THE POWER OF GOODNESS

Genesis 38 (NASB)
David Bruce Linn, Pastor-Teacher
19 January, 2003
All Rights Reserved

I. A GOD THING

Katie sat on the edge of her bed and stared at her calendar in disbelief. “This can’t be happening!” she thought to herself. She checked again, counting the days carefully. There was no mistake. What now? Katie thought back to sweet stolen moments with Andy. It had been like eating an entire cream pie. “And not a lot more!” she said angrily to the walls of her bedroom. Andy was a boyfriend of the “it’s-time-for-me-to-have-a-boyfriend” variety and he was with her for the same reason. It was fun--why not? And it plucked at some very deep things in her heart which she could not explain.

It was those same deep, powerful things which had propelled her relationship with Andy like a car with no brakes. It was almost like they were not in control of their own lives. They just kept doing the thing that was next. You go out a certain number of times, you kiss on schedule, then he gives you a gift. At first you sometimes hang out with other people but soon you begin looking for ways to be completely alone together.

Going too far had caused the relationship to cool off. Andy had become somewhat pushy about what he wanted, and the shock of, you know, doing it had caused Katie to recoil. Not at the exact moment, of course. At the time it was as easy as rolling down a hill. Everyone else was doing it--why shouldn’t they? But after...

And now Katie was counting calendar days--weeks, actually. “What was I thinking?!” she shouted again. Pregnancy was out of the question. She went to her dresser and pulled out a pamphlet which she had picked up in school. “First Choice Women’s Health Center” it said on the cover: “Safe, Confidential, Affordable.” This was the only logical choice. Andy would be going into the Navy in a few months and Katie had another year of high school. Besides, Andy was a candidate neither for husband nor father. He was just a guy.

Katie threw her coat on and headed for the car. “This is the only way!” she thought. Her eyes filled with tears at random intervals separated by spikes of anger. She drove downtown and tried to park in an inconspicuous place which turned out to be three blocks away. She tried to walk the distance with her head down so she would not be recognized but half way up the second block she ran smack into a huge, familiar shock of black wavy hair. It was Karen. “Katie, what brings you downtown?”

“I...uhh...” Katie found herself unable to talk. She had desperately wanted to avoid meeting anyone she knew, and especially anyone like Karen “goody two-shoes.” “Are you O.K.?” Karen looked concerned. Still no words would come. “Come on, I’ll buy you one of those nine-dollar caramel mocha javas, or whatever they’re called.” Katie found herself being steered into a nearby coffee shop. She had not wanted to tell anyone but somehow Karen pulled the cork and the whole story gushed out. “So what are you going to do now?” Karen asked. Katie pulled the crumpled pamphlet out of her pocket. Karen looked at it like it was a coiled cobra.

Karen reached into her purse and drew out another pamphlet with the words “Polar Star Care Center” on it. “Katie, listen to me very carefully. You’re in shock. You don’t know what to do. I’m sure it’s hard to think straight. But this is no time to do something hasty. Before you go to the women’s health clinic and do something that you can never undo, would you go see my friends at Polar Star? I know these people, Katie. They have nothing to sell. Most of them are volunteers. They will help you get some perspective on your situation. Trust me.”

And so she did. Katie was surprised at how hungrily she had drunk in Karen’s caring advice. She did not have to be alone! What a relief! Katie no longer felt like an old Eskimo woman walking off into a blizzard to die alone. “C’mon, I’ll drive you there.”

The women at Polar Star welcomed Katie. It felt more like a family than a clinic. The pregnancy test was positive--of course, she was almost showing! Katie was stunned to see how fully formed the unborn babies looked on the fetal models even in the early stages. And there was something about the women staff members which gave Katie a sense of comfort. Even so, Katie was set on ending her pregnancy. “There’s no way I can have this baby!” she kept telling the counselor. The counselor would smile and continue talking about the wonder of the new creation growing within her. It got a little too religious in places for Katie’s comfort, but so many things felt right about the process that she stayed.

Polar Star was fortunate to have a medical staff and Katie agreed to an ultrasound--a picture of the growing baby made with a special machine. The nurse rubbed Katie’s abdomen with a gel lubricant and began to move a probe around. The machine displayed a rather grainy picture of her baby. “What’s that sound?” Katie asked. The machine was emitting a scratchy, rhythmic tone. “That’s your baby’s heart beat,” the nurse said. At those simple words the universe came into focus for Katie as if she had been seeing through frosted glass until now. She saw herself and her baby as a beautiful creation. Tears rolled down her face. “This is a God thing, isn’t it?” Katie breathed in a whisper. The nurse replied in a soft voice, “Yes it is, Katie, yes it is.”

II. THE POWER OF A GOOD MAN

What power could possibly change the shocking fact that Americans have aborted forty-five million unborn babies since 1973? That’s greater than the population of many countries. I have thought, studied, wept, organized, preached, and prayed about this question for decades. The solution is simple: a wave of people being good and doing good would virtually wipe out the holocaust of elective abortions. This may sound naive, but there are concrete ways in which the goodness quotient of America can be raised by degrees. In this message I want to focus on the influence which individual men and women can have.

First of all, a good man can have a tremendous influence. The famous father of the tribe of Judah will be our case study, and most of the lessons will be discovered by reversing what he did. Turn to Genesis 38:1: “And it came about at that time, that Judah departed from his brothers and visited a certain Adullamite, whose name was Hirah. Judah saw there a daughter of a certain Canaanite whose name was Shua; and he took her and went in to her. So she conceived and bore a son and he named him Er. Then she conceived again and bore a son and named him Onan. She bore still another son and named him Shelah; and it was at Chezib that she bore him” (Gen. 38:1-5). Judah was one of the twelve sons of Jacob who became the fathers of the twelve tribes of Israel. He had not distinguished himself as a godly man up to this point to say the least. He had sold his brother Joseph into slavery, he taken part in slaughtering an entire village of men, and now he is found running away from the people of God to take a wife from the pagan Canaanites. A good man would have obeyed God and taken a wife from among the new nation of people which God was building. It is very hard to undo the teaching impact of wrong choices. Our children and others will see our wrong choices as options, even if we repent of them. It puts the wrong things on the mental map of those who observe us, and in a moment of distress they may choose the wrong option.

The sequence of bad consequences from this wrong choice began to unroll for Judah as it always does for us: “Now Judah took a wife for Er his firstborn, and her name was Tamar. But Er, Judah's firstborn, was evil in the sight of the LORD, so the LORD took his life. Then Judah said to Onan, ‘Go in to your brother's wife, and perform your duty as a brother-in-law to her, and raise up offspring for your brother.’ Onan knew that the offspring would not be his; so when he went in to his brother's wife, he wasted his seed on the ground in order not to give offspring to his brother. But what he did was displeasing in the sight of the LORD; so He took his life also” (Gen. 38:6-10). Because Judah was living with the Canaanites, he had only pagans to choose from to find a wife for his firstborn son, and he picked Tamar. His decision to spurn the godly nation now took its effect on his sons who never had a choice to marry a woman who worshiped the one true God.

Good men are faithful to their families, in this case by seeking to help their sons and daughters find good spouses. As the text says, the output of Judah’s fathering was sons so evil that God simply took their lives rather than letting them become part of the bloodline of Messiah. According to the practice of levirate marriage Judah asked his son Onan to raise up offspring in the name of his older brother Er. Onan distinguished himself for selfishness by participating in the sex but denying Tamar the benefit of procreation, so God took him. In effect, Onan used the practice of levirate marriage to commit an act tantamount to rape. As an aside, let me say that the deed which Onan committed is not a birth control method. This is a widely-held confusion even today. The sex act does not have to be completed for procreation to occur. Ask your doctor.

Judah then revealed his selfishness even further by lying to Tamar and sending her back to her family: “Then Judah said to his daughter-in-law Tamar, ‘Remain a widow in your father's house until my son Shelah grows up’; for he thought, ‘I am afraid that he too may die like his brothers.’ So Tamar went and lived in her father's house” (Gen. 38:11). Judah had no intention of fulfilling his vow to her. A good man takes care of his own family. Sons- and daughters-in-law do not begin as family, but they become so. You cannot just discard them when they are inconvenient.

Soon the evil results of Judah’s bad behavior began to snowball: “Now after a considerable time Shua's daughter, the wife of Judah, died; and when the time of mourning was ended, Judah went up to his sheepshearers at Timnah, he and his friend Hirah the Adullamite. It was told to Tamar, ‘Behold, your father-in-law is going up to Timnah to shear his sheep.’ So she removed her widow's garments and covered herself with a veil, and wrapped herself, and sat in the gateway of Enaim, which is on the road to Timnah; for she saw that Shelah had grown up, and she had not been given to him as a wife. When Judah saw her, he thought she was a harlot, for she had covered her face. So he turned aside to her by the road, and said, ‘Here now, let me come in to you’; for he did not know that she was his daughter-in-law. And she said, ‘What will you give me, that you may come in to me?’ He said, therefore, ‘I will send you a young goat from the flock.’ She said, moreover, ‘Will you give a pledge until you send it?’ He said, ‘What pledge shall I give you?’ And she said, ‘Your seal and your cord, and your staff that is in your hand.’ So he gave them to her and went in to her, and she conceived by him. Then she arose and departed, and removed her veil and put on her widow's garments” (Genesis 38:12-19). Tamar had been forced into a position of desperation by Judah’s depriving her of his son Shelah, and so she laid a trap for him to get what she wanted. He was apparently acquainted with the practice of prostitution and engaged her services.

In stark contrast to Judah, good men choose purity even when it is difficult. If we take Judah’s part, we might appreciate that he was a married man who had become bereft of his wife. He may even have been desperate about this loss, and going up to town for the sheep-shearing gave him a temptation he would otherwise not have had. All excuses aside, it is never right for a man to visit a prostitute or to have sexual relations with anyone besides his wife. It is an abomination before the Lord. A good man would have suffered the loss and trusted the Lord.

A flood of men who have decided to be good men would nearly shut down abortion in America. When the opportunity to have sex outside marriage arises, the good man says: ‘Babies are the inevitable result of sex, babies need families, immorality is a foul sin before the holy God, and I will not do this thing--as much temporary pleasure as it would be.” Even if assailed by foolish women who want sex outside marriage, the good man chooses to do the right thing. The young man in my opening story was faced with just such an opportunity to choose. With no commitment to Katie at all Andy chose to eat the whole cream pie in one sitting. His refusal to be a good man caused the scenario where Katie felt desperate enough to go to an abortion clinic.

If the reining in of immorality by people who choose to be good were to become widespread every abortion clinic would go out of business. If men were to use their unique role in God’s creation to stand for good, to be good, and to do good, women would not find themselves in crisis pregnancies. Period.

III. THE POWER OF A GOOD WOMAN

Secondly, a good woman can have a tremendous personal influence. Thank God a good woman named Karen was providentially in the right place at the right time, ready to care, listen, and hand the right pamphlet to a woman in distress! I’m sure she had her whole day planned. But Karen became the instrument of God by offering Katie not only the pamphlet, but her heart, her time, and her car. I believe that many more women than men are in the position to learn of crisis pregnancies while it is still time to do something about them. Karen saved the life of Katie’s unborn baby and spared Katie a lifetime of regret, emotional dysfunction, and often physical consequences. What’s that worth? If done enough times, the world begins to change.

In a way almost as damaging as abortion, Tamar took her situation into her own hands by entrapping her father-in-law. What good could come from this? Since it was not levirate marriage, Tamar committed prostitution and incest at the same time. A good woman would have stood her ground for what was right. Why did she not appeal to her own father to approach Judah about the breaking of his vow? Why would she not rather have suffered than commit these universally despised sins? It is always better to be wronged, even greatly so, than to do wrong.

This brings me to my biggest point: good women don’t kill their babies. The biggest lie in the abortion propaganda arsenal is that abortion is a non-moral procedure done by good women in times of distress. No, choosing abortion proves that you are not a good woman. Over the years I have sat with dozens of people, including pastors, who have been caught in some immoral act, and many of them want to preserve their self-esteem instead of their walk with God. I remember a pastor we disciplined once for immorality who became incensed when our report concluded that he is a willful, predatory adulterer. We’d all prefer to think well of ourselves, but women who kill their babies are killers--they are bad women.

The solution that works every time it is tried is choosing to be good in the middle of a crisis pregnancy. The thought never crossed Katie’s mind. Like many young women today, Katie was dwelling in a moral and spiritual vacuum. The obvious fact of creation all around her had been drummed out of her mind by a society which finds God inconvenient to say the least. Thank God for the medical model crisis pregnancy centers which can show the ultrasound pictures and amplify the sound of the baby’s beating heart.

IV. THE ONLY WAY PEOPLE CAN BECOME GOOD

The punch line to all this talk about being good and doing good is that none of us can do it--at least not to God’s standard. If you are grieved by things you have done which were not good, then start by taking the cleansing treatment of the blood of Christ. Many born-again women have had abortions and many born-again men have fathered those babies. There is no deed so bad that God cannot forgive the genuinely repentant person.

And let us all know that the only way to be good and do good is by the indwelling power of the Holy Spirit: “But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control; against such things there is no law” (Gal. 5:22-23). Let us be found choosing goodness as the real answer and living it by the power of God. Let us not be found judging America in our hearts, for that is God’s job, but reminding America that there is an Omnipotent Judge of all people. Let us be found introducing people to Christ so that the real power of goodness can be released in their lives by the Holy Spirit. And let’s be there for the Andys and Katies to influence them for good. If we don’t do these things, who will?