Clough Genesis Lesson 85

Judah, a sinner, produces the Messianic seed – Genesis 38:12-30

Before we continue in our series on Genesis there are some feedback cards that people have turned in, one is more of a complaint than anything else so I’ll reiterate it without any comment. It says I am tired of being buttonholed when I come to this church for some business opportunity or some sales thing. What is the governing body of Lubbock Bible Church’s stand on such activity? The stand is that as with our phone directory, don’t take advantage of the assembly of the saints or list of them for your own private profit. It’s nice to be in private enterprise; we encourage it, but just be careful about mixing the two.

Two questions about the teaching; one is concerning my remarks last week about the means of birth control that were permitted in the Old Testament economy. The question comes back: Then are you saying that sterilization is wrong today? The answer is found in Isaiah 56:4; we tried to show you the methods of birth control that were permitted under the Mosaic economy. We are not under the Mosaic economy and in fact, the particular provision of sterilization was looked upon because men who were sterilized were not permitted to be around the temple complex. But in Isaiah 56 we have the fore view of the kingdom of God as it one day shall be, looking at it from inside the Mosaic economy and in Isaiah 56:4 we have the statement, “For thus saith the LORD unto the eunuchs that keep my Sabbaths, and choose those things that please me, and take hold of my covenant; [5] Even unto them will I give in my house and within my walls a place and a name better than of sons and of daughters; and I will give them an everlasting name, that shall not be cut off.” Isaiah 56 and Matthew 19 represent reversals in the Mosaic provisions in that particular point.

The last question: On Joseph you mentioned the various forces in his life that work by God’s providence according to His own plan. Was Joseph aware immediately of the forces and the direction that God was making, or did Joseph have insight only after many years of contemplating about everything that happened to him? Should the Christian, therefore, know immediately or does insight come after many years of thinking? Well obviously insight comes after many years of thinking and you find this again in Joseph. Where Joseph finally grasps his insight is in Genesis 50 which is the last chapter, after many years of thinking about the different things that have taken place in his life. And so this is why it behooves the Christian, finally when these things happen you throw yourself into the arms of God, trusting there is a rhyme and there is a reason, though at that particular point you may not know what the reason is. See, that’s what part of faith is; faith is trusting the character of God, even when you don’t know the specifics because after all, if you knew the specifics then really, there goes the trusting of his character.

Let’s turn back to Genesis 38 and continue our Sunday morning series of this portion of Israel’s history. Remember that we’ve said, looking at the series of chapters, from Genesis 37 on through Genesis 50, the story basically concerns Joseph going down into Egypt to prepare the way for the first family, the chosen family, the first Jewish family of history. And the idea was for him to go to prepare a place in the furnace of affliction so that God could then take this family, develop the family and turn it into the nucleus of His coming kingdom. That’s all Joseph narrative.

But then why, we ask, is stuck in the middle of this Joseph narrative in Genesis 38 this seemingly complete discontinuity; why bother with Judah? We said that the reason for this discontinuity is that Judah is the Messianic seed, not Joseph. Joseph is just a tool in the stories; Joseph is going to be used but the basic story does not track with Joseph; it tracks with what’s happening with Judah. Joseph goes to Egypt because of Judah. Now this story, both the Joseph and the Judah narratives, have many lessons for us. And these lessons might be best seen if we think of how we look at life; whether we look at it from the divine viewpoint or whether we look at it from the human viewpoint. “As a man thinks in his heart, so is he,” and because of that principle at any given point you are operating on human viewpoint principles or you are operating on divine viewpoint principles. Every one of us is making a daily choice in the matter.

The particular area we want to look at is this area of circumstances. Every life is surrounded by circumstances and therefore much of the problems that you encounter on a daily basis are encounters with various adverse circumstances. So let’s look at how these two positions see these circumstances; make sure that we are gathering from the story more than just the story but some principles that we can take away and apply.

If we look at life from the human viewpoint is that chance is in back of all and in particular what the “all” in modern vernacular is environment and heredity. Environment and heredity are always looked upon as the main shaping forces. If I am what I am not because of my genes, then it must be because of my environment, and a lot of determinist psychology is based on this point. A lot of educational theory as I will show you in a moment is based on this point. A lot of the coming collision between you, if you are a Bible-believing Christian, and the ever increasing power of the state will be on this simple little axiom of faith. This is not theory; this is coming out in our own generation in the form of practice. Now if one believes this, really believes it, that chance is in back of all, and that the forces that shape me are my environment and my heredity, then there follows from this a certain very practical conclusion; one that is unavoidable, one that must be followed, and that is that I must have guidance from those who know these principles best, those who know them and those who can control them. This is always followed, as night follows day, once you commit yourself to that belief then automatically whether you deny it, whether you resist it, whatever you do you are going to act that way. And therefore we have people following, all the way from Plato, who says that society must be run by the philosopher kings on down through Karl Marx to the modern welfarists. And we have a great many people who profess to be the spokesman to protect us all from breathing and other things that cause cancer.

So we have this tremendous emphasis on government control; the problem we have to face as Bible-believing Christian is if Ralph Nader speaks for all, then who controls Ralph Nader? In other words, where do you locate your final point of control? Is it to be in the elite, the Ralph Naders of this world, or the philosopher kings of Plato, or is it to be somewhere else? Once you commit yourself to traveling that path, unfortunately you have a great dilemma because you never can figure out where it is you’re going to locate your final point of reference.

If you doubt all this and say this is just so much theory, how about this one for size. Someone handed me this article that was in this week’s Avalanche Journal, an article that cites Dr. Jerry Bergman, who’s an educational psychologist at Bowling Green State University. Says Dr. Bergman: “If you and your spouse have IQ’s above 80, earn more than $8,000 a year, have no serious emotional problems, and know how to care for children, you would receive a license from the government to have a baby. If you failed one of these requirements you and you mate would not be allowed to become parents. Said Dr. Bergman, ‘Many scientists are thinking very seriously about the licensing of parents and thinking of it as inevitable.’ [end quote] Last December he wrote a magazine article exploring the possibilities of a new government program and interestingly most of the response to that magazine article were from teachers, psychologists and school administrators who said it’s about time we looked into something like this.”

Is this just theory or am I right that as night follows day, “as a man thinks in his heart, so is he.” “As more and more people accept this and as more and more people sheer away and deviate from the Scriptures then there’s more and more emphasis on the fact that somewhere else, other than God, they must be controlled. The state must be transformed into a substitute surrogate God to replace the absentee God of the Scriptures. But if we are to go with the divine viewpoint we have to say that sovereignty is in back of all, not chance. And if that’s the case we can still acknowledge the role of environment, we can still acknowledge the role of heredity. We accept those but we just simply say that under the wide ranging comprehensive sovereignty of God who is in control of the environment and who is in control of heredity. We’ll see these come out very clearly in the stories of the Joseph and Judah narratives.

Take Joseph, for example. Let’s look at him from the standpoint of environment and heredity. Again, here’s Joseph; from the standpoint of heredity he obtains an aggressive nature from his father and mother. Joseph could have reacted and said that’s not fair, God why did you work my genes so that I have this aggressive nature; I can’t help it, I didn’t consult you, I wasn’t privy to the plan of my genetic design; why am I given this particular nature. He has an aggressive nature. So Joseph, in other words, is shaped by his heredity. And the answer is very simple if you’ve been following the Sunday morning series; who is it that controlled who it was that would be Joseph’s father and Joseph’s mother? Who is it that made sure that Jacob, his father, would marry just the right women and have the women programmed in a situation where the genetic material would be there to produce just the nature that God wanted in this boy Joseph. Obviously not chance but God’s sovereignty.

And then let’s look at Joseph’s environment. Joseph, we said, was surrounded by an unwise father and surrounded by hateful brothers. Isn’t this the family environment that’s so vitally shapes people’s personality? Of course it is. But who controls the environment of the family? What does the stories that we’ve been reading say? Again and again and again it’s the hand of God working through and in spite of the environment. So therefore we don’t have to make the government the god, the substitute god, because we have the real God. Why take a cheap counterfeit when you can have the real thing? That’s the story of Genesis and this is why Bible-believing Christians are so anti big government; that is consistent Bible-believing Christians. They just don’t vote the party line because they happen to be a Republican or Democrat all their life. They vote according to the Scriptures; the Scriptures mean enough so they hold the candidates of their particular party against these principles and say that we have as much right to articulate Christian principles as our pagan neighbor has his right to articulate his pagan principles. The Bible-believing Christian or the consistent one argues there is no such thing as neutrality; that either one principle or the other one prevails. And we don’t sit passively by; we have to carry this out into the environment.

We’ve looked at Joseph and we’ve seen that Joseph is a combination of his heredity; Joseph is a combination of his environment. Joseph was not allowed to be born because the government gave a license to Jacob, because Jacob had an IQ of over 80 and made over $8,000 year and had no emotional problems. Joseph was permitted because God demanded it; God used Joseph, regardless of the IQ of Judah, or the IQ of Jacob or his income, it didn’t figure into the case. What figured into the case was what God was doing.

Now in Genesis 38 we move to the second character, Judah. In this case, and as we finish Genesis 38 this morning, keep in mind the same principles. How is the principle of heredity being used here? As you read the story do you notice how heredity is working together for good? Do you notice how environment is working together for good? And do you notice that both are working together for good in the complete absence of a licensing government.

Let’s look at Genesis 38:12; “And in process of time the daughter of Shua, Judah’s wife died; and Judah was comforted, and went up unto his sheepshearers to Timnath, he and his friend Hirah the Adullamite. [13] And it was told Tamar, saying, Behold thy father in law goes up to Timnath to shear his sheep. [14] And she put her widow’s garments off from her, and covered her with a veil, and wrapped herself, and sat in an open place, which is by the way to Timnath; for she saw that Shelah was grown, and she was not given unto him to wife. [15] When Judah saw her, he thought her to be a whore; because she had covered her face. [16] And he turned unto her by the way, and said, Go to, I pray thee, let me come in unto thee; (for he knew not that she was his daughter in law.) And she said, What wilt thou give me, that thou may come in unto me? [17] And he said, I will send thee a kid from the flock. And she said, Wilt thou give me a pledge, till thou send it? [18] And he said, What pledge shall I give thee? And she said, Thy signet, and thy bracelets, and thy staff that is in thine hand. And he gave it her, and came in unto her, and she conceived by him. [19] And she arose, and went away, and laid by her veil from her, and put on the garments of her widowhood.

[20] And Judah sent the kid by the hand of his friend the Adullamite, to receive his pledge from the woman’s hand: but he found her not. [21] Then he asked the men of that place, saying, Where is the harlot, that was openly by the way side? And they said, There was no harlot in this place. [22] And he returned to Judah, and said, I cannot find her; and also the men of the place said, that there was no harlot in this place. [23] And Judah said, Let her take it to her, lest we be shamed: behold, I sent this kid, and thou hast not found her. [24] And it came to pass about three months after, that it was told Judah, saying, Tamar thy daughter in law hath played the harlot; and also, behold, she is with child by whoredom. And Judah said, Bring her forth, and let her be burnt. [25] When she was brought forth, she sent to her father in law, saying, By the man, whose these are, am I with child: and she said, Discern, I pray thee, whose are these, the signet, and bracelets, and staff. [26] And Judah acknowledged them, and said, She hath been more righteous than I; because that I gave her not to Shelah my son. And he knew her again no more. [27] And it came to pass in the time of her travail, that, behold, twins were in her womb. [28] And it came to pass, when she travailed, that the one put out his hand: and the midwife took and bound upon his hand a scarlet thread, saying, This came out first, [29] And it came to pass, as he drew back his hand, that, behold, his brother came out: and she said, How hast thou broken forth? This breach be upon thee: therefore his name was called Perez. [30] And afterward came out his brother, that had the scarlet thread upon his hand: and his name was called Zerah.”

Now this is a story to be interpreted in line with all the other stories. The big theme is God trying to prevent His first family from becoming contaminated culturally and God is taking precautions that this occurs. In the process of time in verse 12 is over many years. This goes on for at least two decades before the episode of our time.

Now the thing to notice about Judah, let’s take a little inventory in verse 12 and see where Judah is. What has he done? Judah is the key actor; it’s not Tamar. It’s very interesting as you read this text and it’s one of those texts that’s delightful because it always offends legalists, to think that such things are in the Scriptures. Well, I don’t know what world you live in but in the world I live in those things go on and since I’m interested in living in the real world and not an ideal world in my pious imagination, therefore I am thankful that the Scriptures address these kinds of problems. And in Judah’s case we have him as the key actor; not Tamar. Tamar is never rebuked, incidentally, for anything in the story. It’s very interesting; people become a little more pious than God when they read these kinds of things. Nowhere is Tamar rebuked for what she did; the only rebuke in the story goes to Judah. Judah is the one who’s the Messianic seed, and what has Judah done? He’s married the wrong woman, so he comes down here, he marries this woman, he has three sons by her.

Now God didn’t tell him to marry this woman, or Shua’s daughter, he didn’t marry this woman by divine command. There’s not an evidence in the text that he ever consulted his father, that he ever consulted his mother. That’s remarkable in the light of the fact that both Jacob, Isaac and Abraham were very concerned about who they married, and yet this man goes out unconcerned about who he marries; he doesn’t care, which is an expression of his general attitude toward the will of God in his life. Frankly he doesn’t care what happens, but God cares and God has a plan and that plan is going to take place. And what is the plan? The plan is to produce the Messianic seed through this boy. The boy may not like it; the boy may run, the boy may deviate but God’s plan will come to pass.

So the boy marries the wrong woman, without consulting anyone and he produces three sons, Er, Onan and Shelah. All three sons are rejected as the Messianic seed. It’s remarkable, isn’t it; he undertakes all this fine effort to build a family and God says I will destroy your family; you built your family without consulting me and therefore you will not have your family, and so he loses all of them in death except Shelah, the last one, and he goes on but basically spins off of the central biblical purview of the point of history here, so wasted effort. Add about twenty years or so wasted; wasted because a man made a big decision without consulting God, without praying about it, without thinking once of his obligations, because he wanted to what he wanted to do when he wanted, with whom he wanted, how he wanted and the heck with God. That was his attitude; very clearly that was his attitude. Yet Judah can’t get away from God’s plan; it is going to trap him in the end.

Let’s see what else he does. The one wise thing he does is select Tamar. You can see that in verse 6, here as a father he exercised responsibility for his sons in giving them guidance on whom they picked out for the wives. And here he was very interested in Tamar. Now he does something right in verse 6. Then in verse 11 he reverses himself. After having picked the girl for his son that was correct, that was God’s woman, then he turns around in verse 11 and rejects her; he sends her back to daddy and hopes, as I indicated last week, if you have a King James there, “for he said, Lest peradventure he die also, as his brethren did,” should be in a parenthesis because that expresses Judah’s mental attitude. That’s what was on his mind; he pretended to be very concerned about Tamar’s welfare. He wasn’t concerned about Tamar’s welfare; he was concerned about Judah’s welfare. And he was worried that since two of his sons who had married this woman died, maybe she had a bug or something and therefore he didn’t want his third son to die so he sort of excommunicated her and put her in quarantine with daddy.

Unfortunately, Judah is no more going to be successful in getting Tamar out of his life than he was in trying to produce the Messianic seed through the wrong woman. See, that’s what these stories are saying. Here he is, this big long episode of forming a family, thinking he’s going to do it his way and the whole family is cratered, the whole family is destroyed. This is just an abortive attempt. He comes down to here and he wants to exclude the right woman and he can’t get rid of her, and that’s the story of the rest of chapter 38, like a bad penny Tamar keeps coming back into his life. She’s not a bad penny, she happens to be God’s penny, worth more than a penny but she keeps coming back. Why? Because that’s God’s sovereign will.

Let’s look at the details. Shua dies, the daughter of Shua dies it says in verse 12 and that’s significant because this woman can’t be over 40 when she dies, and this is a time in biblical history when there was great longevity. People were living a lot longer than they do now; for a woman to die at 40 would be like today a woman dying at 28. It’s abnormally young for a woman to die. So there in verse 12 you have evidence once again of God’s cursing on this whole entire family; two sons dead and his wife dead. Now an early death, obviously, is not always due to sin but in this particular story it is.

Another thing about verse 12 that sets you up for the rest of the story is that obviously Judah is a sexually active man and the loss of his wife makes him vulnerable here to what is going to take place. Now he doesn’t have the gift of celibacy, other men like Paul did. If Paul was married, and there’s discussion about that, if the apostle Paul in the New Testament was married and he lost his wife, he maintained celibacy for the rest of his life. He maintained it not because he didn’t have any sex drive; he maintained it because the drive to produce in God’s plan exceeded his sex drive and therefore because of that it simply became an impediment to him and he forewent the right he had to be married. Judah, however, isn’t of that kind of caliber spiritually and so this leaves him vulnerable.

Now let’s watch what happens. In Genesis 38:13-14 Tamar realizes that she’s been cheated. The key to this story is the contract of verse 11. In the contract of verse 11 the deal was that the girl, if she went back to her father’s house would stay there only as long as it took Shelah to become eligible to marry. Yes, there would be a tremendous age difference between the people but remember, the point was that the genetic material of the first family had to be transmitted. The contract of verse 11 draws emphasis to the fact that God is concerned about heredity and that’s why He’s taking all these precautions. So the contract of verse 11 is the backdrop. In verse 14 she saw that Shelah was grown and she wasn’t given to him—broken contract. And in verse 26 when the story ends, when he comes down he acknowledges his sin; notice the sin that he acknowledges is not the half incest incident; the sin that he acknowledges in verse 26 is the broken contract. So the emphasis here is on the duplicity of Judah, not the shenanigans of Tamar.

Something else to notice. The story is full of comment, except you just have to kind of look at the words carefully to get out of the story what the Holy Spirit put there. When Judah saw her he thought her to be a harlot because she covered her face. Now it’s interesting that the story uses two different words for harlot and a lot turns on the author’s use of these two words. If you have a King James you’ll notice that the word in verse 15 and the word in verse 21 is the same word; it’s translated “harlot.” If you have a modern translation you’ll notice that the modern translators shifted gears when they got to verse 21 and I believe your modern translation says something about a priestess. Now that is going to give us some interesting insight into what is going on with Judah.

In verses 14-15 you have what often happens to traveling salesmen. It happens today and it happened then. And here he is and he’s got a situation involving a prostitute and the word here is zanah, which comes from the Hebrew verb to fornicate; it’s the common term for a prostitute and it is not going to be used in verse 21 for reasons we’ll discuss when we get there. Right here, so far, in verse 14 and 15 it’s just a common business type situation. “And he turned unto her by the way, and said, I pray thee, let me come in unto you.” The price, in verse 17 was a kid, and we can estimate that to be about $200 so she was not a cheap street walker by any means. Now why was the situation of prostitution brought up here? It’s to show the decline in the moral stature and character of the first family. Here you’ve got the Messianic seed and here you have him actively tolerating and getting involved with prostitution.

If you want to see the ramifications of that moral judgment turn to Revelation 22; in Revelation 22:15 we have a statement in the Scriptures concerning prostitution. The Bible makes it clear that men do not get excluded from the kingdom of God because they have sin problems. I want to clear up a point here. It looks when you read at Revelation 22:15, it says, “For outside,” that is outside of the eternal kingdom of God, this is the last chapter, all chances for transfer have been rendered null and void by this point. “For without,” that means outside, “are dogs, and sorcerers, whoremongers [fornicators]” that would be the prostitutes, “murdered, and idolaters, and whosoever loves and makes a lie.” The key to those sins mentioned in verse 15 is the last one, “whoever loves them” and does it. In other words they are sin patterns that have become life dominating patterns where there is no attempt to deal with them. Verse 15 is not calling for moral perfection; moral perfection obviously is called for by God but its imputed to us through the Lord Jesus Christ. Verse 15 is a sobering reminder that where you have people who do not attempt to cope with their sin problem and just let things go, and moreover love and participate and plan and carry on, as a prostitute would, you have got evidence that the final sin of unbelief is being committed. 1 Corinthians 6:9 lists all of these and says that Christians engaged in these at one time before they became Christians and may have for a short time after becoming Christian, so the Bible is not perfectionist, but it does say that where these sins are never dealt with and never resisted, or never worked on, then we have, frankly, damning unbelief at the root of them.

So it’s in that environment that Judah must be interpreted in verses 14, 15 and 16 of Genesis 38. In other words, his moral character sees nothing wrong, because in verse 16, again in the King James here you see a parenthesis injected in the middle of verse 16 [“(for he knew not that she was his daughter-in-law)”]and that correctly interprets his mental attitude. See the author’s style is that when he wanted to depict the mental attitude of one of them he would always parenthesize it, and in verse 16 you see that literary device again, and here he’s simply saying the only qualm he might have had was had he known the girl was his daughter-in-law. In other words, it wasn’t that she was a prostitute, it was just well, thank the Lord, she’s not a daughter-in-law. So it shows you the moral means of judgment that Judah was using; it gives you an idea of where he’s at.

Now in verse 18 this girl is very, very creative, a marvelous little tactic she pulls, and you don’t catch it until you know the culture of the time. She pulled a stunt on Judah that not only makes him look immorally stupid but just frankly it makes him look stupid because what she asks of him is the key identity that he would have. Now in the King James it says “Thy signet, and thy bracelets,” well, it’s not bracelets, it means cord. Let me show you what was going on. In the ancient world they didn’t have checks, so when you wrote something out or you signed a document it wasn’t on a piece of paper, it was on a piece of clay that looked like this; and it was soft and therefore malleable when you could mark on it. And these kinds of documents have been dug up by the tens of thousands. In the latest excavations up in Syria, up north of Ugarit, there’s a big library that was found, and this library, just in one room had 55,000 to 75,000 of these things. And what they represent as far as they know from cracking the language is they just represent simple transactions that the townspeople were engaged in; they’d make the transaction and they would file the contract like we would file receipts. They didn’t have paper to do it, they had clay. So they picked up the clay and they would have it in soft blocks like this, and the man would come along and he’d sign his name on the block, except most men didn’t know how to sign their name because writing, at that time in history wasn’t alphabetized or where it was starting to as here in the phonetic alphabet of the Canaanites, proto Hebrew, they still didn’t really know it, only professional scribes knew it. So you’d go to a professional scribe and have that scribe make you a little roll that looked like this. And there’d be a hole in that roll and you’d put a string around it so it went around your neck, you carried this thing around your neck, and that was a little roll, it had a handle on it and when you came to sign your name you’d take that thing off your neck, put it on a piece of soft clay and roll it out and as it rolled out your name would be pushed into the clay. Then they’d take the soft clay and bake it and it would harden, and that’s the contract.

This girl is pretty swift here, she picks off his signet that he has that he can’t transact any business without it. So it would be like somebody pulling your Visa card or your credit cards; she walks off with all his credit cards. Not only does she do that but she is so shrewd that she takes his staff. Now what was his staff? The staff was the emblem of his business. What business was Judah in? The sheep ranching business. And what was the tool of his business? The staff. So she not only walks off with his credit cards, she walks off with the tools that he needs for his business. She’s going to make sure she sees him again; a very smart girl.

Then in verse 19 she arises from this and she takes off the veil and puts on the garments of her widowhood. That’s to show you that Tamar is not involved in prostitution as such in the story. She’s not rebuked for this, she engages in it and this is to show that it wasn’t habitual with her.

Now another commentary, verse 20-22, after she leaves, and he tries to pay her off because he wants to get his credit card and his tools back, now they can’t find her. And in verse 21 he sends his best friend, the Adullamite up there and he wanders around trying to find the girl. But when he asks for the girl he doesn’t ask for the prostitute, he asks for the priestess. And what is he doing asking for a priestess; didn’t Judah tell him what went on. Well, the word for priestess, q^edeshah, a completely different word than that zanah word that I showed you before. The priestess was a girl that was kept in the confines of the temple and the religion at that particular time emphasizes fertility and they had what we call a doctrine of sympathy, meaning that if you could get nature to do something over here, then maybe you could get nature to do something over here. And so in the spring time particular they would have orgiastic rites and sexual intercourse and it would be with these priestesses, and the idea wasn’t just for the sake of an orgy, the idea was that they were to get the process of fertility going so that when they planted the seeds in the field the same force, the fertility force that operated in the human body, would operate in the soil, and it’s called the doctrine of sympathy; that is, one part of nature will be sympathetic and coordinate with another part of nature that operates in a similar way. So hence you have these tremendous fertility rites and the priestesses were used in these fertility rites.

So now, here the man comes, he’s trying to find the girl, he doesn’t ask for her as a prostitute, he asks for her as a priestess. Now the question: what does that tell you about the relationship of Judah the Jew to the Adullamite, the Canaanite, in their business. Both these guys were business partners. Obviously the closest male friend that Judah had in the story isn’t one of his brothers. By this time he lived away from his father, he lived away from his family, away from his brothers. So who was his friend? His friend is the Canaanite, the Adullamite, and it’s his friend that is interpreting Judah’s mind. When Judah sends him to pay off the prostitute, his friend, who is in business daily with this man and obviously knows his mind, thinks that what his business partner did was have sexual intercourse with a priestess in one of the Baalite fertility cults. So he goes up and instead of asking for the prostitute asks for the priestess. Now this is the second commentary on Judah’s character. The first one is in the first word in verse 15 when he’s involved in prostitution. That’s a commentary on his moral character. But verse 21 is a commentary on his religious character.

Turn back to Genesis 12 when the first family was separated from pagan culture, came out of Ur in the person of Abraham, Abraham comes down into the land and what is the first thing you read that Abraham does when he gets in the land God promised him. Genesis 12:7, the first thing that Abraham does is build an altar. Why does he build an altar? To build a counter testimony to the false doctrine of the false religions of the culture. In other words, he erects something that will testify to whatever exists at that point in history to the Word of God. It says he builds an altar to Jehovah, meaning he’s building an altar saying to the people that go by this altar every day, look, Jehovah God is the real God, not Baal, not somebody else, not somebody else, God! So Abraham makes this strong distinction between true religion and false religion.

Now four generations later what do we have with the sons of Jacob? We have a total breakdown of the separation of religion. Now we have a total intermingling. Now the man’s closest friend and one man who works daily with another man surely knows his character, and business partners know each other very well this way. When you find something like verse 21 and a business partner’s interpreting his buddy’s intentions this way, what do you conclude has been Judah’s testimony to his partner in business? Zilch; his partner as far as he knows sees no problem thinking of Judah as carrying on syncretistic ecumenical religion. It’s like going down to the first liberal church or something, no idea that this is apostate, just go ahead, mix in it, same religion, you know, all roads lead to heaven; that kind of thing.

So not only does verse 15 talk about his moral character but verse 21 talks about his religious deterioration. You see, there’s a serious commentary going on all through the story.

Now in verse 24-26 you have his piety. In verse 24 he calls her forth to be burned; now that’s interesting. Somebody after the early morning service asked me why did he do that, because doesn’t verse 11 say that she was in her father’s house. Well, if the girl’s in her daddy’s house, what right does Judah have to come over to this other guy’s house, take his own daughter out of the house and kill her. Do you know what right he’s got? The contract of verse 11; according to the contract of verse 11 she is living in her father’s house but she’s under contract with Judah to stand by for future marriage with the seed of Judah. But it’s the contract, according to verse 14, it was the contract that on Judah’s part Judah had already broke the contract. Judah had no intention of fulfilling the contract; now all of a sudden in verse 24 he gets very pious, now we must enforce the contract. How come you didn’t enforce it before? Well now it’s easier because somebody else screwed up, and it’s always easier to smash somebody else that screws up than interpret yourself. And so now he gets very pious and now we’ve got to deal with this humongous thing.

And so verse 25, the clever girl trots out the Visa card and the tools. Judah, whose are these, plop, plop! Wouldn’t it be great to have a drama and the camera zooms in on Judah’s face when he sees this laid out on the table; you could imagine what happens. And in verse 26 his admission. “She hath been more righteous than I; because that I gave her not to Shelah my son.” In other words, he comes to the point of repentance over the sin of verse 11. I want you to see what the story emphasizes; it doesn’t emphasize what we would consider the bizarre means that Tamar used but it emphasizes Judah, the leader, and why he set up a situation in which Tamar almost, you could say, was forced to do what she did.

But that’s not where the story ends; you can say well, why are those last four verses on there. You always want to remember this, that the writers of these stories finish the story where they want you to finish. Now if we were writing the story, it would seem like verse 26 is a good ending. Why those four verses tacked on all about the birth and the strange thing where she has twins and you’ve got the situation where the twins are born and in the middle of the birth process they’re reversed. What do you suppose the reason of those last four verses is? Well, what’s the main theme of the story? The production of what? The Messianic seed. Now already you’ve seen the theme of twins. Where did you see that before? Back a few chapters when who… what was the other set of twins? Jacob and Esau. Now why do you suppose that twins focus so much in this story, because you see, that’s what God’s teaching us.

And today this lesson is very important. These two arguments of heredity and environment are their weakest at the point of twins, because where you have twins you’ve got your genetic material the closest and you’ve got your environmental material the closest because the two children are being raised together at the same stage in the home. So what God is doing is He’s saying look, I give to Isaac twins; not just to show you people that it’s not all heredity and environment here you’ve got one boy out of that first set of twins, Esau, and he’s in hell today; you’ve got the other boy out of that first set of twins and he’s in heaven today. Now was it really due just to common genes? Was it really due just to a common environment or was it due to the fact that I am the sovereign God and I intend to carry out My plan through twins or non-twins, through this circumstance, or through that circumstance. See the argument; it comes out here again.

Again we have a set of twins; again we have the arguments of heredity and environment reduced down to their very simple basics. And what happens here? One and only one of these twins is going to register in the genealogy of Jesus Christ. Now to give adventure to the story, verse 28, during the birth process the non-Messianic twin starts to be born first. And that’s why you have the story about the midwife; she ties a scarlet thread on the little baby’s hand. Then, because apparently of turmoil during the birth canal somehow in verse 28 the second twin is born and as the second twin is born his name is Perez which means the breech, or the one that’s a surprise, because the midwife says how is it that you’ve broken forth? In other words, it’s a very rare kind of thing to her and her experience; how did this happen; she is a professional midwife and she expresses, exclaims surprise over this kind of thing happening. It’s an unusual thing when a baby is born for this thing to happen. Why is it? Because God wanted His Messianic seed to be born first and his name properly fitting what God was doing.

In conclusion turn to Matthew 1 again so you can see where it all winds up. See what a powerful argument these stories are, to make God trustworthy over both heredity and environment? You see, in Matthew 1:3 it says, “And Judah begot Perez and Zerah of Tamar; and Perez begot Hezron; and Hezron begot Ram; [4] And Ram begot so and so, and so and so and so and so. What’s that? That’s the line of the Lord Jesus Christ. Now during that birth process God thought it important to make a distinction between those twins and He died. It’s as though one of them wanted to be born first but then God’s boy was born first. So now you’ve got God controlling all the circumstances, you’ve God controlling all the genetic and environmental features.

Now what does this mean? Well, it means that to produce the genealogy we are studying here in Matthew 1, to produce that genealogy, God, who is sovereign, did not need two licensed parents with IQs above 80, with salaries above $8,000, who had no emotional problems, because God is the One who works all things out together for good. We don’t need a surrogate, cheap, counterfeit god in the guise of HEW or anybody else. These things are God’s prerogative to control and no man knows enough to control all these factors so the best thing we can do is bug off and trust God to work in these areas.

We’re going to conclude by singing….