Veiled Sin

Photo by Syarafina Yusof on Unsplash
Genesis 38 doesn’t get nearly the respect and love it should. Many look at this chapter as an unnecessary and disturbing interruption to the story of Joesph, a generally positive story of redemption. Looking at the content of the story, it is easy to see why people think that. We all have some section of our lives we regret, and it would seem that we are looking at Judah’s season of regret here. Why dwell on the gross sins of one of the brothers when we could be focusing on the more positive portrait of Joseph? After all, this doesn’t describe most of our lives as good Presbyterians, so what is there even to learn from here? 
But this is actually a critical chapter for the story of Genesis, our Christian lives generally, and even contributes to the overall story of Jesus. 
Genesis 38 is critical to the book as a whole because Joseph is not the only character in this section of Genesis. Judah’s roles is arguably equally important. Rather than just focus on God’s redemption of Joseph’s circumstances, we are seeing in this chapter, the beginnings of God’s redemption of Judah’s character (Matthews). We can’t see how far God brings him if we don’t know where he started from, and this chapter shows us that sinful starting line. Hopefully, this will give you hope for what God can do in your life.
This chapter is critical because of what it has to say for your Christian life today. Because of the sexual misadventures aplenty we see here, we tend to focus on those and not look at all the foundational sins that actually lead to those moments. There are many “smaller” sins that are actually quite common to us all shot through this passage that we can learn a great deal from. Hopefully, this will make us more grateful for Jesus’ sacrifice for those sins after seeing them in their proper light. 
Finally, this chapter is critical because of what it tells us about Jesus’ family. 
We are going to tie all of this together under our two points, Little sins are big obstacles to family commitments, yet Jesus has died for the little sins, too. 

Little sins are big obstacles to family commitments
Chapter 38 takes place over the better part of twenty years (Matthews). After all, we see three sons born all of which make it to marriageable age in the course of this chapter. We aren’t just looking at a bad week in Judah’s life, but we are see what Judah has been doing in contrast to the next several chapters in which we see what Joseph has been doing. These men will lead very different lives, yet as the story unfolds, we will see how God uses both of them. 
However, back here in chapter 38, we see the troubles begin immediately in verse 1 where Judah leaves his brothers to live with the Canaanites. He finds a wife and has three sons by her. 
I’m sure those early years were great. He has found himself a good friend in Hirah, he’s found a wife with whom he has sired up three sons, three sons to carry on his legacy and ensure the retainment of the wealth that he builds. What else could you want in the ancient world? 
But what has he given up? He has forsaken godly family. Now, you may reply, “What godly family? The last time we saw those brothers they were trying to kill Joseph. Don’t even get us started on Jacob. Isn’t Judah better off with the Canaanites?” Well, as we will see in this chapter, no. While certainly his family isn’t the best, they were in the land of promise where God promises to bless. They were among the people that God approved for marriage. And Judah forsakes all of that. 
Many today make that same mistake. They can legitimately point to flaws in their family, church, or otherwise and rather than stay to work things out, they just leave. Yes, there are appropriate times to leave a community, but then seek out a godly one. This isn’t what Judah has done. He has taken his obvious leadership gifts and taken them to a place that God has commanded he not go. It is easy to think that we can find a place where the fit is perfect, but it doesn’t exist. Every community requires change, the question is will it require godly change or not. Be careful of who has maximum influence in your life. This doesn’t mean we don’t have non-Christian friends. We need people in our lives that we are working towards bringing them to Christ, but we need to make sure that those who have maximum influence on us are believers. If you have that, praise God for it! 
As we move into the next section (6-26), we can see that leaving your family isn’t the only way to forsake them. It is easy to get distracted by all the more heinous sexual sins that occur here that we miss the fact that all of this mostly boils down to selfishness. 
Er gets executed by God for some unnamed sin (though some scholar think it might be idolatry, as the punishment is worded similarly to other people who were killed for idolatry), and Onan is given the job to produce children by Er’s wife, Tamar. This is the concept of Levirate marriage. The point of it was two-fold, the dead brother’s name wouldn’t die out with him, and his widow would be taken care of. This would be a sacrifice on the surviving brother, because if an heir is produced, than the inheritance is divided up. If there is no heir, than the surviving brother gets his dead brother’s portion of the inheritance (Belcher). Onan is selfish in many ways here by being willing to take advantage of Tamar for pleasure, but making sure not to provide for her future needs or his brother’s legacy. After many incidents of this, God strikes Onan dead as well. Despite what some groups would say, God isn’t striking Onan down because of birth control per se. He is striking him down for refusing to do the right thing in bringing up children for his brother and the rest of the family. 
Now, we obviously don’t have this concept of marriage anymore because the society that made it necessary (one where women had very little economic opportunity outside of marriage) isn’t here anymore, nonetheless, we can draw some lessons here. Often the things that we are called to do to serve our families are far less sacrificial than what Onan was called to do. Onan was basically told to go live his brother’s life for him. He was to take care of his widow and raise up his children. If he is successful at this task then he get less inheritance after all that. His selfishness wasn’t pleasing to God, so punishment ensued. 
Where is selfishness impacting your family? Often enough you can trace it back to whatever is the thing that causes the most fights in your house. Selfishness is what breaks a family. We have been told in our culture that the individual is the most important. Instead of looking at the family as a whole, an entity unto itself, that God enters into covenants with, we have boiled down the family to a loose collection of individuals. Beware selfish habits that reinforce this. If things must always go your way for there to be peace in the home, something is wrong. Once you get used to selfishness, you will find that there will be almost no limit to what you will consider to please yourself. 
We begin to see that process work out in Judah, and Tamar for that matter, in the next section (12-26). Judah has become frightened that his sons keep dying while being married to Tamar. He obviously blames her for the deaths, because he withholds his last son from marrying Tamar. He sends her back to her father’s house, something that would have been a social shame for Tamar, yet he still holds some sort of power over her disallowing her to marrying someone else (Matthews). He has effectively put her life on indefinite hold, a reality that becomes clearer the longer he withholds his third son. 
Tamar hatches a plan to pretend to be a prostitute to trick Judah into siring an heir. This is a plan that he would obviously not consider for himself. This is why she wears the face covering, and gets a hold of his identifying stuff. It shows itself to be very important later on. This revisits a theme of deception via clothing in the family of Jacob (Ian Duguid). While we can look at what Tamar is doing as a desperate woman out of options, we still have the moral clarity necessary to judge that this isn’t the right approach to this. Yes, she is trying to do what is best for the family, but this is still a sinful way to go about it. Judah, on the other hand, is just looking to satisfy a cheap urge. He is so willing to do so, he hands over the equivalent of his driver’s license and credit card as collateral until he can send her payment. 
Once the evidence comes out of her pregnancy, Judah is ready to have her executed. He hasn’t been willing to provide what is necessary to preserve her life, but he seems pretty quick to do what is necessary to end her life. However, to his credit, when the evidence is produced of his part in the pregnancy, he admits his wrong and doesn’t press the charge as it were. In his saying that “she is more righteous than him” doesn’t mean that what she did was right. It only takes the proper responsibility for the position he put her in. 
No one has won here. Judah’s selfishness both in withholding his third son and in hiring whom he thinks is a prostitute has resulted in a perverse pregnancy. Tamar yes has her future secure as far as that goes, but in trying to preserve the family name she has forever played her part in sullying it. Selfishness has only grown larger. 

Jesus has died for the little sins, too. ​

It is hard to imagine how God is supposed to redeem this situation, especially when we see the contrast with Joseph in the coming chapter. Joseph is put in a similar situation to Tamar and Judah at the same time. He is alone in another country with an opportunity to satisfy a longing and solidify his place in Potifer’s house. It’s the boss’s wife, what else is he supposed to do? He does what is right. Here with Judah and Tamar, no one is doing what is right. 
Yet God will redeem it. As we see, twins have resulted from this union, one of which is named Perez. He will eventually be in another list of names, the genealogy of Christ. 
So if you find your family resembling this chapter, there is hope. Not through further sin and selfishness, but by coming back to the God who redeems. Maybe you are here today running from family that is trying to guide you towards Christ. This is your moment. I’m not saying that it will be easy, but I am saying that it is right to return. 
Jesus came from a family with a past, as we can see here. But He didn’t run away from them. He claims them right at the beginning of the gospel! He numbers Himself with the sinners, Judah and you included. He became sin who knew no sin so that you and Judah can have the righteousness of God. You can be brought into a new family, have your identity firmly with the last name of Jesus. Run to Him. Put your trust in Him not to make your family perfect, but to cling to Him even when they aren’t. 
Maybe it is you who have stayed close to God while everyone else ran away. Continue to be a prayerful peaceful presence in their lives. Pray for an opening to talk about the things of God without forcing it. 
Maybe you’re at the start of your family journey and the whole thing seems unbelievably daunting. It is. You need to stay close to Christ. Make the Word and prayer common culture around your home. It won’t just happen, but it will be worth it. Honor your family by honoring Christ in your family. Faithfulness in little things often means blessing in much.