Tamar

Good morning, Church.

Good morning.

This is the first week of Advent, and so we're gonna light the first candle, which is the candle of hope.

Today's reading is from Matthew 1, 1 through 3.

The book of the genealogy of Jesus Christ, the son of David, the son of Abraham.

Abraham was the father of Isaac, and Isaac the father of Jacob, and Jacob the father of Judah, and his brothers, and Judah the father of Pares, and Zara by Tamar, and Paris the father of Haran, Hezron, and Hezron the father of Ram.

This is the word of the Lord.

Please be seated.

Some texts you don't even need to preach, they just speak for themselves.

Thanks for joining us this morning.

My name is James Rathrin.

I'm the pastor here at Redemption Church Denver.

This is our first week of Advent, so we are out of mark for the year.

We'll be going back into the Gospel of Mark next fall.

At the beginning of the of next year, 2024, we'll do a uh about a four-week topical series on the future of our church and joining uh denomination and all the things, the changes that our church will be experiencing over 2024.

And then after that, we will be uh beginning in the book of Exodus.

So Yeah, a lot of Exodus fans.

You guys you guys like to get out.

So uh I'm I'm really looking forward to that.

And um, yeah, I've got a lot of study to do between now and then.

But for Advent, uh we're going to be spending time in the beginning of the gospel according to Matthew, which begins with a genealogy.

Advent is a time of looking back to the first coming of Christ, where we look back on when uh the promise was fulfilled and Christ was born, and uh we celebrate that, of course, culminating at Christmas, but Advent is also a time of looking forward, where we uh we anticipate the longing that we would have experienced of Christ when we would have longed for him to have come and be born, and now we are in a similar state as we long for Christ's return, as we look at all that is wrong in our hearts and in the world, and we consider that it will be made right, that Christ's promised return will happen.

And so we look forward to that as well in the Advent season.

When Jesus came in the flesh, when he was born on Christmas Day, God took on all of the aspects of humanity.

God was born fully man.

And what's interesting about this is if we were to think of how God would come into the world as fully man, we might think like, okay, the God man would sort of like spawn somewhere in the desert, and we would go wander off and find him, or there would be some, like, you know, he would he would be birthed from the earth in some strange way or something that would be sort of magical or mystical.

That might be what we would expect for how God would become incarnate, but what happens instead is that God takes on all aspects of humanity.

And humans don't just spawn randomly in the desert like they were on Hangham High with swords and pistols.

They that was a reference to a video game that's like 20 years old now, where you respawn.

I'll clarify for you, I'll clarify my references as we go, don't worry.

God took on all aspects of humanity.

And that means he took on what we humans have, which is a birth story, and we all have a lineage.

We do not come from nowhere, but we come as part of a story that's been happening since before we got here, and then we participate in that story.

You all come from somewhere.

You all have parents who had parents who had parents.

We all have a lineage.

And so God, taking on all of humanity, comes with a lineage.

The one who is eternal, having no beginning and no end, from whom all things were created, takes on an origin story, like we all have.

And so Matthew begins his description, his telling of the story of Jesus Christ and his time on earth with a genealogy.

With a description of what is the lineage from which God came.

What is the lineage from which Jesus Christ was born?

He begins his book like this Matthew 1.1, the book of the genealogy of Jesus Christ, the son of David, the son of Abraham.

The phrase that it begins with, the book of the genealogy, in Greek is Biblos Geneseo.

You can hear Geneseo Genesis.

In Biblos, you can hear, it kind of sounds like Bible, right?

Bible, it just means book.

So it's this reference right in the very beginning to Genesis, the very first book of the Bible, to Genesis, that story of the creation itself.

Matthew begins his gospel this way, John begins his gospel with a reference to the book of Genesis in the beginning of creation.

Mark begins his gospel with a reference to Genesis in the beginning of creation, and that is because the only analogy to the birth of Jesus Christ is creation itself.

The only thing that is like Jesus coming into the world is the world being created itself.

Because what is more strange?

That all of this was created by the word of God, and that we stand in our very being upheld by the word of God, or that that very God who upholds the world by the word of his power would enter into this very creation as a man, being born of a woman, just like we all were, that the eternal one would take on flesh.

Perhaps the only thing stranger than the eternal one taking on flesh is the creation itself.

And I think that the incarnation is even more incredible than the creation.

And the way that Matthew sort of puts these little hooks to hang his genealogy on, Jesus Christ is the son of David and the son of Abraham.

David is the first king of Israel.

And he was given a promise by God that his throne would last forever.

It would be an eternal throne.

Now, of course, that throne did come to an end.

But then it was made eternal by Christ, taking up that throne, and it is not just a particular kingdom within the world, but it is a king over all other kings.

A kingdom which subsumes all other kingdoms within it, that is absolute and eternal.

So Jesus is the true king, the son of David.

But Matthew also describes him as the son of Abraham.

And Abraham is the one who is given the promise by God, the promise of redemption, that God would be our God and that we would be his people.

This is the promise.

That in our sin God did not leave us to become strangers to him, but that God committed himself to us to seek us in the midst of our sin, so that we might say once again, He is our God, and we might hear said by God, we are His people.

Jesus is the fulfillment of that promise.

All of the promises that were given to Abraham, that are then expressed more greatly in Moses, that are passed on to David, are fulfilled absolutely in Jesus Christ.

He is the child of promise, and he is the true king.

Last night at our Carol Singh, we sang this phrase the hopes and fears of all the years are met in thee tonight.

And when Matthew begins his gospel with a genealogy, a list of the names of parents that led up to Jesus Christ, we see in all of those people stories just like yours.

Stories that are full of hopes and stories that are full of fears.

And all of those culminate in the birth of Jesus Christ.

The hopes and fears of all the years are met in him.

We still participate in that very hope, the hope of his coming again, that they will be met in him once again.

The genealogy that Matthew lays out, of which we just read the first three verses, is systematically laid out by Matthew.

And it lists 14 generations repeating in three stanzas.

So there's three stanzas of 14 generations each.

And you can kind of think of the 14 generations that are laid out in Matthew.

That number 14 has significance to it.

We can see that the number 7 representing a fullness throughout Scripture.

Number 14 is like a doubly full.

And Jesus comes right at the fullness of time.

And we can see the narrative that takes place for the Israelites throughout this genealogy is something like a, it's like the phases of the moon, which we can see taking place in two-week cycles, where it begins and there is a waxing of the moon into David, the coming of the first king, like a full moon.

And then there, the next two weeks of generations, we see a waning of the moon, where there are no more kings left, and the people of God are exiled into Babylon.

The throne that was promised to be eternal is removed, and the land that was promised to be theirs is taken away.

But then the moon waxes again, and it culminates in the true King, Jesus Christ.

We see this pattern that's in the language of the genealogy.

You can hear it in verse 2.

This is the consistent refrain.

Abraham was the father of Isaac, Isaac was the father of Jacob, and Jacob, the father of Judah and his brothers, was the father, was the father, was the father.

This is the repeated refrain of the genealogy that's laid out in Matthew.

And therefore, it's particularly strange, amidst the backdrop of this refrain, was the father, was the father, was the father, that we hear breaking in a mention of four women in the genealogy.

There are only four women mentioned in the genealogy of Matthew.

These women are Tamar, Rahab, Ruth, and Bathsheba.

Now, throughout the genealogy, there are a lot of different threads of analysis that we could pick up in order to understand this genealogy.

We could look at the numerical pattern, the stanzas of 14 generations that repeat three times, and we could find meaning in there.

We could ask ourselves the question: why does Matthew say that there are 14 generations in the third generation when you count them and there are only 12?

The answer to that question is, I don't know.

I don't know.

We could look at the the narratives of the individuals' lives, and we could we could see the strangeness of the people that God uses in his story.

We could see the wickedness in some of them, the righteousness in others, the mixture within them all.

There are all kinds of threads that we could pick up.

And all of these are different descriptions of hopes and fears which we see met in the person of Jesus Christ.

But for this advent, we will be picking up the thread of these four women.

Why is it that Matthew lists these four women in his genealogy?

Why does he list Tamar, Rahab, Ruth, and Bathsheba?

What is it about these four women, which Matthew calls out in particular, that we might see and see in the shape of their lives and the way that they interact with this genealogy, what does that mean about Jesus?

Because here's what's interesting about all of these people.

All of these people are by Jesus brought into Jesus' story.

What does it mean that these four women in particular, Jesus by his word in Matthew, explicitly brings them into his story?

And throughout this, we'll be considering what does it mean that we can be brought into the story of Jesus?

That his genealogy can become our genealogy, that we can become participants in this family, the family of God.

Okay, so the four women are Tamar, Rahab, Ruth, and Bathsheba.

Why is it that these four women are mentioned?

Matthew's obviously being selective, because there are lots of women that Matthew doesn't include in his genealogy, which he could have, which means he's drawing our attention to these four in particular for some particular reason.

He doesn't mention Sarah, who we see in her old age miraculously conceive the child of promise.

That might have been a good one to include, or Rebecca, that wife of Isaac, who has the twins.

Or Leah, the rejected wife of Jacob, who ends up being the one through whom the line of the king will come.

But Sarah, Rebecca, and Leah, these famous women in church history, are not included among the four in Matthew's genealogy.

Why Tamar?

Why Ruth?

Why Rahab?

Why Bathsheba?

The main commonality that we might find between these four women who are referenced in Matthew's genealogy is that they are all Gentiles.

They're all Gentile women.

These are not Israelites that Matthew includes in the genealogy.

Now there's a strangeness to that because Jesus is the promised king of the Jews.

This promise was given to a particular people, a particular nation, and yet within the one who is the king of the Jews, he himself carries Gentile blood.

Jesus is himself, in a sense, the breaking down of the dividing wall between Jews and Gentiles.

In his very own story, Jesus carries that pattern.

So we see this similarity between the four in that they're all Gentiles.

Secondly, across the four women, we see each of them take an active role in intervening on behalf of the line of the promised king and on behalf of the kingdom itself.

Each of these four women meet the line, the line of the king, through whom the Savior is meant to come, at a moment where the line is about to vanish, or where the kingdom just hangs by a thread.

Sometimes literally hanging by a thread.

A thread tied to a child's wrist, or a thread hung outside of a window to show where she was living.

And because of the intervention of these Gentile women, the line of the king continues.

The line of the Jews, the coming of the true king, takes place.

It's common, and if you were to like Google and read a blog on the four women in Matthew's genealogy, I promise the theme of that blog would be something like God uses messy people.

Look how Jesus uses messy people by incorporating them into his story and into his genealogy.

If any of you ladies out there want to start a Christian women's blog, I have a great, I have this idea for a name.

It would be called Messy Bun Faith.

My messy bun faith.

Doesn't that sound like it exists?

Girls love that.

It's messy.

It's like messy bun faith.

You don't have to do that, but it's free.

But in in that blog, that would be the frame that was taken for this story.

Now, I'm kind of pausing here.

I don't think that that angle makes as much sense of why Matthew would include these women.

I understand the temptation to see that because half of the women engage in, in their stories, that um we'll say oldest of professions.

And so we might say, look, at how messy they are, but that doesn't make sense of Ruth and Bathsheba, because they don't.

Likewise, if Matthew was just using these women to say, look at how God uses messed up people, well, he didn't need these women to do that.

It would have been sufficient to just include Judah.

It would have been sufficient to include David, which he already does.

And so that angle doesn't seem quite appropriate.

I think while that is an aspect of their stories, it is not particularly an aspect of these women's stories.

That's an aspect of many of the stories throughout the people throughout the lineage.

Instead, I think we're seeing something like the only way the kingdom can be established is by the inclusion of the Gentiles.

And so in their story and in their inclusion, we see that the kingdom almost vanishes, and then the Gentiles are included.

And that shows us that the shape of the kingdom that Christ is establishing is not just for one corner of the world.

Christ's project is not just for the redemption of a particular group of people.

Christ's project of redemption is for the whole world.

Christ is becoming the most absolute king of kings that you can imagine.

And there is no place that his redemption doesn't cover.

And so as we see that narrative unfold, particularly in the stories of these women, we see that when it when the kingdom hangs by a thread, the Gentiles are included, and then the kingdom flourishes.

And that is our hope in the coming of Christ.

That he does not come as some parochial king, but he comes as the king of the world.

So that we can look to him.

Anyone can look to him and find salvation.

So this morning for our first week here, we're going to be spending time looking at the story of Tamar.

Tamar is the first woman who is included in the genealogy of Matthew.

And perhaps ironically, or in a very unplanned way, this is our fourth sermon about Tamar this year.

I've never pre uh like we've I've preached 12 on Jesus, you know, in In Mark, uh, our fourth sermon on Tamar, she's like the theme of 2023 for some reason.

The reason that worked out is because we were preaching through Genesis 38 at the beginning of this year, and that's where Tamar's story is told.

And then at Palm Sunday, which actually was just a couple weeks after we preached through Genesis 38, we referenced Tamar because Tamar's name means palm.

And then when we were preaching in uh Mark, we went through the triumphal entry and we see the palm branches come out again, because that is what we're celebrating on Palm Sunday.

And so there's another reference to Tamar, and then here we are in our Advent series, and we're back to Tamar again.

So I don't know what you probably doesn't mean anything, but you're just gonna get to know if you go to this church, if there's one person you'll know, it's Tamar.

This is the way that she's described in the genealogy.

It's the first interruption of that flow of was the father.

In Matthew 1, 2 through 3, which you already heard this morning, it says, Abraham was the father of Isaac, and Isaac the father of Jacob, and Jacob the father of Judah and his brothers, and Judah the father of Perez, and Zarah by Tamar.

And Perez the father of Hezron.

So Tamar is the wife of, not the wife, but she uh gives birth by Judah to two sons, twins, in fact, Perez and Zara.

Perez and Zara are born in this strange way in which we'll we'll look at, you may have like vague memories of this story of during the birth of these twins, one of the child's hands comes out first, and they tie a red cord around that child's wrist to mark him as coming out first.

That's Zara.

And then Perez makes a breach for himself and ends up being born before the child, his brother, whose hand had come out first.

And so there's this strange sense, which is this sense that is carried throughout these twin narrative in narratives in Scripture, which is that the younger, or excuse me, the older will serve the younger.

That the younger will be the one who carries the promise.

And so the one who carries the promise is Perez.

But there's a sense in which Perez is not the one who came out first.

The one who came out first was Zara.

And so there's that strange dynamic that takes place here.

Tamar is, because she is, uh gives birth to the children of Judah, and Judah is the one who has promised that the line of the king will come from.

Tamar is the mother of the king.

Tamar, as I mentioned before, is a Gentile woman.

She's a woman from Canaan.

Now, we are meant to think of Tamar as something like the embodiment of being a Gentile.

Narratively, her name is directly correlated to the Gentiles, because her name means palm.

Now, why is the name, why is the name palm, why are palms correlated to the Gentiles?

Well, it's this strange moment in Exodus 15.

And in Exodus 15, right when the Gentiles had come out of the Promised Land, uh, and excuse me, had come out of Egypt, and they are wandering around in the wilderness.

They hit this first problem, which is there's no water.

And immediately being led out by Moses and seeing that there is no water, they start complaining because they're thirsty.

And Moses performs a miracle by God, and uh water comes out from the rock.

But then they finally find a place that is well-watered.

And this first well-watered place is called Elam.

And it's a little oasis in the desert.

And Elam is described as having twelve springs which water seventy palms.

Seventy, I'm doing a lot of numerology this morning.

Seventy is the number of the nations.

Because in Genesis 10, the table of nations is laid out.

And this is the table which describes all of the Gentile nations of the world in Genesis chapter 10.

Genesis 10 · chapter mention

And there are 70 nations.

And so the 70 is equated with the nations, with the Gentiles.

And so there are 70 palms, which are shown.

And so the 70 palms are the nations of the world, which are being watered by the 12 springs.

And what do you think the 12 springs are?

Exactly, the 12 tribes of Israel.

And so this is the pattern that the promise was meant to participate in.

The pattern of the promise is that the Israelites in particular would be blessed by God.

But their blessing will be a blessing for the whole world.

And so you could picture it.

Like the Israelites are like seven, are like twelve springs which go out and they water the whole world so that in their blessing we are all blessed.

And so Tamar, whose very name is Palm, she is the embodiment of being a Gentile.

And then we see that this palm being the king of the Gentiles, because Tamar has the child by Judah, and Judah is the line of the kings, and her name means palm.

This is why palms become equated with kings.

And so at Palm Sunday, they wave the palm branches because this is the symbol of the coming of the king.

So just in Tamar herself, in her name, we see that she is the Gentile who is the mother of the king.

We see the fullness of the redemption story of Christ just in her name.

So let's look at her story.

As each of these women, Tamar participates in the line when it is in a moment of crisis.

And the moment of crisis is described for us in Genesis 38.

So what happens is, when we looked at the story initially, we really looked at it through the lens of Judah.

But this gives us an opportunity to look at it through the lens of Tamar.

So Judah is one of the 12 sons of Israel, one of the 12 sons of Jacob.

And after selling Joseph into slavery, there's a bit of a fracture among the 12 sons of Israel.

And in that fracture, Judah departs from his other brothers, and he goes down south with a friend.

And when he is down south and he is away from the family of promise, he marries a Canaanite woman.

The Canaanite woman is described to us as the daughter of Shua.

And Shuah is a priest in the area.

So he is, in a sense, integrating himself with a people that are outside of the promise of God.

And he is even integrating himself with the religious aspects of a people who are outside of the promise of God.

What we are seeing is a descent of Judah in every way.

He goes down south.

He marries someone outside of the promise, which you are not supposed to do, and he marries into a priestly family.

With the daughter of Shua, Judah conceives three sons.

Sons' names are Ur, Onan, and Shelah.

So living among the Canaanites, he marries his firstborn son Ur to Tamar.

Now, this firstborn son, Ur, who is married to Tamar, is so wicked that God kills him.

That's very wicked.

If you are wondering how wicked, very.

Now, the custom is, and in fact this is laid down explicitly in law in Deuteronomy chapter 25, is that if a woman is widowed, then she would be married to the brother of her widow, and the brother of her widow would be responsible for providing an heir to his now deceased brother.

Deuteronomy 25 · chapter mention

That way the line of that brother would not be cut off.

So he would be responsible for having a child, a son, with the widow of his brother, so that that line would not be cut off, but it would continue.

And that means that the child that he has would not be his heir.

And there's a sense in which he would actually be the son of the deceased brother.

This is the way that this law is laid down explicitly in Deuteronomy chapter 25.

Deuteronomy 25 · chapter mention

It says, If brothers dwell together and one of them dies and has no son, the wife of the dead man shall not be married outside the family to a stranger.

Her husband's brother shall go into her and take her as his wife and perform the duty of a husband's brother to her.

This is where the expression the duty of a husband's brother comes from.

I'm just kidding, that's not an expression.

And the first son whom she bears shall succeed to the name of his dead brother, that his name may not be blotted out of Israel.

Now, Onan was that secondborn brother who was the remaining brother, and he refused to conceive with Tamar.

Because in his selfishness, he did not want to take responsibility for a son who would not be his heir and would not continue in his name.

And so, because he didn't want to honor his brother or honor his family, in fact, because he did not even want to count his brother as his brother, he denied Tamar her right to a son.

Because of that wickedness of Onan, God kills Onan.

There's a warning here.

Which is that if you will not take responsibility, particularly in your sexual relationships, then the line is a dead end.

And it is a dead end even for you.

And we see this manifest in the story of Onan.

So Judah becomes terrified of Tamar.

Because he sees, I married her to Ur, Ur died.

I married her to Onan, Onan died.

What's going on with Tamar?

I can't marry her to any of my sons.

This was actually inspiration for the song Maneater.

This is where this comes from.

Judah wrote that initially.

Genesis 38, 11.

Then Judah said to Tamar, his daughter-in-law, Remain a widow in your father's house till Shelah, my son, grows up.

That's the third son, Shelah.

For he feared that he would die like his brothers.

So Tamar went and remained in her father's house.

So Tamar is now sent away from the house of Judah, sent back to her father's house to live as a widow.

And she's given this promise by Judah that once Shahla grows up, then she will be married to Shela, that she will get her right as one who would share in this line, the line of Judah.

But Judah, because of his fear, once Shela is of age, he still refuses to call Tamar.

And he leaves her to live as a widow.

And over the course of time, Judah's wife dies as well.

So Judah has one remaining son, Shelah.

And he is technically betrothed to Tamar.

But he will not marry Sheila to Tamar.

That means that because of Judah's fear, his line has come to an end.

This could have been the end of the genealogy that leads to Jesus Christ.

And here's something that is important to remember when we're reading stories about the way God does things.

He does not do things with a plan B.

He has one plan and he executes it absolutely.

So the line hangs by a thread.

There's a sense in which the line of Judah, the promise that our Savior would come, dies here in the fear of Judah.

But Tamar intervenes.

After the death of Judah's wife, he heads past Tamar's town to a festival where they would shear their sheep.

It was the festival of sheep shearing.

For us, of course, we celebrate that in July.

But we will reference it here in November.

Tamar hatches a plan and she disguises herself as a cult prostitute.

Part of the religious ceremony of the Canaanites was sort of prostitute priestesses that you would sleep with in hopes of garnering fertility for your crops and for your herds.

So she disguises herself as one of these cult prostitutes at the side of the road that Judah would pass down.

And you could tell that she understood clearly the character of Judah because she thought, all I'll need to do is make myself look like a prostitute.

And when he passes by, that will be sufficient.

Such was her understanding of the character of Judah.

Judah sees her on the side of the road, and he lays with her.

Unaware of her true identity, because she is veiled, as the cult prostitutes would have been veiled.

Now he doesn't have a goat with him at the time, which means he doesn't have any payment to offer.

Let's talk about goats for a second.

Throughout this narrative and throughout scripture, goats are the types of things that are meant to make sin go away.

The way that Judah had just a couple of years before hidden the selling of his brother Joseph into slavery was by killing a goat and covering Joseph's coat of many colors with the blood of the goat.

And so here, the way that he would cover the sin that he had with Tamar would be by providing her payment.

And the payment would be in the form of a goat.

And that would, in a sense, cut ties with them if he had had the goat.

But he was unable to cut ties with Tamar because he had no goat.

And so he promises to give her a goat, and Tamar, shrewdly, says, Leave me a pledge so that I know that you will return.

So he leaves her his cord, his signet, which would have hung from that cord, which would have been tied to his identity.

It's basically his signature, his name, and his staff.

And so he leaves those with Tamar.

And then he sends his friend back in this sort of like comic interaction where he goes back with the goat and they're asking around town, hey, the cult prostitute who was here, I have a goat to pay her.

Where is she?

I don't see her around.

And the men of the town say, there's no cult prostitute who lives here.

And who's like, well, that's strange.

Because, you know, I have this goat.

And in fear of becoming further embarrassed by the men of the town who said, if there was a cult prostitute who lived here, we'd know.

You know.

He comes back and they're unable to find who it turns out was Tamar.

And then three months later, it is discovered that Tamar is pregnant, pregnant by immorality, it is said.

And it must be pregnant by immorality because she's technically betrothed to Shela.

And is living as a widow, betrothed to Shelah, the youngest son of Judah.

Judah hears that Tamar has become pregnant by immorality, and he says, let her be brought out and let her be burned.

What an opportunity Judah finally has to get rid of this Tamar problem.

Then he won't have to have this betrothed son to this deadly woman.

And although it would mean the end of his line, at least he would be able to keep hold of what he had and what he could see right in front of him.

They call Tamar out, and Tamar comes before Judah, and she says, It is by the owner of this cord and this signet ring and by the owner of this staff that I have become pregnant.

And Judah is completely exposed.

Judah identifies them in Genesis 38, 26, and in identifying them, it says, and then Judah identified them and said, She is more righteous than I, since I did not give her to my son Shela, and he did not know her again.

That is, Judah did not know her again.

Judah is exposed.

His sinfulness is exposed.

And it becomes clear, and he says, She is more righteous than I, because I did not give her to my son Shelah.

Where is her righteousness?

She cared about the line continuing when Judah did not.

Judah did not care about the line of promise, the promises of God, which he was responsible for, which were given to him to participate in and to continue through.

He had given up on those, lost faith in those.

And yet Tamar, in her deceitfulness, proves to be more righteous.

So Tamar becomes pregnant and she becomes pregnant with twins.

It must run in the family because Rebecca had twins just like a generation before.

It skips a generation.

And the pattern of their birth, which I talked about in the beginning, it shows us this strange pattern in Scripture of the older being not the one who carries the promise, as it would have been typical to do, but instead, God choosing of his own accord the younger to continue the promise through.

And there's that strange birth story in which the scarlet thread is placed upon the wrist of the boy who comes out first and then is pulled back in, and then the other son makes a breach for himself, and it is Perez, the, in a sense, technically younger, who is made the child of promise.

And it is through Perez that the line comes that leads to Jesus.

Now, what is happening with this pattern?

Why do we keep seeing this pattern?

This is a picture of the inclusion.

Of the Gentiles.

Because it is the Jews are, in a sense, the firstborn son of God.

They are his chosen.

And yet the ones who are brought in, where the kingdom is established, are the Gentiles.

So it is by looking and following the pattern of the younger son that the older son might be brought in.

And this is the very pattern that God gives us, that Paul lays out in his hope for his brothers, the Jews, that they might look upon the Gentiles and they might see, look at how they are sharing in the promises of God, and that by looking at that they would be brought in, and the kingdom would be full.

So that all nations would come and worship God.

Now, in this birth of twins, and in Tamar's use of deception to preserve the line, we should start to get like these glimmers or these memories.

This story sounds like another story.

In fact, she's acting just like this other mother, just a couple of generations before, who birthed Jacob and Esau.

She's acting just like Rebecca.

Now, you may remember that God told Isaac that the promise would go to the younger son of Jacob.

The younger of the two of his twin boys.

But Isaac did not like Jacob.

He liked his older son.

And so he wanted the promise to go to his older son.

And so Isaac, when he is about to commit the sin of blessing, his older son, when he was commanded by God to bless his younger son, he's foiled by Rebecca.

And Rebecca comes and tells Jacob, okay, here's the plan.

Jacob, you're going to dress up like your son, like your brother Esau.

Here's some goat skin because he's hairy.

You're going to smell like the field.

We'll cook this, I'll cook this food for you, and you take it in.

And by Rebecca's intervention, she deceives Isaac into doing the right thing.

And thus, she preserves the line.

So in this same way, by the deception of Tamar, she shows that she is the one who truly values the line.

Now, what is the lesson in that?

I don't know.

Sometimes scripture is just like, deal with it.

How is it?

Look, these are this deception, these lies.

Aren't those something like particular sins?

And yet, how is it that we can see that God uses these particular sins to bring about the redemption of the world?

But then we start to see, well, isn't this the pattern?

Isn't God constantly working through the wicked and sinful intentions of people in the world?

And he, even through that, is accomplishing his good purposes.

Is this not in the most maximal form the pattern that we see in the crucifixion?

How is it that these sinful intentions could account for the greatest blessing to all the world?

There are four lessons that I want us to see from the story of Tamar.

The first is that in Tamar's story, we see that the line of the king is restored by the inclusion of the Gentiles.

Jesus is the King of kings.

This is the one that we are looking forward to.

Second is that Tamar is scandalous, and her mode of deception is not to be copied.

Yet, in this crooked story, looking back through the lens of Christ, we see that it is her righteousness that is sifted out.

Because Judah is absolutely right.

She is more righteous than him.

And her righteousness shows, in somehow, for some reason, she understood the value of this line.

She understood in a way that Judah was blind to.

As blind as his father, as blind as his grandpa, excuse me, these genealogies.

As blind as his grandpa Isaac, who was literally blind when he was deceived, Judah did not need to be literally blind in order to not see the value of the line of God.

Tamar could see it.

She saw it in the way that a Canaanite could see it.

She saw it and participated in it with the morality that we might expect from a Canaanite, but she saw it.

And by her face in that line, what we get as a description of Tamar, a final description of her, is she is more righteous than Judah.

And what is it that we see in the way that she demonstrates her righteousness?

Is it not this?

She was not a prostitute, but yet she was willing to be counted among the adulterers so that the line would be preserved.

And these women must be calling us to that final turn which takes place in the genealogy, where Joseph is not called the father of Jesus.

Because God is directly the father of Jesus.

But Mary is called the mother.

And so all of these women must tell us something about Mary.

That wasn't an accident, is what it was.

Thanks for thinking that it was as funny as I thought it was.

Thanks, Mom.

Mary was willing to be counted an adulterer for the sake of the line.

So in Tamar's sort of crooked participation in this, in Jesus' story, he brings it in, and in this most incredible sense in Mary, we see that she is willing to be counted among the adulterers so that the line would be preserved.

Such was her love and her care and her righteousness for the line of God.

And then what is that a picture of, that righteousness in Mary?

Is this not a picture of the righteousness of Jesus?

Who, unlike Mary and unlike Tamar, is absolutely sinless, who is perfectly righteous in everything that he does, and he is willing to be counted among the sinners so that we might be counted as absolutely righteous.

And so what does it mean that these stories end with the story of Jesus?

It means that when Jesus incorporates us into his story, when the guiding purpose of our lives is integration into the story of Jesus, he shifts our wicked lives and he brings out their righteousness.

So that we are made pure by Jesus.

And this is the way that God treats you.

It is only in him that any of our crooked stories can be found righteous.

And so this is the last thing that I want us to see in the story of Tamar.

If you find yourself in a story that is as twisted as Tamar in Judah's story, it is not dead yet.

There is a meaning in it, which is found in Jesus Christ.

We see that pattern shown in Tamar's story.

That although broken and corrupted, as it participates in the story of Jesus, all her hopes and all her fears are met in him.

This is our hope that we can be a part of that lineage and we too can be redeemed in Jesus.

So when you think of Tamar, think of the redemption that she pictures and how it finds its fullness in Jesus.

Now, let us turn to take communion.

Paul writes in 1 Corinthians, For I received from the Lord what I also delivered to you.

That the Lord Jesus on the night when he was betrayed took bread, and when he had given thanks, he broke it and said, This is my body which is for you.

Do this in remembrance of me.

In the same way also he took the cup after supper, saying, This cup is the new covenant in my blood.

Do this as often as you drink it in remembrance of me.

For as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the Lord's death until he comes.

This is a picture of a wedding feast, where we are brought in as the bride of Christ.

Now, how could we possibly be worthy to be the bride of the perfect king?

How could we ever be counted as worthy to sit in that place?

It is because Jesus has made the sacrifice, has atoned for our sins, has washed us, and has made us clean.

By our faith in Christ, our story is brought into his story.

And he was willing to make us a part of his family, such as we are, that we might be made righteous in him.

So come to the table this morning and feast, knowing that you by faith are made righteous by Jesus.

Holy Father, I pray that you would attend this time together, that you would attend this meal, and that you would show us in the stories of Tamar and throughout this Advent season how it is that when we are brought into the story of Jesus, our stories are reinterpreted.

And that even in their brokenness, they are able to participate in this wonderful higher glory that's found only in you, Jesus.

Lift this up in Jesus' name.

Amen.