We are continuing on our study of Genesis this morning so you may want to turn there and have that available if you have a Bible Genesis 38 and 39. Sorry we don't have the text printed this morning it was just too much to fit in. But we are continuing with our study of the life of Joseph as recorded in Genesis 37-50. In our first study we looked at chapter 37 verses 1 to 11 which we are introduced to a young Joseph just 17 years of age and he was living and working with his family and in that introductory account we saw how due to his father's foolishness and his father's favoritism a great deal of deep and destructive tension had developed between Joseph and his brothers. And then in our second study Genesis 37-12 to 36 we saw the tension between Joseph and his brothers escalate into full blown hatred which very nearly resulted in violence. And in the end Joseph was spared, he sold as a slave to a passing trader caravan who in turn sold him to a prominent Egyptian. And in the midst of examining all of that we saw how in spite of the personal hardships that Joseph experienced the events that took place clearly displayed the hand of God guiding and shaping Joseph's story at every twist and turn. This morning we pick up with chapter 38 and what at first may seem like an intrusion almost as if the story was just randomly inserted here for no immediately apparent reason. This impression is only highlighted I think when you read the closing verse of chapter 37, skip chapter 38 and jump immediately to the opening verse of chapter 39. Nevertheless in spite of appearances, chapter 38 as I hope to show is not an intrusion into the Joseph story but is here for quite deliberate reason, plays an important role in the developing storyline. That's one way to understand what's going on here is to think about something that you and I have seen countless times in the world of film and that's the cut away. There you are you're following a developing storyline for example the orcs are pounding away at Helm's deep and then just as they're about to kind of burst through the gate the camera switches to a different scene and it's Gandalf leading this whole group of horsemen to the battlefield and as you understand through that technique both of those events are taking place simultaneously that's how the story is developing. Well that's what's going on here in Genesis 38 and Genesis 39. It's sort of the literary version of that technique as Joseph is being carried off in this traitor caravan that storyline is developing in that direction we're given a brief account of another storyline that began to develop at the same time and in a very different direction the account of Judah Joseph's older brother. Now because we're covering a lot of ground we're going to have to move pretty quickly and so rather than reading right through these chapters I will be attempting to summarize them instead as we go along but I would commend them to you to read and reflect upon during the week as there are a number of important lessons to be drawn from them only some of which we will highlight this morning. With that as our introduction then let me pray before we dig in. Let's pray together. Father in heaven as the psalmist prayed open our eyes that we may be hold wondrous things out of your law and in this context father that simply cannot be improved upon and so we would simply make this prayer our own and we ask it in Jesus name. Amen. Now right on the heels of telling us that Joseph has now become the possession of an Egyptian officer at the end of chapter 37, right on the heels of that the story shifts rather abruptly. And it's no longer Joseph who's at center stage but his brother Judah. Now you may wonder what's so important about Judah. Why does his story matter? I mean all the other brothers had a story too. Let me give you two reasons. Judah was important firstly because he was at this point the most likely to get the lion's share of his father's inheritance. Ruben had disqualified himself because his disgraceful behavior with Jacob's servant wife. Simeon and Levi the next oldest as you may recall had also disgraced themselves in the whole affair with Dina which resulted among other things in their violent and wholesale slaughter of the men of Shechem Judah was the next in line after these three. But beyond that there's a more important reason why Judah matters and it's because through Judah's lineage is through his lineage that the Messiah the Lord Jesus would one day come. And that fact which may not seem to be much more than a point of interesting information at the beginning of chapter 38 will become downright astonishing by the time you get to the end. So what happens? Well not long after Joseph gets hauled off to Egypt Judah decides it's time to stretch his wings a bit leaving his brothers behind he takes up living amongst a foreign people some canonites and he strikes a friendship with one man a particular named Hyra. Now just in making this move right just that move in doing that Judah who's not yet married is flirting with disaster. If you go back to places like Genesis 24 and read the instructions that Abraham gave his servant as he sent him out to find a wife for Isaac or if you read the instructions that Isaac later gave on to his son Jacob in Genesis 28 what's you find in both of these places is this strict warning that under no circumstance are Isaac and Jacob to marry someone outside their kindred someone from among the canonites. They are to remain separate and distinct within the world and are not to become mixed in with or absorbed into other nations through inner marriage. Judah however ignoring the advice his father would most certainly have given to him on these matters goes and lives amongst the canonites anyway with predictable results. He ends up marrying a canonite woman who is the daughter of a man named Shua but her name is not given which I think is the author's commentary on that decision and then she promptly conceives and they have a first son named heir and later on a second son named ownin and finally a third son named Sheila and at this point the story gets increasingly crazy. The craziness starts when Judah gets a wife for his oldest son heir which tells you among other things that a lot of time has passed. At any rate the woman he chose was named Tamar whose name suggests that she was quite beautiful. Well heir and Tamar marry and were then told very simply that heir was a wicked man and the Lord killed him. Now we're not told why this happened we're only told that it happened and as much as we might like to know why we're not told and it's really not necessary at the end of the day for understanding this story. Now in order to make sense of the events that follow from this you need to know that there was in that day a custom that later on was enshrined in mosaic law known as leverit marriage. What was this law about essentially the law required that if the husband died before an heir had been produced it was the duty of the next closest relative in line to see to it that an heir was produced. The operating assumption behind this as one writer was that the family as a whole had a responsibility to ensure the continuity of the line of the dead relative. This law further ensured that the dead man's property remained in the extended family and it provided a means of protection for the widow sparing her from having to marry outside of the clan. At any rate after Er's death with Tamar being childless this custom kicks in. And so Judah instructs Er's brother onan to fulfill his leverit responsibilities. And on the surface onan appears to comply with this and marries Tamar but then shows by his actions that he has no intention of producing an heir for his brother because an heir would not be his and there would be nothing in it for him. Well onan's charade might have fooled everyone else but it did not fool God who knew what was going on and promptly sent judgment upon Onan resulting in his death as well. Now all this striking down of people might seem a bit harsh but you have to remember that there's more at stake here than just producing a descendant for Judah's son heir. This is the very bloodline of the Messiah that is being threatened right now by the wickedness of Judah himself and his sons. What any right after the loss of two sons it seems that this point Judah becomes worried that if this pattern continues he will soon have no sons at all and will himself be without an heir so he sends Tamar back to her father under the guise of wanting to wait until his last son Sheila is older before he's asked to take up his responsibilities toward Tamar. But the truth is as the story makes clear he has no intention whatsoever of letting that third marriage happen. Well time passes Sheila is now old enough to be married but still Judah does nothing at which point Tamar realizes it's never going to happen and so when she hears that Judah is going on a trip she decides to take matters into her own hands knowing of Judah's vulnerability because his wife has recently died and perhaps knowing of his personal weaknesses in this area she positions herself at a point along the road where she knows Judah will be passing by disguising herself as a temple prostitute she manages to seduce Judah into sleeping with her. Return for her services the fee was a kid a young goat which of course Judah doesn't have with him so he agrees to give her items that essentially are his proof of identity roughly the equivalent of giving her his driver's license which she will hold until the goat is delivered. Well she returns to her home and so when the payment is sent by Judah she's nowhere to be found and so he lets the whole thing drop no doubt thinking that that's the end of the matter it's over. Three months later it's discovered that Tamar is pregnant and in an amazing display of self-righteousness Judah determines that for her punishment she must be burned and it's at this point that Tamar produces the personal items given to her about Judah making it obvious that he is the one that has made her pregnant and in that moment of revelation as Judah's son and his hypocrisy are exposed he sees immediately how his own failure to provide Sheila as a husband for Tamar has pushed her into taking such drastic actions and so he declares that she Tamar is more righteous than he and judging from Judah's response here as well as what he'll do later on in Genesis 44 it would seem that this might have been a genuine turning point for Judah in other words what we see in chapter 38 may very well be a real brokenness that was the leading edge of his own personal and spiritual reformation well following all this we're told of the birth of twin boys to Tamar named Perez and Zero. Zero technically is the first one out because he puts a hand out and read threads wrapped around his wrist but really it's Perez who's the first to fully appear and with that the account of Judah comes to an end well before we draw any conclusions or observations from that portion with the momentum we already have I want us to keep going and turn our attention now for a minute to the account that immediately follows chapter 39 the account of what happened to Joseph after he arrived in Egypt as chapter 39 begins we pick up right where we left off at the end of chapter 37 Joseph has been sold by the Ishmaelites to the captain of Pharaoh's guard a man named Potapher and right off the bat we're told that the Lord was with Joseph was with Joseph and that he caused everything he did to succeed with the result that his responsibilities gradually increased until he had oversight not only of Potapher's household but really all of Potapher's affairs so much so that the only thing the text tells us that Potapher had to think about when he woke up each morning was what he was going to eat that day let me tell you something when you get to that point when the biggest decision of your day is whether you're going to have steak or seafood that's relaxed that's the position of a man who has complete confidence that his affairs are being perfectly looked after and that's what it was like for Potapher ever since Joseph showed up Potapher had a good thing he had a really good thing going and he would have been very reluctant to allow anything to interfere with that well unfortunately wasn't just Potapher that was impressed with Joseph his wife was impressed as well but for different reasons so she ends up shamelessly propositioning Joseph practically begging him to sleep with her and Joseph to his everlasting credit absolutely refuses to entertain this idea and in doing so he's motivated by at least two things firstly his conviction that doing such a thing would have been an offense against God and secondly his conviction that to do so would be a complete betrayal of his master's trust and confidence the very thought of which was repulsive to Joseph now as a passage reveals Potapher's wife isn't one to take no for an answer and so she badgers him day after day trying to get him to cave in eventually in an act of frustration and even desperation she grabs hold of Joseph one day and in the process of his trying to get away from her yet again Joseph loses his outer garment and he runs off without it well Potapher's wife seeing that she cannot have what she wants turns on Joseph now perfectly willing to destroy this one that only moments before was the object of her desire and the first thing she does is gather together the other male servants of the household men over whom Joseph was in charge and possibly playing on their resentment at having to be supervised by this foreigner she shares her fictitious account of what had happened to her now why does she do this I think for two possible reasons one is she knew that her husband would likely be very reluctant to do away with someone who'd been such a huge blessing to his household and his life and so by making sure that the other servants knew what had happened she was ensuring that her husband could not just let it slide right she was making sure that it was public knowledge and that would force her husband to act no matter how reluctant he might feel about doing so the other reason she may have done this was because in all likelihood this is not the first time she's attempted to be unfaithful to her husband it may well be that Potapher already knew about her flirtatious behavior perhaps already suspected her of infidelity in the past and so having other witnesses would corroborate her story would cast hers the victim rather than as being the predator that she actually was well her hubby comes home and she tells in the story and he is predictably furious about what has happened of course however there's at least one thing here I think that indicates that Potapher may have had some doubts regarding his wife's story and it's this he doesn't kill Joseph I mean given his authority given what sort of man he was given what he did for a living this should have been no difficulty for him whatsoever to have Joseph killed he'd think that be as immediate response but it isn't instead he throws Joseph in with the king's prisoners which might be referring to a special section within the larger prison might not at this point we're told again that the Lord was with Joseph were reminded he's still with Joseph which in this instance meant that he was favored in the eyes of the prison keeper and he's even given a position of responsibility and authority over the other prisoners and so we see the pattern of the first part of the story now repeated again as Joseph once again succeeds in this area of dealing with other people and this brings the account of Joseph to an end at this point. Now stopping here and looking back over to extremely fascinating feeling in some ways disturbing account certainly at least with regard to Judah but looking back over these things we need to stop and think about what is going on here
and in doing that and highlighting some of the implications that I believe flow out of these verses I want to do so in two broad categories I want to consider how these stories help us to think about our life before God how we live it and secondly I want you to see how these events fit into and advance God's overall redemptive plan and purposes and so prepare us for and point us to the Lord Jesus Christ. Firstly there are some helpful things to be found in both these passages in the story of Judah we see this tragic and complicated results that came from his initial bad decision to leave his people behind and instead place himself in a situation that was precarious to say the least and which was reminiscent of the sort of decisions lot made many years earlier which also led to tragedy and it points to reality that I believe frequently accompanies these sorts of decisions and that is the reality of unintended and unforeseen consequences matter how clever we are matter how long and hard we've thought through a situation there are limits to what we're able to do and anticipating what may or may not happen as a result of decisions that we might make this is true even when the things we're considering are good and right things right and after all we aren't God or even close we can't possibly know or predict how a thing will always turn out and if this holds true when we're considering doing things that are wise and just I think it's equally if not more true when it comes to the dicey questionable decisions we sometimes make which are often not the result of nearly as much reflection and are typically more of a gut level response than anything else such was the decision of Judah I believe to go and live amongst the Canaanites it's an initial bad decision against the advice and counsel he would have received growing up led to all sorts of things that he would not have predicted or foreseen and if ignoring a human authority such as his father led to such things how much more might ignoring divine infallible all knowing authority lead to the same how foolish are we knowing the inescapability of unintended consequences to ignore the instruction and wisdom of God for whom there are never unforeseen events or unintended consequences how crazy is it to ignore counsel such as that and yet we still do it don't we just like Judah the other thing I would highlight from chapter 38 there's more than this to be seen to be sure but the other thing that stands out to me in terms of impacting us where we live is evidence in this connection between Judah's sin and Tamar's active desperation right I mean interestingly the passage makes no comment about the morality of Tamar's behavior and deceiving Judah into sleeping with her now there is as I understand at some debate in scholar circles as to whether the leveraged marriage custom would have extended beyond the brothers to the father-in-law of the bride should such things become necessary and if so if that is the case then Tamar's actions toward Judah need to be seen in that light however even if that was not the case we would have to and we had to charge Tamar with wrongdoing we still have to do so with a great deal of understanding compassion for a woman who was terribly sinned against and placed in a very difficult situation a situation she should never have been in were it not for the sin of her father in law he's the one that put her in that situation and that reality right just that reality the corporate consequences of our sin is something worth taking time to reflect upon to consider how our own sin and faithfulness might be doing the same sort of thing within our own families among our friends and within our churches could it be that that behavior that drives you to distraction in your wife or your husband can be traced at least in parts to your own sin could it be that the attitude of perspective that you find so unacceptable in your child is at least in part a response to your own failings and sin as a parent this passage among other things ought to cause us to take stock of our lives in this area to perhaps pause before we make that next pronouncement or formulate that next judgment and consider if and how our own failings have resulted in the very thing that we have come to despise so much and if the result of your own reflections here brings you to the place that Judah got to where he saw and admitted his own hypocrisy and sin then even as you grieve those realities as you should remember that there is mercy and there is forgiveness for the broken and repent that it is only the cross of Christ that makes it even possible for you to admit to these sorts of things without being crushed by them and which will in the end bring you through to the other side and in God's good time will extinguish these kinds of failings from your life forever and then turning to chapter 39 there are life lessons to be found there as well for one thing Judah's Joseph's response to the temptation by Potiphar's wife is a perfect illustration of the very counsel that appears in the New Testament much later on which encourages God's people to flee youthful lusts which wage war against the soul.
I noticed that Joseph when the temptation was at its strongest point didn't stand around considering the pros and cons of the thing he fled he ran he took off why did he run my guess is this while Joseph was a pretty good guy he's still a man he's still also a sinner he wasn't perfect and I think he knew that and I think he knew that no matter how much he was resolved not to give in he still might I think he knew that if he stood there and tried to reason it out or think about whether in fact it'd be such a horrible thing after all if he hesitated and stuck around he was a goner so he ran and you know sometimes that is the wisest most noble most godly thing to do in the face of temptation just run the other thing that we see illustrated in chapter 39 is something we have seen before so I won't dwell on it but please notice how God answered Joseph's prayers right here's Joseph sold in slavery by his family taken to a faraway place away from his father away from Benjamin whom he loved and despite the fact that when he got to Potiphar's place things went really well at first at least don't you know that he was praying every day for God to deliver him don't you think Joseph would have been pleading with God to hear him and to respond to his great need certainly he was well guess what God did hear him God did respond to Joseph and what was the response he took him from the comfort of Potiphar's place allowed him to be public disgrace saw him placed into a prison cell where we're told once again that God was with him there as well what's the point the point is God was with Joseph he was no less with Joseph when he was in the prison than he was when he was comfortably situated in Potiphar's house running the whole show or even he was back in his father's place God never moved even though Joseph did God knew what he was doing so rather than answer Joseph prayers by delivering him from difficult circumstances in this instance he answered by providing for Joseph in the midst of difficult circumstances that he was not yet prepared to remove Joseph from so if that's you I mean if you're in one of those places pray absolutely pray for God to deliver you that's a perfectly good and right thing to pray for but along with it pray for God to come and meet you in the middle of it pray for God to comfort you to give you patience to show you how you can honor him in the place that he apparently is not yet prepared to deliver you from I know that's a hard prayer to pray it's a grown-up prayer but it's the right one finally after seeing what these passages separately can tell us about how we live our lives before God I want to see very quickly how the events described in these passages together fit into an advance God's overall regemptive plan and purposes how they prepare us for and point us to the Lord Jesus Christ and regarding all that one of the main things to be seen is how Genesis 38 highlights a very real problem and concern for God's people what was that concern it was that they would become absorbed into and lost within the pagan cultures around them that they would lose their distinctiveness as the people of God including and especially the distinctiveness of their faith and worship and would instead begin imitating the faith and practices of the pagan cultures around them that was a real problem as the subsequent history of Israel shows over and over again and you see right here very early on before all of that even gets started in the account of Judah you get this glimpse this foreshadowing this cautionary tale of what can happen and indeed what will happen if the people of God leave their own people behind and become mixed up in and identify themselves with the nations the count of Judah reveals how precarious and fragile the situation is how they are in fact only one generation away from losing their distinctiveness I mean see how quickly and easily the bloodline of the promised Messiah was placed in jeopardy by Judah's actions and so if their absorption into the Canaanite cultures around them was such an imminent danger how in the world is this tiny tribe gonna survive long enough to become an entire nation without completely losing their identity I'll tell you how Egypt Egypt would be the place where the people of Israel could grow and develop for years and years virtually unhindered virtually unpolluted by the surrounding culture why because of the very strong dislike that the Egyptians developed towards the Hebrew people over time and which endured for the entirety of their stay and which then made the intermingling of their cultures very unlikely and so Egypt in the providence of God Egypt was the perfect incubator within which God insulated and protected and multiplied his people and short the story of Judah highlights the problem that the story of Joseph is gonna solve it highlights the very real danger that the story of Joseph addresses another thing that the juxtaposition of these two stories does for us is demonstrate how God can and does accomplish his purposes no matter what right I mean when his people are faithless and disobedient as the story of Judah illustrates or when they're faithful and true as the story of Joseph illustrates whatever the case and any and every circumstance God is not hindered and he's fully capable of bringing his plans to completion and I don't know about you but it's no small comfort to know at least to me that God's purposes continue in spite of the evil intentions of others and even in spite of the character failings of his own people lastly both of these stories point is to Christ in different ways one by means of a negative example the other by means of a positive one negatively the story of Judah stands forever as a picture of God's graciousness to both use and save people who have neither earned or deserved his kindness indeed it's nothing less than ironic that the very sinfulness that Jesus came to redeem is illustrated and permanently enshrined within the broken lives of his own ancestors and then positively we see Joseph who unlike his brother Judah when faced with severe repeated temptation did not give in and that obedience cost him a great deal we are reminded in this act of faithfulness of the one to whom Joseph points us whose obedience also cost him a great deal and by whose faithfulness in the face of the greatest of all possible temptations allowed him to remain the sinless spotless lamb by whose perfect sacrifice we have been forgiven and set free father help us now to take away from this time the things that you want us to keep and have and please take and blow away all those things that aren't helpful or good or right or aren't going to build up your people aren't going to cause your people to love you more they continue to work your truth even this truth into our hearts for your glory we pray in Jesus name amen those who are taking up the morning offering will come forward we'll collect that