The Bible Recap - Day 025 (Genesis 38-40) - Year 6

Episode Date: January 25, 2024

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Hey Bible readers, I'm Tara Lee Cobble and I'm your host for the Bible Recap. Yesterday we ended with Joseph's brothers selling him into slavery and he was subsequently sold to a man named Potiphar who worked for the King of Egypt. Joseph's brothers led his father Jacob to believe he was dead, and Jacob was crushed. Today we have a brief intermission from Joseph's story where we follow what's happening at that time in the life of his half-brother Judah, Leah's fourth son. Judah finds a wife from among the Canaanites.

We've seen them a lot already, we'll continue seeing them. They're the cursed descendants of Noah's son Ham. They're not worshipers of God, and they currently inhabit the land God promised to give to this family. Judah and his new wife have three sons, and he eventually arranges a marriage between his oldest son Ur and a woman named Tamar.

But Ur was wicked, so God kills him, because he's God and he knows hearts. God is both just and merciful. In this instance, he leans into his justice. So if you're feeling any kind of impulse to set yourself up as a judge over God because of this, I would just encourage you to remember that he's the one who gets to make those kinds of decisions.

We've all committed treason against God and his kingdom, and we all deserve death. So no matter what Ur did or didn't do, he got what he deserved. The rest of us are just living on mercy. After Ur's death, Judah gave Tamar his second son in marriage. Because if she had neither a husband nor children, it was essentially a death sentence for her in that day. There'd be no one to care for her or provide for her.

It seems like Judah was really trying to take care of Tamar. But son number two wasn't having it, so he got sneaky about it to make sure he didn't get her pregnant. God's protection of Tamar kicks in when this happens, and God kills son number two. Son number three was still a child at that point, so Judah told Tamar to stick around

until he was old enough to marry. But Judah didn't seem keen on keeping his promises, and Tamar was fearful that she'd never have kids. So she took matters into her own hands. We've seen this kind of thing a few times before and we're not even a month in yet. For the descendants of Abraham, children were the sign of God's blessing

because that's what he promised Abraham. So to not have children was shameful for one of Abraham's descendants. One day, after Judah's wife died, Tamar heard he was going on a trip. She veiled herself and positioned herself on the road he'd be taking. Some theologians think she intentionally dressed like a prostitute and planned this scenario all along, but others believe she veiled herself as a reminder to Judah that he was supposed to be helping her marry his son. Either way, when he mistook her for a prostitute, she went along

with the ruse. He slept with her and she cleverly asked for collateral until his payment, which was a goat, could arrive. So he gave her his signet, which was like a form of ID. He also gave her the cord it was on and his walking staff, which was probably also personalized and unique to him. He sent the goat to her later, but surprise, she was nowhere to be found. A few months later, word gets out that Tamar is pregnant and Judah orders her to be burned. She pulls the big reveal of all Judah's personal items that he gave her, and he's busted. Through this process, Judah is deeply humbled, and Tamar's life is spared.

Then she gives birth to twins. Chapter 39 zooms back in on Joseph, who is still in captivity in Egypt. One of the first things we learn about him was that he wasn't alone. This chapter tells us four times that the Lord was with Joseph. God's nearness to him and blessing on his life made his master Potiphar take notice. God was causing him to succeed, so Potiphar put him in charge of more things in hopes that more things would be successful. It doesn't seem like this was some kind of religious move on Potiphar's part. It wasn't like he saw the blessing on Joseph's life and said, I want to worship this God who blesses you. It just sounds

like this was more of a business decision. Still, for Joseph's sake, God blessed this, and Potiphar trusted Joseph all the more. This falls right in line with the promise God made to the patriarchs. By the way, that's what we call the fathers of our faith who are from this particular family, patriarchs. The word refers specifically to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. God has promised to bless those who bless them and curse those who curse them, and now he's continuing this with Jacob's son, Joseph. Joseph was easy on the eyes,

and Potiphar's wife tried to seduce him. She launched a repeated campaign of temptation against him, but he remained honorable. He knew it would be a sin not just against his master and her and himself, but primarily against God. Since her efforts at seduction weren't working, she forced herself on him, but he ran away. Rejection hits anyone hard, but this woman took revenge to the next level using the clothes she had torn off him to accuse him of trying to attack her.

This is the second time Joseph has been wronged by someone who then uses his clothes to lie about him. If I were Joseph, I might start to get a little paranoid about my clothes. You may have noticed that she calls Joseph a Hebrew. So I wanna explain that term briefly and why it's here in the text. First of all, Abraham, Joseph's great-grandfather, was from Hebron and there seems to be a close association with people of that region generally being referred to as Hebrews.

The term Hebrew is often used interchangeably with the term Israelites, which refers to the descendants of Abraham via Jacob Israel. So Hebrew is usually more of a geographic identifier of a person and Israelite is often more of a reference to lineage. To further complicate this, Hebrews also the name of the language they speak. So when Potiphar's wife points out that Joseph is a Hebrew,

she's trying to slander him. She's leaning on the racial tension that exists between her people, the Egyptians, and Joseph's people, the Hebrews. Despite Joseph's loyalty to Potiphar for more than a decade of service, he puts Joseph in prison. There's not even a trial where he can defend himself because he's a Hebrew slave in Egypt, so he has no rights. But guess what? This is where we see two of the places that this chapter tells us the Lord, capital L-O-R-D, intimate, personal, Yahweh, was with him. We don't have any record of Joseph having personal conversations with God like his ancestors did, but God makes

it clear that he was there with him. And because God was with him, Joseph gained favor with the guards and continued to succeed even in prison. After Joseph becomes the highest ranking prisoner, two new prisoners show up, the king's cup bearer and chief baker. Both of these guys had really important positions. They had to be trustworthy because they had the responsibility of making sure the king wasn't poisoned. They were in charge of his food and beverages.

One night, they both have dreams that bum them out, and they want someone to interpret them for them. In ancient Near East culture, dreams were viewed as messages from God, and there were lots of magicians who could interpret your dreams for you. But there apparently weren't any magicians in prison, so these two guys were stuck. Now, Joseph knows that only God can provide an accurate interpretation for any messages he sends via dreams, and Joseph also knows that God is with him,

so he steps up in confidence. He interprets the cupbearer's dream first, and it has a favorable outcome. He'll be restored to his position in three days. He's overjoyed. And Joseph knows that the cupbearer's reinstatement could be the key to his own freedom as well, so he asks the cupbearer to put in a good word for him.

Then the chief baker shares his dream. But the interpretation is not so awesome. He's going to be killed in three days. It's pretty clear from Joseph's interpretations that he isn't just trying to win friends by saying nice things. The king's birthday is three days away and everything happens just as God had said and Joseph had interpreted, both good and bad.

But the real letdown for Joseph is that the cupbearer forgets about him. Where did you see God's character and attributes show up in today's reading? My God shot was in the story of Tamar and Judah and his sons. The whole story is filled with sin from top to bottom. Wickedness, fear, deception, manipulation, hypocrisy, prostitution, and or adultery. But here's what I saw about God in this.

I saw his faithfulness. Despite all the ways these people were unfaithful to him, he remained faithful to his promise to their family. How do we know this? these people were unfaithful to him, he remained faithful to his promise to their family. How do we know this? Matthew 1 lists Judah, Tamar, and their son Perez in the lineage of Jesus. While Scripture never endorses most of what happens in Genesis 28, God was working in all that mess to bring about the birth of the very one who would redeem us from sins

like these. That means Jesus comes from the line of Judah, which is would redeem us from sins like these. That means Jesus comes from the line of Judah, which is why one of his names is the Lion of Judah. Judah was a broken man. Tamar was a broken woman. And we don't know a lot about their son, Perez, but I'm sure he was no walk in the park either. It all goes to show us that even though we will be unfaithful, he will continue to be

faithful to every promise he made. He's a promise keeper, and he's where the joy is. If you're tired of self-help Bible studies and you want to dig deeper into Scripture and knowing God, then D-Group is for you. D-Group is different than the Bible Recap. The Bible Recap is where we read the Bible, and D-Group, Discipleship Group, is where we study the Bible. We start new studies every six weeks. We have both men's and women's D-Groups that meet all over the world, both in person and

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