Transcript: Which Jesus? | Rocky Cross Baptist Church

Which Jesus?

If you have your Bible, turn to Matthew chapter 1. This is an exciting Sunday for me. We're starting a new series, and we're going to go through the Gospel according to Matthew, the first book of the New Testament, named after Matthew.

I want us to think about something as we go into this Gospel. There are so many versions of Jesus presented to us.

For example, there's a mean Jesus. There's a Jesus who is strict, who stands over your shoulder, just waiting for you to mess up. There's the "look busy, Jesus is coming" Jesus. But then there's also a super nice Jesus, a Jesus who will never tell anyone no and never asks anything of anyone. All he wants for you is to be happy. Then there's a hippie Jesus: long hair, sandals, anything goes, everything's cool. But on the other hand, there's King Jesus, the king with a crown and a throne, a royal king who is high above and far away.

There's a Jesus who would never do certain things, never allow certain things, never say certain things, never permit certain things. And on the other hand, there's a Jesus who would always permit anything and everything, because everything's fine. He's all love, all grace, all affirming.

My point is that there are so many Jesuses. And what's interesting is that if you pay close enough attention, the Jesus that people present to you tends to be a "Jesus-ified" version of themselves. The Jesus that people love and present lines up remarkably well with the person describing him.

We get our picture of Jesus from everywhere: movies, shows, politicians, social media, cable news, the way we were raised, the church we grew up in, the pictures we see throughout the house. They all inform the Jesus we were taught. Maybe you were hurt at a church, and that informs the type of Jesus you picture. Maybe you've been hurt by somebody, and you think Jesus loves people who hurt people and that's what he wants. Not really.

Here is what I want to conclude about the different versions of Jesus we're presented. You could lay them all side by side by side, and you would realize they cannot all be true. All these Jesuses can't be the right Jesus at the same time. That leaves us with two dangers.

The first danger is that picking and choosing the Jesus we like the most means we make a Jesus in our own image. God made us in his image, and we have forever been trying to return the favor and make him in ours. So the Jesus we believe in can end up being just us with a halo over our head, a Jesus who looks and acts and sounds and believes and would do things a lot like we would. A lot of us believe in that Jesus.
The second danger is quieter: you might be following and believing in the wrong Jesus, because there is only one Jesus. There is one right Jesus, one true Jesus, and there are many false ones.

So the question should be: with all these different versions, how do I know I'm following the right Jesus?

Who do you say Jesus is?

This is a great way for us to get into the Book of Matthew, because it is an age-old question from the beginning. Turn to Matthew 16:13-16.

"Now when Jesus came to the district of Caesarea Philippi, he was asking his disciples, 'Who do people say the Son of Man is?'"

In other words, what are people saying about Jesus?

They said, "Well, some say John the Baptist," this revivalist, wilderness type of man. "Some say Elijah," this prophetic, bold man. "Some say Jeremiah or one of the prophets."

So even in Jesus' own ministry, there were different versions of Jesus circulating. But the point Jesus drives home, in verse 15, is: "Okay, that's who they say I am. But who do you say I am?"

Simon Peter answered, "You are the Christ, the Son of the living God." And Jesus said to him, "Blessed are you, Simon Bar-Jonah, for flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my Father in heaven."

Jesus is asking his disciples, after going through the list, "Who do you say I am?" That is the question this whole book is going to press on us for the rest of this series. Who do you say Jesus is?

What I want out of this whole study is that the Jesus you believe, the Jesus you love, the Jesus you follow, is informed by the Scriptures. The Scriptures are the only accurate, truthful, and reliable version of Jesus we can go to without worrying about a mixture of a right and a wrong Jesus.

I want you to believe in the right Jesus because, believe it or not, your eternity matters. A wrong Jesus will take you to the wrong place, and what I mean is hell. So the question is: will your answer be the one that Scripture teaches?

That matters for the Book of Matthew. Matthew is an introduction in the Bible to a man named Jesus. Is he just a man? Is he more than a man? Is he God? Is he a friend? Is he a king? Who is he? This is what the Book of Matthew will answer.

Three things I ask of you in this series

1. Let the Scriptures dictate the Jesus you follow. When you read about Jesus, or when I teach you about Jesus, some things will make you feel great and comforted. Some things might offend you and fly in the face of who you think Jesus really is. In those moments, I want you to say, "Okay, Jesus, this is who you are, and I'm going to follow you." When your version of Jesus and the Scripture's version of Jesus collide, let your version fall away. Trust that the Scriptures are the words of eternal life, and that this Jesus is the way to eternal life and righteousness.

2. Decide what kind of follower you're going to be. Matthew is about following Jesus. It begins with a call to follow him, and it ends with a call to follow him. We read about three kinds of people:

Those who reject Jesus. They completely reject him. These are usually the religious leaders who want nothing to do with him. He's a kook, or maybe he's operating in Satan's service. Whatever it is, they reject him.
Half-hearted followers. These are usually called "the crowds" in Matthew. They love following Jesus so long as it's convenient: when there's a meal, something to drink, something to gain. In modern terms, when you're getting something out of Jesus that benefits you, you're a great follower. But the moment Jesus doesn't answer you the way you want, or withholds what you want, you go the other way.
The all-in disciple. Sometimes the disciples are confused, sometimes controversial, sometimes cowards. But at the end of the day they are all in. They left their careers, their titles, their families, and everything else to follow this Jesus, who with two words changed their whole lives: "Follow me."

3. Know that you have a place in God's kingdom. I want every person here to know that. Let me explain what I mean.

There is a place in the kingdom for every sinner

We're starting with a genealogy, and there are some family secrets in it. If you look through Matthew 1, you'll see a woman named Tamar. Her story, if you're taking notes, you can read later in Genesis 38. It is one of the most uncomfortable stories in the Bible, because it involves Judah, one of the fathers of the Jewish faith, being with his daughter-in-law, who had tricked him. It is a dark mark on the family history.

Then there's Rahab. Rahab was a Gentile, a prostitute, and a Canaanite. She had three strikes against her, yet she finds herself in the genealogy of Jesus.

Then you have Ruth, a Moabite, a foreigner, from the kind of people Israel was told to keep at arm's length. She was an outsider.

So far we have deception, incest, prostitution, and outsiders. And then we have Bathsheba, who isn't even named. Matthew calls her "the wife of Uriah." That phrase points us to the darkest time in David's life, when he set up a whole scheme to kill this woman's husband so he could have her. He impregnated her, her husband was killed, he married her, and he lost children as part of the punishment. It was a stain on the nation.

All these people are in this genealogy, and they have a place in God's kingdom.

The man who wrote the book

Then there is the man himself who wrote the book. He was a tax collector, and I want to paint a picture of him. One commentary says that when Matthew left his booth as a tax collector, he kept his pen with him.

When Jesus lists types of sinners, right alongside prostitutes he lists tax collectors. I don't like the IRS, but people really hated this kind of tax collection. The system back then was almost like debt collection today: people could buy debts. Say you owed me $1,000. I could buy that from the government for $200, and I'd have the right to collect the full thousand and keep the difference.

The problem for Matthew was that he was a Jewish man collecting taxes for the Roman Empire. He was a traitor to his people, to his faith, and to his family. He was not respected. He was despised. They were the lowest of the low, the worst kind of sinner. And yet we have a man like that who left everything and followed Jesus, and who is going to teach us about Jesus.

So the big point is this: whether you're a low-down, dirty, hated person, hated by your family or by the world around you; whether you're an outcast, a prostitute, an adulterer; whether your life is stained with darkness from your own doing or someone else's, we are going to learn that you have a place in the kingdom of God.

Turn to Matthew 9:9-13, the calling of the man who wrote this book. I want you to understand who is talking to you. Bring your Bible every week, because we're going to be looking at things.

As Jesus went on from there, He saw a man called Matthew sitting in the tax collector's booth, and He said to Matthew, "Follow me." And so Matthew got up and followed Him. And then it happened that as Jesus was reclining at the table in the house, behold, many tax collectors and sinners came and were dining with Jesus and His disciples. When the Pharisees saw this, they said to the disciples, "Why does your teacher eat with tax collectors and sinners?" But when Jesus heard this, He said, "It is not those who are healthy that need a physician, but those who are sick." Then He told the religious leaders, "But go and learn what this means: 'I desire compassion and not sacrifice,' for I did not come to call the righteous, but to call sinners."

That is how Jesus treats a sinner like Matthew. There's a place in the kingdom.

Here's an interesting fact. There are four accounts of Jesus' life: Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. When Matthew tells his own story, he calls himself "Matthew the publican," the tax collector. Mark and Luke do not call him that; they call him Levi. It's almost as if Matthew, having met Jesus, wants to leave out there how far from Jesus he was when Jesus called him to follow. It's like Paul saying, "I'm the chief of sinners." He doesn't forget who he was when he met Jesus. He puts it out there that he was the worst of sinners, but now he has the privilege not only of following Jesus but of etching this account of Jesus into the monument of history.

So why would a man like this write a book like this? Matthew 1:21, because he knew why Jesus came. Right at the beginning of the book: "Mary will bear a son, and you will call his name Jesus." Why? "For he will save his people from their sins." Matthew had already experienced that grace. He wrote this book having been the sinner, the betrayer, the tax collector, the hated one, the reject. Can you imagine the joy in this man's heart as he wrote, "He will save his people from their sins"? He was on the receiving end of the grace of God. He is writing to let us know that there is forgiveness of sin for all types of sinners.

So the third and final point of this series is that there is a place in God's kingdom for every sinner. All of us have a tax booth we sit at. Some of us are adulterers, fornicators, liars, thieves, people with outbursts of anger, commandment breakers of every sort. Some of us are hated by our families. Some of you hate your family. That's not very good. The list could go on and on. You might have a past you wouldn't dare bring up. You might have stains in your heart, mind, and soul that you think will never go away, that beat you down. You might have a good case you've been working on for decades for why God would never love you.

The answer to all those sinners' problems is right here in this book. I intend for us to walk through it for the next several, who knows how long. I want to keep it open-ended. We all have booths, and Jesus is saying to you, "Follow me. Get up out of whatever you're into and follow me."

Why we are going verse by verse

I want to go through this book with you verse by verse, chapter by chapter, to the very end. There is a blessing in walking through books this way, and I want you to know why.

It keeps me honest. John Stott, the famous Christian writer who wrote plenty of amazing books, including a good commentary on Matthew, shared that after 25 years of preaching, he finally preached a sermon on divorce. For 25 years he had deliberately avoided it because it was a hard, messy, and potentially offensive topic. The first time he preached on it was when he preached through Matthew passage by passage, because it's right there in Matthew 5:31-32. It is beneficial to me and to the church to preach through a book because there is no passage I can avoid. I can't preach Matthew 5:30 and then start the next week in verse 33, and have you wondering, "Why did he skip that passage?" I can't hide from you, and I can't hide from hard conversations. Neither can you, by the way, and I can't shield you.
You never have to wonder why I picked a text. If I preached on divorce without it coming naturally through the text, you would probably wonder, "Who is he talking about? Whose situation in this room is he preaching to?" You'd already be thinking about something besides what God's Word says. Going through the Scriptures week by week keeps us from wondering, and keeps us focused on the Word.
We will see the whole book of Matthew. We've done this with Samuel, 1 John, 1 Timothy, Colossians, and probably some other books I can't remember. Going through books is not new to this church, but I want you to see the whole book. If we don't go through a book like this, the Bible, whether from me or anyone else, gets presented in fragments, like a scrapbook of favorites. You get a fragmented picture where things don't line up, and you can't see the big picture.

The road ahead

We are starting on a very long journey. Many trusted saints here have told me, "Mason, don't feel the need to rush through a book." Well, those people are getting what they asked for.

Some passages I've outlined are one verse a week. Some are two words from a verse. Some are half chapters or whole chapters. It depends on how my prayers are answered as I preach. But we're not going to step around any hard texts: divorce and remarriage; "I never knew you" in chapter 7; Jesus saying "go to Israel" on the one hand and "go to the Gentiles" on the other; some very hard and perplexing end-times passages in chapters 24 and 25; the passage where Jesus tells his disciples to sell what they have to buy a sword (Luke 22:36), alongside the one where he tells Peter, "Those who live by the sword will die by the sword." Some hard things, some paradoxical things. We're going to take it in seasons, take some breaks, and work through Matthew as Matthew presented it.

Here is the shape of the book, so we can get set up for a long journey together:

Chapters 1 and 2: the arrival of the King. This is the front door of the book. His family line, his birth, and his escape.
Chapters 3 through 7: the King announces his kingdom. John the Baptist, his temptation in the wilderness, the calling of the first disciples, the Sermon on the Mount.
The King shows his authority. Jesus heals, Matthew is called, and Jesus sends out the Twelve.
The King meets resistance (chapters 11 through 13). The opposition of the religious leaders rises, and he starts teaching in parables.
The King is confessed and hard lines are drawn (13:54 through 19:2).
The King confronts Jerusalem. The conflict with the leaders and the teaching on the road come to a head.
The King dies, rises, and sends (26:6 through the end). The cross, the resurrection, and the Great Commission.

Between these seasons we might go through a smaller book like Jonah or Malachi, or take up a topic pertinent to our church or one the Lord lays on my heart. But this is the road ahead of us, church. I'm excited about it. Matthew has always been my favorite Gospel. I love this book. It has informed me, discipled me, and taught me so much. I've listened to it dozens of times in the last year. I've been preparing for this, unknowingly, for a very long time.

Matthew 1:1

So let's get right into the front door. We're not going to hurry through anything. Chapter 1, verse 1. Let's pray and thank God for his Word.

Lord, we thank you that you accept sinners and you save sinners. I pray that every soul in here would know that. Every dark, stained heart, every despicable past, every soul that's hurting and troubled: I pray that this series would refresh them and be good to them. Lord, give us grace as we walk through this first verse. We ask these things in your holy name. Amen.

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

The story hasn't started. There's no action yet. This is the title of the book, or some say the title of the chapter. Either way, Matthew is telling us the record of the genealogy of Jesus the Messiah, the son of David, the son of Abraham.

Why start with a genealogy?

Most of the time when we get to genealogies, we skip them. Why start such an important book with such a boring format? To Matthew's first readers, this was the first thing that had to be settled, because in Israel your family line was everything. Your credibility, your entitlement to land, and even your entitlement to the throne were tied to your genealogical records.

There's another interesting point. Matthew writes in Greek, and the Greek word for "genealogy" is a word you all know very well: genesis. This is the genesis of the genealogy. We have a new Genesis happening.

Let's turn to Genesis 5. I'm in no hurry. I'm not going to read the whole genealogy, but I want to show you something I never noticed until this week.

"This is the book of the generations of Adam. In the day when God created man, He made him in His likeness of God, and created them male and female, and blessed them, and named them Man in the day when they were created."

Now skim with me. About every third verse, starting in verse 8: "So all the days of Seth were 912 years, and he died." Then about every third verse after that. Look at verse 11: "he died." Verse 14: "he died." The generations of Adam are marked with death, and it continues like that.

What is so cool is that when we get to the genealogy of Jesus, it's the opposite. It starts with life. So-and-so begot this person, so-and-so begot that person, and it's about birth. Some have rightly pointed out that whereas the line of Adam is marked with death, the line of Christ is marked with life.

The Jewish reader, the original audience, would have understood exactly why there's a genealogy. It establishes Jesus' credibility, his right to the throne, his right to the covenant, the markers of Abraham and David, and this new Genesis. This is why it's the New Testament, the Book of the New Covenant. This is why Malachi was read this morning. If you didn't know it, that was the very end of the Old Testament, and it says that somebody great is coming. Then you turn the page into the New Testament and you get a new Genesis. Somebody is coming, and that someone is Jesus.

"Jesus Christ"

Jesus' last name is not Christ. "Jesus" is the Greek version of the name Joshua, a Hebrew name meaning "God is our Savior," "Yahweh saves," or "salvation is of the Lord." However you want to tease out the Hebrew, Jesus' name is Joshua, and it means salvation is of the Lord. The first Joshua led God's people to the Promised Land. This new Joshua, Jesus, is going to lead his people to the true Promised Land, heaven.

"Christ," not being his last name, is a title. It is the Greek word christos, a translation of the Hebrew mashiach, which is where we get the word Messiah. So we could say Jesus the Messiah, or Jesus the Anointed. In the Old Testament, oil was poured over the heads of priests, prophets, and kings. Oil was an anointing for a high-ranking office. On a simple definition, "Jesus Christ" means Jesus the Anointed One, the Chosen One, the Promised One, and that goes back to the Old Testament.

The Anointed One was an expected figure in the Jewish community back then. There were many different types of Jesuses even before Jesus came. Is he going to be a warrior? A king? A revolutionary? No one quite landed on the right answer, that he was going to come as a ransom, to suffer and die for sinners. But Matthew is going to show us a Messiah who is greater and stronger than a warrior:

A king who has authority over heaven and earth.
A prophet, the greater prophet. Deuteronomy 18 promises that one day a prophet like Moses will come, and Jesus is that true and greater Moses.
A great high priest, all in one. Not a priest standing behind a veil, keeping you at a distance or making you go through rituals before you can approach him, but a great high priest who opens heaven wide for anyone who will approach.

So when Peter says, "You are the Christ," that's the right Jesus. You are the chosen, anointed, crowned, promised Son of God.

"The son of David"

We have the genealogy of Jesus Christ with two relevant titles: the son of David, the son of Abraham. Why the son of David? This is a royal title, and it comes first. Why did Matthew go out of chronological order, with David before Abraham? One commentator says it's because David's name was on everybody's lips. David is the hero of the Old Testament. The symbol on the Israeli flag is not the star of Abraham; it's the star of David. David is a big deal. Everyone knew the Messiah would come from David's line.

That takes us back to 2 Samuel 7:13. We're in the middle of the Old Testament now, so you might need your table of contents. God tells David that his son will build a house for my name, and I will establish the throne of his kingdom forever. There's a lot to unpack there, but this is why people were waiting for a king from David's line: God promised David that a son would come who would have an established throne forever, and forever does mean forever when God says it. There would be no end to the throne of the son of David.

The problem was that the kingdom of Israel was demolished in 586 BC, and from that time on there had been no king in Israel and no throne of David established. As it looked, God's promise had gone unfulfilled for roughly six hundred years, from the exile until the birth of Jesus, and the last four hundred of those were the silent years between the Old Testament and the New. So it's very pertinent that Matthew opens by calling Jesus the son of David. It signals, in big, bright, flashing red lights: "Look, there's a king here from the lineage of David, and he is the Christ." God's promises were not empty. They are coming true.

Isaiah says that from the stump of Jesse, David's father, a branch will come. If you've ever cut down a tree and left the stump, sometimes a tender little shoot comes up, and it looks so out of place over a dead stump, but it's the prettiest green, and it's delicate. Even though Jesse's line looks like that stump, Isaiah says a tender shoot will come out of dry ground. In Jeremiah 23:5 he is called a righteous branch. This branch of David, this tender shoot everyone was waiting for, will be the fulfillment of God's promise that a kingdom would be established through David.

"The son of Abraham"

This is how I interpret this part of the verse. Matthew goes back to Abraham because it means Jesus is truly Jewish, an Israelite through and through, from the line of David and the line of Abraham. He is one of them.

It also points back to God's first promise to Abraham in Genesis 12:3, where God calls Abraham: "Pick up everything you have and leave the land you're in, and I will make a great nation, and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed." Remember, God said this before there was a Jew. Everybody was a Gentile. The promise to Abraham was that all families would be blessed through the seed of Abraham.

On the one hand, Jesus is coming for his people, the Jews. On the other hand, he's coming to fulfill the promise to Abraham. There is a global scope in this one verse: he is coming for the Jews and for the Gentiles, and this king has a kingdom with an endless dominion and an endless reign.

The Jesus of Matthew

So before the story even starts, the question "Which Jesus?" is answered.

Jesus is the Lord who saves his people from their sins.
Christ is the anointed true prophet, priest, and king.
Son of David is the rightful king of an everlasting throne.
Son of Abraham is the blessing for every nation, which includes you.

Matthew wrote that one verse to tell the whole story: this Gospel is for the Jews, it is a Gospel for the Gentiles, and it is a missionary Gospel that goes to all the nations to fulfill the covenant and the promises to David and Abraham.

If the Book of Matthew were summed up in one sentence, it would be this. Let me say it again, because we're going to hear it more than once:

Matthew wrote to show that Jesus is the promised King, that his kingdom has come, and that everyone who bows to him belongs to a people sent to every nation.

The King has come, the King calls, the King stays

Let me wrap up like this. We're going to learn throughout this series that the King has come, the King calls, and the King stays.

Think back to all the Jesuses we started with.

The King has come. He is not simply a nice teacher or a barefooted, dirty-footed hippie. He is a king. He is royal indeed. He has authority indeed. He has laws and rules and precepts, and the right to instruct and order and command.
The King calls. He is a Jesus who can demand and ask something of you. He can call you out of your life to follow him, and he has the right to every single fiber of your being.
The King stays. He is not mean. He is not distant, waiting for you to come to him. He is Immanuel. The book starts by saying "Immanuel," which means "God with us," and it ends with a very similar phrase, where Jesus tells his disciples, "I am with you even till the very end of the age." The King stays with us. He doesn't depart. He doesn't leave us.

That is the Jesus of Matthew. This is not a Jesus that we make up, not a Jesus that we mold into the man we want him to be. This is the Jesus of Matthew.

What kind of follower will you be?

I want to conclude with a call and ask for a decision from you today as we move through this series. What kind of follower are you going to be?

Are you going to be the rejecter, the one who turns up their nose at Jesus, criticizes him, labels him, and ultimately turns away?
Are you going to be the half-hearted follower, all in for Jesus as long as it's easy, beneficial, and convenient, as long as your prayers are answered and life goes well?
Or are you going to be the all-in follower?

When Jesus first called his disciples, they were in the middle of their jobs, with their families, fishing with their dad. He said, "Drop the nets. Follow me, and I will make you fishers of men." What did they do? They were all in. They left their family, their job, and everything on their plate to follow Jesus. Matthew, for example, was on the clock, collecting taxes. Jesus said, "Follow me," and he got up and went.

There are three versions of a follower of Jesus that I want you to wrestle with, and ultimately I want you to be the all-in follower. I want you to follow Jesus whatever the cost, because you realize now that he is a king, a prophet, and a priest. He is a mighty God. He is the promised one, the anointed one. He is the son of David, who owns the throne of eternity. He is the son of Abraham, whose dominion goes over the entire earth. He is the king who is staying, who loves you, who is going to die for you as we will read, and who has already died for you. I want you to let this series and the words of this book dictate the Jesus that you know and love. Amen?

If you're visiting, or this is the only sermon you're going to hear, I'm going to ask you today: what kind of follower are you going to be? Understand that Jesus came to save his people from their sins. That is all he asks of you. Two words: "Follow me." Will you let your life be dictated by these two words?

Closing prayer

Father, I thank you for your Word and for the blessing of a short passage in a long book. I pray that you would bless me, bless the church, and bless every hearer as we go through this book. Lord, that you would challenge us and draw us to truth and understanding, so that, in any idolatrous Jesus we may hold in part or in whole, we would gladly and joyfully have in our hearts and minds the true Jesus of the Scriptures: the Son of the living God. The King, the Prophet, the Priest, the one who came to save his people from their sins. The one who sends his disciples out to all nations. The Jesus who has all authority in heaven and on earth. The Jesus who despises the proud but gives grace to the humble. The Jesus who expects purity from his followers and holiness as the yearning of their hearts.

Lord, bless us today. Help us to be eager to read ahead every week, to read chapters 1 and 2, and to invite people to church so that they can learn about this real and true Jesus. God, I ask for your grace in these things. And Lord, I pray that the question of what kind of follower we're going to be would be on our hearts and minds right now and throughout the week, and that every week you would challenge us and graciously call us to be all in for you. I ask and pray all these things in Jesus' name. Amen.

Corrections and clarifications

These points were corrected or clarified when this transcript was prepared. The text above reflects the corrected versions.

Years without a king. In the message, the gap after the exile was described as "four hundred years between then and the writing of this book." The throne of David sat empty from the exile in 586 BC until the birth of Jesus, about six hundred years. The four hundred "silent years" are the period between the last Old Testament prophet, Malachi, and the New Testament.
The sword. Jesus telling his disciples to sell what they have and buy a sword is in Luke 22:36. His words to Peter, "Those who live by the sword will die by the sword," are in Matthew 26:52.
Matthew the tax collector. Mark and Luke do not call him Matthew, but they do tell the same story under the name Levi (Mark 2:14; Luke 5:27, where Luke calls him a tax collector). Only Matthew's own Gospel calls him "Matthew the publican" (Matthew 9:9; 10:3).
Tamar. In Genesis 38, Judah's daughter-in-law Tamar, disguised as a prostitute, tricked Judah into fathering her children.