S20051029
AMAZING PROPHECIES: THE ROYAL LINE
(EDITED AND ABBREVIATED)
Matthew 1:2-6; Galatians 3:16,29; Genesis 38:1-30
When I was in my early teens I considered my brother, who is thirteen years my senior and who was then a medical student, the fountain of all wisdom. Normally he considered me a pest, and generally barred me from his room when he was studying. As a very small child I had tossed a coin collection of his down a grate into a furnace, never to be retrieved. So you can see why he developed early the idea that I was a pest.
I considered it a very special privilege to be able to sleep with my brother in his bed when company would come and they would be given my bed. I can remember vividly a conversation I had with him on one particular occasion.
As we were resting on our backs, I said to him: “BOB, let’s discuss something.”
So he turned to me, and pointed out a little cavity in my chest bone. He said: “What do you call that?” Not being a medical student, I professed my ignorance. He said: “That is a salt cellar. You use it to put salt in when you eat celery in bed.”
I said: “Come on. Let’s talk about something serious.” So he came up with this one. “If you had thirty minutes to tell a person what the Old Testament is all about, what would you tell them?”
I am not sure how I answered him then, but let me today suggest a possible answer. In short, the Old Testament is the story of the immediate family of Jesus Christ, and how that family was preserved and instructed to bring us the Person and message of Jesus Christ. And as we consider this theme developing in its early stages in the Old Testament, I want you to realize that only God, who could foresee from whom Jesus Christ was to be born, could have written the Old Testament. Only God, who knew that Jesus was to be the God-man, could have written Genesis 3:15. Only God, who knew that Jesus Christ was to come of the seed of Noah, would have chosen Noah of all the families of the earth to escape the flood. Only God, who knew that of the three sons of Noah, Shem was the line to produce the Messiah, would have guided the writer of Genesis to record what he does in Genesis 11:10—32, and not some other genealogy.
The Bible is the Word of God. It cannot be the word of men alone. Let me illustrate. Let us suppose that you were born in 1950 and this year reached your 55th birthday. Suppose that in 450 A.D. someone said to some historian: “In the twentieth century, a person named “Yours Truly” (Supply your own name.) is to be born. I want you to begin now to arrange for the recording of his (or her) genealogy. I want you to make sure that everything important about every person
in the direct line is recorded. I do not want anything superfluous in the genealogy and in the historical records associated with the genealogy. Everything must be
pertinent to the direct line of “Yours Truly.” A person in 450 A.D., hearing that proposal, would have had to say, “That is humanly impossible. You cannot write history in advance, and your proposal involves doing just that”.
Genesis 38 is a wonderful example of how God directed history and the writing of this genealogy in advance. Genesis 37-50 deals primarily with Joseph. Joseph is not in the direct line of Christ. Rather his brother Judah is in the direct line. The question then arises: Why are fourteen chapters spent telling the Joseph story? Well, the Joseph story is important because Joseph was the instrument whom God used to preserve the life of Judah who was in the direct line of Christ. And the most important underlying theme in the Joseph story is Judah’s part. If it bad not been for Judah, Joseph may have died before he ever set foot in Egypt, for it was Judah’s recommendation that the brothers sell him as a slave, not kill him.
Actually Genesis 38 is one of the most important chapters in the Joseph story, and it says nothing at all about Joseph. From a human standpoint one might say: “Why did the author put this crude story into the Joseph sequence? It has nothing to do with Joseph. It just interrupts a perfectly good story that would be better off without such an interruption. But from the divine standpoint Genesis 38 is a very important part of the Joseph story. Genesis 38 describes the line of Judah, and one of the main points of all Bible history is the preservation of the line of Judah.
Let us look at Genesis 38 for a moment. Judah originally had three Sons: Er, Onan, and Shelah. Er married a girl named Tamar. Er was a wicked person and God slew him. Judah told Onan, his second born, to go to Tamar, the widow, and raise up children who legally would be the children of Er, his dead brother. Onan was selfish, and did not like the idea of raising up children for somebody else. So he disobeyed his father, and deceived him into thinking that he was obeying him. For this act God slew Onan. That left Judah, Judah’s wife, Tamar (Er’s wife), and Shelah, Judah’s youngest son. Then Judah’s wife died, and that left just three. Judah told Tamar to wait until Shelah grew up, then marry him, and raise up children to Er. However, for some reason Shelah was not given to Tamar. So Tamar took things into her own hands. She disguised herself as a harlot, and planted herself in a place where she knew her father-in-law would be on a business trip. And Judah, not knowing who she was, went into her. Like all harlots she had a price. The price was some of Judah’s personal effects, which bore his own personal identification; and which she would afterwards use to prove that he was involved. Soon it became evident that Tamar was with child. When Judah found out that Tamar had played the harlot, not knowing that he was involved, that old hypocrite said: “Let her be burned.” Isn’t that the limit for hypocrisy? However, the story is not important primarily as a good example of a father-in-law’s hypocrisy. It is important because if Tamar had been burned, the line of Christ would have been directly affected. For Tamar gave birth to twins. The first-born was Perez (which means breach), and Perez was part of the direct line to Christ.
Yes, from a human standpoint the line of Christ has some “skeletons in the closet”. Abraham, who lied, is in it, That despicable cheat Jacob is in it. Isaac, the father who showed such favoritism, is in it. That hypocrite of a father-in-law and terrible example of a businessman Judah is in it. Tamar is in it. The harlot Rahab is in it. The adulterer David and his adulterous wife Bathsheba are in it. And Ted Barton, the scoundrel who would throw his brother’s valuable coin collection into a furnace, is in it.
And I was not born into the line by natural birth. But one day I confessed to Jesus Christ that I was just as much a sinner as the rest of the people in this line. And I asked Him to save me and to make me His child. And he did. And the Scriptures say: And if ye be Christ’s then are ye Abraham’s seed, and heirs according to the promise. From a human standpoint, we are not much to look at. But history has demonstrated, and the future will prove, than in Abraham and his Seed all the families of the earth will be blessed. And some day we shall reign for ever and ever.
Do you want to be blessed? Do you want to be a blessing to others? Then repent of your sins, accept Christ, and get into the royal line. Get into the royal line, man. Get into the line.
