FBC Morning Light – January 19, 2023

The Dysfunctional Family of Jacob and Joseph

A good Thursday morning to you. Have you been following along the Morning Light broadcast this week? If you did, if you have been, then we left yesterday talking about this contrast between the twelve sons of Jacob and the plethora of offspring of Esau, and that God in his covenant promise made the promise to Jacob that he was going to have kings from his loins.

It was going to be his descendants, it would be a company of nations, and the kings would come from him. From that promise, we're told these are the twelve sons of Jacob. Then there's the genealogy of Esau, and all of the kings of Esau, and so on and so forth.

Then we come to chapter 37, and it goes back to talking about the family of Jacob. You talk about a dysfunctional family. We use that phrase a lot, this is a dysfunctional family. This is a dysfunctional family.

You've got these twelve sons, they come from four different moms, and that's a story in itself, you read it earlier in Genesis. In chapter 37, we read that Jacob favored Joseph above all his brothers, so there's this favoritism with Dad.

He makes him a coat of many colors. All the brothers envy Joseph, they despise him. Dad gives Joseph the job of going and spying on his brothers, and coming and tattling on them, that kind of a thing.

Joseph has this dream, and he tells the dreams to his dreams, and he tells the dreams to his brothers, and they hate him all the more, because the dreams make Joseph the hero of the story, and they can't accept that whatsoever.

There's all of this conflict within that family. So deep is the hostility in the hearts of these brothers toward Joseph, that they concoct this plan to sell Joseph so they can get some money out of him rather than just kill him.

They have the opportunity to kill him, they decide not to kill him, they're going to sell him into slavery. They concoct this plan to do that, they sell him into slavery, they get the money, and then they take his many-colored coat, get blood all over it so that it looks like Joseph has been torn by some kind of a wild beast, and then they take that to their father.

They clearly give their dad the impression that Joseph must have died in the wilderness, and Jacob comes to the conclusion, my son, my son, my Joseph, my son's been killed by a wild beast, and he's just in absolute mourning, and the brothers are all standing around this, pretending like they're comforting their father, but at the same time they're chuckling within because ha-ha, we got away with it, we succeeded in the ruse.

What? A dysfunctional family. That's chapter 37. Chapter 37 ends with Joseph being taken to Egypt and sold into slavery, and he ends up in Potiphar's house. Chapter 39, which we'll get to tomorrow, chapter 39 picks up the story with Joseph in Potiphar's house, and sandwiched between is chapter 38.

Judah, Tamar, and the Unexpected Line of Messiah

Kind of a no-brainer, but it's this really messed-up story of Judah. Many people have read, you read through the Bible in sequence, you read chapter 36 and then chapter 37, and you see the descending of Joseph into Egypt, into Potiphar's house, and you expect chapter 38 is just going to continue the story.

But instead, it goes completely down a side trail and tells the story of Judah, and what a messed-up story this is. Here's Judah, Judah who is a participant in the Joseph ruse. He went right along with this whole ruse of deceiving dad, of selling Joseph into slavery.

He married a Canaanite woman, we're told, in chapter 38. He married just killed them in judgment. I mean, how grievous their sin was, the Lord took their lives because of the horrific nature of their sin.

And then Judah has this third son, and the way things were supposed to work was his firstborn son marries this woman, Tamar, and she can't have...well, she doesn't have a child by the firstborn son. The firstborn son is so wicked, God kills him.

So Judah gives the secondborn to the firstborn's widow with the intention that he's going to raise up seed for the son who died. I mean, this was the typical practice, okay? Seems foreign to our ears and all the rest, I get that.

But anyway, this is what they did. The second son says, man, I don't want to have a child and have it be my brother's child, it's in my brother's name. So he made sure in the act of marriage, he made sure that his wife wasn't going to get pregnant.

And so the Lord struck him, and he died. And that left the third son. And so Judah tells his daughter-in-law, Tamar, go back home to your father, and when my son is old enough to marry, I'll fetch you and you can marry him.

But the whole time Judah's thinking, there's no way I'm giving this woman to my son, she's already been the widow of two of my sons, there must be something wrong with her. There's a curse associated with her.

So he sends her off. Never gives Tamar to his third son. Time passes, Judah is going to go shear his sheep, and along the way, Tamar hears about it, and she goes out along the side of the road, pretends that she's a prostitute.

Judah sees her, thinks she's a prostitute, and says, what's your pay? What do I have to pay you? She gives him a price. He says, okay, I promise to give you that, and here's the tokens that I'll fulfill my promise.

She accepts those tokens, and Judah goes and does the deed, and leaves, goes on his way, finds out later that Tamar is pregnant. She's pregnant with his children. First he wants to have her put to death for committing adultery.

He didn't know when he had sex with her that that was Tamar. He didn't know. She covered her face and all the rest of that kind of stuff. She ends up being pregnant, and Judah's going to have her killed because she committed adultery.

She says, okay, well, these things, these tokens are the dad. They belong to the father. Judah recognizes those are his tokens. He's the father. He's guilty. He doesn't have her executed, obviously, and the way chapter 38 ends is that she gives birth to two children, and calls their names.

One of them Perez, and then the second one that's born is Zerah. Let me make two observations about this chapter. One of them has to do with the sovereign grace and purposes of God, because it is through the line of Judah that Messiah is going to come.

It is not through the Canaanite mother, wife of Judah, that the seed is going to come. The seed is going to come through Tamar, and specifically through Perez. You can't make this stuff up. It's clearly the sovereign purposes and plan of God to highlight his incredible and amazing grace, that he would use such a distorted, corrupt story, and from it bring forth the Savior of the world.

That's just incredible. But then, let's go back to the question. Why insert that story here? Why here? Right in the middle of the Joseph story. There are several answers, and let me just highlight a couple things.

One is that Judah was very much involved in this plot to have Joseph sent to Egypt. His heart was hard, it was calloused, it was corrupt. Remember that. Secondly, let's realize that Judah plays a prominent role in the eventual revelation, when Joseph eventually reveals himself to his brothers.

Judah plays a prominent role in that whole interaction. We're going to come to that later. What's happening here is that God is showing us how he's working in Judah's life and heart to crack the hardness, to break the hardness, and bring him to a place of humility, a place of repentance.

It's going to be one incremental step at a time. First, you see the hard, cold, calloused heart of Judah selling Joseph into slavery. Then you see the humbled heart of Judah in chapter 38, as he is shamed and has to accept responsibility for these sons through his daughter-in-law, Tamar.

The Lord is setting us up to see the change and transformation in Judah that's going to end in the blessing that Jacob gives to his son Judah before he dies. Hang on to all of that, and watch as this unfolds in the chapters ahead.

Prayer for Sovereign Grace

Let's have a word of prayer. Father, we do thank you for your sovereign grace, your amazing, amazing grace that can work even in the midst of the corruption of this world and bring about such wonderful blessing.

Thank you for it in Jesus' name and for his sake. Amen.