Dan: 0:00

Hi everyone. And welcome to the very last episode. Looking at Genesis, we’re going to finish chances off today. We’re on episode nine. So if you want the show notes or the study that go with this episode, head over to training for life redeemed.com/nine. Now this is our last episode. We are up to Genesis 37 and we’re going to be looking at the lives of Judah and Joseph from Genesis 35 37 through to chapter 50. Now , as always, I’m here with my dad, David Jackson, who does most of the talking So Dad, Does God not want kids to read the book? I was just getting started on the life of Joseph when this obscene chapter about Judah interrupted the whole thing. So why do we need to know about this kind of stuff that’s happening throughout the Bible?

David: 1:14

Well, when you read the Bible, I mean, reading the Bible with kids, there’s some passages that are age appropriate and passages that you’re going to have to wait for a while. I think this is probably one to wait for a while . This is all about inappropriate sexual relationships and it’s Judah and Judah is the one God chose to be the one through whom the line of promise will come. And this is one messed up, man. So why is this in there? Well, the life of Joseph is a great story. And you would think if you were following the line of promise and you’re just reading through Genesis, you’d be saying to yourself, right, Abraham, it goes to Isaac. So we focus on the story of Isaac’s family and Ishmael sort of disappears stage left then in the next generation it’s Jacob. So Esau disappears stage left. The rest of Genesis is all about Joseph. So we think, Oh, he must be the line of promise because he gets 12 chapters out of Genesis. He’s a quarter of the book, but he’s not. The line of promises through Judah. And we’re going to find that out in Genesis 38 i n Genesis 49. But the fact that God is doing such a great work through Joseph sets us up for a tension That’s now going to be built into the fabric of everything that’s going to happen right through to the exile, because it’s going to be t he, the family of Joseph. And in fact, all the brothers, and then on the other end, it’s going to be this Judah fellow. So Judah is in the background of the story, but he’s really where God is doing the action, but he needs Joseph to set things up so that we can have this line of promise and t his people of Israel where God wants them when God wants them there. So Judah has made some dumb moves. He’s married his sons off to Canaanites, and God’s not going to let the line of promise go down that road. So in comes this amazing lady Tamar. And now we discover a little interesting thing about our God. We’ve focused on a lot of men, but if you look carefully, it’s the ladies that keep saving the day and Tamar comes along to redeem the line of redemption. And when you get to Jesus, you’re looking at a string of ladies who were engaged in prostitution and we have Rahab, Tamar, a rape victim in Bathsheba. God uses these ladies to keep these dysfunctional men in line and maintain God’s line of promise.

Dan: 4:12

You say, they’re part of what they’re doing here is keeping the line, of the redeemer redeemed. But how did that work?

David: 4:30

Okay. There’s a, there’s a thing that goes on in the Bible where you imagine this family farm and the brothers are going to share the inheritance. If one of the brothers dies without a son, then he basically disappears from the equation. The other two brothers are going to divide up the farm among themselves and their kids a nd a way we go and the other guy w ill be forgotten. He’ll be a nobody. And we don’t want that to happen to our sons. We don’t want them to be nobodies. We don’t want that line of the family to perish. So God set up this system feel for the poor lady. You marry the e ldest son in the family. You’re what 17 years old When this happens at 18 and 19, he drops dead. For some reason, you’re a widow. You don’t own any land. Your brothers-in-law o wn the farm. And you’re a nobody on the property. Well, God doesn’t do that to women. So one of the other brothers has to marry her and make sure she continues to be part of the family. And the first child that she has would be the child who would take the dead brother’s place. N ow that’s going to get a bit expensive for these other brothers, but it’s about redeeming the dead brother’s name. The problem is Judah refused to do that. He refused to honor, to redeem the name of his own sons. And if Tamar hadn’t stepped up, he w ould h ave had nobody to inherit his property. He w ould h ave been a dead twig. So Tamer, I said using the, her father-in-law actually saves the l ine of Judah.

Dan: 6:05

All right, well now let’s go back to Joseph and Joseph’s the one who takes up most of the chapters here. So how does Joseph’s life help us to live a life redeemed?

David: 6:15

Oh , look, you begin to learn through the life of Joseph that the kingdom of God is this subversive activity. It’s we are a people sent out into a world that’s ruled by Satan and the offspring of Satan, all the Kings and rulers of the world and they’re enemies of God. Their regimes are independent of God, or they think they are. And we were sent out as loyal servants of King Jesus into their territory. We’re there to rescue people, to bring people out from under the rule of Satan, to tell them the gospel, to bring this, the gospel to bear. We’re not just there to get people saved though. We’re there to make sure that the world doesn’t collapse in on itself. It doesn’t self-destruct. So one of the jobs of God’s people is to rescue Satan’s kingdom from killing itself. There’s this beautiful line in Jeremiah. When the people of Israel were sent into exile, God said through Jeremiah, that , he says, seek the welfare or the Shalom, the peace of the city, where I’ve sent you into exile, mediate for that city to the Lord. So you’re going to be praying for the people around you for all these enemies of God, your welfare, your Shalom depends on their welfare, t heir S halom. So you’re going to live in this neighborhood. You’re going to live with these people and t hey’re, they’re going to hate you and be your enemies and everything else. But if they don’t survive, you don’t survive. There’s a story told, we were in Israel for a little bit of a visit. And we were on the W estbank talking to an Arab Christian, and he was talking about how they relate to the Israeli occupying army, Israeli settlers, and everybody else. And, you know, everybody knows they hate each other and they want to kill each other, but you got to learn to live together. So this meeting comes about and the head of the Muslim community and the head of the Israeli community sit down because somebody’s got to collect the garbage and they live in the same town. So for the sake of collecting the garbage, they stop chucking rocks and they sit down and have a talk and they work something out. If they hadn’t done that, the place would have just piled up with rubbish. So that’s a bit like putting Christians into a world, gone mad. We are The people who bring peace and where the people who like Jesus said salt of the earth, we, we, the place from going rotten faster. And that’s what Joseph’s doing. God’s put in Joseph, his agent, if you like, if you think of spies and agents, God’s planting Joseph in Pharaoh’s kingdom to apply God’s grace in spite of Pharaoh , because if he didn’t, the whole place would be dead.

Dan: 9:19

So why did it go Not just then set him to Egypt and set him up as second in charge, straight away . Why does he actually have to go through all this abuse along the way where he gets put in prison, unjustly and he’s sold as a slave?

David: 9:33

Yeah. Why did, why did Joseph have to suffer all of that? Look, if you’re going to go into Satan’s kingdom and in effect , undermine his hatefulness and his wickedness and bring grace and mercy in its place, don’t expected an easy ride. You think of the people, you know, I think of people like Wilberforce and the Clapham sect and the people who , put an end to the slave trade, it took them decades to make that happen. They were slandered and abused, threatened all sorts of things in order to persuade a sinner, not to self-destruct, y ou k now, i t’s yeah, you’re working against what they want to do, and they’re not going to let you get away with that too easily. Things have to be pretty desperate. And really every Christian is in that position. We’re just like Joseph. We can expect for the close members of our family to turn on us. I mean, if they don’t give their lives to Christ, we are an alien to them at a most fundamental level. So Joseph’s brothers turned on him, gee whiz Jesus’s brothers turned on him, too. It’s an exact pattern. we travel into enemy territory and we are not surprised that we’re jailed. We’re not surprised that we’re persecuted. And yet God has got this wicked sense of humor. You look at the, just so happens with Joseph, okay. He’s brothers want to kill him and they’re struggling with some conscience issues. And he gets smuggled off and sold to the distant cousins. The Ishmaelites the descendants of Ishmael. And they just happened to put him in the marketplace on the day when Potiphar turns up looking for a 17 year old boy. So what a coincidence, the captain of Pharaoh’s bodyguard buys Joseph. And like I say, this is like, how close to the head of the snake do you want to go? Joseph is now living in the home of the guy who’s in charge of Pharaoh’s bodyguard . Now we have a little reverse rape scene. The woman is trying to rape the man and he says, no, for a change. And in the process ends up in jail. If he hadn’t been in Potiphar’s house, if he hadn’t gone to jail, he would never have got into Pharaoh’s court. And by getting into Pharaoh’s court, God puts him in the place to stop the whole of Egypt and the whole plan of redemption from going down the toilet, we we will have to suffer in order to get through this gauntlet of abuse, to bring people the good news. This is training for a life redeemed. And Joseph is one of the heroes of the faith for persevering. You know, when I read through the Bible, how many people can you think of in the Bible who aren’t complete stuff ups?

Dan: 12:38

Oh , I think you were mentioning this to me just eaarlier to that. There’s two, three. If you include Jesus,

David: 12:45

You look at the people, you look at the men, let’s just look at the men. You’ve got Joseph and Daniel. I don’t think there’s a bad word anywhere in the Bible about either of those two. But then you look at the character of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Noah, Moses, Moses, the disciples, Peter , Paul running around killing Christians. I mean, where do you find a bloke who wasn’t a complete stuff up? On the other hand, if you have sensitive ears and eyes and you read through the text, check out the ladies, there’s not a lot of bad stuff said about most of the ladies who ensure that we get to the next generation and that the child of the line of promise actually survives. These are the women of faith who keep the story alive in spite of the men.

Dan: 13:38

Well, it’s hard to see what God is doing in our today. And we, as we come to the end of the book of Genesis, the thing that stands out is God’s persistence in bringing about his promise to bring his people back out from under Satan’s rule. I mean, my mum’s favourite verse here, Genesis 50 verse 20. It talks talking about how Satan cannot win . It says “as for you, you meant evil against me, but God meant it for good in order to bring about this present result, to preserve many people alive.” I think that’s very true of us today. I mean, all around people and nations are still tearing themselves apart and destroying God’s beautiful creation. So many lives are heading in a self-destructive manner. Yet here we are. Thousands of years later on the opposite side of the planet, living out our part in his story, his grace is relentless. He keeps his promises and we are the living evidence, Wars and persecutions have never been able to stop the advance of God’s kingdom. I love that scene where Jacob has his family around the bed, as he ends his part in God’s story, he knew God would bring the promised saviour through his son, Judah, and he got it. Well, we’re actually at the end of Genesis. So head on over to trainingforliferedeem .com/ 9, and you can grab the PDF of the study notes for this episode, but also you’ll find a button there to be able to purchase for a very small fee. The e-book of all the studies for the entire book of Genesis. And there’s probably a few other things that will come up in the next few episodes, a few Q and A’s or something around the Genesis. Before we then dive into Exodus and looking forward to the rest of the Torah, it will be fun.