God's Faithfulness to Desperate Sinners

Genesis 38

This Sunday was a special service including baptisms and welcoming of new members to the congregation.

Choose from the options below: an audio recording of the sermon, video of the baptisms and new members, or video recordings of each individual baptism & membership candidate's testimony.

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Click on this link to open the Scripture passage in a new window: Genesis 38   ^ESV   

Video of baptisms & membership portions of the service:

Video of individual testimonies:

Sadra Pinkerton

Tim Friesen

Connie Friesen

Patricia Johnson

Joel Johnson

Karen Langelaar

Clint Langelaar

Daniel Haynes

Josiah Haynes

Josiah Reddekopp

Genesis 38:6-30 - God's Faithfulness to Desperate Sinners

In these three Sundays of December we call "Advent"-l eading to Christmas-my plan is to highlight three moments in history when it looked like people's sin nearly prevented Christmas from ever happening. The first of these is in Genesis 38.

 [read vv 14-23] An ancient Hebrew manuscript, in verse 14, reads, "...in the division of the ways where all eyes look".[i] Because it seems this place, "Enaim", was at a fork in the road on the way to the town of Timnah. By the sound of it, many scholars believe that when a traveller came to this spot, depending on where he was going, he had to stop and look around at the landscape around him, to check which way he should go. So in verse 14 we have this detail of the name of the place by the side of a fork in the road called "Enaim", which in Hebrew means "eyes". This is a place where travellers had to look carefully to see where they were going. This is a place where Tamar and Judah both made critical decisions about which way they should go, though neither of them knew where the road would eventually lead. This is a place this morning, it's my prayer, where some of you will make a choice-like the choices represented in these baptisms this morning-to turn here, at this fork in the road of your lives, and follow Jesus.

What I want to do this morning is to take a look back down the road which had led Judah and Tamar to this fork, and then to look ahead from here to see where the path they each chose led them. What we are going to find is messy. Life is messy: it was for Judah and Tamar and it certainly is for us, isn't it? We all know that the choices we make have consequences; sometimes huge, life-changing consequences. These consequences often are mercifully orchestrated by God to bring us face to face with our sin. How we respond to this conviction of sin will determine the rest of our lives forever. The Bible affirms that we are each responsible for the choices we make. But the Bible affirms something else as well, which we will see: that in spite of our choices and our mess, God is faithful and His promises are good. Is God calling you, today, to confess your sin and trust in His Son?

Genesis 38 doesn't start off on a good note. Judah leaves his father, Jacob, and his brothers behind and moves in with a Canaanite friend. But then he meets a pagan, Canaanite woman named Shua who does not know the God of his fathers, and unwisely he marries her. If you know the story of Joseph, I'm sure this account of his brother Judah's mistakes and misfortunes will shock you. How can two brothers be so different? Joseph is righteous and self-disciplined; Judah is self-centred and foolish. In many ways, all that happens in chapter 38, in all its messy details, is the result of Judah's decision to leave his family and his faith behind. But still, as God was faithful to Joseph, God is faithful to Judah. God does not leave Judah behind.

2 Timothy 2:13 says that "if we are faithless, [God] remains faithful--for he cannot deny himself." We see in this chapter that over and over again, Judah is faithless. But, speaking for myself, I am not going to look down on him for that. I know how often I have acted faithlessly, and I know that every one of you have too. But in the middle of our messiness I want you to take from this Scripture the knowledge that God is faithful. You see, God made a promise to Judah's father and grandfather. And Judah turns out to be an important part of how God keeps that promise.

Judah's and Tamar's paths first crossed back in verse 6, when Judah went looking to find a wife for his firstborn son, Er-who would have been no more than about 15 years old at the time. And it's interesting that Er's name, spelled backwards in Hebrew, means "wicked". Because that's what he was. And for his wickedness, verse 7 says "...the LORD put him to death." This left Tamar in a difficult situation. As a widow, few young men would now desire to marry her. She was also bound to Jacob's family. With no children and no prospect of having children, once Jacob died, she would have no one to provide for her and take care of her.

But there was a custom in those times, later made into a law by God in Deuteronomy 25, called a "leverite marriage". Now a "leverite marriage" sounds odd but was a gracious provision for women in Tamar's position. It required that the dead man's next brother should marry his widow and so provide children and protection for her. So Judah seems to have this custom in mind in verse 8 [read].

Again however, Tamar is hurt, but this time she is also shamed by her brother in law. Instead of providing for her he takes advantage of her and while she is under Jacob's protection, Onan abuses her privately while acting the part of a husband in public (what should we call it when he uses her like this, shames her and leaves her with nothing?). [read vv 9-10]. So what does Judah do, now that both his sons have followed so well in his selfish and faithless footsteps? Instead of repenting and trusting God, he sends Tamar back to her parents' home in order to keep his third son safe from her. You see, he thinks his sons died because of Tamar when in fact they died for their wickedness. What he does here is wicked also--he pretends like he is intending to let her marry his surviving son but makes up this excuse about him being too young to marry. The truth is, he just wants to keep her away from him in case he dies too. Judah seems to be pinning his hopes on this son to continue his family name. But he sins in this by withholding his son from Tamar. His refusal prevents Tamar from having a chance to have a child legally and so to continue the line of Judah's firstborn, her first husband.

Years later, Judah's wife died, leaving him a widower. Meanwhile, Tamar, still dressing like a widow, still waiting on his promise, hears that Jacob is going to Timnah. So she puts on the clothes of a betrothed woman, veil and all (since after all she is actually betrothed to Judah's third son) and goes to meet him at the place called "Eyes", at the fork in the road.

Now I don't think she intended to seduce him. I think she wore the veil to remind him of his promise. But Judah, when he saw an unknown woman by the side of the road, mistook her for a prostitute and propositioned her. And she sees an opportunity here, within the letter of the law, to get for herself a child and an heir for her first husband. The laws of inheritance sometime later stated that her child would inherit 2/3 of Judah's estate. It's quite likely that this was the law of the land even at this time. It's important that we understand what's happening here. At that time prostitution was generally acceptable. The Law of Moses had not yet been written, though in any case the Canaanites were quite pagan-these are Tamar's people and the people Judah was living among. Their wickedness is the stuff of archaeological legend. But as we see in verse 24, Judah himself considers adultery to be a crime worthy of death. He is now a widow but she is officially engaged. So in his hypocrisy, it's fine for him to hire a prostitute but not for her to find another man with whom to have a child. This is their situation when she says to him, in verse 16, "What will you give to me, that you may come in to me?" With those words she made the decision to prostitute herself, to take for herself what was her right since the men in this family were not trustworthy. And so she demands that he leave her a pledge of payment-his staff and his signet, the seal that he wore on a chord around his neck-his driver's license and i.d.

Later on he sends a servant with the payment they arranged but she is nowhere to be found. And Judah plans on forgetting the whole incident until he hears the news that Tamar has engaged in prostitution (that's what the words translated "immorality" suggest in Hebrew) [read v 24]. So he hypocritically calls for her to be burned for her crime (remember she was supposed to be engaged to be married). But Tamar has an ace up her sleeve and sends Judah his seal and staff as proof that if she was guilty, so was he [read vv 25-26]. Finally Judah repents. After this, he is a changed-man and returns to his father.

What a mess. But we all get ourselves into messes, right? We need to learn to recognize signs of God at work in our lives when our messes bring us to a fork in the road-to see with spiritual eyes at the place called "Eyes". Now I want to point out to you where this chapter fits into Genesis. Chapter 37 ends with Joseph being sold by his brothers to slave traders who sold him to an Egyptian. Chapter 39 continues the story of Joseph right from where chapter 37 left off. So why does chapter 38 sidetrack the reader with this sordid tale of Judah and his sons and Tamar? The answer is that what happens at the end of chapter 38 is very important in the whole story of Scripture: the birth of Tamar and Judah's son, Perez. The whole rest of this chapter explains how Perez legally becomes Judah's firstborn heir. His birth is important-and the way it happens draws our attention to what God is doing in spite of all the wickedness, sin and mess of his people.

[read vv 27-30] This was probably not the first birth this midwife had attended, but she is amazed by the unusual birth. Humanly speaking, Zerah should have been the firstborn. But Perez manages to wrestle his way out ahead of his brother. Humanly speaking, when Judah ran away from his father and his father's faith, that should have been the last we heard of him. But God, not Judah, was in control of events. So in spite of Judah's selfish sinful unfaithfulness, God was faithful and His purpose could not be thwarted. It may be difficult at times for us to see, through all of our mess, that God is working in our lives for His own purposes, and for the good of His people. And oh, how great is the good that God had planned through this little baby boy, Perez, his unlikely parentage and his unusual birth! [read Matt 1:1-3, --skip 32 generations-- v16]

Judah was no saint. Neither was Tamar. But Perez' descendants became a great clan, important in Israel, and through his line the whole world is blessed in Jesus Christ. All this is what God did for Judah when all he did was acknowledge his sin, humble himself, repent and return to the God of his fathers. Some of you here today need to repent also-acknowledge your sin, humble yourselves and return to the one true God through His Son Jesus Christ. Your story is not yet written. No one but God yet knows what He might do through your simple act of faith when you believe in Jesus Christ and choose to follow Him.

[i] (Gill 1809), "Gen 38:14".