Sunday Night, December 1, 2019 PM

for her hand in marriage, and after he had worked seven years, Laban gave him

Rachel's older sister Leah to marry. They did not necessarily work out very smoothly, but Jacob finally did get to marry

Rachel as well. My best reading of the text was a week after he married

Leah, he married Rachel and then worked for seven more years to finish the deal. And then he worked another six years after that for Laban, for his flocks, they parted ways.

Jacob reinserted himself back into the promised land after negotiating and dealing not only with Esau for that,

Christ himself wrestling on the riverbank. Jacob has tried to do his best to live well in the land, though his sons are giving him fits.

His sons keep on making trouble for him, and he has singled out, now

Joseph, after Rachel has died, he has singled out Joseph as his favorite. He has done so by putting a robe of many colors on him, and this is a tunic, a garment that is not the same kind of garment that everyone else would be wearing.

It has long sleeves and a variety of colors. This would be like wearing gold.

It was so valuable, such a treasure, not something you wear to go to work in. And so Joseph, we have the story of Joseph going out wearing this coat, and he is basically supervising his brothers and coming back with a bad report.

Tensions mount. Joseph has dreams about how he would be ruling and reigning over his brothers, and not only over his brothers, but also over his mother and father.

And the brothers greatly resented Joseph and their father's favoritism of him, and they plotted together to at first kill him, and then they settled on selling him to some

Midianite traders, and Joseph was taken away to Egypt. The whole of it is this.

They did not know that Joseph reigning over them would mean their salvation.

They did not know that there would be a famine. They did not know that Joseph would be at the right hand of the most powerful man on the planet, the right hand of Pharaoh, and that by Joseph's wisdom and power he would save up the grain of Egypt during the seven years of prosperity, so that during the time of famine that Jacob and his sons would not starve to death, but indeed they would live.

They had no idea that they would be bowing down before Joseph receiving grain from his hand, this dream that they so greatly resented.

Even as Joseph came towards them at Dothan, they said, here comes this dreamer.

They used it as a vehement insult, and they wanted to kill him or then sell him to slavery to disprove the dream.

They resented. They resisted. They raged at their own salvation.

Who does that remind you of? Well, it reminds us of some, well, yeah.

It reminds me of the Jews in Jesus' day who resented the obvious favor that the father had upon his son and how he anointed him with the

Holy Spirit and clearly favored him above all the rest, and how as Jesus came, he was the walking fulfillment of everything that Israel was supposed to be, and they resented his power.

They resented his closeness with the father. They resented his authority. They resented his critiques of their failings as they were not doing well, and they raged against their salvation, and it's a reminder of the way that God is doing things.

We come to chapter 38, and it's a bit of an odd chapter. We're all kind of wondering about Joseph.

What happens to Joseph? He's away in Egypt. He's enslaved in Egypt. What will become of him? And yet, we don't get to hear about Joseph in chapter 38.

We instead hear about Judah, Judah and a daughter -in -law by the name of Tamar.

Why would Moses, writing to the Israelites, why would the

Holy Spirit inspire Moses to write now about Judah? Well, it's important to remember that we're thinking about the genealogy of Jacob.

That's who we're tracing. This is all under the heading of now the generations of Jacob. It's all under that heading, so these stories are about his generations, and we have heard how

Reuben has committed incest, and so he has disqualified himself from being the heir.

Simeon and Levi have gone out and slaughtered in cold blood all the men of Shechem, and so Jacob has a real issue with them as well.

He had shown his favoritism to Joseph, the firstborn of his favorite wife. Now, Jacob believes that Joseph is dead, as his brothers have brought back his tunic covered and shredded in the blood of a wild animal, so he believes that Joseph is dead.

So now, logically, the next person in line to be the leader of the clan, the leader of Jacob's family, should

Jacob die, would be Judah, because it goes like this in the birth order.

Reuben, Simeon, Levi, Judah, and now that Joseph's out of the way, then

Judah would be the logical next person to consider. Now, here comes a story about Judah, and it came about at that time that Judah departed from his brothers and visited a certain

Adulamite whose name was Hira. Judah saw there a certain, a daughter of a certain

Canaanite whose name was Shua, and he took her and went into her, so she conceived and bore a son, and he named him

Ur. Then she conceived again and bore a son and named him Onan. She bore still another son and named him

Shelah, and it was at Chezeb that she bore him. Now, Judah took a wife for Ur, his firstborn, and her name was

Tamar, but Ur, Judah's firstborn, was evil in the sight of the Lord, so the

Lord took his life. Then Judah said to Onan, Go into your brother's wife and perform your duty as a brother -in -law to her, and raise up offspring for your brother.

Onan knew that the offspring would not be his, so when he went into his brother's wife, he wasted his seat on the ground and ordered not to give offspring to his brother, but what he did was displeasing in the sight of the

Lord, and he took his life also. Then Judah said to his daughter -in -law Tamar, Remain a widow in your father's house until my son

Shelah grows up, for he thought, I am afraid that he too may die like his brothers.

So Tamar went and lived in her father's house. The subtext for this first 11 verses is that Judah is fairly cozy with the

Canaanites. We remember such emphasis earlier on in Genesis that Abraham says to his servant

Eleazar, My son will not have a wife from among the Canaanites.

And he sends his servant back to Haran, back to his people to go find a wife for his son

Isaac. He is so insistent that Isaac not be married to some local girl where the local entanglements are, where the local idols are.

He wants his son to be married to one of the family back from home.

And there's a very long chapter in Genesis all about that, and several portions are repeated at length to emphasize how important it is to marry within the family.

Then we also have the story about Isaac and Rebekah, how they had their sons, and how these twin sons

Esau brought great grief to his parents because he married local girls.

He tried to make it up by, after the second Canaanite girl that he married, it caused such grief to his parents, he tried to make it up by marrying someone who was slightly more related to them, but it still brought great grief.

So he had three wives, all of them soured the stomach of his parents. And Rebekah used this as a convenient excuse to Isaac to send

Jacob away back to Haran, back to find a wife from there.

She said, these Canaanite wives are making me sick. She did that because Jacob had, of course, tricked his brother

Esau and deceived, with his mother's help, deceived his father, and Esau was planning on killing Jacob as soon as he could.

So she wanted Jacob out of the way, lest she lose both of her sons. She knew that if Esau murdered Jacob, then

Esau would have to be killed, capital punishment. Genesis nine, she would lose both her sons all at once, and she did not want that to happen.

And so emphasis had been placed in the story thus far, that it's important who you marry, important for Jacob to marry within the family, important for Isaac to marry within the family.

But now we come to Genesis 38 and Judah, Judah is cozy with the

Canaanites. And he sees a Canaanite woman and he sees her and he takes her, which means he marries her and he goes into her and she conceived.

This is a very, it sounds very quick in the text, but remember that Moses is writing to the

Israelites and he's telling them about the story of Judah and how it is that Judah married a

Canaanite wife. Now, how would an Israelite hear that?

They had been ordered. They had been commanded all through the wilderness. They had been told, when you get into the promised land, when you enter the land of Canaan, you are not allowed to intermarry with the

Canaanites. Do not do this. They have been told that by Moses and Aaron.

They have been told that by the Levites. That commandment has been repeated to them. They know this is the law.

They know this is the plan. Do not intermarry with the Canaanites. And now comes a story that helps give some context as to what might happen or why or the complications that arise from intermarrying with the

Canaanites. So Judah takes a wife also for Ur, his firstborn, and she also is a

Canaanite, Tamar. So, you know, what could go wrong? Well, Judah's firstborn

Ur was evil in the sight of the Lord. So the Lord blessed the earth by removing him from it.

Now, again, Israelites walking around the wilderness, how, okay, there was just the men numbered.

In the book of Numbers, the first generation is getting close to a million, just the men. And that was just the number of those of age 20 to 50.

They numbered the army. They didn't number the men below the age of 20 or above the age of 50.

They didn't number the women and the children. So we're well over a million, probably two or three million people wandering through the wilderness, and the entire first generation died.

Everybody 20 years and older died, except for Joshua and Caleb, in the wilderness. And when you finally do the math, and that's 40 years of wandering, but when you do the math, you have hundreds of people every week dying on average.

You lived in a culture of death. You wandered around, and you just littered the wilderness full of graves.

And why were these people dying? Because they were evil. They displeased the

Lord. They had gone against God, and the penalty was death. This is what they lived in, day in and day out, reminders that to go against God and to reject

God's word is to end in death. And here's a reminder. Er was evil, so the

Lord took his life. And then what about the brother?

Then Judah said to Anon, go into your brother's wife and perform your duty as a brother -in -law to her and raise up offspring for your brother.

This is the very first time we hear something called the Levite marriage.

And we hear about it later on in the instructions in Deuteronomy 25.

So read a little bit about that. Here, this is Judah, you know, 400 years prior to Moses, prior to the codification of Israel at Sinai and the way that they were supposed to live, way before any of that, talking about this duty.

So Deuteronomy chapter 25 and verse 5. When brothers live together and one of them dies and has no son, this is the key, has no son, the wife of the deceased shall not be married outside the family to a strange man.

Her husband's brother shall go into her and take her to himself as wife and perform the duty of a husband's brother to her.

It shall be that the firstborn whom she bears shall assume the name of his dead brother so that his name will not be blotted out from Israel.

So much depended on the inheritance, the land being passed down, the allotment being passed down from generation to generation that what happens if a man is married and dies without having any children or having a son?

What will happen? How will the family continue? So this instruction is a mercy to the family who had no heir.

And this is the duty. Now, this has, of course, this precedent in the story of Judah.

We hear about this story in the book of Ruth, much of the drama of Ruth. It focuses in on this instruction for Israel that Ruth, her husband

Melon, died. The father was Elimelech. His two sons died.

He had no one to carry on his name. So Naomi had no heir. And then

Ruth's husband died. So they come back to the land of Israel. And what's to happen?

Well, Boaz is a kinsman redeemer. He's a close relative. And so things begin to shape up for Boaz to fulfill his duty as a kinsman redeemer, to go through this

Levite marriage. And the idea is that he's going to marry Ruth in hopes that they would have a son who would take on the name son of Elimelech, Naomi's husband, so that Elimelech's line would continue.

But there was a closer relative than Boaz. And Boaz went to this man and said, you need to redeem the property that has fallen out of the family's hands because of their poverty, and you need to marry

Ruth the Moabitess. And the man said, oh, I can't not do this thing, because he knew, and it says he knew that the heir would not be his.

And so he refused. Why? Because he wanted a name for himself. He wanted a name for himself.

He didn't want to have a son in the name of somebody else. He was not willing to do that. And, of course, the irony is in the book of Ruth, this man's name is not known.

The man who was so jealous for his name, we don't have his name. And in the genealogy at the end of Ruth, it actually does say that Obed, the son of Ruth and Boaz, was the son of Boaz.

And so his name is maintained. So here Onan is unwilling, unwilling to do his duty.

He knew that the offspring would not be his. Because of that reason, he sinned, and the

Lord took his life also. And so now the sense of desperation is settling in.

Judah only has one son left. And this son is not old enough to be married yet.

And so he says to Tamar to remain a widow until his son Shelah grows up. But what he's thinking is,

I don't want to lose a third son to this woman. And he says, this is not working out.

This is not good. And so Judah is concerned for the same thing that Onan is concerned.

Judah wants to make sure his name is preserved. And this is the way he's going to do it. He's going to lead Tamar on, but he is not going to follow through with what he has promised.

And so Tamar went and lived in her father's house. So Judah has married into some

Canaanites. And it seems that he begins to do some

Canaanite things and it's uncertain whether or not things will work out.

Verse 12. Now, after a considerable time, she was daughter of the wife of Judah died. So Judah's wife dies.

And when the time of mourning was ended, Judah went up to his sheep shearers at Timnah, he and his friend,

Hira the Adulamite. Now this doesn't mean a whole lot until you hear.

Canaanite practices at sheep shearing time were a hoot. They got together and they partied and they had a great time and it involved sacrifices to the fertility gods and so on.

And so Judah's hanging out with his buddy Hira. So they go out and they're going to have a blast. They're going to go out and have some fun.

Verse 13. It was told to Tamar, behold your father -in -law is going into Timnah to shear his sheep.

So she removed her widow's garments and covered herself with a veil and wrapped herself and sat in the gateway of Aniam, which is on the road to Timnah.

For she saw that Sheila had grown up and she had not been given to him as a wife.

When Judah saw her, he thought she was a harlot for she had covered her face.

Tamar grew up in Canaan. She knew how to look like a harlot. She did not look like the harlots that we have today.

She looked like a Canaanite harlot, but she gave all the right signals, especially covering her face for anonymity.

And Judah saw her. He's out to party. He's out to have fun. He's out for the sheep shearing festivities.

And so he says, ah, here's a cult prostitute. After all, he was going with his, with his buddy to the, to the idolatrous sacrifices.

So it all fit together in his mind. And he sees her and he says, verse 15,

Judah saw her and he thought she was a harlot for she covered her face. So he turned aside to her by the road and said, here now, let me come into you.

For he did not know that she was his daughter -in -law. And she said, what will you give me that you may come into me?

He said, therefore, I will send you a young goat from the flock. She said, moreover, will you give a pledge until you send it?

He said, what pledge shall I give you? And she said, your seal 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 departed and removed her veil and put on her widow's garments. And so Judah, certainly he was deceptive to Tamar.

He had said that this was going to come about and it didn't. He did not want his third son to die.

So then she responds through deception and she ensnares him and then traps him.

We know from Proverbs 5 and 7, the warnings to the young man to avoid certain areas and women who look and sound a certain way, to avoid these things and that's wisdom.

But Judah is not interested in avoiding those things. He's interested in going to have a good time with his buddy. And so he is deceived and tricked into committing incest.

And she is no fool. She takes the pledge, his seal, his cord, his staff that could only be his, only identifying him.

So she has some very solid life insurance and she's going to need it. Verse 20, when

Judah sent the young goat by his friend the Idulamite to receive the pledge from the woman's hand, he did not find her. He asked the men of her place saying, where is the temple prostitute who was by the road at Aniam?

But they said, there has been no temple prostitute here. So he returned to Judah and said,

I did not find her. And furthermore, the men of the place said, there has been no temple prostitute here. Then Judah said, let her keep them.

Otherwise we will become a laughing stock. After all, I sent this young goat, but you didn't find her. And as is always the case, that when you engage in a plan of sin, it never goes just the way that you thought it would.

And there's something brewing here, a theme that we're going to flesh out here in a moment. But Judah is hanging out with the

Canaanites. He is slowly becoming a little bit more, a little bit more Canaanized. This is exactly what happened to Israel in their history where they entered the land of Canaan.

They were to follow the instructions to not intermarry. They were to follow the instructions to destroy all of the idols that were in their land, but they did not follow through.

Now God told them through Moses, if you intermarry and if you don't wipe out the idols, you will progressively become more like the people here and become wicked like them.

And you will begin to worship their gods rather than me. He told them that's what was going to happen. And lo and behold, when you read the book of Judges, that's exactly what happened.

And the thing about it is that Judah, he's hanging out with the Canaanites, but he's just not as good at it as the

Canaanites are. He just has no idea what's happening. He is getting deceived.

He's getting the runaround. Tamar knows how to manipulate him, and he has no idea what's going on.

He tries to pay the prostitute, but can't because she's not there, and he doesn't know what's going on, but the men of the city do.

But he doesn't know what's going on, and he's lost his way, and he's entangled. Verse 24, now it was about three months later that Judah was informed, your daughter -in -law

Tamar has played the harlot. Behold, she is also with child by harlotry. Then Judah said, bring her out and let her be burned.

This comes later in some of the laws in Israel depending on the situation that was still the punishment.

It was while she was being brought out that she sent to her father -in -law saying, I am with child by the man to whom these things belong.

And she said, please examine and see whose signet ring and cords and staff are these.

Hmm, Judah recognized them, said she is more righteous than I inasmuch as I did not give her to my son

Sheila, and he did not have relations with her again. What a statement, she is more righteous than I.

Hmm, what's one of the lessons here? One of the lessons I think here for the Israelites is you get tangled up with the

Canaanites, you get mixed up with the Canaanites, and you're going to have your lunch handed to you.

You have no idea what you're getting involved with and it's going to turn out that you're going to be worse than they ever were.

And isn't that exactly the diagnosis that was given later on about Israel, that they did more wickedness than the

Amorites that were before them, that they did more wickedness than the Canaanites who were before them, that they did more wickedness in their days than those before?

Well, this is supposed to be a lesson.

Of course, we certainly have a lesson here about hypocrisy and a wholly righteous anger that's not really righteous at all.

We have many practical lessons here as well.

Verse 27 and following. It came about at the time that she was giving birth that, behold, there were twins in her womb.

Moreover, it took place while she was giving birth, one put out a hand and the midwife took and tied a scarlet thread on his hand, saying,

This one came out first. But it came about as he drew back his hand that, behold, his brother came out.

Then she said, What a breach you have made for yourself. So he was named Perez. Afterward, his brother came out who had the scarlet thread on his hand and he was named

Zerah. This little notation about the remarkable way in which his sons were born is a reminder, is actually thematically connected to the entire story because what you thought was happening actually wasn't.

What you thought the outcome was going to be actually wasn't. Something else happened instead. This is also a very nice setup for the rest of the story of Joseph.

We just heard about this awful thing that happened to Joseph. But it's not going to turn out the way you think it is.

And we even heard this awful story about Judah. But it's not going to turn out the way you think it will.

And then we read through the rest of the story of Joseph. Joseph's story and Judah's story become intertwined at the end of chapter 44.

At the end of chapter 44, we have an intertwining of the story of Judah and the story of Joseph.

Joseph had been sold as a slave. He became a slave of Potiphar. He was full of wisdom.

God's favor was upon him. He was at the right hand of Potiphar. He was falsely accused. And he was put into the prison.

There, because of his wisdom, the jailer had him in charge of all the prisoners. And there, because of his wisdom, because God gave him, he interpreted the dreams.

And he was later on brought before Pharaoh as the one who could interpret dreams. And he interpreted

Pharaoh's dream. And Pharaoh said, well, what do we need to do?

Well, Joseph says, this is what you got to do. You have to save up all the grain for the seven years of prosperity. And you'll have enough for the seven years of famine.

Put someone in charge of all of that. Potiphar said, well, there's nobody who can do it better than you. So you're now in charge, right hand man.

And so Joseph is now in charge. And what we thought was going to end up being horrible ended up being something surprisingly, something totally different.

The son that Jacob thought was dead was in fact alive. Jacob's family was facing absolute starvation.

But wait, Egypt has grain. It was a reversal. And why do they have grain? Because Joseph is down there by God's ordained plan providing that grain.

We have all of these reversals. But at the end of chapter 44, when Joseph is testing his brothers who have come to get grain, he's testing his brothers.

And he's seeing whether or not they've changed. And he has his, and Joseph has his younger brother

Benjamin. He's going to have him arrested and taken away. And he's going to see what happens.

What will they do? He knows. He knows that Benjamin, his little brother, was the last son of Rachel.

So he knows that Jacob, his father, has been favoring Benjamin, favoring Benjamin. He's wondering, how do my brothers feel about that?

Are they still the jealous type? Are they still envious? Are they still murderous? And so he does all these different things.

And he favors Benjamin and gives him five times as much food and all this honor to Benjamin. And he's watching the brothers to see if they're reacting.

And finally, at the end of it, he sets a trap. And so he has Benjamin dead to rights. And he's going to be arrested and enslaved.

And he's watching to see what happens to his brothers. And it's Judah. It's Judah who was about saving his own skin.

It was Judah who was about tricking and deceiving and not doing what was right.

It was Judah who stepped forward and said, take me instead. And explained the entire story about the way that his father felt about Benjamin and how it would crush his father if Benjamin were left behind.

And he said, take me instead. Take me instead. And so their stories converge there where what his brothers meant for evil,

God meant for good, for Joseph to keep them all alive. And then there's

Judah where once he was selfish and self -focused. Now he's sacrificial and saying, take me instead.

And so what we thought was the case turns out to be something else and surprising.

Of course, the story gives us a name, not just the name of Judah, but also gives us a name,

Perez, the name of Perez. And when we go to the

Gospel of Matthew in Chapter 1, we read a summary of what we've been studying in Genesis.

The record of the genealogy of Jesus the Messiah, the son of David, the son of Abraham. Abraham was the father of Isaac.

Isaac was the father of Jacob. And Jacob the father of Judah and his brothers. Judah was the father of Perez and Zerah by Tamar.

Perez was the father of Hezron. And we go on down and we hear that one of the descendants from Perez was

Salmon who was the father of Boaz by Rahab. Rahab the prostitute from Jericho.

Boaz was the father of Obed by Ruth. Ruth the Moabitess. Obed the father of Jesse.

Jesse was the father of David the king. David was the father of Solomon by Bathsheba who had been the wife of Uriah.

And we're just reminded by all these names. These names are just inserted there. And a whole host of stories come to mind about the ways in which

God continually uses that which was meant for evil to bring about good.

And not just the good of keeping Jacob's family alive, avoiding starvation.

Not just the good of giving Elimelech an heir. Not just the good of saving

Rahab and her household from the destruction of Jericho. Not just the good of bringing about the birth of Solomon, the wise king from David and Bathsheba.

But the good, the great good of bringing his son into the world.

And all this messed up history reminds us that God's sovereignty is not one so small in which he must activate everyone like robots and preprogramming.

But his sovereignty is so large that he uses the wickedness and the evil that men perpetrate.

And yet nonetheless has ordained and brought all things together to bring about good to the glory of his own name.

Even bringing about his son, Jesus Christ. And that is what the name Perez, I think, reminds us of.

Any questions or thoughts before we close? All right.