Surprise!
Genesis 38 · Vern Peterman · Dec 14, 2008
Genesis, No. 48
Holly Hills Bible Church
https://hollyhillsbiblechurch.org/teaching/messages/492611973424

Transcribed from the recording by SermonAudio, so expect the occasional misheard word.

Good morning. You know, you're right about that. I don't know whether it's gravity or what what's happened here. OK, we before we step into the past, I just want to remind you, we have electives beginning next month. And by the way, that's only a few weeks away.

And the first one to let you know about is You and Christ, and Christ and You, Law and Grace, and Position and Condition. It'll be a trio of classes, and we'd encourage you to give that some good consideration. We also have the book of Ephesians and the book of Revelation. And we'd urge and encourage to have you sign up for those so that we can plan. We end up having to pick, you know, where does this get situated, what classroom, and how much material to prepare, things of that sort. And it also impacts the format, how it's taught.

So I encourage you to look at those and sign up there. The other alternate is a thing Nancy has put out an email. You can respond to that as well. One way or another, it's helpful if you sign up. The other thing to let you know about the Uganda trip, which is not too far away now. As a matter of fact, it's a month from this next Sunday.

So one of the changes or updates we have, earlier we were talking about MP3 players. Well, it turns out we have all the MP3 players that we can use. They're loaded with the entire New Testament in audio in Lugandan, the native language of the people of that district, and in English, both. English is the official language of Uganda. So either way, people will be able to listen to the entire New Testament in a language that they understand.

One of the changes that we're making there is if you wish to make a special contribution towards that missionary trip, Bruce and I will be leaving about a month from this next Sunday, you just designate Uganda Ministry on a check or whatever other form of contribution you have and then that'll be credited to that particular ministry. There'll be kind of multiple purposes in going over there, but one of those will be teaching the people there and giving them a foundation.

I've sent initially some written lessons and the pastor, and by the way, it's very expensive to make copies. The pastors with that latest written lesson says, I'm going to make, you know, I forget what it was, like 60 copies or something of that sort. It's actually a pretty expensive proposition. You know, we think of copies and we're talking single digit cents. They're talking a good portion of a dollar. And we're not talking people that are wealthy either. So, real interesting.

Anyway, your continued prayer for that ministry will be appreciated. Now, I want to warn you that chapter 38 is a wild detour, okay? This chapter, here we ended up this last chapter with Joseph being sold off. Chapter 38, you're going to look at it and you're going to say, whoa, what happened? Indeed, a wild detour.

Now, we won't be swinging from vines in this room. And by the way, that's a picture of Aaron. Anyway, we won't be swinging from vines here in this room. No, it won't be that wild. I won't be beating my chest. And that's not Aaron. I won't be beating my chest. I won't be that kind of wild.

We won't be taking any outlandish, adventuresome trips or taking any precarious mountain roads or any hairy and wild and precarious little cliff-hanging trails. But I will have to be courageous, okay? I will have to be courageous because I will have to talk about topics and subjects here this morning that a pastor would be crazy to have to do. But anyway, I'll do it. Now, it is a wild detour. Why?

Chapter 37, we left off with Joseph being sold to Potiphar in Egypt. That was quite a nice termination, by the way. Judah, we're talking about substantially here, gets credit for that. He's the one that cooked up the idea in a minute and had the deal made minutes later. The next chapter, Genesis chapter 39, will resume the Joseph account. So this is kind of a hiatus, a parentheses in the middle of that account. Chapter 38 will indeed take this wild detour, literary detour. And while it is a wild chapter, it's also very appropriate.

It tells us, first of all, as we saw previously, this whole thing is an account of the family of Jacob. And so this is one of the things that happened with the family of Jacob. But beyond that, it explains things about the character of men. It explains things about the sin nature and about the lineage of King David and of Christ himself, as we'll see here in a little bit. The detour, however, is not just a literary or historical thing.

It has a spiritual and eternal purpose. Got that? What's God's eternal purpose? To declare and reveal and to share His glory that He might be glorified. This is consistent with God's eternal purpose. We're going to see how, in spite of the character, the failures and frailties of man, and specifically we'll see one man, Judah, God is going to preserve and provide for our salvation through this man who is full of failures, this man full of character flaws. We're going to see the Lord is going to provide for our very salvation, is going to fulfill the promise to Abraham, that through you all nations will be blessed. The events of this chapter are also going to be a huge turning point in human history, of course, but also spiritual history. And spiritual history is God's story or His story, right?

For the sake of the rest of the time that this present earth has and on into eternity. Isn't that something? He's going to take, actually what's in this chapter is just a real disaster. And He's going to roll out of that our salvation. That is astounding. Here's what Judah does. He deliberately did what Abraham and Isaac and Jacob sought to avoid, sometimes at great extremes.

Abraham sent his servant under oath. He said, you need to swear an oath to me. And he had him do what was a Middle Eastern custom at the time. He said, put your hand under my thigh, OK? And I want you to swear an oath to me you will not get a wife for my son from any of these Canaanites around here. You're going to go hundreds of miles to the north and get a wife up there. Okay? Not from among the Canaanites. Isaac sent Jacob away from the Canaanites to get a wife. Do not get one from here. Go the hundreds of miles way up there. Do not get one from here. After that clear instruction, what does Jacob do?

He goes straight for the Canaanites. Right for the Canaanites, he finds a woman and she becomes his wife and he has three sons with her. This is my three sons. The bad story. OK, here's the way it goes. Here is Judah, the fourth in line. I see some of you shaking your heads, OK? All right.

Now, God will both judge Judah's foolishness. We're going to see that. He will judge Judah's foolishness and show his grace. God will be gracious. God will be merciful in the midst of this, as well as judging Judah's foolishness. Here is this site of Adullam, and that Chizib is a nearby town, where Judah found his wife, the daughter of Shua. It's still present, that now has some Arabic name I won't try to pronounce. But nonetheless, that's the site. And so this is the place where Jacob, excuse me, Joshua, wow, Judah, went back to continuously. Watch about those J words.

Later, David's going to hide in a cave here in this same area as a fugitive from Saul. That's recorded in 1 Samuel and 2 Chronicles. Here is a dolem situated not too far from Hebron. And so you get an idea where things are oriented. The Dead Sea there is on the map, the south central part, and then the Sea of Galilee up at the northern part there.

Now, here's Judah and the daughter of Shua, the Canaanite, then have three sons. Three sons. The one is, matter of fact, what I find is the names, if you look at the meanings of the names, not bad. It gets worse from there, but not bad, okay? Ur is watchful, is the first one. Onan is strong. And the next one, Shela, is prayer. Not bad names, okay? By meaning. They were just three not great guys, as we'll soon see.

So Judah arranges for his son Ur to marry a Canaanite woman whose name is Tamar. That means date palm. Sometimes you'll see some listing that just says palm, but it's specifically a date palm. And so he makes this arrangement between Ur, his son, and Tamar.

However, Ur is so evil and living among the Canaanites, that's quite understandable. that the Lord takes him. I thought that was interesting because that's the same language that the Lord used with Enoch who walked with God. Isn't that interesting? Here's Enoch who walked with God and the Lord says, hey I just can't wait to have that guy home and takes him up. So really an interesting contrast here. But here's Ur who's so evil the Lord says I can't have him there on planet Earth and I can't have him get mixed up and messed up with the lineage of Judah.

So, Tamar becomes a widow. We're not done. Onan, and that's not the generator company, if you're familiar with that, Judah's second son, according to a custom which was later put in the Law of Moses, this is called Leveret Marriage, according to this custom, takes Tamar as his wife since his brother Ur died. Now the custom goes this way. that if you have one of the brothers dies, the next brother in line then takes that widow for his wife in order to have sons in place of the older brother. And that would be carried on down to as many sons as they had. And this is a leveret marriage is what it's called. It's actually though it's described here and it's in the Law of Moses, it was actually widely practiced among a number of cultures there and part of it was built into law in that area, in the whole Middle East, and part of it was built into custom.

So Onan, however, won't go through with the consummation of the marriage. That is, he says, no, I'm not making any descendants for my brother. So the Lord takes his life as well. You're not going to do this? You're gone. You're out of there. Onan's sin was one of greed. Why do we say that? Because if he produced offspring for his brother, it diluted the inheritance. His own family and his sons would get less money. So he said, well, I'm not going there, okay? And so that was Onan's sin, one of greed. The Lord takes his life as well. And Judah's afraid to put Tamar with the third son, Shalah, because after all, two have died. I'm afraid I marry them up and Shalah's going to die too. And he even expresses that thought there in the passage.

So Tamar goes to live with her father. And by the way, going to live with your father after you've been widowed was something that was not necessarily looked upon as being favorable. and it was only allowed under certain circumstances. So it was kind of a precarious move on her part, but she may not have had much choice. After some time, Judah's Canaanite wife dies, the mother of the three sons. So Judah tries to slide by his obligation to connect up Tamar and Shela, his third son. It's actually his obligation to put that together.

And he kind of says, I'm just going to let it go and see if I don't mention it, if I don't bring it up, maybe she won't bring it up. So he just kind of lets it slide, lets it go, and leaves it at that. After the mourning period, by the way, that's technically seven days. So he says, OK, a week, I'm done.

He's planning this business trip to see his flock's sheep herders at Timna. Now, I'd like to be able to show you a picture of where Timna is. The problem is it was such a commonplace name in those days. There's too many Timnas, and we don't know which one it was. So he was going to one of them. Tamar hears about his business trip to Timnah. Oh, he's going on a business trip.

Ha-ha. Okay. Well, so here she is. She's this widow, twice now. And here's about Judah's business trip. Well, Tamar, having heard that Judah was headed for Timnah, and seeing that Judah was not going to arrange her marriage to his son Shelah, takes off her widow's clothing and switches out of that into some others.

Now, she dresses as a prostitute, which in that time and place includes face covering. There were two instances in the culture in which you put on, not you, the gals, you know, anyway. The gals would put on a face covering. One is they would put it on just as they were getting married for a bride. But if you wore the face covering all the time, that's a prostitute, okay?

So that was the culture and pattern of the time. Now, this is important. According to the customs of the lever at marriage, and it's not in your handout, so you need to make note if you'd like to. If there were no other sons, the father had the responsibility to take the son's widow as his own wife.

So what had Judah done? By not connecting up Sheolah, his third and only living son, with Tamar, by not doing that, It was his responsibility to take Tamar as his wife in order to produce sons in replacement of the first husband, Ur. Anyway, what does she do? She locates herself on the road to Timnah and waits for Judah to come by where she is. Okay. Judah seeing what appears to be a prostitute, falls for Tamar's scheme immediately. No, think about this and let's talk it over. No, he just falls immediately into the trap. Okay. Now it's obvious here that Judah is an easy target for the sexual seduction.

But the word prostitute in a few verses down, verses 21 and 22, That is a different word than what is used earlier in the original language. And it was a word for a Canaanite cult prostitute. Now why would a man go to a Canaanite cult prostitute? It was in order for someone who was, for example, a farmer to have a good yield on his crops. Or if you were a sheep herder, as Judah was, to have good production on his sheep. For example, the sheep shearing that he was going to. So it is possible that Judah here has slipped spiritually, not just morally, but spiritually to the point where he is appealing to the pagan gods to bless his flocks and have a really good shearing.

However, he's about to get sheared. Okay. He falls for that. The only question now is how to pay for the services. It's not a question, is he going to fall for the prostitute? Now it's just, how am I going to pay for this thing? So he offers a goat. He doesn't have one, but that's what he offers. Tamar asked for a collateral. Now let me tell you, Tamar had no intention of getting any goat. She didn't want a goat. She asked for a collateral, knowing that Judah doesn't have anything with him. and he can't let loose of what else he's got.

So he says, how about my seal, which is personal, identifiable by him and to him alone, and staff. There's also mentioned in there a cord. So it would be kind of like you had, now this is a flash drive, but we'll have to let it do. It'd be kind of like you had, here's this seal, right, and here's the cord, okay. I don't think he had a flash drive, but the seal was personal. The cord was used to keep it around your neck because that was something you wanted to have handy and not lose.

Then he had the staff. It so happens, I don't think Art's here, but Art made this for me. See, it's personalized here. It says I have my name on it and all that. That would frequently be done in those days as well. So what Tamar was getting was personal stuff. This was identifiable as his. It wasn't so much that it had monetary value, it's that it would identify that this was the man.

And we'll see her shortly, it's going to be very important that she be able to do that. Tamar conceives by Judah. and leaves there and again puts on her widow's clothing. Now she's back to the widow garb. Well, Judah sends a friend with a goat to pay what he thought was his debt to the roadside prostitute here. But there wasn't anyone. And the local men say there never was one. Oh boy. So Judah doesn't want to further pursue giving the woman the goat or getting back the seal, cord, and staff anymore.

Why? Because if we do that, I'll look like a fool, right? Which he is anyway. Ah, ha, ha. Okay. So anyway, he is a laughing stock nonetheless, and I'm sure that a lot of folks got a lot of chuckles. Where is that? Oh, well. Okay. So now, about three months later, Judah hears that his daughter-in-law, Tamar, has become pregnant.

And I hear something that's very indicative. So, does he go over and try to find out the facts about what's going on? Does he go with maybe a little bit of sympathy? No. He is really, really mad. Temper, temper. And, what's interesting, he wants to have her killed by burning with fire. Now, burning with fire was only a very rare instance for the very worst of sins. And, of course, Judah never did any sins, right? So here he wants the very worst for this woman that he's not been fair to.

Tamar comes, however, and asks him whose seal, cord, and staff she has with her. Whose are these? Oh, no. Once Judah sees them, he realizes that he's been wrong in not putting her together with the son of Sheolah. He, in fact, had a responsibility to do that. And what she was doing was forcing him to take on the responsibility that he would have had. by not providing Sheolah. Remember, he's next in line to take responsibility.

Something else. Generations of deception. Remember, it's a family tradition now. Jacob deceives his father by pretending to be Esau. Oh! With his mother's help. Here, generations of deception have now caught up with him, deceived. He was the one who was deceived. When the time comes for Tamar to give birth, she is pregnant now with twins. That's happened before in the family. Remember that?

Jacob and Esau. The midwife places a scarlet thread in the hand of the first child to become visible, but not to come out completely. Here's this hand reaching out, so she puts the scarlet thread in there. Why would she do that, except that in that culture, remember, it isn't just a matter of, oh, that's interesting, one comes before another. It's inheritance, right? It makes an inheritance difference. So she marks it very carefully. She's doing a good job.

But the other child, however, is born first, to her surprise. So, the one with the scarlet thread in his hand comes out second. By the way, I know those aren't newborns. The child who comes out first is called Perez, or in the King James, Farez. Just a slight variation in the pronunciation there. It means a breech, a breech baby. And the second one is called Zara, or Zara in the King James, a brightness or a dawning.

So now we have this sequence here. Now, let's take a look here, having stepped our way through the passage, and see what kind of lessons are in place here for us. Jacob apparently didn't provide any direction to his sons. That's become abundantly clear, and increasingly so as we read chapters like this.

Except perhaps Joseph. We made note of that last week. Joseph may be an exception. We see that while Joseph seems to have problems with arrogance and being naive and cocky and things of that sort, the Lord's going to grow him. And he does have an understanding that Jacob seems to have passed on to him. Judah, not so much. Jacob didn't provide any guidance to him, apparently, about not intermarrying with the Canaanites or about the godly expression of his male passions. Hmm. Interesting difference, huh?

Judah was the one who came up with the idea of selling Joseph and sold it to the others, sold the idea. And he also carried it out quickly, from seeing traders in the distance to talking to his brothers about it, to having Joseph ready to sell and carrying out the transaction all in one short period of time.

Judah was one who was impetuous, impulsive, thinking quickly but not deeply. Judah lost all sense when it came to his male passions and the rightful treatment of women in his life. First of all, picking the right one, because the Canaanites were not ones to go to, but also treating the ones in his life properly. Judah was a callous man who cared about himself, but didn't seem to care that much about others. I'll grieve the death of my wife just as small a period of time as I have to, and then I'll move on and do my business. I won't deal with my responsibilities with Tamar. I'll just do what I want to do. She doesn't matter.

Judah's got a problem. since Judah had not used discernment in the selection of his wife and didn't provide any moral or spiritual direction to his sons. Remember Ur, the first one, was so evil the Lord said, I got to take him out of there. And he would have been the oldest son and the one to have inherited everything and certainly needed direction. Judah gave him none. God took the lives of two of the three sons, the two older ones.

Look at the contrast we're going to see between this chapter and the next one. In this chapter, a prostitute is presented to Judah and he goes, oh, and he collapses right there. He's drawn in immediately. There is not the slightest evidence of any contemplation or resistance. In great contrast to that, we're going to see in the next chapter, here's Joseph.

He's offered an opportunity for temptation, very similarly, and he runs. What a contrast. What a difference. Amazing, isn't it? Since Judah didn't fall through in his obligation to put together Tamar and Shelah, Tamar, the Canaanite woman, took matters into her own hands actually to force, I'll say trick, Judah into taking responsibility. She tricked him into taking responsibility. Isn't that amazing?

Another thing that this chapter reveals, however, is that the events of this chapter eventually have a Christmas connection. How's that for amazing for the time of year? and also a salvation connection. It's certain, there's no question about it, what Judah did and what he didn't do, those weren't good things. We've seen that in this chapter. We can't look at those and say those were good. He did bad things. He failed to do some good things. It just wasn't good at all. But God worked it out for good. Is there any interesting principle here? So that all who believe in Christ's death for their sins and his burial and resurrection will be saved. Out of this chapter of horrible, horrible lapses and errors.

Here's Perez, the oldest of the two sons, or Perez as the King James has it, and the line of ten generations down to David. So here, Tamar's son Perez was the ancestor of King David. Isn't that amazing? But we're not done. Is it accidental that there are ten generations between Perez and David? Actually, it's not. Not at all.

Deuteronomy 23.2 and other related verses make it so that there is a cloud over the lineage and the spiritual purity until the 10th generation. That comes down to David. David was not allowed to build the temple. His son Solomon was. So even the number of generations down to David is not an accidental number. Solomon was the one that built the temple and didn't have that cloud over his background.

Here you have the genealogy chart, I believe it's on page three of your handout there, going from Judah to Perez, or Fares as the King James has it, all the way down through the rest of them, down all the way to David. So here's the lineage, the connection here that the Lord has put together.

King David was the ancestor of both Joseph and Mary who gave birth to Jesus there in Bethlehem as we celebrate this time of year. And this Jesus, born of Mary, is called the Lion of Judah and the Lamb. The Lion of Judah. Judah, the one that made this horrible bunch of spiritual and moral blunders?

Yeah, that one. The Lord has taken a situation that shows obvious error and frailty and moral weakness, spiritual depravity, and turned it out for good, for our good, for our eternal salvation. Isn't that amazing? Isn't that phenomenal, the way the Lord works?

Here's the lion and the lamb. Here we have Judah, the fourth of the twelve sons, having a descendant, King David, and Jesus Christ our Lord and Savior. Revelation 5, extracting the end of verse 5 and the beginning of verse 6, reads like this, Behold the lion that is from the tribe of Judah, the root of David. has overcome so as to open the book and its seven seals. And I saw between the throne with the four living creatures and the elders a lamb standing as if slain."

What is really astounding here is that the Lord would use this descendant of Judah. We've seen his oopses and they're in all capital letters. And yet the Lord has brought about that He is the Lion of Judah, the Root of David, the One who is overcome. How did He overcome? How did He overcome? He overcame by taking our sins upon Himself. He overcame by rising from the dead. He overcame for us. Since we are identified with Him, having believed in Him, He is the overcomer.

Isn't it amazing? Isn't it phenomenal to contemplate, to think about that, how the Lord works? The Lord takes a situation like we've just read here in Genesis 38, where it's hard to find a good decision that Judah made. It's hard to find a good thing that he did. Matter of fact, it's hard to find things that he didn't do that were good. and to turn that around and to bring about our Lord and Savior. That's how He works all things together for good. Isn't that neat? Isn't that wonderful? Let's pray and praise Him.

Lord, as we look at this passage here, We are reminded of our own frailties and weakness and yet at the same time of your marvelous and amazing grace. And Lord, we pray, especially as we think of this time of year, how you do such astounding and amazing things. through what in this world appears as weakness, you make for eternal strength. And we look to you for that strength. Lord, a number of us are going through different things and different experiences even now. And so we look to you, the one who is the Lion of Judah, the Root of David, the one who overcomes. We ask you to be the one who overcomes in our own life. In Jesus' name we pray. Amen.