“The Sinners” (Judah & Tamar)

Scripture: Genesis 38

Our Advent series of messages will be focusing on several of Jesus’ ancestors, and how they are such a good representation of why we needed Jesus to live with us. It seems that there wasn’t even a glimmer of a holiness gene in these folks, and we aren’t any better. They struggled, they went against God’s ways, and their lives failed to provide any justification for God’s choosing them to be his. Adam and Eve began it all with their little divergence from obedience, and people, whether they were in Jesus’ lineage or not, have been sinning against God ever since.

Today we consider the story of Judah, the 4th son of Jacob. As we know, Jesus would be born into the tribe of Judah, and this ancestor would be anything but worthy of that distinction. He would be directly involved in the plot to get rid of his brother Joseph, and he actually suggested that they sell him to the Midianites who were traveling to trade in Egypt (Genesis 37). Joseph’s story continues from there, but for now, we remain focused on Judah.

Read Genesis 38:1-7

Remembering that God has yet to hand down his law at Mount Sinai, the family was only bound by tradition. But tradition was, nonetheless, very strong, and family was at the very core of right and wrong. And the first issue that is being raised up today is that Judah leaves his family and goes to live in a Canaanite community. This fact can easily raise the question of whether Judah should be excluded from Jacob’s lineage! Family was vital in the lives of all people in that day, and Judah had left them. First Joseph had been taken from them, although not in the way that many thought, and now Judah also appears to be leaving the family. Honor for the family was centered on the number of sons that had been born, and that number was beginning to dwindle.

And not only does Judah move to a “foreign” tribe, he presumably marries a woman who is not even part of his own culture. “Foreign” blood has now entered into the family (a condition that was strongly frowned upon), and the couple would have three children, all sons – Er, Onan, and Shelah. The eldest also marries a Canaanite, but he is “wicked”, and we read that the Lord takes his life. We have no indication as to what Er did, but apparently is was pretty bad! So now there is a widow in the picture, and tradition was that if a man died without an heir, the next brother, in this case Onan, would take her as his wife and produce an heir for his deceased brother. But this raised another problem. If Er was to have a descendent, that means that Jacob’s inheritance would now include his grandson, and wouldn’t be split among the other two brothers! The grandson would receive his father’s double portion, and Onan would have to settle for his single share.

Greed settles in, and Onan intentionally keeps Tamar from getting pregnant to preserve his own financial legacy. Greed has been a problem for us throughout the ages, and in Colossians 3:5, we read that it actually becomes an idol within our nature. Ebenezer Scrooge epitomizes the life that is torn apart by greed. He surrendered friendships, family, even love in favor of gaining greater and greater wealth. Even the name Scrooge has become synonymous with the word “greed”. But our own greed isn’t always centered on financial wealth – sometimes it is the desire for power, or prestige, or position, or anything else that may heighten the view that others have of us. That was what was bringing Onan down, and he, too, would lose his life.

So Judah would send Tamar back to her father’s own home, apparently unwilling to risk the life of his third and final son, Shelah. He breaks the tradition of heirs, and even Judah’s own wife would soon die. Tragedy in this family was on the verge of destroying the line altogether.

Some time later, Judah would go to oversee the shearing of his herd of sheep, and Tamar, now convinced that she would never be able to give birth to a son, hatched a plan that continued the screen of deception that was becoming the family’s tradition.

Read Genesis 38:15-18

Tamar lures her dead husband’s father into her bed by pretending to be a prostitute! The desire to have offspring overwhelms any sense of propriety in her life, and we can only imagine what Judah was thinking when he contracted for sex with his own daughter-in-law. (Are you remembering that these people would, one day, be in Jesus’ ancestry? Makes you wonder, doesn’t it!)

The agreed upon price for sex would be a young goat, and Judah would have to provide a “promissory note”, as it were, to guarantee that the payment would be made. But when he sent the payment, the prostitute had vanished, yet the deed had still been accomplished, and Tamar would soon be discovered to be pregnant. She is accused of being a prostitute, which she actually had been, and would be condemned, by the very man who had done the deed, and the penalty would be death by fire. Isn’t it interesting that Judah saw nothing wrong when he contracted with Tamar, who he thought was a woman for hire, but when he finds that the girl – his daughter-in-law - is, herself, pregnant, that now it is a vile sin! But now there is blackmail, for Tamar has evidence that it was Judah who had gotten her into the “family way”, and (surprise!) all charges are dropped.

Read Genesis 38:27-29

Can you even imagine the height that immorality had risen to in this family! No personal integrity, no sense of right and wrong, no sense of family obligation, constant deception and self-centeredness, and the list could easily continue! But Tamar would, at last, give birth to twin boys, and her heritage would be secured. But what about Er’s heritage? Since it was his father who had finally gained the heir, the lineage of Er vanishes into the mist of time. Matthew’s genealogy of Jesus (Matthew 1:3) lists Judah, Tamar, and Perez (the eldest of the twins), and no one else in that generation.

This is the family that Jesus would, one day, be born into. We tend to forget these details; we tend to ignore the shortcomings of our Lord’s ancestors. We only remember the words of blessing on Mary, and the love of Joseph for his intended, and the glory of the Lord Jesus. But life is filled with failure (except in Jesus’ case, of course), and this is the family that Father God chose to use in his Son’s time on earth. You would think that the Lord could come up with a better plan than this – one that would give honor to the Christ while he lived among us, but that wasn’t the plan.

The Lord Jesus would be born into human frailty, with little, if any, significance. Why would God do that? Couldn’t Jesus at least have a pure Jewish heritage? Apparently not!

But then, why should he? Why shouldn’t Jesus have the same family issues that we do? Why shouldn’t he have “skeletons” in his closet, just like we do? He would come to understand, through his own family’s history, the depth of humanity’s need for forgiveness. And in Luke 5:29-32, the Lord is approached by the learned intellectuals as he enjoys a meal with those corruptible “tax collectors and sinners”, and he tells the Pharisees that these are the very people who he has come to save. Jesus couldn’t come in obvious glory – he had to be in a way that others could identify with.

How could God begin to understand the depravity of our situation unless he lived in the midst of it? Oh, the Lord knows our situation, he knows that we are condemned by the lives we choose to live, he knows that we all are in desperate need of a love that exceeds all understanding. But do we know God?

If Jesus had come in an obvious and divine glory, we would come to him, certainly, but could we possibly consent to the passion that he has for us? Would we seek a true relationship with him? We have to know that the Forgiver and Redeemer of our errant lives understands. His own human family was filled with those despicable gentiles! His own historic family were sinners extraordinaire! Even Jesus Himself was tempted to surrender to the forces of evil (Matthew 4:1-11). God in Christ understands completely all that we go through in this life, and his passion and compassion for us has become even greater by his life here.

Does that excuse our sinfulness? Certainly not! But by his love and understanding, his forgiveness is at the ready for all who confess and repent of their failures in this life. Trust in the life that is Jesus, trust in the word that he has taught us, trust in the ache that resides in the heart of God over our sinful condition – we, the sinners of earth and the sinners of the Lord’s own human family, are the reason that he came. His love for our lives, and the pain that he feels over our failure, brought him to live as a person and not solely as God, and to become the sacrifice that would offer us release from the ravages of sin. We discover the divine relationship that we need through faith in Jesus Christ.

Jesus knows, all too well, all that we go through. And he came to be our Way out of the mess that we have created, IF we give our lives over to him and follow that Way. Praise the Lord for being the Perfection that can save us from our imperfection.