Excerpted from: Grace and Lies: A Mars Hill Story
“Then we got to the story of Joseph. His coat of many colors. Being sold into slavery by his brothers. Interpreting Pharaoh’s dreams. Becoming the second most powerful and wealthy man in Egypt, etc.
The famine that led Joseph’s brothers to go to Egypt for food was quite a story. The reconnection of Joseph to his brothers. The ultimate salvation of his people from famine because of this reconciliation. It seemed more alive than before, but it did not seem different.
Then, at the end of one sermon, Mark hit me with something different. I’m paraphrasing from memory, but it amounted to this:
“So, Joseph did all this great stuff. Where is he in the rest of the Bible?”
Following an awkward silence, he continued.
“He barely shows up. Joseph is basically a non-entity for the rest of the story.”
People were shocked. Or, at least, I was shocked.
“But Joseph’s brother, Judah, is a different story. Why? As we’ve been reading, Judah helped sell his brother into slavery. Judah’s first two sons were so evil God struck them dead. Judah then impregnated his former daughter-in-law, Tamar, believing she was a prostitute, and then tried to get her killed for sexual sins, ignoring his own. By the time he reached middle age, he’d done essentially nothing good. If we’re keeping score, this guy is a disaster.”
I remember being stunned.
“But it was Judah who guided his family to Egypt. It was Judah who took responsibility to bring Benjamin into Egypt despite his father’s fear, to please Joseph. It was because of Judah that they were ultimately able to make peace with the brother he sold into slavery. And we, as Christians, worship the Lion of Judah. Jesus came from the tribe of Judah. That’s Judah’s legacy.”
To this day, I have difficulty saying this, or even thinking about this, without tears coming to my eyes. The message that God was sending, to me, was clear: It doesn’t matter how much you’ve failed. I can still use you for good. You have not squandered your life if you are still with me. If I can still use someone like Judah, I can still use you. If I still love someone like Judah, I still love you.
I suddenly realized the truth of something I had been told 1000 times, but never fully accepted: God can use anybody, and nobody is beyond his love.”
I must say, I have pondered and considered these two brothers and why God would have brought Christ through the line of Judah, too. But in my reflections, I came to different conclusions.
Judah’s history with Tamar showed his fear, his disobedience to God in forcing her away from the family. But she turned the table on him and he was humbled and recognized her wisdom and God’s favor over her. Tamar became a key figure in Christ’s lineage.
Melanie Rainer writes beautifully about the Judah and Tamar story:
“Genesis 38 breaks into the Joseph narrative with a bold, complicated, very broken story. Joseph is sold into slavery, and the very next verse we read is about his brother Judah. Judah was one of Leah’s sons, and Leah the wife that Jacob didn’t love. Judah was also the patriarch of the lineage of King David and Jesus. So this story, and Judah’s legacy, isn’t as much an interjection as an interlude that gives us a glimpse of God’s grace and the amazing ways His promises were fulfilled despite all sorts of human interference.
Some cultural background helps this story, because it’s a rather tangled web of relationships. Levirate marriage was a practice in the ancient Near East that was later codified in Deuteronomy 25 as part of the Mosaic law. Basically, it meant that if a man died before he had a child, his brother had to marry his wife, and their first child would carry on the first (dead) brother’s name and place in the lineage.
Judah had three sons: Er, Onan, and Shelah. Er married a woman named Tamar, and Er was so evil that he died. Onan married Tamar, but didn’t want to preserve his brother’s place in the lineage, and so he did not impregnate Tamar, and was killed for that sin. Judah had seen both of his sons die after marrying Tamar, so he hid Shelah away and kept him from Tamar.
Tamar, the widow who had the right to bear Judah’s eldest son’s child and continue the family line, responded. She dressed as a prostitute, tempted Judah, and conceived a child with him without him knowing who she was (Genesis 38:13–19). Later, when Judah found out she was pregnant, he threatened to kill her for adultery (against Shelah, whom she was technically betrothed to). When she revealed that Judah was, in fact, the father, he then admitted that he had wronged her. Tamar had twin sons, Perez and Zerah, and Perez continued the family line and his descendants included King David and Jesus.
That is a lot of background to unpack a story that is, at its root, a story of God’s faithfulness to a family. God had made a promise to Abraham. He made a promise to Isaac and to Jacob. And at so many turns, the promise appears threatened by someone’s sin. Judah almost destroyed what he should never have had in the first place: the blessing of the line of Christ.
But the author of this very complicated story is the Author of the ultimate story: the story where God wins, where His promises all come true, and we are given the free gift of grace purchased on the cross by Jesus, the Son of God who came to earth as a baby in the line of Judah. God can and does redeem the hardest, most impossible, most complicated stories. What a gift it is to be His.”