"Abraham was the father of Isaac, and Isaac the father of Jacob, and Jacob the father of Judah and his brothers, and Judah the father of Perez and Zerah by Tamar, and Perez the father of Hezron, and Hezron the father of Ram,..." – Matthew 1:2

"And one of the elders said to me, 'Weep no more; behold, the Lion of the tribe of Judah, the Root of David, has conquered, so that he can open the scroll and its seven seals.'" – Revelation 5:5

It’s Not a Love Story

If you think your family is crazy then you really need to pay attention to Jesus’ family. Today we are going to be looking at Genesis 38. This chapter is really confusing and pretty dark. For the sake of those who might be using this to read to your children we are going to handle this in a very sensitive way. The truth of the matter that shines through is that our world is full of sin and sinful people, but that will never stop God from keeping his promises. In the lineage of Jesus as recorded in Matthew 1 there are 5 women mentioned in Jesus’ family line. During this season we are going to take a day to think through each one their parts in God’s plan for our salvation. Now we will turn our attention to the unlikely couple of Judah and Tamar.

Skipping Branches

As you remember God planned to have Judah be the tribe that would produce the kings. And since Jesus was going to be born the King of Kings, that means that Judah is going to be his great, great, great, great grandfather. So when we see that Judah has a son named Er, we automatically assume that he is going to be in the line also. However, the Bible just has one sentence about him, “But Er, Judah’s firstborn, was wicked in the sight of the LORD, and the LORD put him to death.” Whuh oh, now what? Well in Jewish culture they had a custom where if the oldest son died without having a baby then the wife would marry her dead husband’s brother so that they could continue the family line. This might sound really weird to us, but that is the way they did it back then. The second son’s name was Onan. However, Onan didn’t like this setup. He didn’t want his brother to get credit for his son so he wouldn’t keep up this custom. And you guessed it, God put him to death too. This is where Judah got really concerned. He only had 3 sons and his first 2 died after being married to Tamar, so he wouldn’t let his third son get married to her. He told Tamar that she needed to just stay single.

This is where our story gets really crazy. Tamar was not content to just stay single, she wanted to have a child to carry on the family name, so she tricked Judah into having a baby with her by disguising herself as someone else. Then 3 months later Judah found out that she was pregnant. He was so angry and was going to have her put to death until she let him know that he, himself was actually the father. Whoa, talk about a surprise. He then realized that he had sinned before God and didn’t try to have her punished at all.

We Shouldn’t Be Surprised

Isn’t it just like God to accomplish his plans in a way that we would have never guessed? As God makes it clear in Isaiah 55, his ways are not our ways, his thoughts are not our thoughts. As high as the heavens are above the earth so are his thoughts higher than our thoughts. He is thinking on a different plane altogether and he sees all of time from the beginning to the end. Whenever we find ourselves thinking that this isn’t what we would have done we should

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"'Judah, your brothers shall praise you;
your hand shall be on the neck of your enemies;
your father’s sons shall bow down before you.
Judah is a lion’s cub;
from the prey, my son, you have gone up.
He stooped down; he crouched as a lion
and as a lioness; who dares rouse him?
The scepter shall not depart from Judah,
nor the ruler’s staff from between his feet,
until tribute comes to him;
and to him shall be the obedience of the peoples." – Gen. 49:8-10

It’s Good to Be King

Every year at this time we read over this passage and rejoice in the fact that Jesus is born as “the Lion of the Tribe of Judah” and he is. He is the promised king from Judah’s line who will have an everlasting kingdom. And if you have studied the Old Testament you know that the kings were always supposed to come from the line of Judah. The above passage is the first place where we get to see this. This is where Jacob basically lines up all of his children and speaks blessings over them.

Fourth time’s the charm

Here’s an honest question: did you know that Judah wasn’t the firstborn son of Jacob? If you are anything like me, you just assumed Judah had to be the firstborn because he was supposed to be the line of the kings. I thought that for a long time. It just makes sense. However, he is actually the fourth born son of Jacob. So then, what happened to the other three? The short answer is that they disqualified themselves. And what’s crazy is that even in this “blessing” passage in chapter 49 Jacob tells us the reasons.

First is Reuben. He is the firstborn and should rightfully be the heir, but because he had an inappropriate relationship with one of his father’s wives he got crossed him off the list. Then we see Simeon and Levi, the next two in line. Their story is crazy, they slaughtered a whole nation of men because of how they had treated their sister. So then we are left with Judah.

Grace upon grace

Let’s look even closer into this. God had made promises to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob that he would bless the whole world through them. As we look over this Old Testament history we can see the way that God both narrows and expands his promises and he is doing this according to his own will. It is not because of any good that anyone is doing, it is only by his grace. Judah did not do anything to be chosen by God to be the tribe of the kings, he is just the next in line. In the next section, we will even get to see that he wasn’t even doing anything to try and preserve his own line. This should get us to focus on the real main character in all of this, which is God. When we are looking at human history we can see that God is the one who is working out his perfect will through sinful human beings.

Reflection

What do we need to learn from this in our preparation to celebrate Christ’s birth? We need to realize that we cannot put God in a box. What I mean by that is that God does not work the way that we think he should. Isn’t it always supposed to be the firstborn son that inherits? In our human reasoning that makes sense, but that’s just not the way that God works and we can’t try to impose what we think should happen onto him. We probably would have just picked Ishmael, Esau, or Reuben to be the ones set to inherit, but God had other plans...

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"And he took up his discourse and said,
'The oracle of Balaam the son of Beor,
the oracle of the man whose eye is opened,
the oracle of him who hears the words of God,
and knows the knowledge of the Most High,
who sees the vision of the Almighty,
falling down with his eyes uncovered:
I see him, but not now;
I behold him, but not near:
a star shall come out of Jacob,
and a scepter shall rise out of Israel;
it shall crush the forehead of Moab
and break down all the sons of Sheth.
Edom shall be dispossessed;
Seir also, his enemies, shall be dispossessed.
Israel is doing valiantly.
And one from Jacob shall exercise dominion
and destroy the survivors of cities!'" – Numbers 24:15-19

Double Prophecies

This passage comes to us out of the book of Numbers and is really fascinating because it is a prophecy with two meanings. God does this all the time in the Old Testament. He will give a prophecy that will apply first to the people of Israel but then has a fuller meaning that will be accomplished later on in the future.

First, let’s look at the immediate context of this passage. To make a long story short there is a king of Moab, his name is Balak and he is afraid of the Israelites because God had given them victory over their enemies. So to protect himself he hires a prophet to put a curse on them. But here’s the catch: even though Balaam is not a godly guy, he will not prophesy something unless God allows it. This totally frustrates Balak, because every time Balaam gets up to prophesy against the people of Israel, he winds up prophesying for them. That’s what happens here. Balak is trying to get him to say that Moab is going to defeat them, but instead he says that God is going to send someone from the line of Jacob to crush the forehead of Moab. That’s his own country!

This is an amazing story because again it draws our attention to God’s complete sovereignty over all peoples and nations. He predicts the Israelites' victory over Moab, which happens later on in Old Testament history (in the Judges, really). But he is also pointing to the rule and reign of Jesus as the star who came from Jacob’s line. When God prophesies something it is going to come to pass—no matter how long it takes to happen.

Jacob, the Trickster

For a better overall picture of this, we need to go back and look at Jacob. This is also confusing because when we think of the Old Testament patriarchs we want to look at them as heroes that we should imitate, right? I mean when we look at Abraham we see someone who has such a solid faith in God that the New Testament will use him as an example for us to follow. Although, even with Abraham we see moments where he doesn’t seem to be acting consistently in his faith...

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"And the angel of the LORD called to Abraham a second time from heaven and said, 'By myself I have sworn, declares the LORD, because you have done this and have not withheld your son, your only son, I will surely bless you, and I will surely multiply your offspring as the stars of heaven and as the sand that is on the seashore. And your offspring shall possess the gate of his enemies, and in your offspring shall all the nations of the earth be blessed, because you have obeyed my voice.'" – Genesis 22:15-18

A Contradicting Command

You’ll notice that the scripture for today is really encouraging, but the trip from the beginning of the chapter to the end of the chapter is an emotional rollercoaster. During the past couple of sections we have been focused on how God is going to fulfill his promise to Abraham through Isaac. He has been very clear on that. But here we get one of the most confusing commands in all of the Bible. In verse 2 God says to Abraham, “Take your son, your only son Isaac, whom you love, and go to the land of Moriah, and offer him there as a burnt offering on one of the mountains of which I shall tell you.” Doesn’t this contradict what God told him about Isaac? Well, sorta, we are actually really blessed to have more information about what God is doing than what Abraham had in this situation. When we look at the immediate context of this verse we see that verse 1 gives us a huge hint as to what is going on. It says, “after all these things God tested Abraham”. Whew. So we know this is a test, but Abraham doesn’t. After all, what kind of test would it be if he knew he was being tested...

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Follow the whole study of The Things Concerning Himself at:
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Every day, Dec. 1-25, we'll be publishing daily advent study posts (written and audio versions) on our website. You can also access the audio recordings on the Snowbird App, Apple Podcasts, and Spotify.

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Zach Mabry | Marriage Conference

In this episode, Zach will walk through scripture to see how God calls us to love Him, stay close to His Word, and teach it in the simple moments of everyday life. 

He’ll talk about why God’s commands are actually good for us, and how easy it is to forget God when life gets comfortable.

Deuteronomy 6

Marriage Conference

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“through Isaac shall your offspring be named.” – Genesis 21:12

All Kinds of Laughter

There are all kinds of laughter. We have all been in a situation where you are not supposed to be laughing… but you do… and that makes it worse. How is it that things are so much funnier when you’re not allowed to laugh?

When we look at the events surrounding the promise and birth of Isaac we see everyone laughing, but not in the same way. And let’s not forget that Isaac’s name, itself, means “laughter”. So what is going on here? Let’s look at this in detail to see the way that God is working out His plan for our salvation.

Abraham Laughs

The first person we see laughing at this is Abraham. As you remember in chapter 17 (verse 17) God told Abraham that he would have a son and his first response was to fall on his face and laugh. But why is he laughing? First, we need to notice that he falls on his face before God in worship. Whatever else he is thinking, he is giving honor to God. Then we see him laugh, but it looks like this is just a good-hearted laugh. After all, he’s nearly 100 years old and his wife is way past the age for women to have kids. He’s laughing… because this is funny, and because he believes that this super old married couple is going to have a baby. You have to laugh at that imagery. Do you know a 90-year-old lady? Can you picture her in the hospital room holding a tiny, newborn baby? It’s a really funny picture.

Busted

Next, we see that Sarah laughs. In chapter 18, Sarah overhears God telling Abraham that she is going to have a baby in the next year and she laughs. This time it isn’t well received. Why is that? Isn’t this the same thing Abraham did a chapter earlier? Not necessarily. Sure they both laughed, but it was a different kind of laughter. When Abraham laughed, he was laughing out of faith, believing that God would do the impossible. When Sarah laughed it was out of disbelief. Look at the response that her laughter gets from God. When she laughs God asks her a question that exposed her lack of faith saying, “is anything too hard for the Lord?” Sarah was a bitter woman. She had wanted children her whole life and couldn’t have them. When God said this, it sounded like a cruel joke. You can picture her in her tent scoffing, “oh, now you want me to have a baby?…. sure, right…”

Joy to the World

Now that we are caught up, let’s look at what happens here in chapter 21. Sarah indeed becomes pregnant and when Abraham is 100 years old, they have a son named Isaac. Sarah is bursting with joy that she cannot contain. The only way to express it is with laughter. She proclaims, “God has made laughter for me; everyone who hears will laugh over me” (21:6). This is so exciting. It’s so easy to get drawn into this scene and laugh with her. This is a contagious sort of laughter. She realizes the humor in this and rejoices in it. Everyone who hears about this will laugh alongside her and be filled with joy.

Pushed Aside

Finally, the last person we see laughing is Hagar. Remember her? She isn’t happy with this situation at all. Up until this point her son, Ishmael, was going to be Abraham’s heir. But now that Sarah has a son of her own neither she nor Ishmael are needed anymore.

Abraham had thrown a huge party for Isaac and everyone is rejoicing. Everyone except Hagar...

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Read the full article at: https://www.swoutfitters.com/resource/advent-4-new-names-and-a-new-son/

"And God said to Abraham, “As for Sarai your wife, you shall not call her name Sarai, but Sarah shall be her name. I will bless her, and moreover, I will give you a son by her. I will bless her, and she shall become nations; kings of peoples shall come from her.” Then Abraham fell on his face and laughed and said to himself, 'Shall a child be born to a man who is a hundred years old? Shall Sarah, who is ninety years old, bear a child?' And Abraham said to God, 'Oh that Ishmael might live before you!' God said, 'No, but Sarah your wife shall bear you a son, and you shall call his name Isaac. I will establish my covenant with him as an everlasting covenant for his offspring after him. As for Ishmael, I have heard you; behold, I have blessed him and will make him fruitful and multiply him greatly. He shall father twelve princes, and I will make him into a great nation. But I will establish my covenant with Isaac, whom Sarah shall bear to you at this time next year.'" – Genesis 17:15-21

When our solution… isn’t

Sometimes we can get tired of waiting for God to work and we decide to take matters into our own hands. After all, we might be thinking something like, “maybe God is going to fulfill his promise through my creative problem solving”. But as is often the case this type of solution turns out not to solve anything. That is exactly what we see happening with Abraham and Sarah. God had promised Abraham that God was going to give him a son, but this didn’t seem to be happening and his wife, Sarah, kept getting older and older. This is what happened in chapter 16. We can only imagine the disappointment, frustration, or anger Sarah may have been in. God had promised to give her husband a kid and she just wasn’t getting pregnant. What was she to do? In her case, she took matters into her own hands and told Abraham to have a baby with her servant Hagar. But this didn’t fix it. Sure, God gave Hagar a baby, but that wasn’t what God had in mind. And really, how could it be? Abraham had a wife and God promised him a child, surely He meant the child to come from his wife.

Narrowing and Expanding

When we get to chapter 17 God renews the covenant He made with Abraham. First, He gives him a new name. His old name, Abram, meant “exalted father”. Let’s pause for a minute and recognize the irony here. Up to this point, Abram had lived 99 years with a name that means father and did not have any children (imagine how much he must have been made fun of). And then to make it worse, God changed his name to something even more ironic and renamed him Abraham which means, “father of a multitude”.

God had promised Him a son, and he had gotten one, but not the way God had wanted. God then deals with Abraham so graciously and narrows his promise to let him know that the son that is going to carry on his line will be from his wife Sarah. This is where God brings Sarah into the covenant as well. To make this clear God changes her name too. Before this time she was called Sarai, but God changes it to Sarah. The reason for this is a little unclear since they are just different forms of the same word, but most people think that the distinction has to do with the fact that she is going to princess to a nation and not just to Abraham. So we ca

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Spencer Davis | Marriage Conference

In this episode, Spencer will look at the kinds of challenges couples face, why conflict can feel like a trap, and how empathy, teamwork, and Christ-like love bring real change. 

With practical examples from personality differences to money habits, we show how patience, compassion, and a shared mindset can turn “me vs. you” into “we’re in this together.”

Ephesians 5

Marriage Conference

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“On that day the LORD made a covenant with Abram, saying, “To your offspring I give this land” – Genesis 15:18

The Promised Son

If you haven’t done it yet, you should really read this whole chapter. But if not let’s walk through it and show how God is continuing the promise to Abraham. When the chapter starts out Abraham is bummed because he still doesn’t have a child of his own. He tells God that he still doesn’t have an heir to inherit the promises that God is giving him. This is where God takes him out and shows him all the stars in the sky and promises him that he is going to give him that many descendants and that they would come from his own son.

The One-Sided Promise

It’s at this point that God makes the covenant official. To our modern eyes this might look really weird. I mean why would God have Abraham cut these animals in half? For us to understand what is happening we need to have a little knowledge of ancient covenants. It was common in their culture to perform ceremonies like this where two people would come together and make a promise to each other. Then they would cut open an animal and walk together in between them. In doing this they were saying that they were so serious about keeping their end of the bargain that if they didn’t keep their word then they should get cut in half just like these animals. Crazy, right?! You had to be really sure you could keep your promise before you would commit to something like this.

What gets really interesting is that Abraham didn’t walk through the animals, only God did. You see God put Abraham into a deep sleep and went through the covenant promise by himself. This means that God is taking full responsibility to keep the covenant on himself. This is awesome, because if it was going to be up to Abraham to fulfill it, then he would fail. He couldn’t even have a kid on his own. But thankfully God will always keep his word.

The Curveball

Now we get to the hardest part of the covenant to understand. Let’s look a little closer at the words that God says to Abraham when he makes this promise. God says, “Know for certain that your offspring will be sojourners in a land that is not theirs and will be servants there, and they will be afflicted for four hundred years. But I will bring judgment on the nation that they serve, and afterward they shall come out with great possessions.” What?! Did God just promise Abraham that his descendants will be slaves? Yep, you read it correctly. That is fascinating. What in the world are we to make of this? We need to realize that God is sovereign over all of the things that happen in the world and even when it looks like he might be out of control or that his people aren’t experiencing the good things we think they should be experiencing, God is still keeping his word. And with the people of Israel, part of the promise was to make them great. You and I might have just showered dollar bills on them but God did it by taking them into slavery and then sending them out with “great possessions”. (See also Acts 13:17)

Reflection

As we prepare to celebrate Christmas, let’s pause and think through what we know so far. We know that God has promised that he is going to send a Messiah. We know that a man, born of woman, is going to be born to crush the head of the serpent. And we know that he is going to come through Abraham’s line and be a blessing to the world...

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"Now the LORD said to Abram, “Go from your country and your kindred and your father’s house to the land that I will show you. And I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you, and him who dishonors you I will curse, and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed." – Genesis 12:1-3

Cosmic Gospel

“Joy to the world the Lord is come, let earth receive her king!”

I love the song “Joy to the World”. It’s so good because in it we get to sing about a salvation that God has for the whole world. Not only that but in the third verse, Isaac Watts tells us that what Jesus is doing has enormous, cosmic implications. He is reversing the curse! This is awesome!

It started with one man

If you are not on a Bible plan where you read through the whole Bible every year then you need to be. And when you read through the Bible you need to not allow yourself to become numb to some of your favorite Bible stories like Father Abraham. Sure we know that, “many sons had father Abraham” but it is really important that we pause and reflect on what a crazy turn of events this is because the Creator of the universe singles out one man with whom to have this covenant relationship.

Covenants, Testaments, and Promises

When we say that God is establishing a covenant relationship with Abraham (He’s actually still called Abram at this point, but you know who we’re talking about) what we mean is that God is making a promise to him that He is going to fulfill. This moment provides a hinge in all of human history. The immaterial, all-powerful, Creator God is initiating a personal relationship with a sinful human being. 

So what exactly is God promising Abraham at this point? 

• Make a great nation from you
• Bless you
• Make your name great
• You will be a blessing
• Bless those who bless you
• Curse those who curse you
• Bless all the families of the earth through you

God is narrowing the means by which He is fulfilling the promise He made to Eve way back in the garden. The serpent crusher that God told Adam and Eve about is going to come through the family of Abraham. This is the only way that the whole world is going to be blessed through him. 

Reflection

So what do we need to be thinking about as we look forward to Christmas? We need to remember that God is good and that he keeps his promises. Jesus coming to earth as a baby was not just some sort of isolated, haphazard event but was the fulfillment of his promise.

God chose Abraham out of all the people on the earth and made a covenant with him. This is the beginning of the Jewish nation. But notice that from the beginning God did not just intend to bring salvation to the Jews, but also through the Jewish people. What an amazing promise. Not only do we see the promise that God made to Adam and Eve narrowing through Abraham and his descendants but also expanding to include the Gentiles. Praise God that in giving this blessing to Abraham, he also promised to bless us too.

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Every day, Dec. 1-25, we'll be publishing daily advent study posts (written and audio versions) on our website. You can also

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