Advent Day 5 - this one is a bit long winded, I know!

We pick up the scarlet thread with Judah, and visit a part of Bible history that is not so comfortable to visit. But sometimes our comfort has to be upset or overturned in order for us to grow…. that is the case with regards to this next part, both literally and figuratively.
In Genesis 37 we encounter the dysfunctional (to put it mildly) relationship of Jacob’s children, the ancestors of Jesus. We read of a brother hated by the other brothers because he is their father’s favored son. We see how this hatred increases as he shares the dreams he has with them,  in which they are bowing down to him. The brothers want to kill Joseph, but first Reuben and then Judah avert the planned murder. Chapter 37 ends with Judah convincing the brothers to sell Joseph to a travelling caravan of Midianites, who in turn sell him into slavery in Egypt. And here is where we once again will see a very personal,  very hands on God, ensuring nothing happens to thwart His plan….
Chapters 37-50 of Genesis tell of Joseph in Egypt, but there is an interruption in the telling. It begins right after Joseph is sold into slavery, and this chapter covers the next two decades. Genesis 38 will be an example of how God’s perfect plan WILL NOT be thwarted, regardless of how badly we mess things up.
Genesis 38:1 tells us at the time the brothers sold Joseph, Judah left his family to live among the Canaanites. My guess is he could not even contemplate looking his father in the face, because of what they had done to Joseph. Judah marries a Canaanite woman and has three sons. Judah’s sons are growing up, so he finds a wife for his oldest son, Er. The bride is a Canaanite girl by the name of Tamar.  Her bridegroom, Er, is wicked beyond belief. In fact, the Hebrew word used to describe Er implies it is an evil that needs God to intervene and put a stop to. So the Lord took Er’s life. It may sound harsh, but it was necessary.  Er died childless.
In those days, when a man died without having a child, his brother would marry the widow. The first son of that union would be considered the dead son’s child, and the child would inherit accordingly. This ensured a man’s name and line would not die with him. This was a common practice in the Middle East in ancient times. 
Judah follows this practice, and his second son takes Tamar as his wife. But he is not an upstanding guy.  He is more than happy to sleep with Tamar for pleasure, but he has no intention of letting his brother’s name be given to a son who might come from the union with Tamar. So during the act, Onan would withdraw and spill his seed on the ground to prevent this from happening. We miss it in our English translations, but the wording in Hebrew implies this did not just happen on one occasion. This was not a onetime slight of his obligation. This was not pleasing (to put it mildly) to God, so Onan is taken out of the picture. Now Judah is a bit freaked out. He now has two dead sons. He sends Tamar back to her father with a promise of calling her back to marry his third son, Shelah, when he is old enough to marry. Judah has no intention of doing this. Genesis 38:11 gives us a glimpse into his thoughts. He worries his third son will die if he marries Tamar. This implies he thinks she is either cursed or brings bad luck into marriage. He does not seem to consider his sons’ actions may have brought about their deaths. 
After a time Judah’s wife dies and he completes the mourning period.  Meanwhile Tamar realizes her father-in-law has no intention of keeping his word.  With this discovery Tamar does something that is hard for us to understand. You can read the account in Genesis 38:12-30, but for our purposes, let me just say….Tamar disguises herself as a temple prostitute and waits for her father-in-law to pass by the gate of Enaim. Judah sees her and is deceived by the disguise. He believes his daughter-in-law is a prostitute for hire, so he goes in to her. She takes his signet ring as a sign of good faith that he will come back and “pay” her. She is not there when he sends the payment through a friend. He finds out the truth of her identity three months later, when he finds out his daughter-in-law is pregnant. He orders her to be punished and burned to death for her “harlotry”. However Tamar has a card up her sleeve, or a signet ring to be exact. She is able to prove who the father is by the signet ring. Judah acknowledges he was the one in the wrong for not fulfilling his promise to marry her to his youngest son. There are twin boys  born from this one time union, Zerah and Perez. The lineage of Our Savior, Jesus Christ, will continue through the line of Perez.
Now why does all this matter, and how does it fit in our story?  For starters, let’s take Judah….he left his family to live with the Canaanites. He married into the Canaanite culture. His morals had become loose enough for him to defraud his daughter-in-law. They were also loose enough for him to have no problem going in to a prostitute, or any shame sending his best buddy back to pay for services rendered. He was not just in the culture…he was OF the culture. How would his ten brothers be any different? Or if not them,  then their sons after them? I am going somewhere with this, I promise.
Abraham chose Isaac’s wife.  Jacob’s wives were his mother’s relatives. Now we have twelve sons who are supposed to become the nation of Israel, but they seem set on their own paths. How do you build a nation of people, when the eleven guys who are to make up that nation are living in a land where there are opportunities all around to go and intermarry with any of the surrounding nations?  They could spread out and blend in with the other cultures, never becoming or having the national identity of Israel God had declared they would have.
How would the Messiah come from a nation that did not exist? How does God handle this threat to His plan for a nation and the Savior of the world?
First, He allows Joseph to be sold into slavery.  Think of it as sending His recon guy on ahead to prepare the way. After a time, he sets Joseph up as second in command in Egypt. Joseph prepares Egypt for the coming famine.  As the famine ravages the face of the earth, God implements the next phase of His plan. He uses the famine to bring the sons of Jacob into Egypt.
The family lives in Egypt for a time because there is plenty of food and they are taken care. This removed them from the temptation of drifting apart as a family and disappearing into other nations. They are given the land of Goshen to live in and tend their flocks.
But what about intermarrying with the Egyptians? This was not a concern. The Egyptians wanted nothing to do with these shepherds of the wilderness. They considered them unclean. Joseph tells his brothers the following…
“you shall say, 'Your servants have been keepers of livestock from our youth even until now, both we and our fathers,' that you may live in the land of Goshen; for every shepherd is loathsome to the Egyptians." Genesis 46:34 
Good grief, the Egyptians wouldn’t even eat at the same table as Joseph because they knew he was a Hebrew….even though he was the prime minister of Egypt!!
Finally, they become slaves and have no choice but to stay in Egypt. This is because after Joseph dies, a different Pharaoh is in power, and he is a bit intimidated by the size of this family. So he figures the best way to deal with the Hebrews is to oppress and persecute them.
Why would God allow this? Remember at the beginning I said sometimes our comfort needs to be upset or overturned in order for us to grow? That was literally the case here.  Am I saying God oppressed Israel? No, but I am saying that once again God used the choices and actions of man to bring about His plan and purpose. God used the cruelty of the Egyptians to grow His people. This is how God turned a family ,who on arrival in Egypt numbered seventy,  left Egypt a nation of millions. This is the nation in whom the Messiah would come through.  This is not to say there would not be Gentiles in the Messiah’s bloodline. Quite the contrary…so far we have only Gentile brides. The time in Egypt was God bringing about the  birth of the  nation Israel.

‘For I know the plans I have for you,’ declares the Lord, ‘plans for welfare and not for calamity to give you a future and a hope.’ Jeremiah 29:11
“I know that you can do all things, And that no purpose of Yours can be thwarted.” Job 42:2
 Here is the big “THANK YOU, JESUS!!!” for me in all of this. I am so thankful God uses regular, everyday, flawed human beings….even in the genealogy of Jesus!! I am so grateful for the missteps, mistakes, and misdemeanors I see in the people God chooses to use throughout His-story.  He wants us to see and understand this, so we don’t miss out on the blessings of being used for His kingdom, because we think we are too flawed, or not good enough, or whatever our insecurity may be.  I am thankful for such a compassionate, understanding, loving God!!! What a gift!! Merry Christmas!!!