‘The Marvel
of Divine Grace’
9.30am Sunday 29
November 2009
Genesis 38:1-30; Matthew 1:1-3 TNIV
Everything about the
purpose of God and how he uses fallible human beings to accomplishe it never
ceases to amaze me. It is a constant
mystery how he can take the most unlikely people and weave even unsavoury
events into the tapestry of his divine plan.
Truly his thoughts are not our thoughts, and his ways past finding out. It is as Paul exclaimed after writing about
the wonderful way in which God has brought the Gentiles to receive the
blessings promised through Abraham: “O the depth of the riches of the
wisdom and knowledge of God! How
unsearchable his judgments, and his paths beyond tracing out! Who has known the mind of the Lord? Or who has been his counselor?”
Our New Testament reading
from Matthew 1, part of the genealogy of Jesus,
is not the most promising passage of Scripture for one to preach
from. Some question whether it should be
in the Bible at all. Of what interest is
a whole list of names, some of whom we know nothing about. It may be of interest those who study family genealogy,
but most people quickly gloss over them to move on to what seems the more
relevant to life today. But if as the
Apostle Paul says – “All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful
for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness, so that all
God’s people may be thoroughly equipped for every good work.” –
then there certainly will be a reason for the inclusion of such passages as
these, not least those cultures for whom a person’s family line is very
important. This is true in Maori culture
and for many Asian peoples as well. The
Holy Spirit inspired both Matthew and Luke to include Jesus’ family line in
their accounts of the life of Jesus because this was important in Middle East culture as well. Matthew in his genealogy of Jesus begins with
Abraham and works his way through three groups of fourteen generations to
Jesus. Luke starts the other way around
and begins with Jesus and goes right back to Adam. What is quite unique about Matthew’s
genealogy, however, is its mention of the names of five women – Tamar, Rahab,
Ruth, Bathsheba identified only as the wife of Uriah the Hittite, and Mary. The fact that women appear at all is
remarkable in itself given the status of women in Bible times, but what is even
more remarkable is that all the women, apart from Mary the mother of Jesus, are
foreigners, and two of them were involved in highly questionable moral
behaviour. As we journey through Advent
to Christmas Day 2009 we are going to study these five women, to consider the
reasons why their names are listed in Jesus’ family line, and what we can learn
from their stories.
We heard about Tamar, the
first woman mentioned in Jesus’ genealogy, in the reading from Genesis 38. These events come in the middle of the
account about Joseph. Joseph’s brothers
have sold him to the Midianites and at the end of Genesis 37 we are told that
he had been bought as a slave by Potiphar, the captain of Pharoah’s guard. We are left wondering how Joseph fared in his
new land when we are confronted with this sad and unsavoury episode in the life
of Joseph’s older brother, Judah. It
seems almost out of place with what has gone before and with what follows. In the first instant, its subject matter
includes undesirable behaviour and does not show Judah in a very good light. It is a little like hanging out Jacob’s
family’s dirty washing for all and sundry to see. We might well ask why it needed to be
included? Would it not have been better
left out as it does not make for pleasant reading? And what relationship does it bear to God’s salvation
history? If the Bible says that “all
Scripture is God-breathed” what are the merits for its inclusion that is
helpful to those who live in the twenty-first century?
We can note that this
story picks up a number of themes that appear throughout the book of Genesis,
some of which are characteristic of the life of Jacob and his family. For example, there is the theme of childlessness
that we see with Sarah, Abraham’s wife, Rebekah, Isaac’s wife, and Rachel,
Jacob’s wife. True, Tamar’s reasons for
childlessness are different from the others, but with all these women lie the
fulfilment of God’s promise to bless every family on earth through
Abraham.
Another theme is that of
deception. Both Abraham and Isaac were
guilty of this when they lied about their wives, saying that they were their
sisters,
when they moved into foreign territory.
Deception dominates the story of Jacob’s life, first in his deceiving
his father to get his brother’s blessing, then in his being deceived many times
by Laban his uncle for whom he worked for his wife Rachel and then when taking
care of his flocks. Rachel deceives her
father when he chases them in search of his household gods which Rachel hid in
her camel’s saddle and asked to be excused from standing because she was having
her monthly period. Jacob’s sons later
deceive him about the fate of Joseph, saying that a wild animal must have
killed him when in fact they had sold him as a slave to some Midianite
traders. In the passage we read this
morning Judah
deceives Tamar by saying that she could marry his third son when he came of age
when he had no intention of doing so as he feared for this son’s life
also. Tamar then deceives Judah into
thinking she is a prostitute when in fact she was his own daughter-in-law.
A further theme is that of
character change usually signified when the person who has been transformed
receives a new name. For example Abram
is given the name Abraham because he believed God’s promise to provide a son
for Sarah and himself in their latter years.
Jacob is called Israel
when after spending twenty years with his uncle in Haran
he returns to Canaan, and wrestles with God
and prevails. Reuben who violates his
father’s concubine, later showed that he had had a change of heart when he
shows compassion for Joseph and later for his father when his brothers wanted
to kill Joseph and then deceive their father.
After Joseph’s seventeen years in Egypt we also see character change in
how he progresses from being a bumptious upstart who regularly gets offside
with his brothers to becoming the wise statesman who is given responsibility to
rule a nation, how he sees God’s hand in his being sold as a slave in Egypt,
and his willingness to forgive his brothers.
In this story of Tamar we
begin to sense the beginning of a transformation in the life of Judah which becomes evident later when in Egypt he pleads
with Joseph to take the place of his younger brother, Benjamin, in whose sack
Joseph’s silver cup is found, lest his father suffer again through losing
another of his sons. Up until this time Judah appears
hard and callous. He is the one who
suggests to his brothers that they sell Joseph as a slave to the Midianite
traders. He presumably approved the
scheme to deceive his father about what happened to Joseph. There is no indication here in Genesis 38
that he mourned the lost of his first two sons, and when Tamar is found to be
pregnant he has no hesitation in ordering her to be burned. This would be an extreme form of punishment
as normally a person would be stoned for such an offence. A refining process is going on in Judah’s life that begins with this incident with
Tamar that enables him to become the leader God wanted him to be, and the one
through whom Israel’s
Messiah and the world’s Saviour would come.
It is prophesied in Jacob’s blessing of Judah
just prior to Jacob’s death: “The scepter will not depart from Judah, nor the
ruler’s staff from between his feet, until he to whom it belongs shall come and
the obedience of the nations be his.”
What do we know about
Tamar that makes it significant that she should be named in Jesus’ family
line? In Hebrew the name ‘Tamar’ meant
“slender one” and is in fact the same word that is used in Scripture of a palm
tree. We can infer from this that
because of her height she made an impressive appearance. But what is more important is that, just as
was Shuah, her mother-in-law, she was a Canaanite. The Canaanites were one of the nations with
whom God strictly forbade his people to intermarry because of their licentious
religious rituals and immoral lifestyle.
Yet Judah
flagrantly ignores God’s instructions and not only marries a Canaanite woman
himself, but chose another to be the wife of his eldest son. When Er, his eldest son, dies he then marries
Tamar to his next son, Onan, so that according to the custom of that time as
next-of-kin he would “raise up offspring” for his brother. This custom is clear evidence of the
importance for a wife to bear sons for her husband so that a man’s name be
continued in his children. Therefore the
first son of Onan and Tamar’s marriage would be regarded as the dead brother’s
and he would inherit his property and carry on his name. Onan refuses outright to fulfil his
obligation as the dead man’s brother, knowing that their first male child would
then become heir to his brother’s portion of the estate, which would have been
Onan’s at that stage now that his brother was dead. Since then, ‘onanism’ has become in the
English language the technical word use to describe uncompleted sexual union
(coition) and masterbation. What a way to be remembered throughout
history. How different it is to the
woman which we considered last week who did a beautiful thing for Jesus when
she broke the alabaster jar of expensive perfume and poured it on his head,
thus anointing him in preparation for his burial, and act Jesus said would be
told in memory of her whenever the gospel is preached through out the world.
Judah, who had given Tamar
as wife for his sons, is now responsible for her and for the continuation of
the family now that his two older sons have died. He sends her to her father to wait until his
youngest son, Shelah, was old enough to marry, which effectually meant that she
was betrothed/engaged to him. However,
it is obvious that Judah
had no intention of carrying through his promise. Having lost two sons already, whose deaths
were through their own fault and nothing to do with their having been married
to Tamar, he did not want to risk losing his third son as well. This left Tamar, a childless widow, in a very
vulnerable state in the society of that time.
Only a child, preferably a son would give her standing and
security. Yet both her brother-in-law,
Onan, and her father-in-law, Judah, had refused to give her the minimal rights
prescribed her by clan custom. The
strategy she adopted was certainly a desperate one. She had waited patiently, but it was now
clear that although Shelah was of marriagable age, Judah was not going to give his
third son as her husband. She also
showed perception in that she knew what Judah would do when she disguised
herself as a prostitute, and later how he would act when confronted with the
truth.
She takes the initiative
as a woman to obtain her rights. It is
worth noting that the women we read about in Genesis and Exodus are independent
and strong, smart and tough. They
display leadership and initiative. They
spoke and acted confidently. They almost
always get their way when they want something.
Tamar is a good example of this.
She knows her rights and she pursues them decisively. When she took off her widow’s clothes and
covered herself with a veil to disguise herself, Judah most
likely thought she was one of the sacred prostitutes. In Israel, prostitutes were required
to cover their faces at all times. The
Hebrew words for a sacred prostitute and a normal prostitute are both used in
this story. You will notice that when Judah’s friend
goes with the young goat as payment to Tamar, when he cannot find her, he asks
the men of that place, “Where is the shrine prostitute who was beside the
road at Enaim?”
Sacred prostitution was
part of Canaanite religious practice.
They saw sexuality. either human or in nature, as a divine force. According to Herodotus, a Greek historian
writing about 450 BC, a Babylonian woman, at least once during her life, would
disguise herself by covering her face with a veil, and then go to the temple
and receive a man who was a stranger to her.
Their sexual act was meant to reflect and encourage fertility in
Nature. Once a woman had fulfilled this
obligation, she was virtuous and loyal to her husband for the rest of her
life.
Tamar may well have been
following a version of this practice, being a Canaanite woman, but in her case
she also asked payment from Judah. It is interesting to read their conversation
which is carried out in a wonderfully businesslike manner. Wasting no time on preliminaries Judah says, “Please
let me come into you,” to which Tamar replies like a hard-headed
business woman, “What will you give me that you may come in to me?” finally
exacting the serious pledge of Judah’s
seal, and cord and staff. Today’s equivalent
would have been all of a person’s credit cards.
That he possessed these items indicates that Judah was a man of considerable
wealth. His personally engraved seal was the symbol of his individual and
corporate identity, and was carried on a cord threaded through the middle
around his neck. His staff, which
probably had a carved top to mark ownership, was a symbol of authority as well
as being practically useful. For example
in Numbers 17:2 the Lord commanded Moses to get the staffs from the leaders of
each of their ancestral tribes, and they would know by which staff sprouted,
which tribe God had chosen to minister in the tabernacle. When we realise how valuable they were, it is
surprising that Judah
gave them up
Taking his seal and its
cord and his staff was a masterstroke on Tamar’s part. When it came out that Tamar was pregnant,
such evidence made it unmistakably clear who was responsible. What Tamar did was unorthodox by modern
standards, but by ancient Hebrew standards, her actions were legal and morally
right. Judah
confirms as much when he says, “She is more righteous than I (or
“She is within her rights rather than I.”),
since I would not give her my son Shelah.” At the same time we can sympathise and
admire her for what she did in that as a defenceless widow she was fighting for
common justice in a situation where even the rights she possessed as a widow
were being denied her. It shows a
virtuous woman who risked everything, her life and her reputation, to get what
was rightfully hers. She emerges as the heroine of the story. It is to Judah’s credit that even although
it would have been very embarassing and humiliating for him to be shown up in
this way, he readily acknowledges that she was in the right, and that she had
been acting according to the law.
At the end of the chapter
we see that Tamar’s tenacity was rewarded with the birth of twins, Perez and
Zerah. Through Perez she became the
direct forbear of King David, and later of Jesus. This is why I have entitled this sermon, ‘The
Marvel of Divine Grace.’
In an amazing way God
could take the threads of this tangled mess and weave it into his own pattern
to bring hope to humankind. First he
dealt with Judah
as in this chapter we see the first hints of a change taking place as he admits
to moral failure. He was a very
different man later in Genesis when he was willing to be put in prison in the
place of his younger brother. And then
the greatest marvel of all, God permitted the human descent of the Messiah to
come not only from Judah but also Tamar.
No human would have done that.
Only God could take this and use it for his own purpose. There is nothing more marvellous than the
power and possibilities of grace. God’s
grace will not leave us in the miry clay of degradation, defeat and
despair. The glory of God’s grace is its
power to heal broken hearts and mend broken lives. Despite our sin, grace has transforming
power. The gospel comes to hearts broken
by sin and desparing of being saved, and bring the hope of a different tomorrow
as it tells of pardon, peace and purity through the transforming influences of
God’s mercy, love and grace.
This is the message that
finds its fulfilment in the coming of Christ that we celebrate each Christmas,
and that we focus on at the special time of the year. Let us ensure that we not receive the grace
of God in vain.