Disguised Deliverance // Genesis 38 // Jeff Myers

Let us ask the Holy Spirit's grace on the reading of God's word.

Oh God, by your Spirit, tell us what we need to hear and show us what we

ought to do to obey Jesus Christ our Savior.

Amen.

A reading from Psalm 38.

At that time Judah left his brothers and went down to stay with a man of Adullam

named Hirah.

There Judah met a daughter of a Canaanite man named Shua.

He married her and lay with her.

She became pregnant and gave birth to a son son who was named Er.

She conceived again and gave birth to a son named Onan.

She gave birth to still another son and named him Shelah.

It was in Kezib that she gave birth to him.

Judah got a wife for Er, his firstborn, and her name was Tamar.

But Judah's firstborn was wicked in the Lord's sight, so the Lord put him to death.

Then Judah said to Onan, 'Lie with your brother's wife and fulfill your duty to her as a brother-in-law to produce

offspring for your brother.'

But Onan knew that the offspring would not be his, so whenever he lay with his brother's wife, he spilled his semen on the ground

to keep from producing offspring for his brother.

What he did was wicked in the Lord's sight, so he put him to death also.

Judah then said to his daughter-in-law Tamar, 'Live as a widow in your father's house until my son Shelah

grows up.'

For he thought, 'He may die too, just like his brothers.'

So Tamar went to live in her father's

house.

After a long time, Judah's wife, the daughter of Shua, died.

When Judah had recovered from his grief, he went up to Timnah, to the men who were shearing his sheep,

and his friend Hurah the Alamite— Aldumite— went with him.

When Tamar was told, your father-in-law 'is on his way to Timnah to shear his sheep, she took off her widow's clothes and

covered herself with a veil to disguise herself, and then sat down on the entrance to Enmah,

which is on the road to Timnah.

For she saw that though Shelah had now grown up, she had been not given to him as his wife.'

When Judah saw he saw her, he thought she was a prostitute, for she had covered her face.

Not realizing that she was his daughter-in-law, he went over to her by the roadside and said, 'Come now, let me sleep with you.'

'And what will you give me to sleep with you?'

she asked.

'I will send you a young goat from my flock,' he said.

'Will you give me something as a pledge until you send it?'

she asked.

He said, 'What pledge should I give you?

Your seal and its cord and the staff in your hand, she answered.

So he gave them to her and slept with her, and she became pregnant by him.

After she left, she took off her veil and put on her widow's clothes again.

Meanwhile, Judas sent the young goat by his friend the Adullamite in order to get his pledge back

from the woman, but he did not find her.

He asked the men who lived there, 'Where's the shrine prostitute who was beside the road at Enaim?'

'There hasn't been any shrine prostitute there,' they said.

So he went back to Judah and said, 'I didn't find her.

Besides, the men who lived there said there hasn't been any shrine prostitute here.'

Then Judah said, 'Let her keep what she has, or we will become a laughingstock.

After all, I did send her this young goat, but you did not find her.'

About 3 months later, Judah was told, 'Your daughter-in-law Tamar is guilty of prostitution, and as a result, she is

now pregnant.'

Judah said, 'Bring her out and have her burned to death.'

death.

And as she was being brought out, she sent a message to her father-in-law.

I am pregnant by the man who owns these, she said.

And she added, see if you recognize whose seal and cord and staff these are.

Judah recognized them and said, she is more righteous than I, since I would not give her to my son Shelah.

And he did not sleep with her again.

When the time came for her to give birth, there were twin boys in her womb.

As she was giving birth, one of them put out his hand, so the midwife took a scarlet thread and tied it to his wrist and

said, 'This one came out first.'

But when he drew back his hand, his brother came out, and she said, 'So this is how you have broken out.'

And he was named Perez.

Perez.

Then his brother, who had the scarlet thread on his wrist, came out, and he was given the name Zerah.

This is the word of the Lord.

I don't deal well with losing.

But I especially don't deal well with losing and looking ridiculous.

A few years ago, I was running a half marathon down here in San Diego, and the course opened up to me on a downhill where I could see

kind of everybody who was leading me in the first few miles.

And most of everybody is wearing their best running gear, their technical shirts and their running shorts and their best shoes.

And then I see out a ways ahead of me, maybe a half a mile, a mile, a man wearing a pepperoni pizza costume.

The slice is down here between his legs, and my first reaction is, "I think this is hilarious, actually, that somebody is trying to run

13 miles wearing a pizza costume."

But slowly,

as I realize I'm not catching up to him, my attitude begins to change.

I am going to get beat by a slice of pepperoni pizza on this race.

And here was this ridiculous image which was an insult to the sport of running, and I was going to lose to it.

The Bible demonstrates over and over that the weak shame the strong.

The weak shame the strong.

And this is not the way the world is patterned.

Here's how our culture works.

People are conditioned to desire power and influence and strength and popularity and social

credibility from any age.

And successful people are those people who get it.

They get the nice house, they get the solid career, they get the stable family, they get lots of friends, they get the purebred

pet.

And a social separation begins to occur.

The haves separate themselves from the have-nots.

Why?

Well, because the weak and vulnerable and unstable and the socially poor or economically poor in means,

they can bring the successful down.

A dragging effect.

So the haves look down on the have-nots with disregard.

And the have-nots look up at the haves with envy or contempt.

And meanwhile, our society is separated, stratified, and destroyed.

Another pastor friend of mine who pastors a congregation in East Village, where there are all of these brand-new high-rise

apartments that have gone up and people in their young careers in their 20s and 30s with really successful outlooks before them, for them,

look out of their windows to thousands of the urban poor pushing around shopping carts

on the sidewalk below.

And my friend told me, "If only I can get these people to care about these people, and if only I can get these people to care about

these people."

But that is the rub in every society, friends.

The strong are celebrated and the weak the weak are shamed.

God's economy, though, that we read about in his scriptures, is radically opposite.

And we see it from the earliest chapters of Genesis, where he uses the weak to shame the strong.

After reading today's chapter, you might be thinking, what happened to Joseph?

I paid good money to see a Joseph series being preached.

What is happening here?

Why this interruption to the Joseph story?

What was all that about?

Well, it's important that we understand why this story is inserted right here in the story of

Joseph.

And it's because of a literary device that we call frame within a frame, or story within a story.

A frame within a frame is a technique used in literature where a story is going along and suddenly occasionally, seemingly unrelated, a story

is embedded within it.

And when you look at the inner story and really listen to it well, you realize that it's meant to teach you something about the outer

story.

The inner story helps you interpret the outer story.

So this story of Judah and Tamar is not an interruption to the Joseph story.

It is an interpretation of the Joseph story.

story.

Authors of the Bible use this technique to help us with meaning.

How do I understand the significance or the meaning of the Joseph story?

Well, I should look at the story embedded within it.

If you've ever studied Shakespeare's Hamlet, you know that at one point Hamlet pays a few actors to

put on a play about a brother who poisons another brother and steals wife.

And you might think, well, that's a horrible play.

But then you realize that that little play embedded in the overall Shakespeare play is meant to inform what's really happening in all

of the Hamlet play, where Hamlet's father is thought to be poisoned by his brother Claudius and his wife was stolen.

It's a picture within a picture.

So, frame within a frame story helps us with meaning.

And the story of Judah and Tamar is one of those frame within a frame stories.

It is not an interruption, but an interpretation to the story around it.

And you will remember what has been going on in Genesis.

The key question is in this

book about genealogies—remember Genesis means genealogies—how will God preserve an

offspring, his messianic offspring, the Messiah to come, who will put all of the creation back in order again after sin

has entered.

How will God preserve a family offspring when the family has such a convoluted, tragic,

tragedy-filled history?

An offspring who's going to save humanity?

And to make things even more fun, we also get a story of Tamar Tamar's twin sons at the end of this chapter, which is a

little frame within the Tamar and Judah story, a frame within a frame within a frame.

And so today we'll interpret from the inside out, starting with these two twins.

And what we'll find is that there is a similar interpretation to all of these stories.

They all have a common meaning, and that is God uses the weak to shame the strong.

Perez and Zerah are the names of the twins.

The younger breaks out as firstborn.

The twin boys are in the womb.

You'll think of some other twin boys in the book of Genesis, Jacob and Esau.

They seem to be wrestling in the womb.

You think of these other twin boys in Genesis, Jacob and Esau.

A scarlet thread is going to be tied around Zerah's hand, which means— Zerah, his name actually means scarlet.

You think of Jacob and Esau again.

Esau was born with red hair and his nickname was Red, Edom.

But even though Zerah was the one to stick his hand out of the birth canal first, he was not going to be the firstborn.

His brother makes a break for it, a breach, how you've broken out, and he's named Breakout, Perez.

See, here we see that the younger has broken out as firstborn.

The tables have been turned.

The weak suddenly comes out with the gold medal.

This is true of the Jacob and Esau story where a prophecy is made over their mother, the older will

serve serve the younger.

See, in this tiny story we see a role reversal.

One son seems to be the younger brother, and suddenly a breach—

he's become the honored son, the firstborn with the double inheritance.

So what do we learn from our littlest frame?

Well, God sometimes works contrary to human convention.

He repositions the the younger before the older.

So, I wonder if something is going to happen similar in the frame just outside of it, the Judah and Tamar story.

There are two central characters in this story.

One is strong and the other is weak, seemingly.

But perhaps a role reversal is coming.

Let's talk about Judah, the strong,

The Strong Deceiver.

Remember where we left off last week.

Joseph has 10 brothers who have jumped him.

They have stripped him of his beloved robe that had been made by his father as kind of the family favorite.

They cast him into a well to leave him for dead, but then they changed their minds and he is trafficked as a slave and taken down by his

brothers.

by his own extended family to Egypt, and he's sold and enslaved to one of Pharaoh's officials.

Why?

Because they cannot tolerate Joseph's dreams, his daydreams that his family would bow down to him and he would rule

over them.

They take Joseph's special coat his father had made and they dip it in blood.

Do you remember the blood of

of a goat.

That will be important.

And then they show it to their father and they begin with these two words: "Please examine and see if this

is your son, if this belongs to your son.

Please examine."

And Jacob, believing his son to be dead, he mourns and refuses to be comforted.

What was Judah's role in all of this?

This, well, he was the strong deceiver in the last chapter.

Rather than letting Joseph die in an empty well, he sees an opportunity.

Perhaps Joseph's loss can be our gain.

Hey, what advantage is there to us brothers?

He asked the other 10 brothers.

What advantage is there if our brother dies?

But then he says, come, let us sell him.

they tell him, "Let's not lay a hand on him.

After all, he is our own family, our own flesh and blood."

Judah is not painted as a sympathetic character, especially in the chapter we just read.

We see him to be a selfish, heartless liar out to save his own neck while hypocritically condemning his

vulnerable daughter-in-law while he tries to keep keep his own position of power.

And to add to the evil of the situation that Judah has created in the whole chapter, we also see that it is shrouded

in the same language of Adam and Eve being deceived in the garden.

What similarities exist between the two?

Well, all along we see Judah seeing and taking.

He He sees a woman from the Canaanites and he takes, just like Eve sees the fruit and takes and

eats and gives.

His wife gives birth to 3 sons, just like Adam and Eve.

And just like Adam and Eve's sons, those 3 are whittled down to 1.

One ends up dying and the other ends up exiled.

Why?

Unwilling to be his brother's keeper.

In the same way, Judah and Tamar— excuse me, Judah and his wife have 3 sons.

They are whittled down to 1.

Why?

2 of them were killed and 1 because he failed to be his brother's keeper and raise up offspring for his deceased brother.

Even the location names in the story remind us of the sin of the garden.

The place where Judah where the sons are born is called Kesib, which means deceit.

The place where Tamar sits down and dresses herself as a prostitute literally means the opening of the

eyes, pathach enayim.

Remember that when Adam and Eve eat of the fruit, what happens to their eyes?

Their eyes are opened.

And lastly, Tamar's very name, Her name means palm tree.

It's the normal word for palm tree.

Just as Eve took from the tree and gives to her husband, now Judah takes palm tree and gives her to his

firstborn, er.

By Judah's own foolish sin, we are returning back to the same original place of deception.

This makes the reader of Genesis anticipate real danger.

Just like the fall in the garden, the stage is set for another deceit to happen and wreak havoc on the characters of

Genesis.

And as we read, to our horror, we realize that unlike the Garden of Eden, where the deceiver came from outside the

family of humanity, now—— the deceiver is in the family.

Indeed, he is the most influential voice of the family, the one whom all of his brothers are listening to.

Judah, the strong deceiver.

And in his own deception, he's rendering the family line hopeless.

There will be no offspring.

Who will save?

How will Judah get his family out of this mess?

Judah has gone outside the family to marry a Canaanite woman.

Wife, something that his fathers and grandfathers would certainly roll over in their graves to understand.

And he has 3 children, and he takes Tamar, who probably is also a Canaanite woman, and he makes her the wife of his firstborn, Er.

Er is wicked, so he is put to death.

And here is what you need to know now about ancient laws.

It is the deceased brother's excuse me, the brother of the deceased, he has a legal responsibility to

sleep with his brother's widow and to produce offspring.

They will not be his own sons, but his deceased brother's sons.

Why?

Because women at the time were unable to own land, and by losing their husband, they lost their financial security.

But if they had a son, ah, then that would ensure the family's future.

the family farm is kept.

And there was a particular order in which family members came to possess that responsibility.

Well, what if the second brother dies off?

What if the third brother dies off?

And it starts with the closest brother.

Interestingly— And a relevant detail in this story is that some ancient laws stipulate that after the brothers die, it was the

father-in-law's responsibility to raise up offspring for their daughter-in-law.

And what if somebody refuses their responsibility?

It would mean that they, as the brother or the father-in-law, would receive public shame.

There was a ceremony where everyone would gather at the city gate, all of the town would be there, and the person refusing the responsibility, the

man would stand stand there and be faced by the widow.

The widow would take off the man's sandal, which symbolizes owning property, and she would spit in his face,

publicly shaming the man who had refused to take that responsibility.

It was the refusing brother or the refusing father-in-law that was to receive public shame.

But what has happened to Tamar?

She was never given that public vindication.

Instead, Onan, the secondborn, refuses to raise up offspring in the most wicked way imaginable.

So the Lord puts him to death.

Now Judah has one remaining son, Shelah, and he promises him to Tamar, "Remain in your father's house until my youngest son

is grown, and then I will give him to you."

But he is lying.

The text tells us that he has no intention of doing so.

Why?

Because he was afraid that Shelah would die too.

Judah doesn't believe that the Lord put his sons to death.

He thinks Tamar is the reason.

It wasn't an uncommon belief in the cultures of the Bible that if a woman was repeatedly widowed, it was because she was

plagued by a demon.

She had an evil, dangerous spirit, and Judah is thinking, "Well, I'm not going to lose another son to her."

And Judah will not risk this on this terrible, dangerous, evil woman.

He shuts her up with a lie.

And Shelah grows up.

Tamar spends every day in her funeral clothes, childless, powerless, voiceless, and without social credibility.

Ability, she is now a liability and a spiritual danger to the community, deceived by

the very men who were supposed to be her caretakers.

So far in this story, though, Tamar has not spoken a word.

Now remember, frame within a frame.

What similarities do we already see between Tamar, an object of a plot of

in the outside story where without any speech he is jumped and stripped and thrown into a cistern and

sold off into slavery.

She has become a victim of Judah's selfish plotting just as Joseph had become a victim of Judah's selfish plotting.

So what might the Holy Spirit already be doing?

God be showing us here, friends?

We're being showed how weak and how shameful Tamar is in her situation.

She has no social capital.

She has no civil rights.

She has no sexual autonomy.

She has no freedom.

She has no future.

She has no place to go for help because the person in authority is the same person who has been dishonest with her.

And Joseph also has been stripped of his stripped of his family, stripped of his homeland, and stripped of his freedom.

Disowned, disinherited, and trafficked as a slave.

And you may be reading this and saying,

I know this shame.

I've lived this shame.

I see this shame.

I know this weakness.

I know what it means to have a dream of a future being stripped away, a dream of children

being stripped away.

I know what it means to spend my days waiting alone.

I know what it's like to be abused.

I know what it's like to be manipulated.

I know what it's like to be deceived by the people that were supposed to be my helpers.

I know what it's like to be someone's object rather than someone's love.

I know what it is like to be ashamed and powerless.

This is Joseph's story.

This is Tamar's story.

This is the human story.

So will God offer us any hope?

Yes.

But it does not come from the strong one.

The hope of the story does not come from Judah, but from the weak one.

She will launch a counterattack.

deception that ends shaming the strong.

So let's look at Tamar now, the weak counter-deceiver, the weak counter-deceiver.

The story takes a sudden turn when Judah's wife dies, and the text just tells us Judah was comforted,

just like that.

Rather quickly, we're led to assume.

And what will he do next?

Well, he goes to the sheep shearers' feast with his good friend, Hira.

The sheep shearers' feast was like the harvest party for shepherds.

Look at all of this wool that we've shorn off of our sheep.

That's going to bring in a big profit.

And the wine starts to flow.

Perhaps Judah has already had a few drinks, and this is the reason that he doesn't recognize the prostitute who's sitting at the opening of a name.

The opening of the eyes.

"Let me sleep with you," Judah tells her.

The exchange is devoid of love.

It is devoid of personality.

It is devoid even of passion.

It is a business exchange.

"What will you give me to have you sleep with me?"

she asks.

She is looking the man in the eyes who has refused her any children.

Now propositioning her.

One of the goats from all these herds.

That should do.

We are at the sheep shears after all.

I will send you a goat.

Once again, the goat and the garment plays a role in this deception.

Until you send the goat, what will you give me as a pledge?

What should I give you?

Give me your seal.

Give me your cord.

Give me your staff, which is the ancient way of saying, give me your ID, give me your credit cards, give me your car keys.

Now, does Judah think this through?

Does he hesitate?

Does he say, whoa, maybe this is not worth it?

He hands everything over.

Tamar becomes pregnant.

She returns home and she puts her funeral clothes back on.

Now Judah sends the goat.

He is true to his word, but he is not going to take it himself.

No, he needs to save face.

He sends Hira instead, his friend.

Hira can't find the woman.

As he's looking around for her, rather than saying, "Have you seen the common whore?"

Rather than using that word, he uses a euphemism, trying to keep up appearances.

"Have you seen the sacred woman, the religious worker who's been here?"

"Oh, there's been no temple woman here."

they say.

And so when Hirah goes back, he explains things to his friend Judah.

"We need to keep things quiet," Judah says, "otherwise we'll be made a laughingstock.

After all, we sent the goat and couldn't find her.

I did right by her.

She's the one who went missing.

My dignity is intact," Judah thinks.

3 months pass and Judah's babies begin to show.

Judah is told, "Your daughter-in-law is guilty of prostitution.

She's now pregnant.

Bring her out and let her be burned," he says.

Now everything hangs on the edge of this moment.

Judah thinks he's in power, but he has no idea that he's the one who needs saving.

And Tamar will be the one to save him and his whole family.

I am pregnant by the man to whom these belong.

Examine, please, this seal and this cord and this staff.

Judah's story as a new man has just begun.

He realizes his wickedness and the innocence of the woman he was about to burn.

She is more righteous than he.

'He says.'

These frames within frames have taught us something.

God sometimes works contrary to human convention.

The older will serve the younger.

And here a deliverance has come for the family of Judah, but not from the strong one.

It was the weak, socially despised Canaanite woman disguised as a sex worker to Twice widowed,

neglected, and duped, yet God has used her to counter-deceive the deceiver.

The weak has shamed the strong.

And if we look at the pages of scripture, we will see this theme played out over and over again continually.

God using the weak, vulnerable, ridiculous things

to shame the strong things of the world.

David comes at Goliath with sticks and stones.

What a disgrace to the art of war!

And David conquers.

Naaman is told with all of his leprosy, "Go and cleanse yourself in the humble Jordan River."

And he thinks, "What an insult to all of the great rivers of Assyria where I came from."

But the Jordan River cleanses him.

Noah, come on, told to build a boat.

How ridiculous is that?

The weak shame the strong, friends.

And when we come to the climax and crux of the entire Bible, what we learn is that in Jesus Christ, ultimate weakness

and shame is triumphant.

In Jesus Christ, Jesus Christ's ultimate weakness and shame is triumphant.

As amazing as Tamar is, Jesus Christ not only saves a family, but the entire creation

in a display of weakness and foolishness and social shame.

What does it look like?

The cross.

The cross of Jesus was as renowned for its shame as for the pain that it inflicted.

Afflicted.

For the Romans, it was illegal to crucify another Roman citizen.

That's how bad it was.

For the Jews, the cross was considered to be cursed by God.

How could someone cursed by God be the Messiah?

It's a scandal, another— an utter stumbling block.

For the Greeks and those pagans, a crucified Lord was utterly contemptible in their imagination.

One piece of graffiti was found in Rome from the 3rd century.

The Jews were often mocked as worshiping an ass, and on this graffiti that insult was transferred to Christians

worshiping Jesus on the cross.

The inscription reads, "Alexamenos worships God with his hand raised in reverence.

Just like the graffiti we see on the underside of an overpass mocking a minority or defaming a politic, shaming someone else,

this is how Jesus and his followers were seen: ridiculous and weak, the butt of jokes.

Yet the Bible tells us that when Jesus endured the cross, he despised the shame.

He despised the shame connected to it and instead Instead, he greeted the cross with joy.

Why?

Because God was going to show once and for all that his weakness triumphs over human and worldly strength.

Rather than being ashamed, he put the rulers and authorities who crucified him to shame.

Examine, please, the place where they laid him, the angels say.

Examine, please, he is not here.

He is risen.

And this is why the message of Christ has always been good news for the poor.

It's been good news for the weak and the socially vulnerable.

And it's been confusing to those who are in worldly power.

To those who have great influence in the world, they can't make sense of the good news of Christianity.

A 2nd century Greek philosopher named Celsus was opposed to Christianity.

And when he wrote about it, he wrote about it as a superstition for the non-contributors to society.

This is a religion for the weaklings and the women and the slaves.

He says this:

Their Christian invitations are like this: Let no one educated, no one wise, no one

sensible draw near 'Come near.'

But as for anyone stupid, anyone uneducated, anyone who is a child, let him come boldly.

Those who summon people to other superstitions, Celsus says, make this preliminary proclamation: 'Whoever has pure hands

and a wise tongue.'

And again others say, 'Whoever is pure from all defilement and whose soul knows nothing of evil and who has lived well and and righteously.

Such are the preliminary calls of those who promise purification from sins.

Ah, but let us hear what the Christians say.

They call whoever is a sinner.

They say whoever is unwise, whoever is a child, in a word, whoever is a wretch, the kingdom of God

will receive him.

Brothers and sisters, Our proud hearts are opposed to the scandal of Christ's grace.

Following him, after all, means decreasing.

Following him means dying each day, living not for power, but in weakness.

The world calls it wasteful

to give up a day of the week in worship and not work.

The world calls it weak to pray for what we need rather than working hard hard in making more money.

The world calls it shameful to be seen in the company of druggies and sex workers, but

Jesus has told us this is exactly who he has come for.

And only in him the weak things shame the strong.

Friends, in closing, receive these words from the the Apostle Paul as you consider your own calling.

Consider your calling, brothers and sisters.

Not many of you were wise according to worldly standards.

Not many of you were influential.

Not many of you were of noble birth.

But God chose the foolish things of the world to shame the wise.

God chose the weak things of the world to shame the strong.

God chose the lowly things of this world and the despised things and the things that are not, to nullify the things that are,

so that no one may boast before him.

Let's pray.

Thank you, Lord, for the deliverance that comes at the cross.

Thank you for the salvation, the saving power that is considered a scandal and a weakness and an utter shame to the world,

the rugged cross.

Lord, will you help us to have minds and hearts that are humble before you, to follow you not in our own strength.

Instead, that we would deny our strength and follow you in weakness, and that in doing so, we would know more more and

more who the Lord Jesus Christ is.

We give you praise in Christ's name.