FBC Daily Devotional – December 20, 2021

Faith Baptist Church

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Well, good Monday morning to you. I hope your weekend went well, and you had a good day yesterday at God's house.

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Probably celebrated in some way Christmas, perhaps with a

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Christmas message in the morning service, since this after all is the Sunday before Christmas. And this week is

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Christmas week. So looking forward to Saturday and the celebrating on Saturday of our

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Savior's birth. But all this week, of course, people gearing up for that and even

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Wednesday night we're having a candlelight service at our church and I encourage you to attend if you're in the area.

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And hopefully it'll be a good service. We always enjoy that time of the candlelight service.

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Well, since Christmas is coming, I'm going to get away from the normal routine of sharing some devotional thoughts on the daily

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Bible readings. We'll get back to that next week, Lord willing, but this week what I want to do is just focus on some different things related to Christmas.

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Monday through Thursday, today through Thursday, I want to look at the Miracle Women in the genealogy of Jesus.

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It's recorded for us in Matthew chapter 1. And the chapter begins in this way.

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It says, The book of the genealogy of Jesus Christ, the son of David, the son of Abraham.

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And then it begins with Abraham, the genealogy does, and traces his ancestral line, essentially through the different dads, the fathers.

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But in that list, there are four women who are mentioned. And I want to look at those because each one of them represents a different miracle from God's hand.

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And some of them have to do with his character, some of them his power, but let's notice them, all right?

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So here's the list. It says, As Abraham begot Isaac, Isaac begat Jacob. Jacob begot

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Judah and his brothers. Judah begot Perez and Zerah by Tamar.

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There's one woman. Perez begot Hezron, and Hezron begot Ram. Ram begot

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Amminadab. Amminadab begot Nashan, and Nashan begot Salmon. And Salmon begot

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Boaz by Rahab, second woman. Boaz begot Obed by Ruth, third woman.

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And then it continues on down to verse 16 where it says, Jacob begot Joseph, the husband of Mary, of whom was born

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Jesus, who is called Christ, or called Messiah. There's the fourth woman. So let's take each of these in order this week.

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Today, let's look at this woman, Tamar. And she expresses and represents in her role in the genealogy of Jesus, she represents the miracle of God's mercy.

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How so? Well, to get the sense of this and the significance of her presence in the genealogy of Jesus, you need to go back to the book of Genesis, to Genesis chapter 38.

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And what a story it is, really. It tells the story of one of the sons of Jacob by the name of Judah.

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Now, that's a significant name because his is a significant tribe.

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The Messiah is to come through the tribe of Judah. So this story about Judah is a significant story.

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And Judah has three sons. And each of these sons plays a role in this in this account of Tamar.

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He has these three sons, and one of them, one of them is named Ur, the second son is named

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Onan, and the third son is Shelah. Now, I don't want to belabor the point of the different names of the sons and so forth, but here's the deal.

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The oldest son, to the oldest son, Tamar is given in marriage.

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But the Bible tells us that this older son, Ur, was a wicked man. And before they could have any children, the

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Lord slew him. He died. And so Judah says to the next son, number two,

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Onan, says to him, your brother died without having any children, so you take his wife,

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Tamar, to be your wife. That sounds a little odd to us, but that was a very typical procedure.

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If a man died and didn't have any offspring, his wife would often be given to a close relative, a brother or somebody, to carry on the family name.

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That was the practice, okay? So Tamar becomes the wife of Onan. But Onan doesn't like the arrangement, because he knows if Tamar has a child by me, that child's going to be named after my brother, not by me.

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So Onan makes sure that Tamar doesn't get pregnant. That's the bottom line.

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And the Lord again sees the evil in Onan's heart and strikes him, slays him.

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He's gone. He's out of the picture. The third son, Sheila, is a young guy.

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We don't know how old he is, but he's not old enough to get married, that's for sure. And Judah, the dad, is getting a little bit concerned about this situation.

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He's had these two sons, and they've been married to Tamar, and the two sons have died.

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Maybe she's a bad luck charm or something like that. He's not so sure he wants to give his last son,

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Sheila, to Tamar. So he says to Tamar, kind of surreptitiously, he says to her, it's going to be a while before my third son is ready for marriage, so why don't you go on back to your father's home and wait?

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And when he's old enough to get married, I'll bring you, and you can marry Sheila, my youngest son.

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She's okay. So she goes off to her dad's place, back home to her family, and she waits.

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And the years go by, how many we don't know, but long enough that she knows that Sheila, the youngest son, is old enough to marry her, and she doesn't get him.

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There is no marriage. So she's a little miffed. And so what she does, she finds out that her father -in -law,

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Judah, is going to be shearing sheep not far from where she lives. So she dresses up and pretends that she's a prostitute.

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And she sits by the side of the road, waiting for Judah to come by.

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And when Judah comes by, she entices him, plying this trade of the harlot.

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And Judah says, okay, how much do you cost? And it's sordid, isn't it?

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It's an awful story. And Tamar gives a price. And Judah doesn't have the price, so he has to give her a token, has to give her a down payment, if you will, and says,

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I'll send you the price later. She says, okay, good enough. So she keeps the down payment.

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Judah takes off, does the deed and takes off, and eventually goes home and he sends his servant to go back with the price of the harlot.

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And when he gets there, the servant gets there, she's nowhere around. Judah had no idea that the harlot, quote unquote, was actually his daughter -in -law

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Tamar. And it turns out that Tamar is pregnant with Judah's sons, twins.

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This is the story that is the background to Tamar being in the genealogy of Jesus.

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So you look at this background of this story, it is a sinful, sinful story.

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And the difficulty in this story is that nobody, nobody did anything right.

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No one. Judah didn't. Judah's firstborn son didn't.

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He was so wicked, the Lord slew him. Judah's secondborn son didn't. He was wicked, the Lord slew him.

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Tamar didn't do right. Judah, again, didn't do right. Nobody, nobody did what was right in this situation in the least bit.

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So the difficulty is, why would God choose to have the line of the

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Messiah come through her? The answer?

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His mercy. His mercy. Tamar represents the miracle of God's mercy.

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And aren't you grateful for that mercy? Aren't you grateful that God, God deals with us not on the basis of what we deserve, but he deals with us in mercy.

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And if you have come to know Jesus Christ as your personal Savior, and you are saved, and you are confident that your home is set in heaven forever, in eternity,

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God in his grace has saved your soul. It is of his mercy that he has saved us, not by our works.

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And Tamar's representation in the genealogy of Jesus is a testament to the truth that God saves in mercy.

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God uses in mercy. Be grateful today for the marvelous, wonderful mercy of our gracious God.

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So our Father, as we reflect upon this very sordid story, we do rejoice in and relish in the expression of your mercy that is seen through Tamar.

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Thank you for including her in the genealogy. For Lord, if you would have mercy on her, you will have mercy on sinners such as we are.

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Thank you, our gracious God. And we pray it in Jesus' name. Amen. All right.

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Well, I hope your Christmas week is a wonderful week of preparation and anticipation and rejoicing in the mercy of our wonderful God.