While Joseph was in Egypt resisting the sexual advances of his master’s wife, his older brother, Judah, was back in the Promised Land propositioning his daughter in law for an illicit sexual encounter. It’s interesting to pay attention to the outcome of that affair. You learn that Tamar, Judah’s daughter in law, brought forth twin sons as a result. We read the story in Genesis 38:27-29. It tells us that “When the time of her labor came, there were twins in her womb. And when she was in labor, one put out a hand, and the midwife took and tied a scarlet thread on his hand, saying, this one came out first.  But as he drew back his hand, behold, his brother came out. And she said what a breach you have made for yourself! Therefore his name was called Perez.”

At the opening of the New Testament in Matthew chapter 1, there’s a genealogy of Jesus lineage all the way back to Abraham.  In Matthew 1:2-3 we read, “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 …by Tamar, and Perez the father of Hezron…” Can you imagine, Perez was chosen in the line of the Messiah? God’s choices are more often than not strange to us. He chooses Abraham from amongst a city of moon-god worshippers. He chooses Isaac over Ishmael. He chooses Jacob, the deceiver, over Esau, and remarkably he chooses Judah over Joseph. I surely would have chosen Joseph, the most Christ-like figure in the Old Testament. But, no, God chooses Judah.

Judah was the brother who decided to sell Joseph rather than kill him because there was no profit in murder. He was the brother who married the Canaanite woman. He was the father of two sons by her, Er and Onan, both of whom were wicked and God killed them. He was the one who negotiated a price with a prostitute for sex; he was the one who was willing to stone his daughter in law for immorality while he hid his role in the pregnancy. He was everything he shouldn’t be and nothing he should have been. Joseph on the other hand was everything he should have been and nothing he shouldn’t have been. Yet God chooses Judah! The New Testament writers tell us that we too are chosen to be children of God. You and I are often what we shouldn’t be and seldom exactly what we should be, but God still chooses us. How strange is that?