Day 25: Genesis 38-40

Welcome to 5 -Minute Bible, your daily guide for your daily reading. Today's January 25th and we'll be looking at Genesis 38 -40.

Today's reading deliberately interrupts the Joseph narrative and it does so for a very important reason.

Genesis 38 -40 places two independent narratives side by side.

The first is Judah's moral collapse and the second is Joseph's continued descent into deeper and darker hardships.

Now at first glance, Genesis 38 feels like an out -of -place detour that doesn't really fit very well in the story, but in reality it is a very purposeful contrast.

Moses wants us to see the kind of men that God is shaping and the very different tools that He is using to prepare the ones who are going to carry forward

His promises. Now with that, Genesis 38 steps away from the plot focused on Joseph and instead focuses on Judah, who is the fourth son of Jacob and Leah, and he's the great, great ancestor of Jesus, who will come from Judah's line many years in the future.

Now as far as the narrative goes, Judah's life is not one of pious obedience to God, at least not yet.

His life unravels through irresponsibility, sexual sin, and hypocrisy. Now this all involves his daughter -in -law,

Tamar, who is repeatedly wrong and left vulnerable when each of her husbands die.

Now you'll see in that time there was a concept called levirate marriages.

Simply means that if a man dies and leaves a wife, a widow, that the proper thing to do would be for his brother to take her into his home to become his wife, and through that wife to give his brother children and a legacy so that his name would not be erased from the people of Israel.

Now I know the practice seems very strange to us. If your spouse dies, you're not going to marry their brother or their sister.

I get it. But it was common practice back then, and it was precisely where Judah was robbing and defrauding

Tamar. Instead of giving her the next son in line to fulfill their duty to their fallen brother,

Judah withholds his youngest son, in effect eliminating the line of his son and the line of Tamar from the face of the earth forever.

Yet, when Judah refuses to do what is right, Tamar acts decisively to preserve justice in the family line.

And while her actions are far from dignified, she does expose Judah's hypocrisy publicly, even forcing him to admit that she is more righteous than he.

Now if you skip ahead in the story, you'll find out that Tamar shows up in the lineage of Christ. That's right, this unseemly rendezvous between Judah and Tamar will actually carry the story forward all the way to King David and even further to the true

King Jesus. Now this chapter, as I'm sure you can already tell, is uncomfortable to read. I'm sure it's going to conjure up all kinds of questions for you and your family.

But what I want you to remember is that even in the darkest sins, there is no one too far gone for God, which is exactly what we see in Judah, who

God is going to lead both into repentance and great blessing. Now Genesis 39 returns the narrative back to Joseph who is in Egypt.

Though he was sold as a slave, Joseph remains faithful to God and God is blessing his work under his master

Potiphar. That is, until Potiphar's wife attempts to do what Tamar did to Judah, and then

Joseph is falsely accused, thrown in prison, even though he was innocent of any wrongdoing.

Now as we have already seen numerous times in the earlier readings of the Bible, obedience is going to cost them everything.

And that leads to our final chapter for today, which is Genesis 40, that shows Joseph serving faithfully even while he was thrown into prison.

And while he was in there, he gets another dream and he interprets it accurately for Pharaoh's officials, offering clarity in the hope of their confinement.

And when the dream comes true, the cupbearer, who is the one who was restored, forgets

Joseph and leaves him in prison years after the dream came true. There's no promotion that comes.

There's no deliverance right away for Joseph, which means tomorrow we're going to find Joseph in the same old prison cell that he was in today.

So as you read today, I want you to ask the following question, what kind of person is

God forming me to become, even before he uses me publicly? Genesis 38 is not asking why life is hard, it's asking who hardships are supposed to be shaping.

And that's the central pattern in Genesis 38 -40, is the formation of a man through contrast.

Judah is being shaped through exposure. His sin is uncovered so that his pride can be broken.

Joseph, on the other hand, is being shaped through restraint and patience. His integrity is being tested in isolation so that trust could be built out in the open.

The one man is humbled by failure, the other man is strengthened by endurance. And God uses both of these paths, and neither of them is accidental.

And this speaks directly to our everyday life because some people are shaped through consequences and yet others are going to be shaped through long -suffering and patience.

And that's the point. God's not only concerned with what we are going to one day do, but who we are going to become in the process, and he uses these two tools to shape us.

Now, Genesis 38 -40 points unmistakably to Jesus Christ, not by presenting a single clean line of virtue, but by placing two radically different paths side -by -side, failure and faithfulness, and then showing us that he's the one who actually fulfills them both.

You see, Judah represents humanity exposed by sin. His hypocrisy is uncovered, his power stripped away, and his pride is broken.

Yet, through repentance, God preserves his line and astonishingly brings a

Savior into the world through it. This tells us something crucial. Redemption does not come through moral strength, but through grace that meets the sinners where they are once they finally stop hiding.

Now, Joseph, on the other hand, represents the righteous sufferer. He resists temptation, he speaks truth, and he remains faithful, and yet he's punished after being rewarded.

He's hidden, he's forgotten, he's confined, not because God has abandoned him, but because God is preparing him.

And Jesus Christ brings both of these stories together. He's the truly righteous one who suffers like Joseph, but he suffers for the sins of others, like Judah deserved.

Where Judah's guilt is exposed and Joseph's obedience is ignored, Christ bears both the exposure and the injustice willingly.

He enters the consequence of human sin without committing it himself. He's not merely hidden in a prison or exposed in a scandal, he's laid in a grave.

And yet, at the appointed time, God will raise him up just as Joseph is lifted from obscurity in Egypt, raised up to the highest position so that he could give many people life.

Christ is going to be raised from the death to bring salvation to the world. Genesis 38 through 40, in that way, shows us that God prepares salvation quietly through repentance and suffering long before he reveals it in glory.

In Christ, that preparation is complete and redemption is secured forever. So with that, as you read

Genesis 38 through 40, I want you to remember that preparation often feels like delay. God is shaping you and his leaders long before he places them in authority.

And tomorrow, we're going to see how the story is going to sharply turn back to Joseph, who is lifted out of his obscurity and into the halls of influence, revealing the plan that God had been forming all along.

And with that, read your Bible carefully, devotionally, and joyfully, and may the Lord use his word to sanctify you completely, and we will continue our journey tomorrow.