Lessons From Tamar | Jesus and His Crazy Grandmas

There is no family more interesting than Jesus’ family. Rahab, Tamar, Ruth, and everyone in between exemplify the craziness of sin that Jesus was born into.

And yet, He came anyway. He came into our world to redeem the depth of sinfulness we know as the human existence—to rescue a people for Himself by His very death and resurrection.

6 Things About Jesus’ Family Line

1. All men live and die.
2. There is one lineage for all the people of history (Adam and Eve).
3. Jesus became fully human.
4. Jesus was the son of Adam and Son of God.
5. The lineage recorded in Matthew goes through the royal line of kings to Abraham.
6. The lineage of Jesus includes prostitutes, thieves, kings, preachers, businessmen, scholars, slave traders, warlords, and slaves.

In Tamar’s story, we see the ugliest components of humanity. She was used, abused, and tossed aside repeatedly by Judah and his family. In spite of that, Jesus redeems the story of Judah and the sins of all men by coming into our world and conquering the darkness of sin by the light of His glory. You simply don’t have to look far to take away some key lessons from Tamar’s story.

Jesus is the Savior of the world, the Savior of sinners.

• Genesis 38
• Matthew 1

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Transcript – Lessons From Tamar | Jesus and His Crazy Grandmas

There’s an old saying, you can choose your friends, but you can’t choose your family. We’re gonna look at a drastic and exaggerated idea of that today on the no Sanity Required podcast. Welcome back.

Welcome to no Sanity Required from the ministry of Snowbird Wilderness Outfitters, a podcast about the Bible, culture, and stories from around the globe. Hey there, welcome to the no Sanity Required podcast. I’m excited for today’s topic and discussion. When you look in the Bible, there are some fascinating and interesting families, but none more so than the family of Jesus. In general, the entire lineage and bloodline of Jesus has got some very colorful and fascinating characters.

And in particular, if you look at Jesus’ family at the time that he was on the earth, he had several brothers and sisters all of whom initially rejected his claims to be God, but who through the evidence of his resurrection converted and then began to worship their brother as God, giving really a very powerful apologetic or defense of the claims of Christ. You got these people that were his brothers and sisters who tried to shut him up at one point. And after seeing the evidence that Jesus was God and that being undeniable evidence, then they ended up following him as their Messiah. I wanna look just briefly in today’s episode, I wanna look at some interesting things in the lineage of Jesus. So the New Testament records two different lineages, Matthew and Luke.

And Matthew, we’re gonna zero in on Matthew’s lineage and you’ll see why in a minute. But Matthew’s lineage is a Jewish record. And so for the Jewish people, they could follow, they were very particular about lineages. If you go back to for instance, the book of Numbers. There’s a lot of names, a lot of numbers, a lot of people, and you can follow family records.

This is real common in ancient Israel. And so for Matthew to trace the lineage of Jesus, what he was doing is he was following from the time of Jesus back up to King David, showing how Jesus was a descendant of David. And then from there, we could follow from David all the way back on up to Abraham. And so then he stops at Abraham. So, like Matthew stops at Abraham, because.

And why would that be? Well, because Abraham is the father of the Israelite race, the Jewish, the Jewish race, race and Nation. And so Matthew shows us the lineage from Abraham to Jesus and what he does in showing us that there’s a lot of powerful, like, significant names in that bloodline. That gives strong Jewish credibility to the bloodline of Jesus. And then Luke, he goes on beyond that and goes all the way back to Adam, showing that ultimately all people descend from Adam.

And so we’re all connected through Adam. But what I want to look at today is some of the more colorful and interesting characters in the lineage of Jesus. We recently did an episode on the life of Rahab and the conversion of Rahab, who becomes one of Jesus’s ancestors and they’re actually three other women in the bloodline of Jesus. The first one is Tamar. I want to look at her story just briefly because it’s a crazy story.

It’s absolutely, it’s, it’s, it’s mind-blowing to, to try to wrap. It’s disturbing, to say the least. And it’s crazy to try to wrap, wrap your mind around it. And then I’m going to look at, of course, we looked at Rahab, and then I’m going to look at Rahab’s. Rahab’s son married a woman named Ruth.

And so Tamar, Rahab and Ruth, none of them were Israelites. None of them were Jewish. They married into the line of Christ. So it’s interesting. First off, you got to understand ancient historical narratives, ancient historical record.

Women’s names were not included. They did not include women in ancient records. And so one of the things that’s really powerful and beautiful about the ministry of Jesus is that he included women. In fact, women were among the first eyewitnesses giving credibility to the resurrection of Jesus. So contrary to what people have taught through the years, Christianity in its purest and most biblical form liberates and frees women to a standard and a level of equality with men that no other world system has ever done.

And so when we go back up through that lineage and we see these women, each one of them has a crazy story. Then later on you’ve got Bathsheba who was the wife of Uriah. Uriah was a Hittite so he wasn’t a Jew. And so you’ve got these non-Jewish people being woven into the lineage of Christ and I want to just talk about why that might be. First I want to just read Tamar’s story.

You’ll find that in the book of Genesis. The story of Tamar is fascinating. But like I said, it’s disturbing. And it takes place at a very dark time in history. You find the story in Genesis chapter 38.

And let me put on my high-speed tactical reading glasses. That’s intense. So, okay, so Genesis 38 records the story of Judah and Tamar. At that time, Judah left his brothers and settled near an Adullamite named Hara. There Judah saw the daughter of a Canaanite named Shua.

He took her as a wife and slept with her. She conceived and gave birth to a son, and he named him Er or Er. She conceived again, gave birth to a son named him Onan. She gave birth to another son and named him Shelah. It was Shezib that she gave.

It was at Shezib that she gave birth to him. Judah got a wife for her, his firstborn, and her name was Tamar. So, Tamar. So, Tamar is the wife of her, the firstborn son of Judah. Now, you might have noticed that Judah married a non-Jew, which would have been super common at that time because the Jewish nation was just Judah and his brothers.

That was basically the house of Israel. There weren’t, it wasn’t a large nation at this point. It was basically a family or like a small tribe or clan. And so Judah marries his son Er off to another woman in that region, that region of Canaan, which was an area that was inhabited by non-Jewish people and tribes and things like that. And so he marries his son off to this girl named Tamar.

Now Tamar would have been Judah’s daughter-in-law. And over the course of time, this family is going to see incredible tragedy and heartache and hardship. Judah got a wife for her, his firstborn, and her name was Tamar. Now, Ur, Judah’s firstborn, was evil in the Lord’s sight, and the Lord put him to death. So Ur, Judah’s son, dies under the judgment of God.

Then Judah said to Onan, Sleep with your brother’s wife, perform your duty as her brother-in-law, and produce offspring for your brother. You read that and you go, what in the world is that all about? Well, this is an ancient practice that would later be woven into the Jewish law and something that was referred to as the Kinsman Redeemer. But this was an ancient practice where what would happen is a man dies and he doesn’t have any heirs to his house or his land, his estate, whatever. He dies and so he leaves behind a widow who is childless.

And you’re talking about a culture where having a child was everything, having a son was very critical to your stability as a family in a very unstable world. And so what God would have this brother do is marry his brother’s widow. It’s weird, I know, it’s crazy. Different time, different time, different place. The way God worked was a little bit unique in that period in history.

And so the brother would marry his brother’s widow and then would impregnate her. The son that she had would then take the place of her dead husband. You tracking with me? So essentially Judah’s got a son. His name is Er.

Er is married to Tamar. Er dies. Tamar now is to be impregnated by Ur’s brother, whose name is Onan. Onan is going to get Tamar pregnant, but then after the baby is born, Onan steps out of the way and that baby takes the place, that son takes the place of Ur. He becomes the co-heir to Onan.

And remember, Ur was the firstborn. Now what happens if Ur dies and there is no one to take Ur’s place? Is that Onan then becomes the larger beneficiary of the estate of Judah. I hope you’re tracking with this. So, Er dies, Onan becomes the firstborn.

And so, Onan doesn’t want to, what he does is he goes to Tamar, his brother’s widow, and he has sex with her, but he protects her from pregnancy. He doesn’t allow her to have a baby. And the reason is he doesn’t want to share the, we would assume he doesn’t want to share the family wealth. And so he connives and uses her sexually for his own pleasure, but in sort of this half-hearted attempt to fulfill his obligation to his dead brother, we see the wickedness in his own heart. Verse 9, But Onan knew that the offspring would not be his, so whenever he slept with his brother’s wife, he released his semen on the ground so that he would not produce offspring for his brother.

What he did was evil in the Lord’s sight, so he put him to death also. So now you got two dead brothers. Ur is dead, Onan is dead. Tamar is still a widow and she is still childless. This is very important culturally.

In the West, we can’t totally grasp this. For a woman to be childless in the East, especially in the ancient East, was tear, like it was one of the worst things that could happen to you. And so Judah said to his daughter-in-law Tamar, remain a widow in your father’s house until my son Shelah grows up, for he thought he might die too, like his brothers, so she wouldn’t live in her father’s house. So Judah sends his daughter-in-law Tamar, he’s like, go home to your family, live with them, I’ve got one more son, when he’s old enough I’ll marry him off to you. But he doesn’t do it, after a long time it says Judah’s wife, the daughter of Shua died, so Judah’s wife dies.

There’s a lot of names here. You can follow along if you need to. Genesis 38. So Judah’s wife dies. So now Judah is a widower.

His two sons and his wife have all died. He has one son left, and he does not give that son to Tamar, his daughter-in-law in marriage and sexual Union, because he’s afraid that that son will also be struck down. And so he also is disobedient. His wife dies and it says when Judah had finished mourning, he and his friend, Hirah, the Adullamite, went up to Timnah to his sheep shears. Tamar was told, you, father-in-law is going to Timnah to shear his sheep.

So she took off her widow’s clothes, veiled her face, covered herself, and set at the entrance to Enaim, which is on the way to Timnah. For she saw that though Shelah had grown up, she had not been given to him as a wife. When Judah saw her, he thought she was a prostitute, for she had covered her face. Okay, so so Tamar acts like a prostitute now at this point, it’s real easy to think to kind of throw Tamar into judgment, but let’s let’s pause and let’s think about the big picture She has been wronged in so many ways at this point in the story okay, now keep in mind women were uneducated. They weren’t typically allowed to work in the public square or marketplace.

They were reliant on the care given by a husband. That’s why you had a lot of polygamy, a lot of abuse, a lot of women were mistreated. Tamar has been brought into this family of men who are all train wrecks. I mean, and Judah is a name that in our biblical understanding brings like strength. You know, it’s you think of Judah you think power, strength, this is like the line of the tribe of Judah is the name given to Jesus.

David was raised in the lineage of Judah. But right now we see the frailty of Judah’s character. And so Judah has wronged his daughter-in-law. And so he’s left her as a widow without the opportunity to remarry, without the opportunity to have a son. And she’s taking matters into her own hands is what she’s doing.

And so she dresses as a prostitute and goes and sits in the square where she knows he’s going to be passing by. He’s, he’s been a widower for some time now, a widower. And so she’s going to seduce him is what she’s going to do. Verse 16, he went over to her and said, come let me sleep with you, for he did not know that she was his daughter-in-law she’s got a veil over her face. He doesn’t recognize her.

She said, what will you give me for sleeping with me? For sleeping with me? I will send you a young goat for my flock, he replied. But she said, only if you leave something with me until you send what should I give you? He asked.

She answered, your signet ring, your cord, your staff and your hand. So he gave them to her, slept with her and she became pregnant by him. She got up and left, then removed her veil and put her widow clothes back on. When Judah sent the young goat by his friend the Adullamite in order to get back the items he had left with the woman, he could not find her. He asked the men of the place, where is the cult prostitute who was beside the road at Enaim?

There’s been no cult prostitute here they answered so the Adelamite returned to Judah saying I couldn’t find her and besides the men of the place said there’s been no cult prostitute here and so she’s I hope you’re tracking with the story She agrees to sleep with Judah. He doesn’t know who she is. They make a business transaction He leaves his personal belongings. It would be the equivalent of his wallet his driver’s license and and, you know, in official documents in her care, his social security card. I mean, she’s got this dude.

Like, she’s got him. He, he’s, he’s sort of at her mercy. And then he’s going to send her payment for her services in exchange to get his stuff back. Well, when his buddy comes to, to deliver payment, he can’t find this prostitute. Well, it’s because she’s not a prostitute.

She’s, she’s gone back into mourning. But she’s pregnant. Okay, so that’s a huge plot twist. She’s pregnant. Judah replied, let her keep the items for herself.

Otherwise we’ll become a laughingstock. After all, I did send this young goat, but you couldn’t find her. So Judah’s like, hey, we tried. We tried to pay her. It didn’t work.

We can’t find her. Just let it go, man. I like, it’ll be. It’ll be humiliating if I. If we make a big deal out of this.

So we see, like, again, some insight into Judah’s character here. About three months later, Judah was told, you, daughter-in-law Tamar has been acting like a prostitute and now she is pregnant. Bring her out, Judah said, and let her be burned to death. As she was being brought out, she sent her father-in-law this message, I’m pregnant by the man to whom these items belong. And she added, Examine them, whose signet ring, cord, and staff are these?

Judah recognized them. So. So she. Judah catches wind that she’s pregnant. His daughter-in-law is pregnant.

She’s been living back home with her folks, and Judah finds out she’s pregnant. He says, that’s it. We’re going to kill her. We’re going to Stone her. She’s brought shame on the family name.

And so he sends to have her stoned, and she sends his personal belongings and says, okay, I’ll tell you what. The person who impregnated me is the person that these personal and private items belong to and Judah realizes, oh no, these are my things. Listen what he says, she is more right than I since I did not give her my son, Sheila, and he did not know her intimately again. So, the end of the quote, so quote, Judah said, quote, she is more in the right than I since I did not give her my son, Sheila, unquote. And he, Judah, did not know her intimately again.

When the time came for her to give birth, there were twins in her womb. You see some parallels and themes here with these twins to like Jacob and Esau and some other passages. There’s some neat things going on there. Verse 28, as she was giving birth, one of them put out his hand and the midwife took it, tied a scarlet thread around it announcing, this one came out first, but then he pulled his hand back. Out came his brother and she said, what a breakout you have made for yourself.

So he was named Perez. Then his brother who had the scarlet thread tied to his hand came out, his name was Zerah. Now let’s jump back over to the book of Matthew in the lineage of Jesus. It says starting with Abraham, Abraham fathered Isaac, Isaac fathered Jacob, Jacob fathered Judah, Judah and his brothers, Judah fathered Perez and Zerah by Tamar. Doesn’t say that the lineage of Christ came through Judah’s one surviving son, Shelah.

It says he came through Perez, who was fathered by Judah in the womb of Tamar. Fascinating man. He brings this. So Jesus comes through the lineage of an act of prostitution. So what are we to make of this?

Let me give you in our last four or five minutes here, we’ll wrap this up. Then we’re going to follow this up with the next episode. We’re going to keep, we talked about Rahab, We talked about Tamar, we’re gonna follow this up with sort of a part three looking at these crazy stories. Consider these six things in the lineage of Jesus. Six things I want you to consider.

Number one, all men live and die. In other words, all men are born, all men live and all men die. So Jesus put himself in the process of humanity. He was born, he lived, and he died. But on the bookends of that, he was conceived in the womb of a virgin by the Holy Spirit and then he conquered death through the resurrection.

So there’s the distinction over the birth, life, death of Jesus. Number two, there’s one lineage from all the peoples of the earth. It is estimated that 107 billion humans have lived in history. We can go back to the beginning of time and trace one lineage and one bloodline through all of history. It’s crazy.

So 107 billion all descended from one lineage, one bloodline. That was Adam and Eve. And we could whittle that down to the time of the ark and say everyone descended from Noah’s family in one sense. But you had some Noah’s daughters in law that were married in from other families. So that’s why we don’t go back to Noah.

I’ve had people ask me, why don’t we just say everyone descended from Noah’s family? Noah and his wife had sons who then had taken daughters from among other people. So that’s a broader, you know, that’s a broader ancestry. So if we go all the way back, we all descended from the same two people. This is where, this is where racism.

I don’t want to get off topic here, but this is where racism gets absolutely asinine because there’s no, there aren’t multiple races of people. We’re one race. We’re the human race. There are different ethnicities and lineages in like the sub sect or the sub cultures of the world, but we all descended from Adam and Eve. Number three, Jesus became fully human.

Luke’s purpose in recording this is to illustrate with facts and knowable data the humanity of Jesus. Matthew’s purpose in recording this is to illustrate the same things in the Jewish like documentation. We know that Jesus is fully God. This is critical to the identity of Jesus as the Messiah, the God man. Number four, the scripture teaches that he’s the son of Adam and the son of God.

If you go to Luke’s lineage, trace it back, it goes back to son of Adam, son of God. We are sons of Adam. And the Bible teaches us in Romans chapter five and in 1 Corinthians 15, in Adam we all sinned. Jesus comes as the Son of God, the second Adam, so that he might redeem and rescue what the first Adam did. So we all descended in the line and lineage of the first Adam and we’re sinners as such, we’re born into sin.

Adam was our representative head and so he was our representative figurehead in that race of humanity. Jesus is like the second Adam and when we come to him in faith and receive salvation, he takes the place of Adam as our spiritual figurehead. Number 5, this lineage goes through the royal line of Jewish kings, the lineage in Matthew. But if we go into Luke’s lineage, it goes past Abraham all the way back to Adam. And what it does, and as we’ve seen here in this study, it brings both Jews and Gentiles into the lineage of Jesus.

So Jesus, we learn in the book of Romans, becomes the savior of both Jews and Gentiles. But even in his lineage, going back to the time of Abraham, and his immediate descendants, there were both Jews and Gentiles in the lineage of Jesus. And last, number six, the lineage of Jesus includes prostitutes, thieves, kings, preachers, adulterers, farmers, businessmen, chieftains, peasants, scholars, professors, slave traders, warlords, and slaves. This is a pretty traceable group of people ending in Jesus of Nazareth, reminding us that Jesus was born among sinners in a line of sinners. So what’s extraordinary about Tamar’s story, I think there’s a few things in a closing thought here, is that in Tamar we see and in Judah we see the most ugly components of humanity.

Tamar was mistreated, misused, abused, sexually used and then marginalized and pushed to like the perimeter of society and left to live out her days in loneliness. But in her desperation, she acted and God showed her grace and favor. And in Judah, we see that God did not need perfect people to bring his son into the world. Judah is so far from perfect and this magnifies his imperfections. And so we’re reminded that Jesus is the savior of sinners.

He’s the Savior of Jews, He’s the Savior of Gentiles and He values people, period. He loves Tamar and He had a purpose for her life and if He did then we can take joy in knowing that He has a purpose for our lives. And so let’s, as much as we are sometimes confused by the things we read in Scripture, let’s look at the big picture that Jesus is the Savior to the world which means He’s the Savior of sinners. And what a good reminder of that in the fact that he came in a lineage of broken people to bring salvation to a broken humanity. Thanks for joining us and I’m looking forward to the next episode where we pick this conversation up.

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