Genesis 38:12-30 • The Worst Christmas Story Ever
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(This transcript was prepared using software tools and has not been reviewed for complete accuracy.)
Let's look in our Bibles this morning at Genesis chapter 38. Genesis chapter 38, which may be a strange place to seem to go for a Christmas message. Major Kelly and I keep seeing each other at events during this Christmas season. So when she came today, she said, "What in the world are you going to do with Genesis 38?" It's an awful story. I mean, it is terrible, the things that happen in Genesis 38, and you just have to remember that Christmas is about light coming to darkness because this is a really dark chapter. It's about Judah, who is the older brother of Joseph, and we get his account right after Joseph's brothers sell him into slavery in Egypt.
Let's read this portion of God's Word.
Let's stand, and we'll look at Genesis 38. I'll begin reading in verse 12, which is after Judah has given to his first son a woman named Tamar to Mary. That son dies. He gives Tamar to a second son.
That son dies. And now we'll read what happens in verse 12. "In the course of time the wife of Judah, Shua's daughter, died.
When Judah was comforted, he went up to Temna to his sheepshears, he and his friend Hira, the Adulamite.
And when Tamar," again, that's the one who's already lost two husbands, the daughter-in-law of Judah, "when Tamar was told, "Your father-in-law is going up to Temna to shear his sheep," she took off her widow's garments and covered herself with a veil, wrapping herself up, and sat at the entrance to Ennaim, which is on the road to Temna, for she saw that shallow was grown up and she had not been given to him in marriage.
When Judah saw her, he thought she was a prostitute, for she had covered her face. He turned her at the roadside and said, "Come, let me come into you," for he did not know that she was his daughter-in-law. She said, "What will you give me that you may come into me?" He answered, "I will send you a young goat from the flock," and she said, "If you give me a pledge, until you send it." He said, "What pledge shall I give you?" She replied, "Your signet and your court and your staff that's on your hands," so he gave them to her and went into her and she conceived by him.
Then she arose and went away, taking off her veil. She put on the garments of her widowhood. And then we'll read, she goes back to her father's house and stays with him a while, verse 24. About three months later, Judah was told, "Tamar, your daughter-in-law has been immoral. Moreover, she is pregnant by immorality," and Judah said, "Bring her out and let her be burned."
As she was being brought out, she sent word to her father-in-law, "By the man to whom these belong, I am pregnant." And she said, "Please identify whose these are, the signet and the court and the staff."
Then Judah identified them and said, "She is more righteous than I, since I did not give her to my son, Shella, and he did not know her again. When the time of her labor came, there were twins in her womb, and when she was in labor, one put out a hand, and the midwife took and tied a scarlet thread on his hand, saying, "This one came out first, but as he drew back his hand, behold, his brother came out." And she said, "What a breach you have made for yourself." Therefore, his name was called Peres. Afterward, his brother came out with the scarlet thread on his hand, and his name was called Zera.
Let's pray together.
Holy Father, without question, you give us in Your Word a dark account, much that is wrong, much that causes us even to hesitate to read a portion of Your own Word.
But what is there is so that light would shine out of darkness.
Show us the light, we pray, in Jesus' name. Amen.
Please be seated.
Hey, unto you a child is born.
The words of Gladys Herdman in the best Christmas pageant ever. Do you remember the story? The Herdmans are terrible kids. They are so terrible that the narrator of the best Christmas pageant ever spends the opening paragraph just telling us how horrible these kids are. The six Herdman children lie, smoke, and cuss. They ate donuts that the school kids brought for firemen. They wrote a dirty word on the shell of a girl's turtle, and they put tadpoles in the drinking fountain. The Herdmans are horrible. They go around beating up little kids and stealing from the businesses in town. If there's one good thing about the Herdmans is that they do not go to church because none of the other kids in town want to associate with the Herdmans and church becomes the safety zone.
If you go to church, you don't have to face the Herdmans until one day one of the Herdmans steals a Reese's Peanut Butter Cup from Charlie Bradley. And Charlie Bradley, to be brave, says, "It doesn't matter. I go to Sunday school and we get all the candy we want at Sunday school. It's like a free candy store." Now saying that was a mistake because now the Herdmans want to go to Sunday school and they show up on the day that Mrs. Bradley is picking the cast for the Christmas pageant.
Imogene Herdman wants to be married because she hears that Mary gets to hold a baby and she threatens that anybody else tries to get the part, she is going to shove a stick in their ear.
And she says that her brother is going to get to be Joseph and nobody challenged it, not just because they're afraid of the Herdmans, but because they don't really want to be in the Christmas play anyway.
The Herdmans get the parts and they hear the Christmas story that's familiar to everybody else, but the Herdmans have never heard before. So they ask questions like, "Why don't they call him Bill instead of Jesus?
And why don't they call it revenge at Bethlehem instead of a Christmas pageant? And how does Jesus get to know His name if everybody's calling Him Wonderful Counselor, Prince of Peace?"
It's all wrong, which of course makes it all right because what we are discovering as we see Christmas through the eyes of those who don't know the story but desperately need it is how much we need it to. To be reminded that the Christmas story is not for the prim and proper, not for those who've got it all together, that what God is doing throughout the Scriptures is telling us that He brings light out of darkness, beauty for ashes, that where things have made us ashamed, where we are disappointed when life has gone wrong, God can bring beauty out of that and He only shows it if we're able to read in His Word people who desperately need the story of light that shines into darkness to bring the goodness and the sweetness of the story of Jesus.
Now when you begin to actually see the Scriptures that way, you see them in a different way, it's just not all about these camels and shepherds and nice little angel stories, you actually begin to see the darkness and that's what the Judah story is about. If you read the story of Judah in Genesis, what do you see? Well first of all, you see awful sin.
I mean here is Judah who from the very beginning of the chapter is engaged in transgression, things that he should not be doing. He marries an idolater, which he's been commanded not to do, but he marries a woman who's a Canaanite and the evidence of all that is he raises sons who are apparently very wicked.
I mean the name of the first son is Er, like an error, and that son is so wicked that God kills him.
The second son is named Onan and Judah gives the wife of Er to Onan because in that era, in that culture, in that time, there was no Salvation Army, there were no safety net social services, and so if your husband died, you were supposed to marry his brother, your brother-in-law. And that brother-in-law was supposed to take care of the spouse of the dead brother. By the way, this still happens in much of the world. Some of you may know that. This is known as brother-in-law or Levorite marriage. And in many developing nations, the way in which AIDS spreads so rapidly is if one spouse dies, that spouse's brother...excuse me, the brother of the spouse's husband becomes the next marriage partner, and so the age just spreads to yet another family. And it happens over and over and over again. In this time, you're seeing that what's being happened, what's supposed to happen is that the brother of Er is supposed to take care of Tamar. But Onan, in the passage that I didn't read, sexually abuses her in a way that she will not get pregnant and in a way that he will not have to share any of his property with her progeny.
It's an abusive, horrible relationship.
And so God kills him.
Now Judah has lost two sons who have married Tamar. She is a true femme fatale in his mind.
So he's supposed to marry Tamar to the next son whose name is Shella.
But he makes up a story and says, "Shella's not old enough yet." So when he's old enough, then Tamar, you can marry him. But somehow, like Peter Pan, Shella never grows up.
And Tamar is left alone with an aging father who cannot take care of her. And Judah just turns his back.
He's done this before.
We don't just read about transgression in the life of Judah, but true treachery.
Remember this story of Judah interrupts the accounts of Joseph in the book of Genesis. And Joseph has just been sold by slavery, sold into slavery by his brothers. Remember why he had that multicolored coat and the brothers in jealousy that this is the favored son of Jacob? They sell him into slavery. Guess which of the brothers had the bright idea to sell Joseph into slavery?
That was Judah.
He's treacherous.
He's a transgressor.
And folks, the next part of the story is just plain trash because it gets worse than anything I've said to you so far.
I actually read this part to you. Do you remember what happens next? When Tamar recognizes that Judah is not going to have her marry the man who should take care of her, Shella, she devises a little trick. She hears that Judah is on his way sheep shearing. And so she plants herself by the road dressed as a cultic prostitute.
By this time, Judah's wife has died. And for some sexual release, he decides to sleep with a prostitute by the road. She says, "Well, you got to pay me."
Well I don't have my checkbook.
Well give me some ID.
He does. The signet ring, the cord for holding the sheep, the staff.
She gets pregnant.
He doesn't know, of course, that he has impregnated his own daughter-in-law. He goes home, she goes home, and some months later a report comes to Judah. Your daughter-in-law is immoral. She's expecting. He says, "Burn her!"
But as the order is being carried out, she said, "You know, the man who impregnated me has this ID.
Father-in-law, whose ID is this?"
He says, "It's mine."
Boy, this is a dark tale.
You see some pretty awful sin, don't you? I mean, I made a list, just my own catalog. You get lying, cheating, stealing, abandonment, abuse, adultery, fornication, incest, idolatry, attempted murder, hypocrisy, and I'm sure a good prosecutor could list a few more things.
It's awful.
Why in the world is such awful sin in the Bible so that we would also see amazing grace?
Verse 26, there is Judah's confession. Judah identified the ID, implements, and said, "She is more righteous than I, since I did not give her to my son, Shella, and he did not know her again."
He confesses, and what does God do? Verse 27. "When the time of her labor came, there were twins in her womb." Judah confesses, and God blesses. Now, I must tell you something. It's a pretty lame confession. Well, she's better than I am.
Okay, but do you recognize what you have done to her? Do you recognize how awful this is? You have abused, deprived. You wanted to kill her.
And yet God says, "I'm going to bless you instead." And it's actually, do you recognize a double blessing?
She has twins, Perez and Zera. In that age and that time you recognize that already Judah has lost two sons, now he gets two. And all that would happen in that era to have sons who would be spreading the family influence and wealth, that's not now being established, as God is just kind of blessing beyond Judah's sin. I mean, it's just kind of an incredible statement that God is saying, "I'm willing to do something in a way that shows my grace is greater than sin, that I'm blessing not because that person is good, but because I am good." And that message is what's pervading the rest of Scripture as God is making clear the nature of His grace. He is going to show grace to people who don't deserve it at all.
Why do we need that story?
I think about it in terms of the best Christmas pageant ever. As the Christmas pageant approaches, Mrs. Bradley is troubled because the child that's supposed to be used in the manger to represent the baby Jesus is not going to come.
The mother of the infant says, "I don't want Imogene Herdman to touch my baby."
And so that baby doesn't come.
Imogene hears and has a solution. Imogene says to Mrs. Bradley, "They leave babies in the shopping carts outside the supermarket. I'll go steal one and we can use it."
Well Mrs. Bradley has to kind of explain to Imogene, you know, kidnapped babies are not the best prospects for the baby Jesus.
Imogene doesn't get it, she just shrugs and shakes her head and goes off to the girls room to smoke a cigar to think about it, which sets off the fire alarm, which brings the fire department, which sets a buzz across the town of the Herdmans are in the Christmas pageant and everybody shows up just to see how terrible this thing is going to be.
Well it goes pretty much okay anyway.
I mean there are a few glitches, like at the very end where the final curtain comes down and everybody's supposed to leave, except Imogene Herdman begins to get the idea that now somebody might take away the doll that she's claimed as the baby Jesus that she now loves intensely. And so as they come to take her doll, she steps outside the closing curtain and stands exposed in front of everybody who's still there.
And looking nervous with knobby knees and dirty sneakers, she sings silent night, holy night, shepherds quake at the sight, glories stream from heaven above, heavenly hosts sing hallelujah. Christ the Savior is born. Christ the Savior is born.
And of course the message is if God can redeem Imogene, He can redeem anybody.
But of course it's not just Imogene that's on display in the Bible, it's Judah and Tamar and you and me.
We are so ready to count ourselves out, you know, to look at the dirty laundry in our lives, the priorities, the things that aren't right in our lives, the path we've lived, the parenting we haven't done so well. And we just kind of say, you know, there's so much dirty laundry in my life, the Lord couldn't possibly use or want me. He's just disappointed in me. You know I'm talking about the dirty laundry, I'm going to look down, here's yesterday's jeans and here's Friday's shirt. And I'm not going to go deeper than that.
And we look at the stuff that isn't right and we just kind of hang our heads and say God must be disappointed in me.
But you recognize of course what God was saying was, no, I am going to bless beyond you. If I would bless someone like Judah and bring good out of someone like Tamar and redeem someone like Imogene, then what God is actually saying is that He has a love and a goodness that takes the righteousness of Jesus Christ on our behalf and covers all of our sin. And if you see wrinkles in that white robe, it's not Jesus' fault, it's my fault.
What God is reminding us is that the message of grace is that when we say God must be disappointed in me, He is saying no, I delight in you. But God I've got all this dirty laundry in my life, I'm more like Judah than I want to confess. He said, but I bless Judah to show that I bring grace not because of your goodness but because of my own, says the Lord. And that message is repeated over and over again in Scripture so that we will get it and it comes in such powerful terms because we're so ready to count ourselves out or the people that we think shouldn't be part of the kingdom. And God keeps saying, I'm not upset by the dirty laundry, I actually come prepared to cover it.
And that's the message not just of amazing grace, that is the message of an awesome God. And the awesomeness is actually unfolding here in Scripture in ways that are absolutely astounding to us.
We're not through with the account of Judah here in Genesis 38. You've still got your Bibles open, I know a number of you. And if you would turn to Genesis 49, you would recognize that the story unfolds even more. The blessings to come to Judah are going to come through these two boys, particularly one of them who've been illegitimate through his incestuous relationship with Tamar. God's going to take what's so awful and make it right. In what way?
Genesis 49 and verse 8.
Jacob now is dispensing blessings to his 12 sons.
And Jacob speaks in verse 8 to Judah. "Judah, your brothers shall praise you. Your hand shall be on the neck of your enemies. Your father's son shall bow down before you." Here is wonderful family privilege. Judah, you're going to be the one that all your brothers bow down to. Here these would become the 12 tribes of Israel. And of these 12 tribes, all of them are ultimately going to bow down to Judah.
He's not the oldest. He's not first born. He's certainly not the best of these brothers. And yet he's the one who is getting this blessing. And it's not, by the way, just family privilege. It is ultimately royal privilege. Verse 9 of Genesis 49. Judah is a lion's cub. He is going to grow up to be a lion. Do you remember the name of the kings of Israel to come? They were known as the Lion of Judah. And ultimately the book of Revelation, we read that when Jesus himself comes, he will be known as the Lion of Judah. This royal line is going to have amazing influence. Verse 10 of Genesis 49. "The scepter shall not depart from Judah, his mark of rule and leadership, nor the ruler's staff from between his feet, until tribute comes to him. To him shall be the obedience of the peoples." To Abraham had been promised that he would be a blessing to all peoples. And now we're being told that of his progeny there comes Judah, this awful man. And to Judah actually comes the privilege of being the one who will rule over the peoples through his progeny.
How is that going to happen? It's going to happen because of the amazing insight and plan of an awesome God who dispenses this amazing grace.
How do you know the plan actually works out? Well you know it works out because you remember what the burghers said to us earlier. Did you remember when they lit the Christmas candle?
A decree went up from Caesar Augustus that all the world should be taxed. And everyone went to his own city to be taxed. And Joseph went up from Nazareth in Galilee to Judea.
Judea is the land of whom?
The land of Judah.
To Bethlehem, the house of David because he was of the house and the lineage of David.
The Jesus who would be born was ultimately the great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great grandson of this Judah as God was with precision, with detail and depth, planning the grace. He was so awesome. You have to understand that when God gave this promise through Jacob that Judah would be the one through whom the king of Israel would come, that everyone knew this can't possibly be true. This can't work out. One reason it can't work out is Judah's not first born, he can't be a king. And then you recognize his two sons, Peres and Zera, we don't really know which one is first born. One sticks out his hand and then the other's head comes out first. Which one of them is first born? I mean, even the nurse says, "Man, there's going to be a breach here. This is going to be a family feud."
But it's not just that we don't know which is first born. We know they are both illegitimate.
And according to the laws of Israel, an illegitimate child could not be a citizen of Israel, much less a king of Israel for ten generations as God was preserving the holiness of His name. This can't work out, but it does.
The first book of the Bible, the very first book, excuse me, the first book of the New Testament and the very first verse in the first book of the New Testament, I want you to look at. Matthew 1, 1. Matthew 1, 1.
We are told here that we are being given the book of the genealogy of Jesus Christ, the Son of David, the Son of Abraham. And if you look at verse 3, you'll see familiar names.
Among the predecessors, Judah, the father of Peres and Zera by Tamar. Now these are the two illegitimate boys of an incestuous relationship. They are in the genealogy of Jesus. But it's not supposed to work because they're illegitimate.
You can't be made holy. You can't be a citizen for ten generations.
How does it work out? Keep reading in verse 3. "And Peres became the father of Hezron, and Hezron the father of Ram, and Ram the father of Binadab, and Binadab the father of Nation, and Nation the father of Salmon, and Salmon the father of Boaz by Rahab, and Boaz the father of Obed by Ruth, and Obed the father of Jesse, and Jesse the father of David the king."
Ten generations later, there is this Moabite woman who has lost her husband, and she's gleaning wheat in a field.
And a man named Boaz falls in love with her.
He is the tenth generation since Peres.
And God chooses Boaz and a foreigner named Ruth to continue the line of Judah to go to Jesus.
It's incredible.
As God who knows the detail of all the dirty laundry also plans the detail of covering it.
Not just with detail, with tremendous depth of heart and love.
If you just keep reading kind of verses 5 and 6, it's incredible what unfolds. "Salmon was the father of Boaz by Rahab." Do you remember who she was?
That was the prostitute who hid the spies at Jericho in order that Israel would survive into the Promised Land. And Boaz is the father of Obed by Ruth. She's the Moabites. She's not even an Israeli citizen. She's an outcast of her own people and a widow when her father dies, when she, when her husband dies. And Obed the father of Jesse, and Jesse the father of David the king, and David was the father of Solomon by the wife of Uriah.
Not by his own legal wife, by the wife of Uriah when he slept with Bathsheba and then murdered Uriah.
Boy, what a family line Jesus has.
I mean, did you catch it? I mean, we have Tamar, one who is abused and abandoned and unjustly accused. Then we have Rahab, a prostitute and an outcast in her own nation. Ruth, a foreigner to Israel and a widowed young woman. Bathsheba, an adulteress of King David and a widow of a murdered spouse.
Marie, the final in the list of women who's pregnant by no man she can identify.
What an awful list.
What are we being told?
But sometimes the worst of human wrapping becomes the best package of grace as we are learning over and over and over again God saying, "Listen, I know how dirty the laundry is. I know the details.
You've got things in your life that you just look to God and say, "God, you must be disappointed in me." And he says, "No, I delight in you because when you trust in Jesus Christ, not your goodness but his, he clothes you with his righteousness. He died for your sin. He put the dirty laundry away. He put his righteousness in your place. And for that reason, you may know that when God looks at you, he says, "I know the details, but the depth of my love is so much greater.
I delight in you."
We can hardly believe it. We look at our parenting. We look at our past. We look at our careers. We look at the path behind us. We look at the wrong choices. We look at all the things that aren't right. And we can't believe he would say it, but over and over again he makes it clear. And when he does, it's actually meant to make our hearts sing, to rejoice in the reality of the grace that is so great that it declares that that awesome God would delight in people like you and me and Tamar and Rahab and Bathsheba and still say, "I make my light shine out of darkness." That's when it absolutely looks the best.
How do we know that?
Because when we see it happening, we know it and see it as the grace of God on display too.
At the best Christmas pageant ever, when it was time for the angels to announce the birth of Jesus, Gladys Herdman had the phrase prepared, "Shazam! It's Jesus!"
Mrs. Bradley said she couldn't say that.
So Gladys acquiesced and instead, as the Christmas angel with her dirty sneakers, she just said, "Hey, unto you a child is born."
And that had to suffice.
And when the Herdman brothers who were playing the wise men came forward, they didn't know what gold and frankincense and myrrh was, so they brought a Christmas ham instead.
The ham that had been donated to them, they shared with others.
And of course it went a little bit wrong when the wise men were supposed to go home by a route so that Herod would not discern who they were and where they were going. The boys didn't leave. Instead they recognized that their older brother, Ralph, who was praying Joseph, was ready to give them cigars that said, "It's a boy."
And so they decided that better than going home was to sit and contemplate on this a little while.
All that was wrong is actually made the story so very right.
And it's meant for you and for me to remind ourselves that when Christ came, He came not for the wise, He came not for the pure, He came for those who were like Tamar and Rahab and Ruth and Mary and you and me.
The ones who have all the dirty laundry and know that we need Jesus to cover us and He so willingly does so as we put our faith in Him, not in our goodness, but in His.
Because one day you and I are going to stand before the Lord and sometimes we are just going to be absolutely convinced that He's just going to be disappointed in us.
An angel from the sidelines is going to say, "Hey, unto you a child is born." And we're going to remember He covered it all and God will say, "I delight in you. You look an awful lot like my child because you are robed in the righteousness not your own as you put your faith in Jesus." What I want you to hear this year, "Hey, unto you a child is born and He will save His people from their sins.
Joy to the world.
Merry Christmas. It's Jesus."
Father, I thank you for the words of Scripture that are not sugar-coated, that tell us so plainly that you know the details of our lives.
And somehow they don't put you off, but you actually look at people who are so filthy with the dirty laundry of their lives and you actually believe that that gives you opportunity to show your grace even more.
And the things over which we would hang our heads, give your angels reason to lift their voices and you delight to show your grace to those who are in need. Not just the derelicts and the homeless, but the people whose hearts need a home, the people who need to know Jesus.
You delight to show your grace through them.
Teach us this grace, Father, that we might hide in you, hide our hearts in the reality of the gospel and those even now, Father, who think God must be disappointed in me,
would hear through the Christmas story again, even with all the dirty laundry, He's delighted in you.
He sent Jesus to pay the price. He covers you with His righteousness and He calls you His own.
Grant us this glory and this joy we pray in Jesus' name. Amen.