Judah--The Boy Who Became A Lion

Advent:

A major theme which runs through the entire OT

Continues to be a theme in our lives because we continue to look forward to God’s Kingdom being complete on this earth

English Standard Version (Chapter 1)

1 The book of the genealogy of Jesus Christ, the son of David, the son of Abraham.

2 Abraham was the father of Isaac, and Isaac the father of Jacob, and Jacob the father of Judah and his brothers, 3 and Judah the father of Perez and Zerah by Tamar, and Perez the father of Hezron, and Hezron the father of Ram, 4 and Ram the father of Amminadab, and Amminadab the father of Nahshon, and Nahshon the father of Salmon, 5 and Salmon the father of Boaz by Rahab, and Boaz the father of Obed by Ruth, and Obed the father of Jesse, 6 and Jesse the father of David the king.

And David was the father of Solomon by the wife of Uriah, 7 and Solomon the father of Rehoboam, and Rehoboam the father of Abijah, and Abijah the father of Asaph, 8 and Asaph the father of Jehoshaphat, and Jehoshaphat the father of Joram, and Joram the father of Uzziah, 9 and Uzziah the father of Jotham, and Jotham the father of Ahaz, and Ahaz the father of Hezekiah, 10 and Hezekiah the father of Manasseh, and Manasseh the father of Amos, and Amos the father of Josiah, 11 and Josiah the father of Jechoniah and his brothers, at the time of the deportation to Babylon.

12 And after the deportation to Babylon: Jechoniah was the father of Shealtiel, and Shealtiel the father of Zerubbabel, 13 and Zerubbabel the father of Abiud, and Abiud the father of Eliakim, and Eliakim the father of Azor, 14 and Azor the father of Zadok, and Zadok the father of Achim, and Achim the father of Eliud, 15 and Eliud the father of Eleazar, and Eleazar the father of Matthan, and Matthan the father of Jacob, 16 and Jacob the father of Joseph the husband of Mary, of whom Jesus was born, who is called Christ.

17 So all the generations from Abraham to David were fourteen generations, and from David to the deportation to Babylon fourteen generations, and from the deportation to Babylon to the Christ fourteen generations.

Well, you are probably wondering, why read this passage?

I didn’t get anything out of it!

It didn’t talk about how amazing God is, or what Jesus did for us.

It doesn’t teach me how to live. Why read this at all?

Well, we have in our circles something that we call the Mennonite game

You know what I’m talking about, right?

It’s that little game that we play where we try to “place” each other and establish some kind of relationship

By talking about the people that we are related to, or the people that we know

And as we do that, we might come across someone that we are both related to, or someone whom we both know

Now, I have to admit that I have at times been a bit annoyed by this game, and I don’t always play it well

I was at a wedding one time, and an elderly gentleman (I think the Bride’s grandfather or great grandfather) caught me and began to play the game with me

I went back and reported to Heidi that he had beaten me fair and square

But even though I don’t always play the game well, I do have to admit that I am still interested in who my ancestors were and who my extended family is

One of the reasons for that is because the more that I hear their stories and the more that I find out about them

The more that I realize how ordinary they were

Even though some of them lived through some very trying times like

The Great Depression

The World Wars

Times of poverty, times of hardship

They were just ordinary people being faithful to God the best that they knew how

A number of years ago, an older Amish man loaned me a geneology book

Which established that my great-great-great Grandfather Fredrick Swartzendruber is buried in the Peter Miller Cemetary just down the road

And in the book were some writings by my great-grandfather who grew up as an Amish boy in Oklahoma

And you know what? The things that they were dealing with were some of the same things that I deal with

Questions about the future

Dealing with church tension and questions about how that was going to go

Today is the first Sunday of Advent

The season where we think especially of the coming of the Messiah, Jesus Christ

And one of the things that just continues to amaze me is this:

Why did God choose to send His Messiah, His Chosen One, in the way that he did?

The whole reason that we needed a Messiah in the first place was because mankind sinned and were separated from God

Adam and Eve listened to the serpent, were deceived, and did what God had expressly told them not to do.

It was their sin which made the coming of the Messiah necessary

Now, God is God. He can do anything

Couldn’t He have just said, “Presto. Here’s your Messiah”

Here’s my Chosen One and made Him appear and deal with the sin of mankind?

Seems like He could have

But instead, He put into effect a plan which took somewhere around 4000 years and

over 40 Generations

And the story that we read in the Bible is the story of that plan

God’s plan to save His people by sending His Messiah

That is why I read this genealogy today

There were some names in that list that you probably recogized

Other names that made you scratch your head...”I don’t remember that guy”

Some of these people were God followers. Overall, they were faithful to Him

Others were absolute rascals. Their lives were really messed up

And yet somehow, inexplicably, God used them in His plan to bring Messiah into this world

One of these people mentioned in this passage today was

Judah

We can read Judah’s story in the Book of Genesis

He was the fourth son of Leah, the wife of Jacob.

She was the unwanted wife. The one who got thrust onto Jacob when he really wanted her sister Rachel in the worst way.

Jacob had traveled from Canaan, back to Paddan Aram where his Grandfather, Abraham had settled for a time, to find a wife

And he met a young lady named Rachel who turns out to be his first cousin

(that’s the way things were done in those days)

whom he fell in love with, and he worked 7 years for her father in order to gain her hand in marriage

But after the wedding ceremony, the next morning, he found out that the girl’s father had given him his other daughter, Leah, instead. The one whom he didn’t love!

What a way to start a marriage!

Wake up in the morning

Woah, who are you?!! I thought I’d married your sister!

Of course Jacob was upset. He’d been had and he knew it

Did you ever stop to think how Leah felt?

She probably felt awful

She didn’t have any say in the matter. She had to do what the men folk told her to do

She knew that Jacob loved her sister more than her, yet she had to stay and be his wife

This had to be a very painful thing for her

And I wonder if she was ever able to resolve it, or if things were made right between Jacob and her

And I wonder how this pain was passed on to her children

But the Bible says in Genesis 29 that the LORD had mercy on her and it says that when the LORD saw that Jacob disliked her, or at least loved her sister Rachel more than her,

That the LORD enabled her to have children, but Rachel was barren

And so Leah started to have children: Reuben, Simeon, Levi, and then, she had a fourth son.

When he was born, Leah said, “I will praise the LORD”

And so, She named him Judah

A name which means “Object of praise”

And it’s through the fourth son of an unloved wife that God determined the line of the Messiah would pass.

Not the first born. Not through the favorite wife, but through the fourth son of the unloved wife

He would be the ancestor to God’s Chosen One. The One who would bring great praise to God

We don’t know much about Judah’s childhood

But we know that he was born in the land of Paddan-Aram, where his father, Jacob had married his wives

We don’t know how old he was when his life began to be uprooted

And that Jacob fell into a disagreement with Laban, his father-in-law, (who was also his uncle)

Because Jacob had somehow devised a way to get more goats from Laban than Laban wanted to give him

Remember, Jacob was a schemer, a deceiver

and had to flee, and began moving his wives and children and flocks and herds back to his own homeland

And when they left, his wife, Rachel stole some of her father’s idols and took them with her

And so, Laban in great fury chased them down and said, “Hey, what’s the big idea?

Not only did you leave so fast that I didn’t get to say goodbye to my daughters, but someone has stolen my idols!”

Well, they get that sorted out and they make a peace treaty..(I don’t know if Jacob ever knew that his favorite wife had almost gotten him killed)

And they continue back west and south toward his homeland

But there is more trouble on the horizon. Because someone else whom Jacob had wronged was waiting for them…that is his own brother, Esau

But, again, they are able to make peace between them

But you have to wonder what this did to young Judah

What kind of lessons was he starting to learn from his father?

Lesson #1

They settle in Jacob’s original homeland, the land of Canaan

And there is more trouble. There are 12 brothers and one sister, Dinah

And the prince of the land sees her, thinks she is beautiful, takes her and rapes her

And two of Judah’s older brothers, Simeon and Levi decide to get their revenge and end up killing not only this prince but all of the men of that city

And they took their flocks and herds and livestock, wives, children and possessions

And their father, Jacob, said to them, “you naughty boys. You are making me look bad around here. You’re ruining my reputation!”

And there is young Judah watching all of this take place, and I wonder, what is he learning from his brothers and from his father’s response to his brothers

Time goes on and Judah and his brothers are off tending their sheep

And they have an upstart little brother named Joseph who is having dreams

Dreams of grandeur.

Dreams of his older brothers, and even his father bowing down to him

And Judah and his brother begin to despise their little brother, Joseph

And so one day when Joseph comes out to where they are tending their sheep to bring supplies, they think, “here’s our chance to get even with him and show this little brat who’s boss.”

Some of the brother want to kill him, but the oldest brother, Reuben get’s them to throw Joseph in an empty pit, hoping to rescue him later

But Judah has a different plan. He must think that his brothers still want to kill Joseph because he says, “Hey let’s not kill him. Let’s sell him to these traders who are on their way to Egypt.”

What are his motives for doing this? I don’t actually know

Maybe he didn’t want to have blood on his own hands

Maybe he thought that selling his brother as a slave would have the same effect as killing him…they’d be rid of him for good

Egypt was a long way off and they would never see him again

Maybe he was actually trying to save the life of his brother

We aren’t given a window into his mind, so we don’t really know

At any rate, he somehow persuades his brothers that this is what they should do, and they go through with it.

They sell their little brother as a slave for 20 pieces of silver

And Judah never tells his father what really happened to Joseph.

Reuben, the oldest comes back to the pit and sees that Joseph is gone, and is distraught, wondering what he will say to his father

We don’t know if the brothers told Reuben what they had done, but at any rate, they take Joseph’s robe and smear it with blood and persuade their father that Joseph was killed by wild animals.

And Judah never tells his father what really happened

One source I read suggested that the fallout from this whole thing was that Judah actually became an outcast from his brothers for a time because of what he had persuaded them to do.

in the opening verses of Genesis 38, it says that Judah went down from his brothers

But things aren’t going too well for Judah at this point in his life

Because it’s after he leaves his brothers that he gets involved with a Canaanite woman who is unnamed. “The daughter of Shua”

And she gives birth to three sons: Er, Onan, and Shelah

And these boys start to grow and Judah finds a wife for his firstborn son, Er. Her name is Tamar

And things really go badly for poor Tamar. Er turns out to be wicked (surprise, surprise) and God puts him to death.

so, as apparently is the custom in that culture, Judah makes Tamar marry the next son, Onan

Again, Onan turns out to be wicked. He is not fulfilling his responsibility as a husband, and God puts him to death.

Now, Tamar should have been given in marriage to the third son, Shelah, but Judah is unwilling to have his only remaining son marry this woman

Apparently she is bad luck

And because Judah is not taking care of her, Tamar decides to take things into her own hands

She dresses as a prostitute and sits along the road that Judah is going to follow

and of course, Judah can’t help himself and goes into her and gets his own daughter-in-law pregnant with twins

And she bears two sons: Perez and Zerah

And I wonder if it’s around this time that things start to change with Judah. Because she points him out as the father of these boys, and Judah is forced to accept responsibility

And he DOES accept responsibility

And it really does seem like things start to change for Judah

And later when famine forces them to go to Egypt for grain,

It’s Judah who persuades their father to let Benjamin go with them saying basically, “If anything happens to him, you can blame me and me alone forever”

and his youngest brother, Benjamin is about to be arrested for apparently stealing some valuables, Judah follows through with his promise

It’s Judah who pleads for the life of Benjamin and pleads for mercy for their father who would not be able to handle it if Benjamin did not come back

He offers his life in place of Benjamin

He is through with deception and cowardice.

He has become a man of honor and integrity. A protector of his family.

And later, when their father Jacob lays dying, he calls all his sons to him and begins to hand out the blessing

And normally a father handed gave the most important blessing to his firstborn

Which in this case would have been Reuben

But he didn’t give his blessing to Reuben because Reuben had slept with one of his concubines

And he didn’t bless the next two, Simeon and Levi, because they were the ones who had strapped on their swords and killed the men who had defiled their sister

It was Judah, the fourth son of his unwanted wife, Leah, to whom Jacob handed out his richest blessing:

saying this:

Genesis 49:8–12 “8 “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. 9 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? 10 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. 11 Binding his foal to the vine and his donkey’s colt to the choice vine, he has washed his garments in wine and his vesture in the blood of grapes. 12 His eyes are darker than wine, and his teeth whiter than milk.”

Judah, the schemer, the wimp, the sexually immoral man

Some how God had gotten a hold of him and Judah had become a prince among his brothers

And it’s in this blessing to Judah that we see clear references to One greater who would come much later

The Chosen One, the Messiah

Jacob says,

Judah, your brothers will bow down to you. They will praise you

I don’t know if Judah’s brothers ever bowed down to him, but

Fulfilled in Christ—Colossians 2: 9 Therefore God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name that is above every name, 10 so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, 11 and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father

Your hand will be on the neck of your enemies

You are going to be the one who conquers and protects your tribe

And we see as time goes on, and the Israelites come into the Promised Land, the tribe of Judah is one of the dominant tribes

The city of Jerusalem, the fortress where the King lives is in the land of Judah

Without the protection of Judah, the Israelites would have been in a world of hurt

Fulfilled in Christ- Psalm 110 The LORD says to my Lord: “Sit at my right hand, until I make your enemies your footstool.

—Colossians 2: 15 He disarmed the rulers and authorities and put them to open shame, by triumphing over them in him.

There will be a time when the rule of Jesus is complete and total

The scepter will not depart from Judah

vs. 10 The Scepter shall not depart from Judah, not the ruler’s staff from between his feet, until tribute comes to him; and to him shall be the obedience of the peoples.

NIV--The scepter will not depart from Judah, nor the ruler’s staff from between his feet, until he to whom it belongs shall come and the obedience of the nations shall be his.

The kingly line was from the tribe of Judah

King Saul was a Benjamite

But King David was from the tribe of Judah

And the kings of the land of Judah were from the tribe of Judah, all the way until King Zedekiah,

Rebelled against Babylon, blinded, taken captive, Judah and Jerusalem, temple destroyed

over 500 years before the coming of Christ

Fulfilled in Christ—

Isaiah 9:7 “7 Of the increase of his government and of peace there will be no end, on the throne of David and over his kingdom, to establish it and to uphold it with justice and with righteousness from this time forth and forevermore. The zeal of the Lord of hosts will do this.”

In Revelation 19, Apostle John sees Jesus as conqueror and King, sitting on a white horse, a sharp sword coming out of his mouth, clothed in the purest white linen,

His name written on Him—King of Kings, and Lord of Lords

Judah, you will be like a lion

You are going to have the attitude and bearing of a lion

not a hungry, weak lion, young strong lion who eats his fill and lies in wait until he is ready to eat again

A Lion who has eaten his fill is peaceful, quiet, strong

But a creature that you would not dare treat disrespectfully

I believe that Jesus, when He was on this earth, had that same bearing about Him

even though He was from a humble town and family

I believe he had that quiet, confident strength about Him, and people respected him…like a lion

Fulfilled in Christ—the Lion of Judah

The Lion of Judah Rev. 5:5 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.””

So, Judah, a boy, a young man full of pain, full of sin,

Receives the blessing from his father and becomes a forefather to Jesus, the King, the Lion

Isn’t God merciful?

That he takes a broken vessel like Judah, mends him, and ordains him to be in the line of the Messiah

He takes what the enemy meant for evil and He uses it for His own Good and purposes

I don’t know where you are in your lives today

But I hope that this is an encouragement to you today. You are never too far from God that He cannot take your life, renew it, transform it, and use you in His eternal plan