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In Christ, Mark
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The scriptures. May God bless the reading of His holy word.
Judah got a wife for Er, his firstborn, and her name was Tamar. But Er, 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.
Genesis 38:6-11
This ends this reading from God's holy word. Thanks be to God.
It’s troubles me today to see the number of people who feel like it’s fine to live an ungodly life. It’s something they are completely comfortable with as they step through each day doing whatever they please with no real concern for what’s right or wrong and no fear of consequences. Indeed, the line between good and evil seems ever more to be smudged or, in a lot of cases, erased all together.
Indeed, ungodliness seems to be the in thing these days and what is even more troubling to me is that you even find professing Christian believers involved in this. Over and over again, I see it on social media in regard to matters the Bible clearly calls sinful and yet Christian believers are endorsing. Unfortunately, this is just an extension of churches that hold onto non-biblical doctrines, churches that have one foot in the world and its ways and the other in the Lord.
As we turn to our passage for today, we need to recap what we learned yesterday from the first five verses of Genesis, chapter 38. There you’ll recall how Judah, the fourth son of Jacob, decided to leave his Israelite kin and associate with the sinful, polytheistic Canaanite people, even going as far as marrying one of their women. In the following verses, we see where that ungodly decision would go on to have serious ramifications after he had three sons with his Canaanite wife, the daughter of Shua.
Judah got a wife for Er, his firstborn, and her name was Tamar. But Er, 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. Vv.6-11
One truth we know about God is that He will not co-exist with sin. So as Judah willingly chose to turn from the will of the Lord and form a partnership with sinfulness, we find where God didn’t partner with the relationships that resulted.
Point in case was Judah’s first son, Er. The scriptures tell us that he was wicked in the Lord’s sight which should come as no surprise as he was the product of a sinful couple. Er’s transgressions resulted in God taking action, removing the opportunity for him to bear any children after his father selected Tamar to be his wife. Operating outside of the Lord, Judah’s family line was not going to be extended through sons who chose iniquity over the righteousness God desired.
And so, we read where the Lord put Er to death and while we aren’t told how that death happened, the point here is that any man who willfully decides to be wicked in God’s sight can and will face the consequence of death, losing everything in the process.
Going back to our passage, we find Judah trying to adjust after his firstborn son had passed away and of interest, he never turns to God once through this entire story.
Never inquired as to who should be his wife.
Never inquired as to whether or not he should have children.
Never stopped once to inquire why his son had been taken from him.
Judah didn’t do any of this but rather, tried to work things out on his own terms, using worldly, cultural norms in the process.
In this case, he turned to his second son, Onan, and impressed on him the cultural responsibility he now bore with the death of his older brother. That responsibility involved the following:
To honor the death of his brother and compensate for the fact that he had not lived long enough to bear a son, the next son in line, Onan, was to sleep with his dead brother’s widow and then dedicate the first son born to his brother.
In other words, the baby born to the second son would then enjoy the same privilege as if he had been born from the first, a custom was referred to as a “levirate marriage”.
Well, obviously Onan wasn’t a big fan of this cultural norm because we read that when Judah gave Tamar to him so they could engage in sexual relations with the goal of her becoming pregnant, Onan refused to allow his semen to enter Tamar. Instead, the scriptures tell is he would spill “it on the ground."
This was an act that we read was “wicked in the Lord’s sight" so He put Onan to death too. Once again, we don’t know how Onan died but he was wicked like Er was and that wickedness had fatal consequences.
And if you’re keeping score, Judah who sinfully married a Canaanite woman now lost his first two sons from that marriage and this led to him fearing the worse, a fear that only caused him to spiral further into sin.
For not realizing that his first two sons had died because of their wickedness, Judah drew the conclusion that Tamar must be responsible in some way. Maybe he thought she had some curse upon her that caused his sons to die when they were with her but whatever his reasoning, scripture clearly tells us that he believed his youngest son, Shelah, would die "just like his brothers."
And so Judah made up an excuse so to keep Tamar from having sex with Shelah, saying that his youngest son needed to grow up. In essence, Judah told a lie because he misinterpreted what was really happening and this misinterpretation happened because he didn’t consult the Lord. If he had just done that, he would have been told why things happened the way they did and even more importantly, know what needed to happen next.
In the end translation, Judah failed to communicate with the One who is the source of all life’s answers and in a future message, we’ll see how Judah will further pay a price for his unwillingness to ask for the Lord’s counsel.
The lesson here is that when we decide to go it our own way, not consulting the Lord on life’s matters, we can expect to anger the Lord and royally mess up our life situations. We need to know and understand that the Lord will not bless the life of one who is knowingly disobedient and insubordinate to Him.
Going back to our passage for today, we find that Judah, selfishly protecting his son, condemned Tamar to a life of widowhood and as we see in the Bible, this wasn’t a place any woman wanted to end up. This is widows weren’t recognized as having any right to the property and possessions of their deceased husband. That ended up going to the firstborn son and so the widow would typically end up homeless and begging for support, especially if they had no children to care for them.
Thankfully, Tamar was fortunate because she was able to return to her father’s home and while we don’t know for sure, we could possibly see this as the Lord watching over Tamar after being victimized by Judah and his sons. Later, we will see where she reappears in the scriptures to show she is far from a pushover.
This brings us to one final take away from this account for when you decide to go it alone without God, your decisions might be harmful to someone else. There’s definitely a danger that comes with making decisions solely based on one’s own self interest because more often than not, it’s done at the expense of another.
Friends, today’s scripture passage serves as a warning to all who choose to live like there are no consequences for choosing to live contrary to the Lord and His will. Within these verses, God is telling us loud and clear that there are consequences for the wicked, the disrespectful, the disobedient, and the untrusting.
We had better hear this message and work to make corrections now, before it’s too late.
Amen.
In Christ,
Mark
PS: Feel free to leave a comment and please share this with anyone you feel might be blessed by it. Send any prayer requests to TheChristianWalkPrayers@gmail.com.
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