Encouragement
Three quarters of the way through the Book of Genesis and just after the start of the story of Joseph we find a story that is as torrid as it is complicated. Chapter 38 is the story of Judah who goes down to Canaanite territory to find himself a wife. In time he has a family and as they grow up he finds a wife for his first-born son, Er.
Tragedy strikes and Er dies. Judah then instructs his second son, Onan, to take the widow, Tamar, as his wife so that Er’s lineage can be continued. That may seem a little unusual in our culture but theirs was a culture that gave special place to the firstborn. At this point, the story goes into detail of how Onan disappoints the Lord and fails to fulfil to his filial duties. Read on and you will find a story of lust, determination, honour, deceit and disgrace. In the end, Tamar ends up getting pregnant by Judah and the chapter ends with the birth of twins, Perez and Zerah.
The birth of Perez and Zerah sounds remarkably like the story of the birth of Jacob and Esau, their respective grandfather and great-uncles; there is a struggle and the names are determined by their characters and appearance. On the face of it, it seems a mighty strange story - not to mention highly embarrassing to the family - to insert randomly in the middle of the great story of Joseph. But hindsight is a great insight, and we can put two and two together.
The story unfolds just as, at the end of chapter 37, Joseph had been taken into Egypt and sold as a slave, after being bought by some travelling merchants for six ounces of silver. So what is the point of Perez? Well, it doesn’t become immediately clear. In fact we don’t pick up the thread again for another eight hundred years when we read in the Book of Ruth these words...
18 This, then, is the family line of Perez:
Perez was the father of Hezron,
19 Hezron the father of Ram,
Ram the father of Amminadab,
20 Amminadab the father of Nahshon,
Nahshon the father of Salmon,[d]
21 Salmon the father of Boaz,
Boaz the father of Obed,
22 Obed the father of Jesse,
and Jesse the father of David.
We could add there, ‘Jesus, Son of David.’
Piecing together the story and the history we come up with an amazing insight: Chapter 38 of Genesis is there not by mistake nor by random choice, but to show God’s determination to bring salvation, and bring it through the line of Judah. It’s almost as if the Lord is saying, ‘This sojourn in Egypt is a just a prequel to My Exodus, the great deliverance of My people.’ It’s a journey, not a destination. This teaches us two things about God:
1. His Sovereign control over history in spite of the twists and turns of sinful lives. Working with us, He is working with damaged goods but that doesn’t seem to matter to Him. He can use us as much in spite of ourselves as He can use our submitted gifts and talents. In other words there is no mess too messy for God.
2. His ability to make everything beautiful in His time.
So let’s put these two truths together as we grind out our daily lives. The Lord does nothing in our lives by mistake and He is not slow in answering prayer; He is sovereign in answering prayer. That means He will work to His timetable, His schedule and His plan because it is perfect.
I remember a friend telling me that the one thing that kept coming back to him as he lived through his grief, was this verse: ‘As for God, His way is perfect.’ He was right. It is. Think about it: if He can preserve a family line through thousands of years and weave countless lives and unbelievable life events together and make sense of it all, nothing is too hard for Him.
He is your Father, your Friend, your Saviour and your Sovereign. Just bow your head and thank Him, walk with Him and above all, trust Him.
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Thank you for this article that is both encouraging and inspiring. God indeed does not just use people who lived perfect lives but He makes His plans even with the weak. Perez was the fruit of incest yet from his line came the Redeemer.
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