaz in order to try to get him to marry her. And then you get Bathsheba. In order to highlight her sin, he calls her the wife of Uriah. She had an affair with King David. And so it's so unusual because usually when you list a genealogy, these are the things you want to hide.
Joel Brooks:You want to kind of sweep those under the rug, you know, especially when you're talking about the King of King and the Lord of Lords. Let's look at His royal lineage here. And instead of just telling of, you know, the Abraham,
Caleb Chancey:you
Joel Brooks:know, and Isaac, you know, it's, hey, these are the stories we want you to remember. Look at these scandals and Jesus's lineage. When it pulls out these 4 women, you even can look at, you know, Mary who, who even because she was a virgin, and and most of the people did not believe that. Scandals surrounded her, and Jesus felt that in his life as as he would go off and anytime he would talk about his father when people said, Yeah, Jesus, tell us who is your father? They're mocking him when he, when he speaks of his father.
Joel Brooks:They're mocking him because they knew the scandal of his birth. But Jesus here, as Matthew shows us, comes from a long line of sinners. Although he is sinless, Jesus identifies with the sinner. He made this crystal clear at his baptism. He didn't need to be baptized, but you know what he did?
Joel Brooks:He felt compelled to do it. He wanted to get in line with sinners. And so he stood in line with all of these sinners and went to go be baptized in the Jordan because Jesus was always identifying himself with us. One of the things that I find so fascinating about this story, besides just it pointing to Jesus here, is that the Lord is going to use this terrible evil to bring about repentance in the life of Judah. Just because Judah tried to run away from his covenant family and wanted really nothing to do with that anymore, doesn't mean the Lord's gonna let him go.
Joel Brooks:It's like, alright. You could try running. But remember, my hold on you is a lot greater than your hold on me. It doesn't depend on your faithfulness. It depends on my faithfulness.
Joel Brooks:So surprise Judah. I'm not gonna let you go. And he's going to use this to start turning Judah's heart. At the end of Genesis, it's remarkable. Judah's the one who wants to be sacrificed instead of one of his brothers who says, Take me, sacrifice me, instead of my brothers.
Joel Brooks:Does that sound like the Judah here? But God begins changing him. And you see that when when Tamar brought forth those things and said, who do these belong to? Which is the exact same question that Judah went to his father, Jacob, and said, whose coat is this? Identify it, please.
Joel Brooks:Is this Joseph's? Just as he was deceived or he deceived his father, he is now deceived, But he sees it as justice. And he says, Tamar is more righteous than I, more righteous than I. If we do not have this story, this horrible, wicked, evil story and how God begins using it for redemption. We would not come to one of the greatest texts in all the Bible.
Joel Brooks:If you wanna go to Revelation 5. When I saw in the right hand of him who was seated on the throne, that is the throne of all thrones, the throne of the universe, A scroll written within and one on the back sealed with 7 seals. And I saw a strong angel proclaiming with a loud voice, who is worthy to open the scroll and break its seals? And no one in heaven or on earth or under the earth was able to open the scroll or look into it. And I began to weep loudly because no one was found worthy to open the scroll or to look into it.
Joel Brooks:And one of the elders said to me, weep no more. Behold, the lion of the tribe of Judah, the root of David has conquered so that he can open the scroll and its 7 seals. Between the throne and the 4 living creatures and among the elders, I saw a lamb standing as though it has been slain. Seven horns and 7 eyes, which are the 7 spirits of God sent into all the earth. And he went and took the scroll from the right hand of him who was seated on the throne.
Joel Brooks:And when he had taken the scroll, the 4 living creatures and the 24 elders fell down before the lamb. Each holding a harp and golden bowls full of incense, which are the prayers of the saints, and they sang a new song saying, worthy are you to take the scroll and to open its seals, for you were slain and by your blood, your ransom people for God, from every tribe and language and people and nation, and you have made them a kingdom and priest to our God, and they shall reign on the earth. The lion of Judah. This end time picture of glory and worship is only possible because of Genesis 38. God uses all evil, all wickedness to bring him glory.
Joel Brooks:There is no one who is too far gone that cannot be redeemed. That's the hope that we take away from this. Pray with me. Lord, we are not worthy. Abraham, Isaac, Jacob was not worthy.
Joel Brooks:Judah is not worthy, but used all of them. You used all of their sin, You used all of their circumstances. You worked all of this for your good and bringing in our Lord and savior, our Messiah, Jesus Christ, who is worthy. And we give you praise and thanks for the redemption that he has purchased for us. I pray that everyone here would realize that no one can be so far gone that you will not pursue them and pull them back.
Joel Brooks:You're our hope. We pray this in the name of Jesus. Amen.
