Text:  Genesis 38:1-30                                                                                                   W 6^th Lent Midweek

Victory of Faith

            In the name of Jesus, dear friends in Christ:  this evening we come to the conclusion of our series of meditations on the Law and Gospel and specifically how they are revealed to us in various narratives in the book of Genesis.  And hopefully you have noticed a certain progression as we’ve gone along.  That is to say that each succeeding story has been uncovering and/or highlighting different aspects of the same Law and Gospel theme.  In all the stories we’ve examined thus far we’ve seen a single recurring idea, namely that people are constantly being presented the choice between attaining the goal their own way and with their own effort (Law), and attaining the goal by trusting in God to do it for them in his way and in his own good time (Gospel). At the same time, the details in the subsequent stories have given us increasing clarity about how the tension between Law and Gospel plays out in the life of each believer.

            Last week we looked at the story of Jacob and his two wives, Rachel and Leah.  That story revealed to us both the relative appeal and fruitfulness of the two covenants. We saw that Jacob’s relationship with Rachel paralleled a believer’s love affair with the Law.  Of the two covenants, it’s the one we find so attractive – but unfortunately, it isn’t able to produce anything that leads to the attainment of the goal.  On the other hand, Jacob’s relationship with Leah we saw as a picture of a believer’s relationship with the Gospel.  It’s the unlovely, undesired covenant.  No one would choose it willingly – but that doesn’t matter because the Lord manages to get it to us anyway, whether we want it or not – even to the point of concealing its true identity.  But however he gets it to us, when he does, it always proves fruitful and life giving to the one who receives it.

This was shown in to us in Jacob’s marriage:  how his father-in-law Laban pulled the old bait and switch on him, making him think he was marrying Rachel, when in fact he had substituted Leah in her place.  Jacob was horrified to discover he’d married the wrong woman; but even though he never learned to love her, it was through her that the Lord fulfilled the promise to him, making him the father of many sons – who turned out to be the fathers of seven of the twelve tribes of Israel – including Judah, the one through whom the Lord would eventually bring the Christ into the world and fulfill all his promises to his people.  And so it is even today.  It’s not through appealing, glorious, or philosophically wise and beautiful means that God saves us, but rather through means the world finds unattractive, foolish, and low – the most low and unappealing of which is the cross of Christ itself – but in all that ugly pain and suffering that our Lord endured is concealed the infinite wisdom, glory, and love of God.

Anyway, in last week’s story, we weren’t told exactly how Laban managed to hide Leah’s identity from Jacob.  Presumably it was dark, her face was veiled, and it’s likely that since it was a wedding celebration Jacob probably had a little too much to drink.  But however it was done, Jacob ended up in an intimate, covenant relationship – and having children – with a woman whose true identity was not known to him—and that suggests a strong connection to the story under consideration for this evening.  In it, Jacob’s son Judah ends up in a very similar situation: fathering a child (actually twins) by a woman who isn’t who he thinks she is.  This is especially significant because Judah is the one through whom the Messianic line goes on, as is Perez who is one of the twins born to him as a result of this unusual liaison.  And again, none of this is a coincidence – but yet another aspect of the same developing theme of Law and Gospel, which we will continue to explore one last time this evening.

            Our story begins some twenty-five years or more after Jacob married Laban’s two daughters, and a lot has happened since then. Jacob, who left the Promised Land many years before with little more than the shirt on his back has since returned with four wives, twelve sons, a daughter, large flocks and herds, and many servants.  Here he has flourished for some time; but all has not been well in the family.  You probably remember how Jacob’s ten older sons became jealous of their brother Joseph, and how, in their hatred for him planned at first to kill him – but ended up selling him into slavery – thus profiting quite handsomely from their brother’s alleged death.  The brothers brought their father Joseph’s bloody coat, leading him to believe that wild animals had killed his beloved son.  At this a cloud of darkness descends on the family. Jacob is absolutely inconsolable, entering a period of bitterness and mourning that will span more than two decades. It’s during this time that Judah, whose idea it had been to sell Joseph to slave traders, decides to leave the family settlement and strike out on his own. This is probably because he couldn’t bear his father’s unending grief constantly reminding him and silently accusing him of his part in having been the cause of it.

So it is that Judah makes friends among the local Canaanites, and in due course he marries one of them:  a woman whose name Scripture does not reveal to us.  Of their happy union are born three sons:  Er, Onan, and Shelah; and the indication is that Shelah is quite a bit younger than the other two.  Skipping rapidly over the years, we come to the day when the eldest son, Er, arrives at marriageable age.  Performing a father’s duty, Judah seeks out and finds a suitable wife for him:  a lovely young Canaanite woman named Tamar. And the reason all of this is important for the story and for us because we know that it is through Judah’s line that the Gospel promise of the coming Savior is to continue.  That’s what the text is following – and at this point it’s asking us to consider the question:  through which of Judah’s three sons will it go?

            The logical choice in the mind of most people (especially in the ancient world) would be that it should go through Er, the firstborn. It was always the firstborn who was favored with special honors.  But Er is disqualified.  We’re told that he was wicked in the Lord’s sight; so the Lord put him to death. And if you’re looking for some Law in the story, there it is:  the soul that sins shall die.  We’re not told what specific wickedness the Lord found so objectionable in him; but we’re given the impression that it was something pretty serious – or more likely, in my own estimation, it was a question of his faithfulness.  All people are wicked in the Lord’s sight.  They are considered righteous by the Lord by faith in the Gospel.  I rather suspect that Er turned his heart from the promise, and that’s what rendered him unfit to continue the Messianic line.

            But that brings us to a point in the story that may be a little hard for us to understand in our day and age.  We have to bear in mind that this was a very patriarchal society, and one in which there were no such things as social security or welfare.  At the same time, it was a society very much concerned with ensuring the continuing means of subsistence and the life-long security of its women.  Something else to understand is that in those days, when a woman married she left her own father’s house and became a member of her father-in-law’s larger family.  It was her father-in-law who assumed responsibility for ensuring her future livelihood.  By far his most significant contribution would be the inheritance that went to her husband at the time of his death.  And one of the things a woman considered before she married was her future faith-in-law’s wealth and what share of it would fall to her husband when the time came.  That’s because the rights of inheritance went to men only – that’s part of why she left her own father’s family:  there was no future for her there.  Her future security was tied to the men in her life:  her husband, his father, and later her sons.

But what happened then to a woman who lost her husband?  Since her husband was gone, did she then also lose her future means of subsistence that she counted on when she got married?  Was she cut out of the protection that her father-in-law’s wealth might have provided for her in her old age?  Well, no.  If she had one or more sons, they could inherit her dead husband’s share when her father-in-law died.  It would pass from the grandfather, through the dead husband, directly to them.  The assumption was that her son or sons would care for her in part from those assets.  But what if she had no sons when her husband died?  What she cut out then?  Again, no – and what protected her was the law of levirate marriage.  And this is where it gets a little weird for us. In such a case it became the duty of one of her dead husband’s brothers to father a son by her.  This son, when born, would be considered legally to be the son of her deceased husband – with all the rights of inheritance that belonged to him.  This son would guarantee her future security and take care of her in her old age. Now, I know that all sounds really strange.  But please understand that it was a system designed to protect women and to ensure they got what was promised to them when they married.

            So, back to the story, when Tamar’s husband Er is struck down by the Lord, leaving her a childless widow, the duty of giving her a son falls to Onan, Er’s younger brother.  But Onan is one selfish fellow.  He knows that if Tamar has a son, that’s one more heir to whom Judah’s wealth will be divided when he dies – and that means less for him to inherit.  His own share would be much bigger if Tamar has no son.  So he devises a way to deliberately fail to impregnate her.  He pretends to be fulfilling his duty; but as we heard in the reading, when the crucial moment came, “he spilled his seed on the ground”.  The indication is that this was his repeated practice over some period of time.  But understand what’s at stake here:  Onan is doing more than just being a reprehensible pig and cheating Tamar out of her promised due and rightful claim. Remember that we are dealing with the Messianic line:  the promise to all of God’s people which is being passed down through the generations. Onan’s sin potentially puts that promise at risk.  Here he has the chance to do the right thing and be part of fulfilling the promise of salvation to all people – but for reasons of his own greed, he opts out. He is the Judas of Genesis, if you will; and for his sin, he too is put to death by the Lord.

And when this happens Judah himself begins to have second thoughts. Two of his sons have been struck down in the prime of life, and the one connection seems to him to be Tamar.  In his heart he blames her, as if some terrible curse were attached to her, not knowing that it was his own sons’ wickedness that caused the Lord to slay them.  Though he has a legal responsibility toward Tamar, the last thing Judah wants to do is send his youngest son to fulfill the duty of levirate marriage because he fears that he too will die leaving Judah with a broken heart and no descendants at all.  The fact that Shelah is at present too young to marry provides Judah with a way to delay.  He sends Tamar back to her father’s house – even though by rights, she should stay with him.  Doubtless he tells her that she would probably be more comfortable with her own people while she waits for Shelah to come of age; but secretly he hopes that while there she will be given by her father in marriage to another – and then Judah will be off the hook.  One thing’s for sure, he has no intention of letting his son Shelah get anywhere near her, as Tamar herself finally concludes after waiting patiently for years for the call that will never come. 

And so we see in this story an interesting twist.  In two previous stories we’ve looked at in this series, those of Abraham and his wives, and of Jacob and his wives, it’s the relative fertility or infertility of the women involved that drives the story line and gives us the Law – Gospel tension.  But in this story it is the failure of the men to be fathers – specifically men disobeying the Law, acting hypocritically, and deceitfully failing to keep promises that creates the conflict. 

In any case, seeing that she is being cheated out of what has been promised to her, Tamar now resorts to extraordinary measures to claim what is hers.  And obviously I’m not advocating the approach she takes, but the point of the story is that she remains fixed on the promise, which on the surface are her rights of inheritance – but on a deeper level, we’re talking about the Messianic promise:  that of the coming Savior.  It’s Judah who is breaking faith with her on that first level and with God in the latter sense.   And the irony is that Tamar will use Judah’s own weakness and sin to cause him to fulfill the promise for her.  Judah is at this time a widower, having lost his wife some time past.  He’s also been out working hard with his servants for several weeks:  it’s sheep shearing season.  He comes into town after a long day … feeling a bit, uh, “edgy” shall we say?  And he finds temptation there waiting for him.  He falls – and he falls farther than may be apparent at first.  Yes, there’s fornication, which is quite bad enough; but it’s worse than that because as he later reveals, he believes Tamar to be a shrine prostitute; that is, a sort of priestess who served one of the Canaanite fertility gods.  The Canaanites employed the services of such prostitutes as acts of worship to their idols. So, and here’s the point, it’s Judah’s unfaithfulness to himself, to Tamar, and to the Lord God that results in Tamar getting the promise she’s been trusting in.

            And when, a few months later, Tamar’s delicate condition becomes known, it is she who is accused of being the sinner.  Judah leaps at the chance to get rid of her once and for all. As her legal guardian – and therefore the one who exercises legal authority over her – he condemns her to death. At last, he thinks, I’ll be free of this cursed woman and my line will go on through Shelah.  It’s at this point that Tamar takes the boldest leap of faith. She sends to Judah the staff and seal that he left as a pledge of payment to what he thought was a shrine prostitute.  It’s proof of his own guilt in the matter, both his visiting prostitutes and his failure to do his duty as her father-in-law.  More than that, it’s an accusation that says, “How is it that you keep your word to prostitutes but not to your own daughter-in-law?”  But here’s where it took such faith.  Judah could, if he were completely without a conscience, take them back, never say a word, and allow Tamar’s execution to go on.  But instead, the Holy Spirit working on his hard heart – which was no doubt already festering with guilt because of the crime he helped commit on his own brother Joseph – Judah cracks under the strain.  He admits his failure and his guilt and finally does the right thing, recognizing Tamar’s rightful claim and place in his family.  In time, Tamar gives birth to the child through whom the Lord will fulfill his promise to all – even to sinful and unfaithful Judah.

            The whole episode is a prophetic foreshadowing of an event that will take place many years later, when Judah’s descendants (who are called Jews) will self-righteously condemn to death another innocent One who trusted in the promise.  Believing themselves to be doing what is necessary to ensure their survival (by their own works – that is by the Law – and specifically by hypocritically breaking it), they will unwittingly cause the promise for all to be fulfilled.  It was on the day of Pentecost that the Holy Spirit brought many of them to repentance and faith in the Gospel through the preaching of St. Peter when he declared, “Let all the house of Israel know for certain that God has made this Jesus whom you crucified both Lord and Christ.” Those who believed were baptized and brought into the family of God and made heirs of eternal life.

            And I think that’s a good place to conclude this series of messages on the Law and Gospel in the book of Genesis.  The stories up to this point have revealed the futility of attempting to attain the goal of salvation by the works of the Law and how trust is the Gospel is the only way.  This evening’s story emphasizes the truth that the Lord keeps the promise open even to those who by their sin consciously try to destroy it – even to the point of using their sin and rebellion to make the promise come true for them.  God is faithful even when we are not – and that’s a pretty good summary of what Law and Gospel are all about.  To the gracious God who has revealed these precious, life-giving truths to us through his Son, be praise and glory forever.  In Jesus’ name.  Amen.

Soli Deo Gloria!