Being Good (Rock Springs UMC)

Scripture today is Genesis chapter 28 or I'm sorry chapter

Genesis 28 · chapter mention

38 verses 24 through 26. About three months later Judah

was told your daughter-in-law Tamar is guilty of prostitution

and as a result she is now pregnant.

Judah said bring her out and have her burned to death.

As she was being brought out she sent a message to her

father-in-law. I am pregnant by the man who

owns these, she said and she added, see if you can recognize

whose seal and cord and staff these are.

Judah recognized them and said she is more righteous than I

since I wouldn't give her to my son Sheila and he did not sleep

with her again. May the Lord add His blessing to

the reading and hearing of His word.

We are talking about goodness today in, in a, in a, in a.

I just forgot another announcement that I'm going to

interrupt the sermon as I saw the Amen corner back there.

Don't Amen yet, not not just yet.

You'll have opportunity. But we are having a meeting at

Chester at 6:00 PM today. That is.

And I think when I talked about this last week, I might have

said it was at 4:00 PM, but that's because I was wrong.

It's at 6:00 PM and it's the regular youth time at Chester,

but we're going to be discussing potential events and activities

for teens and preteens over the next couple of years.

And everyone from, well, everyone, teens and preteens

from all three churches are invited and, and the adults that

need to get them there are also invited.

So you all are invited for that. There will be pizza and there

will be some games and then we're going to talk about

hopefully some exciting things to do like maybe rock climbing

and rappelling or horseback riding or whitewater rafting,

things like that. And we want to get your input on

what you think would be good to do and what you think would be,

you know, not good to do. So, so you're invited. 6:00 PM

at Chester this afternoon. This evening, So, and not 4 PM,

6:00 PM. If I get there at 4:00, I'll

just be early. So now back to the sermon.

Back to the sermon being good in a system stacked against us.

We live in a system stacked against us.

We live in a system that is designed to undermine our

Christian faith, that's designed to separate us from God and

separate us from each other through all different

mechanisms. Whether it's anger, whether it's

it's violence, whether it's jealousy, envy, greed, idolatry,

hate, lust, all of these different kinds of things that

conspire to separate us from each other and separate us from

God. This is the system in which we

live. How can we be good in that

system? And, and to really talk about

how we can be good in that system, we need to talk about

what goodness is. And to see what goodness is, we

need to take a look at some examples of evil and that'll

help us to understand what goodness is.

But before we do all of that, I just want to say goodness is

important. Goodness is as important as

truth. On Good Friday, I'm going to

really focus on the question of truth and how truth brings us,

can bring us to repentance. Like when the centurion saw what

happened at Jesus's death and just the reality of that, the

truth of that brought him to a confession of faith.

That's Good Friday. Today we're talking about

goodness, the church a lot of times, you know, we, we, we've

got a sense of the importance of truth.

We need to have a sense and the equal important, or at least as

equal importance of goodness in our lives.

And our English language fails us here.

And so I'm going to make up some words today.

I figure if Shakespeare can do it, why not me?

Make up a word here today because we talk about good,

better and best. And, and the problem is, is when

we go from good to better in terms of our words, our, our

mental framework shifts and suddenly better means better

than, you know, we're in March Madness.

And, and the best team will win regardless of the goodness of

that team in the sense of are they good people?

Are they good human beings? Are they, they, you know, right.

It's, it better becomes and best become qualitative or

quantitative measures of skill or performance rather than the

quality of the person. And, and so rather than better

and best, I'm going to use gooder and goodest.

And my English teacher will just have to restrain himself from

spinning in his grave because I, I want us to keep that

qualitative sense. We're not.

We're talking about being better than someone.

We're talking about how good can we be and can we become gooder

and what does it mean to be gooder or the goodest that we

can be in this world. So we're going to talk about

that. We're going to talk about all of

that. Tamar, I said this wrong at all

three services last week. Repeatedly I said that Judas

said that Tamar, what Tamar had done was not as bad as what he

had done, was not as evil as what he had done.

That's not what the Bible says. And I got to fix that this week.

I realized it lasting as like I've been saying it wrong

because I did. What I think is a fairly common

thing for us to do is we take the words of the Bible and we

kind of filter them through all of our past experiences and

understanding. And then we repeat and say the

Bible says this when that's really not what the Bible said,

because the Bible does not say that Tamar was less evil than

Judah. I said that last week.

But that's not what the Bible says.

And I think it's incredibly important for us to be precise

and accurate about what the Bible says.

So when I get it wrong, I like to fix it, and I'm trying to fix

it this week. The Bible, Tamar was not less

evil. Tamar was more righteous than

Judah. And that distinction I think is

important because if we simply say Tamar was less evil in what

she did, all of the emphasis gets put on the evil.

And and you can make a really strong argument that Tamar did

evil things in chapter 38. You can make a really strong

argument based on the law of scripture itself, really strong

argument that Tamar did evil. And and then we can say, well,

but the evil she did wasn't as evil as the evil that Judah did.

But that's very it takes a very different feel when we say that

what, what Tamar did was not less evil, it was more good.

Tamar's goodness. Tamar displayed more goodness.

She was more good. She was gooder than Judah.

Which means that even though we can make a really strong

argument that what Tamar did was wrong and bad, the scripture is

telling us to look at the goodness of what she did.

And that's a harder thing to do in chapter 38.

Not going to get into the details of all of that this

week. I got into the details of all of

that last week. If you want to know, if you

don't know what I mean by the bad things Tamar did or the

things that Tamar did that we could call bad or we can call

good, read chapter 38. It's all there.

You can listen to last week's sermon online if you want to.

Not going to get into the details again today, but we got

to hit this part. The Tamar, it's not that she was

less evil. It's she was more righteous.

She had more goodness in her acts, in her actions, than Judah

had in his. And that goodness is what I want

us to look at today, because it is important that we're good in

this world. People will not care one tiny

little bit about how much truth we speak if they don't

experience us as good people. We can have all the truth in the

world, but if we don't display goodness, no one will care.

They won't. People need truth.

People respond to and are drawn to goodness, and without us

being good in the ways that Tamar was good, then the truth

we speak won't matter, or at least not very much, and most

likely won't be heard. Think about, think about

whatever mega church or or even not mega church I've known, you

know, small church pastor scandals, right?

And I don't care. I grew up in one of those many,

many years ago when I was a kid, we had a pastor and there was a

scandal. I couldn't tell you now whether

a thing that that pastor ever said was true.

I can tell you that pastor was not good.

And and that's how he is remembered.

And that church, not as a speaker of truth, but as someone

who was a doer of evil. All right, Goodness is

important. And Tamar was good.

She was more good than Judah, not just less evil, but to see

what it means to be more good, we got to, you know, learn it.

By contrast, one of my favorite ways to learn.

So we're going to look at some evil because again, it's

important. In Genesis chapter 38

Genesis 38 · chapter mention

specifically given what Tamar did that is described as being

more good than what Judah did, it could be tempting to say that

Genesis chapter 38 opens the doors to if it feels good, do

Genesis 38 · chapter mention

it. If you feel like doing

everything is OK, it's no holds barred.

Whatever you want to do, if you feels good to you, you do it.

If everyone you know it's it's all good and that is not at all

what Genesis chapter 38 is saying.

Genesis 38 · chapter mention

Genesis chapter 38 takes evil very seriously and the Vadnais

Genesis 38 · chapter mention

of evil very seriously and God in Genesis chapter 38 is a mess

Genesis 38 · chapter mention

around and find out God fool with evil long enough and find

out how God responds to evil. And we see that first in ER, ER

was Judah's oldest son Tamar was engaged to be married to ER.

They got married the by we don't know anything about ER other

than that he was Judah's oldest son, that he was married to

Tamar. And the Bible said he did evil

in the eyes of the Lord, and the Lord killed him directly, took

his life. We don't know what evil he did,

but God takes evil that seriously, that he took ER's

life for the evil that he was doing.

So then, according to custom and tradition, Tamar was given in

marriage to Judah's second oldest son, Onan.

And we know the evil he did because the Bible tells us that

Onan indifferently used Tamar for his own pleasure.

He had a wife. He had covenant responsibilities

to her that were emotional, relational, financial, all of

these different things. He had these covenant

obligations to her, to you know, Paul tells us there's a command

in the Bible, love your wives husband to love your wives.

Onan did not love Tamar. Onan used Tamar for his own

pleasure, and he could not care less about her as a person.

And God looked at that and said that is evil.

And he killed Onan for that evil for treating his wife with

contemptuous indifference and simply using another human being

for his own pleasure without regard for her at all.

That was evil enough for God to strike him dead.

Now, I got a third person on this list, but I messed up and,

and, and, and I made the same mistake on the flip side this

week that I made last week when I said that Tamar was less evil

than Judah. But I didn't realize my mistake

till I'd done the slides for all three churches.

I was like, I'm not going to go back and change all those

slides. I'll just leave the mistake and

talk about it. So I have Judah on this as being

an example of evil, but we should recognize in this that

Judah was not identified as evil, certainly not in the way

uh and Onan were. He was identified as being less

good, less righteous in his relationships with Tamar, with

his family, with God. Not evil, but less good than

than than Tamar. And, and let's talk about

Judah's righteousness and what his righteousness was and how it

was less good. And the one that's listed up

there failed to live up to covenant obligations, his

obligations. We'll get to that in a minute.

The the the clearest thing that we can see that Judah's clearest

expression of righteousness up to this point is his acting as

the morality police. He was told your daughter-in-law

is prostituting herself. Judah said that's wrong,

punishable by death. Bring her out, we're going to

burn her at the stake. The morality police, Judah was

right. We don't have the law of Moses

yet. God hasn't met with the

Israelites at Mount Sinai and given Moses the law, but when he

does, the very thing that Tamar did is condemned by God in the

law, condemned by God and Judah's acting as the morality

police. He's calling out the wrong that

he sees in another person. And there is a level of

righteousness in that, being able to look at what other

people are doing and determining whether it's wrong or right,

good or bad, good or evil. There's a level of righteousness

in that. But what we see in Genesis 38 is

that's a low level, second tier kind of righteousness.

It's kind of the bottom floor of righteousness.

And the Tamar had a higher level of righteousness.

Judas writes, It's easy. We do, I do, I, I don't know.

I'm not sure I've ever met anybody.

I, we don't, I don't have the conversation with everybody,

but, but maybe I just like to generalize because I find myself

doing it so much and it makes me feel better if I assume other

people do it too. Because I hate to be lone in my

failures, but I, I slip into this.

It's easy seeing someone on the News Online.

Oh, that's awful. That evil, that's just, that's

terrible. It's easy to be the morality

police. It's easy and there's a certain

self-righteous satisfaction that comes along with it.

When we can confidently identify the evil that someone else has

done, and particularly if we have the authority and the

opportunity to make them pay for that evil, we're doing

righteousness. Possible, but it's a low level

of righteousness. It's a second tier of

righteousness. The level of righteousness that

Judah failed at was in living up to his obligations.

He had an obligation to take Mark when when she married his

son. Judah was a patriarch of his

family. He was the head of the tribe of

the tribe of one of the 13 tribes of Israel, the tribe of

Judah and Judah. He had a lot of influence over

the course of human history. May not be aware of this.

Just a little short biblical and historical lesson here.

Judah, the head of the tribe of Judah, the entire region in

which all this happened, eventually came to be called

Judea after Judah and his descendants.

That's how much influence Judah had.

The term Jewish for all of the descendants of Abraham is based

on the name Judah because the tribe of Judah became, came to

have so much influence and such dominance.

And, and that region was called Judea for a very long time until

the Roman Empire invaded and eventually, you know,

perpetrated some ethnic cleansing and killed as many

Jews as they could and drove as many out of Jerusalem as they

could. And then then the Roman Empire

changed the name of that region. Until then it was called Judah.

So that's how much influence that he had.

He was a leader, he was influential, he had resources,

and Tamar had become part of his family.

And when his son died, Tamar's husband died.

Judah had a responsibility to Tamar, a covenant responsibility

to make sure she was cared for and provided for, gave it to his

son Onan, so that she would still have a husband.

She could have children so that she could, you know, participate

in the life of the community and contribute to the community.

And, and he died. And then Judah at that point

abandoned Tamar, Superstitious. She's bad luck.

She's married two of my sons. Both of my sons have died.

What's wrong with her? Not going to give her to my

third son. And he abandoned his covenant

responsibilities to her, leaving her vulnerable, insecure, and

unable to fully participate in the life of their community.

And that's what he failed to do while he was being the morality

police. Let's take a look at Tamar's

goodness though, because I think that's, I think I heard someone

say years ago that villains are more interesting in in movies

because evil is more interesting.

I think evil is boring. There's just a few different

ways it really manifests itself. I think goodness is really,

really interesting and and I think Tamar's goodness here is

extraordinarily interesting. Tamar had, I think there are

three things that can be seen as good as righteous, and Tamar's

behavior throughout chapter 38. First, she rebuked Judah as

gently as possible and only as forcefully as necessary.

Going to talk about that in more detail next week.

I just want to hit on it today. Tamar could have humiliated

Judah. She could have absolutely

disgraced him publicly, but she did not.

She sent her message privately. She sent those items privately

to rebuke him and his zeal to be the morality police.

She didn't roll over like a doormat.

She could have been killed. She was taking a great risk when

she was doing this. She could have been executed for

what she did. She took the risk and she it it

trusted that Judah would do the right thing.

And he did. He repented and he did right by

her and he welcomed for her and he provided for her in all of

the ways he should have been doing before and more.

She, she didn't roll over, She didn't play the victim.

She didn't play a doormat. She was forceful, but only as

forceful as necessary and as gentle as possible.

We'll talk about that in more detail next week, but that's a

level of goodness. Tamar exercised agency to take

care of herself and to contribute to society.

That's what we talked about last week and this is a good thing.

Working hard to take care of yourself and your family and to

contribute something positive to society is a good thing.

It's not just a patriotic thing, It's not just a financially

smart thing. It's a good thing.

It's a righteous thing. And, and I think our culture

doesn't give enough time and attention to that reality.

That hard work to contribute something positive to society is

a good thing. Tamar what women can do now to

contribute positively to society, There's a lot more

options than it was in Tamar's day.

And the primary way that a woman contributed to society and

Tamar, or at least one of the primary ways, was to bear

children, to continue the family, to expand the legacy, to

provide more people to work and, and for the family to grow and

have a greater and greater impact and more and more

likelihood of success. And Tamar was being denied that

opportunity. She instead of again, instead of

playing the victim, instead of giving up, instead of going off

and doing something and devoting, or she could have run

off and become a prostitute. She could have run, done any

number of different things to take care of herself without

productively contributing to society.

But instead, she exercised her agency to take care of herself

and to contribute to the society, the culture, the people

and community around her. And that's not just a again,

it's a that's goodness. It's goodness.

Finally, Tamar showed faithfulness to her family even

when her family was not faithful to her.

Tamar's family abandoned her in every meaningful way.

Judah did, left her hanging out to dry.

She couldn't get married to someone else because she was

technically engaged to Judah's youngest son Shayla.

So she couldn't get married to someone else.

But Judah was never going to bring her in to actually marry

his son. So she was going to be

dependent, non contributing in the terms of having children and

insecure for the future. They abandoned her.

I don't know where if Tamar's father was on this but her

father should have been going to Judah and saying hey what about

my daughter? She's supposed to be married to

your son. Why isn't she married to your

son? You're putting it to putting her

a terrible risk here. You can't blame her for her and

Onan. They were rotten kids.

They deserve God took him out, not Tamar.

I don't know where Tamar's father was, but he apparently

was not advocating for her. Tamar could have disgraced her

family, disgraced Judah, done any number of things to do that,

to care for herself. Once she did what she did and

was pregnant with Judah's children.

Once that happened, she could have humiliated Judah.

She could have confronted him publicly.

She could have called him out in front of the whole clan, said

you're going to burn me at the stake for prostitution.

Guess what bud, you better step in the fire with me.

She could have done that, but she didn't.

She was as forceful as necessary, but as gentle as

possible and bringing Judah to repentance and and so doing.

She showed a faithfulness to her family when her family had not

been faithful to her. This reminds me of Jesus's words

and the first part of the Sermon on the Mount, early part of the

Sermon on the Mount, and he said, you know what the law

says? He was talking to the morality

police. You know what the law says?

You know what the law says, don't kill.

I'm telling you this, anyone who holds a grudge in their heart

against their brother or sister, just as bad as killing.

I don't even know what the law says.

What the law says is don't commit adultery, but if you're

living in lust in your heart, viewing people as objects to be

possessed for your own personal use and pleasure, it's just as

bad as adultery. You know what the law says?

Law says an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.

You know that's in the law, right?

That's, that's part of the same law that was do not kill and do

not commit adultery. It all came from God.

Eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.

Jesus said, But I'm telling you, someone strikes you on one

cheek, turn the other cheek. Also, Jesus was communicating to

his followers that that superficial work of the morality

police, while there is a level of righteousness into it, it's a

low level. The morality police can get only

one thing, and that is conformity.

Conformity of behavior. We're going to enforce the law.

We're going to make everybody do things the way we think they

ought to be done, or we're going to make everybody do things that

we the way we think God wants it to be done.

The most you can get being morality police is conformity.

But God wants so much more than conformity.

God wants our hearts. God wants us treating people out

of our hearts as God would treat them, with compassion, with

patience, with respect, with love, as his children created in

his image to have God's law not forced upon us by an out or

enforced upon us by the morality police, but God's law written on

our hearts so that we naturally do those things.

And this is what Jesus did. Jesus hanging on the cross,

publicly shamed and humiliated and tortured, hung naked on the

cross in Jerusalem, is praying for forgiveness for the people

that stripped him naked and nailed him to the cross,

guarding their dignity as Tamar guarded Judah's dignity, seeking

relationship and reconciliation as Tamar was seeking

relationship and reconciliation within her family.

This is what God is after, not the enforcement of external

standards, but hearts that belong to God.

And this is the righteousness that Tamar showed, not someone

trying to bend other people to her will, but treating those

other people as children of God, people of worth who deserved

dignity and honor and respect. Even when they didn't show it to

her, she was going to show it to them.

And that's what she did. What does all of this have to do

with us and our goodness? I think, I think Tamar's

behavior and attitudes and heart in Genesis chapter 38 are a very

Genesis 38 · chapter mention

simple, straightforward model for us. 1st, when rebuke is

necessary, be as gentle as possible and only as forceful as

necessary. I, I got to remind myself most

of the time it's not my job to do the rebuking.

I see a lot of people that I identify that I identify as

knuckleheads. You know, I'm not sure how they

identify, but I identify them as knuckleheads.

But 99 times out of 100, maybe 990 times times out of 1000, it

isn't my job to rebuke them. It's just not, they're not my,

you know, I don't have the kind of relationship with them that

would make that the right thing to do.

But when I do have that responsibility, then I need to

do it like Tamar did it, as gently as possible and only as

forceful as necessary. There's there have been people

throughout the centuries, throughout the millennia who

have insisted that the God of the Old Testament is different

than the God of the New Testament.

Because the God of the Old Testament is filled with

judgement and wrath and violence, and the God of the New

Testament is filled with mercy and compassion and grace and

forgiveness. The folks that say that don't

have a really thorough, meaningful understanding of the

Old Testament. Because when you read the Old

Testament carefully, you see there is judgment and wrath and

anger in the Old Testament for sure.

But you see hundreds of years and hundreds of generations of

God calling His people and wooing his people and as gently

as possible and as forcefully as necessary, correcting His

people. Until after hundreds of years

and hundreds of generations, they reached the point where the

judgement and wrath were the force that was necessary to get

their attention and bring them repent to repentance.

And that's the same God that we see in the New Testament, the

very same God. And that's how God invites us to

be as gentle as possible and only as forceful as necessary as

we're rebuking those who we have a legitimate reason to rebuke.

Second, labor for yourself and for society.

Work hard. It's not just a matter of

patriotic duty. It's not just a matter of

personal welfare. It's, it's good.

It's a right thing to do. God created us to work.

God gave. Work was given to human beings

before sin came into the world. Work was given from the very

beginning. Be fruitful, multiply, fill the

earth, subdue the earth, govern in my name over the earth.

That's work. And work is a good part of life.

And doing work is a good thing, not just a smart thing.

And doing it for ourselves and for society to make the world a

better place. Whatever that work is, whether,

whether it's teaching children, whether it's mopping floors,

whether it's flipping hamburgers, whether it's serving

chicken, whether it's it's it's stitching wounds, driving a bus,

laying pipe, what are building buildings, all growing food, all

of these things that we do. I've had the mindset of doing

this to serve the world, to make the world better.

It's possible to do those things and not make the world better.

I did. I know because I did.

I have a great example of this. It's one of my favorite stories.

I can tell it now because the person who was really mad at me

is is passed on just working at the shake shop across from the

clinic on Jackson Pike and Gallup police.

When my when the owner was there, our boss, I was always

very nervous and I was not allowed to be at the cash

register. I was a fry cook.

He was at the drive through window during the lunch rush.

I was at the I was at the fryer making the burgers.

Someone ordered a double SI. Remember this.

It's been like 40 years ago. Double stuffed shirt and fries.

Everything wrapped up, handed it, sent it out, handed out the

window. 15 minutes later, the phone rings.

They want to talk to my boss because their double stuffed

shirt had no meat on it. Had all the lettuce, tomato,

onions, Mayo, ketchup and mustard.

Not a bit of meat. You can do things that that

didn't make anybody's day better that day, but even those little

things that can bring a little bit of joy or a little bit of

frustration into other people's lives, we do that.

We can do those things in the name of Jesus.

And it doesn't, it's not been just work.

It's good, it's righteous what we're doing.

It's a way and a part and essential part of our

faithfulness to God and to each other.

And it's an essential part of being faithful to our covenant

obligations, even when folks around us aren't, is that we

stay faithful to those covenant obligations.

This is the example Jesus gave us.

This is the example God has given us in the Old and the New

Testament. God says, though you might be

unfaithful, I will be faithful. And he calls his followers to

live in that same kind of way, that our love isn't dependent on

whether the other person is loving us.

Our love is dependent on the love of God that flows out of

us, that it's not how they treat us that dictates how we treat

them, but we treat them how Jesus would treat them if he

were standing in there and with us.

And this is the way Tamar live and the way God invites us to

live, that we take serious our covenant obligations that the

people that God has placed in our care, we care for them,

whether it's our children or our neighbors or our parents or our

grandparents. The God has placed us in their

lives to give care, to give love, to encouragement, to give

support, at times, to give guidance and direction at times,

to give shelter and food and clothing and medical care.

And we fulfill those covenant obligations, we're called to

fulfill those covenant obligations, even when the that

person might not have fulfilled those to us.

And sometimes it's not possible. Sometimes relationships are

broken and in such a way that there is so much distance that,

that, that you can't. But we can still pray even in

those situations. We can still pray.

I, I think, I think Tamar is maybe other than Jesus, the best

picture in all of scripture of what it means to be good in a

system stack against you, because everything in that

system was stacked against Tamar.

She took such a risk in doing what she did.

It nearly cost her her life For Jesus.

It did cost him his life, and he did it anyway, nearly cost Tamar

her life. But she still she still rebuked

as gently as possible and only as forcefully as necessary.

She did what she could do to be a contributing part, meaningful

part of the society in which she lived.

And she was faithful to her covenant obligations even when

the people around her weren't. And that's the life Jesus

invites us to as well. In Jesus name, Amen.

Amen.