Monday Morning Mail, 6th May 2013

Loving God | Loving Each Other | Loving our Community

Good Morning!

Yesterday was one of those really encouraging days, or it was for me anyway! We had a great time at church in the morning, and then had a really good 20s/30s picnic in our back garden – it was great to see loads of people there including quite a few we hadn't met before! If you're not on the 20s/30s e-mail list and you'd like to be, please let me know...

Yesterday evening, I was preaching on the Old Testament Law. I should probably have switched sermons at the last minute, but didn't – sorry. This is roughly what I think I should have said(!)...

When you see the word "law" in the Old Testament, it usually translates the Hebrew "Torah", which is talking about the whole of Genesis – Deuteronomy, a lot of which is story and so on rather than just lists of rules. The stories set the scene for the rules; they give us a background to read them against and show us God in a way that just lists of rules could never do. And a lot of the stories in Genesis are about brothers.

We start with Cain and Abel. Cain kills his brother, and then asks God "Am I my brother's keeper?" It's the first question anyone asks God in the Bible. God doesn't answer it directly, but the rest of Genesis answers it indirectly.

We then go through a whole series of brotherly relationships which don't work. Shem, Ham and Japheth; Isaac and Ishmael; Jacob and Esau; Joseph and his brothers. All of them come to blows or end up estranged.

But then comes the turning point in Genesis 44. It's a familiar story – Joseph's brothers had sold him into slavery, and because of God's blessing he became Prime Minister of Egypt. His brothers have now come to him begging for food, but they don't recognise him. He plays a trick on them and sets up Benjamin to make it look as if he's been stealing from Joseph, and then demands that Ben become his slave as a punishment. In steps the unlikely hero, Judah, and offers himself in his brother's place. As a result, Judah is blessed by God and is told he will be the ancestor of the great King (David, then later Jesus too – Gen 49:8-12). But just 7 chapters earlier, Judah was the one who had cynically suggested selling his own brother into slavery to make more profit than they could by just killing him!

What changed? Well, there's a chapter that most people miss out when they read Genesis. We certainly never did it in Sunday School! In Genesis 38, Judah mistreats his daughter-in-law Tamar because he seems to blame her for the death of his son and won't let her remarry. She gets revenge by disguising herself as a prostitute. Judah hires her, and then later when he discovers Tamar pregnant and therefore has been sleeping around, condemns her to death. In an incredible reversal, she proves that he is the one who slept with her, and he is forced to recognise his own guilt.

As a story it is deeply subversive of the whole patriarchal culture at the time, where women were treated as property and men could get away with far more than women could because the head of the family also functioned as the judge.

But the key for the wider story is what happens with Judah. He is forced to acknowledge his own guilt in public, and even that this woman whom he had tried sentencing to death is "more righteous than I". That is the moment that Judah changes. By being forced into recognising his own guilt, he is set free to sacrifice himself out of love for Benjamin in a way that he could not and would not have loved Joseph.

And in a wonderful twist, it is the child of Judah's humbling encounter with Tamar that is the ancestor of both David and Jesus.

That's what the law does. It shows us that we are sinners, and so that we need a saviour. And as we find that God keeps on loving us and keeps on forgiving us despite the ways we let him down, so that sets us free to love others. It shows that God keeps working even in the dark and mess of human sin and that he will bring his glory out of it.

Have a great Bank Holiday and God bless,

John