God is Good
God Is... July 7, 2024 Psalm 107:1-3 Notes
“Is God really good?” You ask. Sometimes you may have doubted God’s goodness. For if any of us has had a trauma, a bad diagnosis, lost a job, or suffered a failed relationship… then we’ve asked the age-old question: “If God is good, then why are these bad things happening to me?” Most of us affirm God’s goodness until something bad happens to us.
Perhaps it is our understanding of God and our understanding of what is truly good that is lacking. For who are we to approve of what is good or not? In Psalm 107, the Psalmist encouraged his hearers to give thanks to the LORD for His goodness. We can give thanks to the LORD for His great goodness towards us.
Audio
Good morning, church. It's good to see all of you here today. We're in part seven of our eight week series talking about the attributes of God. We've been going through the attributes of God, his character traits, and studying who God is and learning more about him. And it's time to dig in again.
Today we're going to be talking about the goodness of God, looking at the goodness of God. And before we begin, let me pray, and then we'll dig into his word. Lord, thank you. That we can do this, that we can come together and think about you and know you better. And so, Lord, I pray first of all for those that might have come in today, coming in from a far distance from God, that you would bring them near, Lord, that there are those who are in darkness, that you would bring them into the light of your goodness.
And for those of us that know you, Lord, that today we would be encouraged by your goodness and reminded to give thanks. And so, Lord, I pray for the preaching of your word now, that it would be according to your word and according to your spirit. And I pray for the hearing ears as we listen to your word, that we would hear exactly what you'd have to say to us. Lord, speak to us. We are listening.
In Jesus name. Amen. So we're going through these attributes of God. We're going to be talking about the goodness of God today. And our theme verse for this series is found in the book of John, where Jesus was speaking, and Jesus said, John 17:3 (ESV) “And this is eternal life, that they know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent.”
And so this is the key to life, Jesus says, and that's to know God, not just to know about him, but to be in relationship with him and to truly know him. And as we grow in knowledge of him, we learn more about him, more about his motivations, his character traits and his actions. And so we grow in these things. And so we've been studying what the word of God says about that over these past few weeks. We've studied God's love, how God is loved.
We've studied his might, his mercy, his fatherhood, his unchanging nature. We've talked about his faithfulness. Now, today we want to unpack this thought that God is good. We want to talk about God's goodness. But somebody might be sitting here today, or you might be watching online this morning, and you might be questioning and say, but is he really?
Is God really good? And so you might be thinking like that today because sometimes you may have doubted God's goodness. For any of us who have had a trauma, you've had a bad diagnosis, you've suffered from a failed relationship. It may have brought you to a point where you actually said, “Is God good?” You might have asked the age old question, “If God is good, then why are these bad things happening to me?
Most of us today would affirm God's goodness, but we might question his goodness if something bad happens. For some, this question actually brings them to a point of unbelief. They doubt the existence of God. They begin to ask “if, then” statements. They begin to say, “If God is good, then why is there suffering in the world?”
If God is good, then why is there evil in the world? So, sometimes this question of God's goodness moves people to doubt his existence. The truth is, it's not the purpose of our sermon today, but just a thought about this idea about the problem of evil is that God didn't create evil. Evil is the absence of good, just as darkness is the absence of light. And so humanity has rebelled against God and sin was introduced into God's good creation and man chose darkness over light.
Let us not say that God created evil. Let's instead say that God is good and those that would come into his light are brought out of the darkness. But most of us here today, our question of God's goodness is not so much about whether God is good. We believe that he is, but we might doubt that he's going to be good. To me, the nature of this might be more like, I don't know if I'm good enough for God to be good to me.
You might think of it like that. Like, I know God's good, I know that's true, but there's some bad stuff in my life that's happened to me. And so the nature for most of us here today, because most of us here today came at some level of belief. You came in this morning wanting to worship God. You've left your homes, you've come here on a Sunday morning, so you have some level of belief in God, but your doubt is not his goodness, but whether or not he'll be good to you.
And so that's troubling. It makes us afraid to fully trust him. Like, I know he's good, but I'm afraid to give this to him because I feel like I can do a better job with this area of my life myself because we don't fully trust his goodness towards us, that his good is better than what I call good.
It's this idea that we have about God that can give us a wrong view of God, that somehow his good is inferior to my own idea of good, that we put ourselves somehow in a position of thinking, that we can affirm whether it's good or nothing. And these kinds of ideas are dangerous because it causes us to misunderstand God. As the late philosopher and theologian Dallas Willard said, “There is no avoiding the fact that we live at the mercy of our ideas… This is never more true than with our ideas about God.” So when you think of God, when you close your eyes at night and lay your head on your pillow and you say your prayers before you sleep, whenever you do think of God, how do you picture him?
Do you view him as good or do you view him as someone who's just waiting to make your life miserable? Just waiting. Oh, you just gave me this. I'm just going to really mess up your life. I mean, what's your view of God?
Do you think of him as a good God? C.S. Lewis said, “There is but one good; that is God. Everything else is good when it looks to Him and bad when it turns from Him.” See, God is the standard for goodness. In psalm 107, which is where we'll be looking today, the psalmist encouraged his worshipers, his fellow believers, to give thanks to God for his goodness.
And I believe today we can do that. We can by faith say, ‘I believe you are a good God, and I give you thanks for your goodness.’ As we look at the text, I think we'll see three reasons why this is possible. So let's look. We're going to be looking at the three verses.
First three verses of psalm 107. Psalm 107:1-3 (ESV) 1 “Oh give thanks to the LORD, for he is good, for his steadfast love endures forever! 2 Let the redeemed of the LORD say so, whom he has redeemed from trouble 3 and gathered in from the lands, from the east and from the west, from the north and from the south.” This is God's word. Amen.
We're looking for three reasons that we can give thanks for God's goodness. Here's the first reason:
1. Because we are loved by Him.
Because we are loved by him. One of the ways that we know that God is good is because of God's steadfast love towards us, that God loves us. God's good.The psalmist here has written a psalm really for use in temple worship. It's part of what was organized. These 150 psalms were organized into five books, and this is the first psalm in book five. And that final book tended to be instructions on worship. In fact, we see, “Oh, give thanks” is in the imperative. It's a command.
It's like the worship leader is up front and he says, ‘Church, give thanks.’ And then the church is supposed to. God, you're good. It's an instruction like that. It's in the Hebrew imperative.
And so if I say, ‘God is good,’ you say, ‘all the time.’ Are you ready? “God is good.” “All the time.” There you go, church. So now we've obeyed what the word of God says here to us as worshippers, because the redeemed of the Lord are supposed to say so. “God is good.” “All the time.” There you go, Amen.
There's just something about that declaration that kind of lifts us up to where we're getting in some “heaven practice,” and we're learning to give thanks even when everything doesn't seem good, that we declare, in spite of this fallen world, in spite of the darkness that pervades, that we still trust in a good God who is bringing all things together for good to those that love him and are called according to his purpose. We just believe it by faith. We give thanks. And so the psalmist here encourages us to do so. Oh, give thanks to the Lord.
It's in all caps, “LORD.” . Do you see that we've learned in the past that when we see in an English translation all capital letters, what does that mean? Well, it means that he's referring to the covenantal name of God that was given to Moses at the burning bush. Moses asked, “What's your name?” And God said, “I am that I am,” which in Hebrew is “Yahweh” or “Jehovah.”
And so it just means the covenantal name of God, the revealed name of God. And that's what we see here with the all caps. ‘Oh, give thanks to Yahweh, for he is good.’ This is the covenantal name of God. Now, when I say “good,” I'm not meaning good in a relative sense. Do you know what I mean?
Like, if I say, ‘Man, that was a good taco.’ What I mean is, ‘Among the tacos that I've eaten in the past, that was one of the better tacos.’ And so when we say, ‘God is good,’ we're not using the word, ‘good,’ in the sense of good, better, best with ‘I'm good, that was good.’ like that. We're not using it like that as if it were some lower sense that there's a better and a best higher than good.
No, not like that at all. When we say, “God is good,” we're talking about the essence of goodness, that which God is above all others, that he is the standard of all things good. And whatever he approves of is good. And whatever he disapproves of is not good. So our whole definition of good is wrapped up in who he is as we apply it to God, goodness for him, it becomes a category all its own.
In fact, when Jesus was approached by a young man who said, “Good teacher” and he began to talk to him, he interrupted him and he said this in Mark 10:19 (ESV) “…No one is good except God alone.” He's trying to teach the young man it's not about the definition of goodness. God, He's the only one that's truly good. He's in a category all his own. God is the standard for all that is good.
The fact that God is good means that there's no evil in him, there's no turning of darkness in him. All of his intentions, all of his motivations and all of his actions are good. All of his plans turn to good. God's goodness speaks both of his character and of his deeds. John Gill writes in his commentary, “For he is good; and does good, and is the author of all good.”
So whatever he thinks is good, whatever his motivations are, are good. Whatever his actions are, are good. The psalmist declares in another place, Psalm 25:8 (ESV) “Good and upright is the Lord…” Psalm 119:68 (ESV) You are good and do good…
And so the psalmist here says, “Oh, give thanks to the Lord, for he is good.” So at his very essence he is good. And so his goodness, we see it come out here. The psalmist is bringing it out. It's expressed in his steadfast love.
And indeed, all of God's attributes are in balance with all of his other attributes. You can't take a scalpel and excise any part of it and separate it because then it would lose its essence. All of his attributes are whole; part of one, but his goodness seems to connect to all in a certain way. So we say God is love, but we also say God is just. We say God is forgiving, but we also say God is holy.
All of these are in balance. If we excise one and pull it out, it loses its meaning, its essence. So his goodness is connected. His goodness here the psalmist first of all wants to celebrate is expressed by his love for, well, that's an explanation word, isn't it? He's good, for his steadfast love endures forever.
He's got love that doesn't quit. Steadfast love. We learned this word, I think, last week when we were talking, but it's the Hebrew word, “ḥeseḏ.” Should take a note that “ḥeseḏ” is a good transliteration of that Hebrew word “ḥeseḏ.” It's like the New Testament Greek word, “agape.”
It's kind of like the Old Testament's version of “agape.” It's God's covenantal love, his kind of love that comes from him alone. Some translations, like the King James, translate it as “loving kindness.”
It's a word, as I've said, that can't be translated or taken in isolation from his other attributes. It's expressed, and literally in the Hebrew the word, “endures,” is not there. It's rightfully inserted in order to smooth out the translation. But it literally says, “Oh, give thanks to the Lord, for he is good for his steadfast love forever.”
It just says it like that - “love forever.” It's expressed in this kind of way. And so he expresses it so forth. If we read in Psalm 100:4-5 (ESV) 4 “Enter his gates with thanksgiving, and his courts with praise!
Give thanks to him; bless his name! 5 For the Lord is good; his steadfast love endures forever…”
This phrase is repeated throughout the psalms. We can see God's goodness chiefly in three areas, expressed in his activity.In three areas. One is in creation. In creation, we read this in Psalm 33:5 (NLT) “He loves whatever is just and good; the unfailing love of the Lord fills the earth.”
And so just looking at creation, when God made creation, you look back in the book of Genesis, every time he made something, he'd say, ‘That's good. I did good on that.’ So he's really the only one that could approve of his work and all of his work. He said it was good. But then because of man's sin, darkness and sin enters into the world, and God's world is affected.
So creation is affected, but God's goodness is still radiating there presently. I've been alive for 65 plus years. In another week, I get another mark of the earth going around the sun again. And all those years, I've never had a day where the sun didn't come up. Now I've only been alive that long.
Some of you have been alive longer than me. And from what you've told me, you've never had a day where the sun didn't come up. I don't go to bed at night thinking, Man, I hope the sun comes up tomorrow. Now I might go to bed at night thinking, I hope it rains and praise the Lord it did.
I kept hearing it was supposed to rain day after day, and it never did. You know, the farmers have been praying for rain. I've been praying for rain. My yard's been praying for rain. So much heat.
Last night, around 08:00 where I live, it clouded up and I heard thunder. And I said, “Robin, let's go sit out on the screen porch and see if it actually rains.” And we sat out there, and all of a sudden, we felt a cool breeze. And then the rain started falling. God is good.
He brings rain, he causes the sun to come up and the sun to set. So part of God's goodness is reflected in his good creation. It's not perfect because sin has entered in. And so there are hurricanes and things that happen that are disastrous, that harm people. I have a missionary friend who has a church in Mexico.
I went to seminary with him, and his church is on the coast. And he's got an “open air” church. It's got one wall on the back end where he preaches from, but then it has three areas open with a big old roof that's like a thatch roof if you can picture it. And so he showed a video on Facebook a couple days ago and was just thanking people for praying for him.
His whole sanctuary is full of palm branches and trees where the hurricane had blown in. He says, “But my roof is still up, you know?” And so he was still giving the Lord thanks that it didn't blow his church down. But I guarantee you, if it even would have blown his church down, he would have still been giving the Lord thanks, because there's still bad things that happen in this fallen world. But we as believers can keep thanking God because of his unfailing, steadfast love.
It's revealed to us in the good things of creation. It's also revealed to us in his providence. What we mean by “providence” is his provision. Look what the book of Acts says. This is Paul speaking.
He was talking to some Gentiles who had been bowing down to idols and been caught up in idolatry. They didn't really know the true God. But here's what he says to him. He says, Acts 14:17 (ESV) “Yet he did not leave himself without witness, for he did good by giving you rains from heaven and fruitful seasons, satisfying your hearts with food and gladness.” And so here's Paul witnessing to these gentiles, and he's telling them, you know, one of the proofs of God's goodness and love towards you is the way he's provided for you.
In Matthew, chapter five. Jesus talks about it and says, Matthew 5:45 (ESV) “For he makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the just and on the unjust.” His goodness is expressed in his provision, even for those who are most undeserving. And then thirdly, he expresses his goodness in redemption. That's probably the highest expression.
But more on that in just a minute because that leads into our next verse. Let's just pause and think about this idea of how God's goodness is revealed through his steadfast love and how he loves us. Let's bring it down to earth a little bit and think about someone else's goodness that has been revealed to you through love. When I think of that, I think of my mom and dad. I think especially of my mom.
Probably if you were to ask me, “Did you have a good mom? Did you have a good dad?” I would say, absolutely. Why would I say that? What would I be thinking? Maybe I could say to you, I think my mom was “gooder” than your mom. And you would probably say, ‘Oh no, you don't know my mom.’
But what would we be talking about? Don't you think we might be talking primarily about the way they loved us? Isn't that a saying we say there's a face that only a mother could love. Isn't that something we say of mothers? And so I think that when we look at motherhood, when we look at fatherhood, when we look at parenting, that at its best it's a glimpse of the goodness of God expressed through love.
Now that doesn't mean they might not discipline us. Sometimes they might make us go to bed without having what we wanted or they might make us go to school. When we don't want to go to school, our parents might discipline us. But as we grow up, we recognize that even that was an expression of their love and goodness towards us, that they had a better plan for us than we had for ourselves. They had a good plan for us.
And so when you bring it down that way, can you understand how God is a good God and the way he loves you as a father loves his children? What is your right response? What's the only appropriate response to God's goodness? This morning, the psalmist tells us we don't have to guess. Give thanks, give thanks because God is good.
And all the time God is good. We're going to have to take you all to class and teach you all stuff, get you all trained. Here's number two. Here's the second reason. First is because of his love.
The second is:
2. Because we are redeemed by His Son.
We're in verse two now. Because we are redeemed by his son. Notice the word, “redeemed.” It's in verse two twice. 2 “Let the redeemed of the LORD say so, whom he has redeemed from trouble.”“Redeemed” - that word redeemed means to buy or to make a payment towards. We owe a debt. The Bible says the wages of sin is death. We owe a debt.
We owe a debt. But Jesus, God's son, came and paid our debt. He redeemed us, bought us out of our sin debt, bought us out of slavery to sin. And he is our redeemer. He has redeemed us.
Now, as the psalmist is writing here, he's speaking of how God, probably in his time period, had redeemed them from Egypt or had redeemed them from their enemies. Because literally, this idea of redeemed from trouble could mean redeemed from the hand of the foe or redeemed from an enemy or redeemed even from the devil or from the flesh or from the world. But it had the idea of an enemy. And so the psalmist was speaking this way. But as we take the whole word, we recognize it had a present meaning in the time it was written, but it has an ongoing meaning because it speaks prophetically of the Son Jesus.
God's intention to utterly redeem us, to set us free from sin. And so he gives us an instruction here.
“Let the redeemed of the LORD”... And there's that all caps LORD again.Let the redeemed of Yahweh say so. In other words, ‘Say it. Don't just keep it a secret. Give thanks. And if you're among the redeemed, open your mouth in worship.
Open your mouth and praise. Open your mouth and witness. Let the redeemed of the Lord say so.’ Have you been brought out of trouble? Anybody here ever been in any trouble?
Huh? Two of you have been in trouble, okay? A third person thought about it for a second and said, yeah, actually I was in trouble once. No, look, I don't care how old you are. I got young people down here.
You've been in trouble. If you hadn't, you'd probably get in trouble before the day's over. We've all been in trouble, but he's bought us out and brought us out of our trouble. So say so. That's what he's saying.
Express it. Express the goodness of God. He has redeemed us. This is the ultimate expression of God's goodness, that he would take our place and offer us his, that he would take our sin and offer his righteousness, that he would take our death and offer his eternal life, that he would take our separation from the father and offer his sonship, his relationship with the father. This is the ultimate redemption, and he offers it to us today that we're redeemed.
“Let the redeemed of the LORD say so.” God's goodness is revealed in Christ most fully. It says in Titus 2:13-14 (ESV) 13 “… our great God and Savior Jesus Christ, 14 who gave himself for us to redeem us from all lawlessness and to purify for himself a people for his own possession who are zealous for good works.” In God, we see in Christ, we see his desire for us. Not that he would save us because of our works, because our works aren't good, but that he saves us unto good works.
Through Jesus, his goodness is displayed through his readiness to forgive. It says in Psalm 86:5 (NLT) “O Lord, you are so good, so ready to forgive, so full of unfailing love for all who ask for your help.”
And so we can see his redemption. We can see his forgiveness is an expression of his goodness. Indeed, it's his goodness towards us that should move us to repentance.The book of Romans says, Romans 2:4 (NKJV) “Or do you despise the riches of His goodness, forbearance, and longsuffering, not knowing that the goodness of God leads you to repentance?” And so to recognize his goodness leads us to say, ‘God, I'm sorry. I want your plan instead of my plan.’ This morning we heard a testimony from brother Bobby Pitman; he read his testimony to us.
He had written it down as a part of our Life on Life discipleship program. It has been my privilege to actually be the one who has been working with Bobby, as we went through our life on life discipleship process. And one of the final steps in this process is to write your testimony of how Jesus saved you. What a privilege to work with Bobby and to hear him talk about his story. Now, if you were to stop his story somewhere early, you might say, ‘Well, that's not a good story. I don't see how God was good to him.
His mother left him, then he lived with his grandfather, and then his grandfather left him at the children's home.’ And if you just stopped there and said, ‘Well, how's he going to turn out?’ He's probably not going to turn out very good. He's going to grow up with a wound that makes him afraid that someone's going to leave him all the time. He's going to have that kind of personality, you see?
But that's not God. That's not what God did with Bobby. Bobby has the story that every time the world did something to him, even his own family, God would show up again and provide a family for Bobby again. That's his story. And ultimately it was the story that he has a family now and a savior that'll never leave him nor forsake him.
I'm glad that Bobby got up this morning and said, “Let the redeemed of the LORD say so.” And so if we train someone to give their testimony through our Life on Life discipleship process, we tell them, write it down, try to keep it around 600 words or less and just read it. Just read it. Because the first version Bobby gave me was a book, okay?
Because everybody's story is really a book, right? I mean, and so I said, “Let's make it an “elevator” speech, you know. If you were on an elevator with somebody, you could tell them enough of the story where they could hear how you are saying, 'I'm redeemed and Jesus saved me.’ And you can be too, you know? And so we tell people, write it down and then just read it to the church. Because especially those introverts that are afraid to “say so” can be trained to “say so.”
Thanks, Bobby. Thank you, Jesus, for Bobby's story. Amen, everybody. Amen. Bobby’s story
isn’t over yet. Because the part he didn't tell you about, that I feel privileged to tell you about, is that at age 70, which he already told you, so that's not news. He felt the Lord call him. He's retired.
He's at the age where people go, ‘You know, I've already done my due. Let somebody else do it.’ Bobby felt called to go back to work at the Middlesex children's home. Being in a small group affected him. We started talking about, ‘What's God want to do in your life now?
Your life's not over. Why are you still here? God hasn't taken you home yet, so he's not finished with you yet, so do something.’ Bobby started thinking about that. He thought, Maybe I can go back and help a young boy come to Jesus and his deepest needs.
If you sit down and talk to Bobby, all he's going to want to talk to you about is he wants to talk to you about Jesus. He wants to talk to you about those middle school age boys at this children's home that he is one of the house parents for. And how this one just got there, and this one's angry and how this one's starting to open up their heart a little bit to Jesus.He'll tell you with tears in his eyes because he's right back there again. Because God often takes your deepest wound, your deepest hurt, and he gives you comfort, and he gives you excess of comfort to the point where it becomes your ministry.
It becomes the thing that God does in you, because he gives you more than you need, he gives you grace more than sufficient in the very place you were most broken. And it becomes your ministry because that's a good God. Amen. And so he's the God who redeems us. And then finally, we're in verse three now:
3. Because we are gathered into His family.
We are gathered into his family. Oh, he's a good God. Not only does he love us, not only does he redeem us, but he adopts us into his family. Oh, he's a good God. Verse three says this, 3 “and gathered in from the lands, from the east and from the west, from the north and from the south.”
So let the redeemed of the Lord say so, whom he has redeemed from trouble and gathered in from the lands. Gathered in from the lands to gather. This psalmist is talking, probably in his time period, to the Jews that were dispersed, either because of exile or other things. And he's probably in that time period saying he's going to gather them in. He's going to gather the redeemed in.
But as we look at it from our point of view, from the New Testament, we see that God's doing a thing even bigger than the psalmist could imagine, and that is he's gathering a family of his own, and he's bringing them in from the east and the west and the north and the south. And all you have to do is talk to some of the people in our church. Like, there's a lot of people coming from the west these days. We've got some new people attending more and more from California. We keep bumping into them, I've noticed.
And then it's been going on for years. A lot of these. It doesn't say it here, but in Hebrew it actually says, ‘ and yankees.’ Right there, it says yankees, yankees and southerners. No, it doesn't say that, but our church has become a landing point for people from the northeast, and that's fine.
They're learning to say, “y'all” and I'm learning to say “coffee,” “you guys,” it's all good. Because what happens is, because we've been redeemed, because we've been loved by the father, redeemed by the son, the spirit comes and lives in us and begins to form us into a family. And so our tribal identities, our cultural identities, our racial color identities, all of these things are diminished in the sense that what is primary now is our identity in Christ. And so we're unified around that.
He gathers us, and he gathers us from the lands. Literally. It's the Hebrew word that could be translated, “from the whole earth.” He gathers us from the earth. It's beautiful the way it's written.
The Hebrew language is a very colorful language. “East” is literally in Hebrew, “sunrise” . He gathers us from the place where the sun rises. And west is literally where the sun sets. He gathers us from sunrise to sunset.
It's a beautiful language in Hebrew. It has an eschatological sense, what I mean by that, an “end times” sense, because isn't that book of Revelation stuff where it says, Revelation 7:9, “...a great multitude that no one could number, from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages…” And so that's what God's up to right now. That's his good plan, is to bring us together into one family. Indeed, as Jesus was departing from Jerusalem, in Matthew 23 he says this, Matthew 23:37 (ESV) “O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the city that kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to it!
How often would I have gathered your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, and you were not willing!”
Oh, Jerusalem how if you would have just let me I would have gathered you like family. Oh, Wilson. Oh, Wilson. I believe Jesus says that today, how he would gather you. How he desires to show his love and to adopt us into his family.There comes a day, and psalm 22 talks about it. Psalm 22:27 (ESV) “All the ends of the earth shall remember and turn to the Lord, and all the families of the nations shall worship before you.” That's the eschatological sense I was telling you about, that God wants to bring us to him from every corner of the earth. When I think about this whole thing about family, it affects me and it reminds me of how I was as a young man.
Those of you that know my story know that at age eight, my father passed away. He was only 39 years old. He died of lung cancer. And I remember we prayed all the time. In fact, as he declined in health and kept going down,, we started inviting preachers.
First of all, our pastor would come over from our church but then we met preachers from other churches, and I don't know what my mom was thinking, Hey, you want to come over and pray for me? So we would have different preachers come over and pray. We're just praying. And I was eight years old, so I was praying as only a little boy can. I mean, I was praying with full on faith and no doubt
because that's how children pray. Did you know that? That's how children pray. But my father passed away on November 2, 1966. I was eight years old.
I still remember. And it messed my whole family up. It changed everything. Oh, man, I was a daddy's boy. I didn't know what to do with myself.
And then my mom had a nervous breakdown, and we moved in with my aunt who lived in Wayne, Michigan. So I went from where I was to all of a sudden, I'm outside Detroit going to third grade. It was tough. So I trusted the Lord. Now, listen, when I was eight years old, the very year my father died, I went forward in the children's church and gave my life to Jesus publicly because I was so afraid of death and of hell and I wanted confidence, and the Lord gave me that.
But I hadn't put it all together. You know, when you're a child, you have a child's mind. I hadn't put it all together. And there were still parts of my life I was keeping to myself, because the truth of the matter is, the way I viewed God, by the time I was 13 or 14 years old , it became more and more evident that if I gave my life completely to him, like every area, he might hurt me. He might take something else away from me that I loved because my view of God was affected by that event.
Now, I wasn't smart enough or mature enough to connect the dots. It was just working itself out in me that way. And so I doubted God's goodness towards me, not towards you, not that he was good. I knew he was good. I believed by faith he was good.
But I doubted; if I give everything to him, he might hurt me. And I had someone that was working with me, and it was an older student at the school I went to. He was three years older than me, and he was discipling me and taking me through the scriptures. And he pointed out something to me that I didn't like. He said, “Gary, you're one way on Sunday, but a different way Monday through Saturday, especially at school.
You are just too ‘cool at school,’ man. You've got this persona over there.”I said, “Come on now.” Then, he asks me, “When are you going to give your whole life to Jesus? When are you going to give this area and this area…?
You know, the area you're holding back?” I was thinking, I'm doing a good job right here, Lord, but I do need you over here. I need you right here. But I got this one under control.
That's the part you're afraid to give to him because you still have a view that he might not be good to you in that area. And that was how I was. He said to me, “Well, you're always talking about your dad. If you crawled up in your daddy's lap when you were a little boy and he was still alive, and you crawled up and you said, ‘Daddy, I want to be just like you when I grow up,’ would he have taken you by the shoulders and shook you and said, ‘I've been waiting for this moment, son. I'm glad you said this.
I'm going to lock you in the closet and make you eat liver.’ In fact, I used to say that to my dad when I was a little boy: “Dad, when I grow up, I want to be just like you.” And he would put his arms around me and say, “Son, I love you.
I'm so proud of you. I just want you to grow up to be what God wants you to be.” That's what my dad would say. My friend said to me, “Have you heard what Jesus said about this?” I said, “What do you mean?”
And he read to me from Matthew, chapter seven.Matthew 7:9-11 (ESV) 9 “Or which one of you, if his son asks him for bread, will give him a stone? 10 Or if he asks for a fish, will give him a serpent? 11 If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father who is in heaven give good things to those who ask him!” Your heavenly father loves you and wants to do good for you and to you and through you more than even your earthly father ever could.
I think I was around 14 years old at that time. And I said, “Lord, I'm going to give you this. I'm going to give you this and I'm going to give you this.” And it's still a journey. He's still revealing things to me that I haven't totally surrendered.
You know, it's kind of like peeling an onion and it seems to be another layer under each one. But little by little, I've become so convinced that God's plan for me is “gooder” than my plan for me. His plan for me is good. His plan for you is good.
And he wants to adopt you into his family. And God's goodness is revealed in the way he wants to gather us into his family. And what does this mean? Well, first, Peter talks about it. He says, 1 Peter 2:1-3 (NIV) 1 “Therefore, rid yourselves of all malice and all deceit, hypocrisy, envy, and slander of every kind.
2 Like newborn babies, crave pure spiritual milk, so that by it you may grow up in your salvation, 3 now that you have tasted that the Lord is good.”
Oh, have you tasted that the Lord is good all the time? God is good all the time. Have you tasted and seen that the Lord is good?If so, put away the darkness, put away all hypocrisy. Put it away and pursue the spirit. And pursue and drink from the spirit and be filled with the spirit. Be gathered in and grow up in your salvation.
God loves us. God redeems us. God gathers us. These are evidence of God's goodness. Let's pray.
Lord, thank you. Oh, you're good. We declare it. But, lord, we recognize that some are here today hurting, and they've been questioning your goodness towards them. Lord, would you speak to each of us by your spirit now and help us apply your word?
And especially for that one who came in today, far from you, but is ready today to be gathered into your family. Is that you, my friend? Right where you are? Right in your seat? Maybe you're watching online, right where you are.
You can make a decision today to be a Christ follower. You can express it through prayer as an expression of your faith. Just pray with me right where you are. Dear Lord Jesus. That's right.
Dear Lord Jesus, I'm a sinner.
I need a savior. I believe you died on the cross for me, that you were raised from the grave and that you live today. Come and live in me. Forgive me of my sin. I want to follow you all the days of my life as my lord and savior.
Adopt me into your family. I want to be a child of God. If you're praying that prayer of faith, believing, he'll save you, he'll redeem you. He'll gather you in. He'll never leave you nor forsake you.
Others are here and you've prayed and you've believed and you're a follower of Jesus. But maybe you're like where I was. You know, God's good, but you're not so sure he's good to you right where you are right now. You're going through something. It's like we were praying earlier.
It's a bad diagnosis. It was a failed relationship. You lost someone you loved, you lost your job.
You're going through it. You believe in God, but you're hurting right where you are right now and say, God, I still trust your goodness. Forgive me for doubting your goodness towards me. I'm all in today. I'm not going to hold back.
And so this area of my pain, this area of doubt, I give even that to you today. Oh, lord, you're good. And I give thanks for you. And I say so in Jesus name. Amen.
Audio
Morning, church. It's good to see all of you this morning. I'm very thankful for you. I hope you had a good fourth. It's been hot, so I hope you enjoyed that wonderful humidity over the last couple of days.
But the Lord did give us some good sunny weather, that's for sure. And I'm very excited this morning to be really coming to the conclusion of this. We got two more weeks of this series on the nature of God and his attributes and his character. This week we're talking about God's goodness. You're going to really pick up on that theme in the worship music.
We just sang it over and over again. You're altogether good. You're more. Your goodness is just something that we want to certainly praise, but it's something that it would be great to understand and maybe something that you've questioned somewhat in your life. I want to remind you of the reason that we're pursuing this at all, trying to understand who God is.
It says in John 17, Jesus says this, and this is eternal life. That they know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom you have sent, and so that they know you, the only true God. That we would know him is what our whole life's pursuit is truly about. That's why we were created, is for him and to know him and to be with him, certainly to be in fellowship with each other, that's like a, that's icing on that wonderful cake. But knowing him is what God created us for.
And he's very much interested in getting close to us, if we would follow him and try to grow closer to him as well. We've talked about over the last few weeks, a couple of things, and if you missed any of these, you can certainly go back and check them out on our website where we talked about God's love, which really is the umbrella for so much of what we've talked about, his mercy, his faithfulness, the fact that he's a father. Today we're talking about God's goodness. God is good. That's something that we say a lot.
God is good all the time is something I heard growing up a lot might be something you've said or heard. And the question, though is, is he? Is he good? Because for some people, probably a great many people in your life, they really doubt this attribute of God. For those of us in the room who have had any sort of trauma, maybe as young people or maybe recently, a bad diagnosis, a failed relationship, you lost a job at one point, something terrible happened.
Maybe that was completely out of your control. And it may have caused you to ask an age old question, and that is, if God is good, then why do bad things happen? Why do bad things happen? To quote good people, which, you know, we could dig into what that's all about, but this is a great question. Most of us can easily affirm the goodness of God when things are going good.
When they're going well, it's not hard to question God's goodness when things are peachy, but when they're not, boy, it gets challenging, doesn't it, for so many. And I bet you've run into friends and family like this. This is often a position people will take on why they don't believe in God. If he's so good, then why? Why evil?
Why suffering? If he's so good, then why is he not powerful enough to move this stuff? It's interesting that, you know, a lot of the people who are far from God will. They'll give him this one. They'll say, well, okay, if there is a God and he is good, that's the very reason I'm not going to believe him.
It's like they'll give him some of his attribute, but won't dive a little further to see, okay, how does that flesh out? How does that really work its way out in the reality that we experience? The fact is, and I would pose this question to you, if something is good and there is nothing that's bad, how would you ever know anything was good? If there is only light and no darkness, how would you know you were in light at all? That's really kind of the argument the scripture makes, is that God is the author, the creator.
He is goodness, and anything that is not him is evil. God is light, the Bible says, which means there is no darkness in him, and yet we know darkness. And then we're not talking about, literally the sun and the night. We're talking about good and evil here. Even when we're talking about light and darkness, the absence of the very thing helps us to realize that there is its opposite.
Most of us here today, most of the believers in the room, maybe you don't question that God is good. You just question whether or not he's good to you. And that's a more important question, one that I must admit at times I've been challenged by, oh, I believe he might be good to y'all. Just not sure. He's always good to me.
You ever say something like that? You ever think that, oh, it seems like God is good to missionaries, and he's good to other pastors, and he's good to other believers that I see. But why is this happening to me? I'm not sure he's good to me. Perhaps it's our understanding of what truly is good is what is lacking.
Cs Lewis famously wrote in this book called the great Divorce, which is a fantastic read. He wrote, there is but one good that is God. Everything else is good when it looks to him, and bad when it turns from him. He is all that is good. And that is really true.
When you start to break down everything that is good about this world and this life, these are all things that God has done and is behind sustains. When you really have a good marriage. And maybe it's bumpy at times, but when you're having a good day with your spouse, just remember, God created that. He created children, he created the process. And when things go terribly wrong, maybe you question God's goodness.
I just want to remind you this morning that we can be thankful for God's goodness. And I'm really gonna. I'm hoping at the end of the day, you're gonna feel encouraged. You're gonna lean in and trust God all the more, knowing that he is good and he wants what is not just average for you, he wants what's best for you. And sometimes that means bringing you through a valley.
Sometimes that means you needed to be sharpened a little bit. And what might have felt like to you something other than goodness was in fact, God's ultimate good, that God loves you so much that he would bring you to the best. And in fact, that's really what we're talking about. This idea that God is good is not about scale. It's not as if to say God is good and something else is great.
It's not the nature of. When the Bible speaks of his goodness, it's talking about the idea that he is pure, that he is not evil, he is all light, that kind of good. So we're gonna be in psalm 107 today. If you've got your bibles, psalm 107. One, three.
And here the psalmist. Many people think this is a psalm of David. There's no autograph here, but it does seem to be possibly one of his. This almost here encouraged his hearers to give thanks to the Lord for the Lord's goodness, to give, to give gratitude. And we can give thanks as we look at this great goodness that God has towards us.
I think we're going to see three really clear ways, three clear reasons, in fact, we can give thanks to him. So just a few verses together. Psalm 107. One, three. It says, oh, give thanks to the Lord, for he is good.
Why? Because his steadfast love endures forever. Let the redeemed of the Lord say so. Let the redeemed of the Lord say so. Whom he is redeemed from trouble and gathered in from the lands, from the east and from the west, and from the northe and from the south.
God bless the reading of his word. Amen. We can give thanks for his goodness. This is a wild thing. In fact, sometimes when we just go ahead and have a heart of gratitude right in the midst of a valley, we'll find a unique way out of it and that the more we look to him and the more we focus on him, we'll actually find our way out of a pit.
And that's what the psalmist here is saying. He says, oh, give thanks. Why? Because he is good. Let's not forget his goodness.
And he gives us three reasons. They're pretty clear in the text. I didn't have to really work too hard to see them. The first is this, that we are loved by him. We can be thankful for his goodness to us because at the end of the day we know this.
His steadfast love endures forever and his steadfast love is poured out for us. This is a God who is creative in the sense that he looked and decided, I'm going to make a world. I'm going to make a people. I'm going to make them in my image and I want them for myself and I love them so much that I'm going to. I'm going to have this grand narrative where I'm constantly getting involved and where eventually I'm going to fully redeem them myself and my love endures.
It continues both past, present and future. It's never ending. It's without ceasing. That is God's and love to you. He loves us.
So give thanks. The psalmist says, there's only r1 good response to this and I think he's right. What do you give to someone who has everything? I know Father's day I find to be one of the most difficult holidays of the year because it's both challenging for me as a father and to give gifts to my father. Because here's something that I think a lot of men in the room understand, and that is when I need something, I buy it.
That's just how it is. And the stuff I need are tools and gadgets and things like that and my kids and my wife. They don't have a clue what it is I'm trying to even buy. This past weekend, I decided I need a finishing nail gun and just bought one. I know, Avery, I could have borrowed yours, but I just was itching, itching to get my own.
These are the kind of things. And so when I go to shop for my dad, I'm like, I have no clue what to buy this man. He has the things he needs. I can buy him another book that he may or may not like. He reads a lot, but I never know.
He buys so many books. I don't know what to buy this guy. What's even more challenging, when you're dealing with the creator of the universe, what in the world could you possibly give him? The psalmist says, thanks. The idea here is praise, worship, gratitude.
When I look to you and think, God, you have given me breath, you have decided that I should exist. When you look at me and say so much beyond that, that you love me and care for me and you want to be deeply involved in my life and that you want to save me and sanctify me and you want all this for me. Thank you. Thank you. I worship you.
I praise you. Who the Lord? Here we've got again Yahweh, his covenantal name. Why? Because he's good.
This is why you thank him, because he's good and his goodness is displayed in verse one there by steadfast love. Now, this idea of goodness I've already mentioned, it's not this idea of scale, but rather that he's in a category all on his own. Really. He couldn't even put this thing to scale. In fact, Mark chapter ten says, no one is good except God alone.
Now, if you have not realized this yet, you must be very young or very naive because you don't have to deal with somebody for very long to find out they have a dark side. In fact, you don't really have to wrestle through your thoughts for too long before you start to go, wow, there's some messed up stuff going on in that noggin of mine. Or is that just me? Y'all looking at me blankly like, come on, you don't ever think, oh, I can't stand such and such. I wish that person would walk away from me.
Oh, really? You don't think that? I mean, you don't ever think an ill thought, oh, boy, they rummage through my head sometimes and I've noticed that other people do this. It's when Mark writes, there's none good but God. He's absolutely right.
And this is the sense that altogether. Good. Sure. We have, this is, again, one of these, as we say, communicable attributes of God, that his goodness could be displayed through us, his faithfulness, like last week, this is one of the fruit of the spirit. Love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness.
It's one of the fruit. It's one of the parts of what he has done through us in the Holy Spirit. But we're just a finite version. We're just a mere shadow of goodness. Because with us also comes some darkness.
With God, he's in a category all on his own. Maybe that's why we struggle in this area, because it's very difficult, I have to admit, it's very difficult for me to think of someone who is so much different than me in this way. Because when I think of myself or when I think of you, and this is bad, but some of you are like me. If you're really kind to me or you're really, you know, over the top respectful or good to me, I'm always waiting for the other shoe to drop. Where's the but in this statement?
Oh, you've done really well, Jonathan, but I really hate your guts. I'm just waiting for the other shoe to drop. And maybe I do that with the Lord. It's like my goodness, my love, my faithfulness, my mercy, my grace. And I'm waiting.
Okay, tell me the bad news. But he's all good. Sure. He's here to discipline my misbehavior. He wants something better for me.
So sometimes I'm left dealing with the conviction. The Holy Spirit certainly convicts us of sin. But that's not about him being dark or evil. That's about his goodness. Still, that he loves me enough to say that's not good for you.
That right there, Jonathan, that thing you're doing, that thing you're thinking, that thing you're saying is killing you, that's another category of goodness. Sometimes I have a hard time really understanding how good he is. I asked this question, and I would recommend this website to you. It's called gotquestions.org dot. I jump on there from time to time.
They actually do a really good job on that site. But I ask this question as I'm digging into my study. Okay, what does Google think about this crazy question? Cause really what we're dealing with here, in a way, is the problem of evil, which is this really difficult problem. And it's not totally centered to what I'm trying to do today.
But I wanted to oppose this question, what does it mean that God is good? And got questions said this, God is the standard of all that is good. The fact that God is good means the fact that God is good means that he has no evil in him. His intentions, his motivations are always good. He always does what is right.
The outcome of his plan is always good. Those are the things that I have to get my head around, because those are the things I doubt in myself and I doubt in others. I'm never sure about the motivation, the intention. I'm certainly not sure that the plan will end well. Do you understand that this is the way God is good?
That maybe you have gotten some difficult news, maybe you've been through some very tragic times, but understanding that God is good means understanding that his plans and the results are always good, that his motivations and his intentions are always good. Now, that's something to challenge yourself and trust. John Gilwyn, writing on this, he says that God is good. He does good and is the author of all good. The psalmist.
I could have gone 100 different places. Honestly, when I chose psalm 107, there was many other spots I was looking at. Psalm 25, it says, good and upright is the Lord. Psalm 119, it says, you are good and you do good. It's not just merely his character.
It's what he does first displayed by his love. And really, everything else pours out from there. This is this really powerful hebrew word. I taught it to you really, week one, but it keeps coming back up because there's a reason for that. His love motivates so much of who he is.
Steadfast love here is the hebrew word chesed, which means covenantal kind of love, most similar to the greek agape, which we talk about sometimes, is this unconditional kind of love that means that God loves regardless, in spite of you, in spite of your mess. God is love and will love, and his love here is never ceasing. Now, I want to show you a little something here because, well, I get interested in word studies, all right? It's not for everybody. I get it.
It might sound a little nerdy to you, but the word here endures. That appears in your text and every version that I could find. Something like steadfast love endures or never ceases. In fact, here in the Hebrew, that word doesn't exist. It's merely this.
If it was, if you were reading it just verbatim, it would be his steadfast love forever. And, of course, the translators had to put something in there because that doesn't sound like good. English right. But really it is a bigger idea. It's not just about perseverance.
His love forever. It always is. It always has been, it always will be. You want to know who God is? He is good and his goodness is displayed by his love that is forever.
There was never a time where he was not loving. There's never going to be one. Give thanks to him is the only response, the only appropriate response. The psalmist writes in psalm 100, enter his gates with thanksgiving, his courts with praise. Give thanks to him.
Bless his name, for the Lord is good. His steadfast love endures forever. This is interesting because God's goodness is displayed even when we don't believe. His goodness is displayed to people all over the earth that have not only don't know him, but some have rejected him outright. And yet we know these things to be true.
I'll share a few things that the word says about it. Psalm 33 it says, he loves whatever is just and good. The unfailing love fills the earth. It fills the earth. Acts 14 says it that he did not leave himself without a witness, for he did good by giving you rains from heaven and fruitful seasons, satisfying your hearts with food and gladness.
Matthew five he makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good. He sends rain on the just and on the unjust. This is the idea that God is generally good. This is the idea of general versus specific goodness. To us, his specific goodness is his word and his son and the ways in which he has specifically said, this is how I love you.
But there's other stuff that's just general goodness. Now I would question whether or not this kind of humidity is his goodness on display, but the rain last night was proof of his goodness. Oh, thank the Lord. When the just, when it dropped out and you went outside, if you did just for a second, just peer out there, I can breathe. It didn't take it long afterwards before you couldn't breathe again.
But this is the idea of his goodness that people enjoy, that they're satisfying their hearts with food and gladness. You don't have to believe in God to enjoy a bite. This is his general goodness to all of us, but more specifically in his redemptive plan for us.
Here's the thing. I imagine some of you had a, had a good mother or a good father or maybe a good spouse. I've had a lot of these things. And to those things I can't help but thank God for his general goodness. To me that those are things that certainly having good parents was not something I could have controlled.
And I would say a good spouse is only limited in your control. You know a certain amount about a person, but live with them for a few years, you'll go, huh? I really didn't see that. Don't love that. But we can work on it together.
Cause I got messed, too. But you can't control some of these things. I had a pretty good father and mother. And if someone was to ask me what made them good that I had good parents, I think generally, I would say it's the ways in which they loved me. All right.
That at the end of the day, here's what I knew. My parents loved me. Yeah, they disciplined me. They disciplined me a lot. I'm a PK, just so you know.
Pastor's kid alert. And I was that kid, too. Every Sunday, I think for probably four years, I got a spanking every Sunday. Because. Not because I was trying to be disobedient with my parents.
It wasn't that at all. I'm just mega high energy. I still am, praise goddess. But especially then, if y'all have met my little Kinsey running around, it's really me in male form, which was just her, plus destruction. And so I'd be running around the church.
I'm supposed to be putting equipment into the old red van. Big Bertha, that's what we call her. I was supposed to be putting equipment in there. Instead, I have disappeared somewhere in Forest Hills Middle School in Wilson, and I'm running amok, or I'm breaking into a vending machine somewhere, which is not good. All right, this was me.
And yet I never questioned my parents love, even though they disciplined me. In fact, I figure at the end of the day, maybe I didn't know this at the time, but looking back, that didn't make me feel less loved, but more because my parents cared also about my goodness.
And my parents are imperfect. I could tell you all the ways, but that's not important. At the end of the day, I knew I was loved. And that makes me say to you, I had good parents. Now, the Bible talks about this idea that if you have a good father and he gives you, and he's imperfect, how much more your father in heaven, who is perfect, will give you good gifts.
What is your response to God's goodness expressed here by his love? Praise. Thank you. Thank you. That no matter what happens, at the end of the day, God, I know you love me, and you have a purpose for me, and you've got a plan.
And if I would walk with you. I know that your love will be displayed constantly. First, it's his love, and that would almost be enough. But, boy, he's not done there. The reason that we can give thanks for his goodness is because we are redeemed by his son.
First, we're loved eternally, everlasting, but we're redeemed by his son. Look right there in verse two. Let the redeemed of the Lord say so. This is like a shout out. The psalmist is here.
This probably was put to music. Let the redeemed now shout. And we would do that as one. Why? Because we have been redeemed from trouble.
Now, the ESV is the only one that translates this hebrew word trouble. I'm not totally sure why it could be translated that way, but the most literal translation is that you have been redeemed from the hand of the enemy, that God has pulled you away from the evil one. The enemy you've been redeemed from this world, from the flesh, from the devil, from the countless other snares. What has God done? He has plucked you out of a big, big mess and made you his own.
This word redeemed here, twice, it's the word gaelda goel, redeemer, kinsman, redeemer. Payment has been made. Now, it's interesting that the psalmist would choose this word, because up until this point. What does it mean that God has made ransom for you? What does it mean that God has made payment for you?
Maybe they would have thought and said, well, God has certainly gone out of his way to be interacting with us. He's gone out of his way to be a part of our story. But this is a bit of foreshadowing here, where God says, I will redeem by payment. I'm going to do something that costs me something to set you free here. Already we're forecasting that.
We're foreshadowing that. Let the redeemed say, thank you, God. Thank you for pulling me up out of this terrible trouble. The goodness of God, then, is so apparent in the revelation of Christ, the redemption of the Son Titus. Chapter two says, our great God and savior, Jesus Christ, who gave himself for us, to redeem us, must from all lawlessness and to purify for himself a people for his own possession, who are zealous for good works.
He pulled us out of something for himself that now we get to be a part of what he's doing. Now, sometimes I think we as believers miss this part. We weren't just redeemed for the sake of redemption. We were redeemed for a purpose. Now God is apparently wanting to work out his goodness in this world also through us.
We've given up a lot of these things as a church, especially in America, the kinds of things that God had called us to. We've given those to the government, and they're not doing a good job with them. The whole social care and all this stuff the church is supposed to be doing, that, the widows and the orphans and the needy and the hungry, that's the church's job. And yet we can't really do a good job of it now because we've given up so much of it. And maybe even in our hearts, sometimes we think, well, there's someone else that will do this.
God has called us to it. No, Titus clearly says, God has pulled us out, redeemed us for himself. And now that we might do good works, his goodness now poured out through us, through the Holy Spirit in this fruit, that now what are we good? We do good things. What would that mean?
That the people of God, that is church, that people would say instead of, oh, wow, that place is full of a messy people. It's full of hypocrisy. What if instead people would say, you know, those people are good, and they do good because that's who God is. That's who he is. Through us, he's redeemed us for himself, for a purpose.
His goodness, then, is displayed in his readiness to forgive. I want you to understand something, and I get this so backwards. I know better. This is the sad thing. I know better.
And yet I will. I will just wallow in my own guilt and shame for a long time before I come to God because I think he needs to. I need to be punished. I need to be distant from God for a season. And yet that's not the way the word describes our goddess.
He is ready and willing to forgive and to bring us back into community. He does not desire distance from us, not at all. And his discipline for us does not look like, get out of my house. That's not the way God convicts. It's not the way God disciplines.
No. His is much more close and involved.
Psalm 86, it says, o Lord, you are so good, so ready to forgive, so full of unfailing love for all who ask for your help. Now, some in prosperity, wealth kind of circles would say that when Jesus says, you have not because you ask not is about that. I think primarily it's about the idea of asking for God's forgiveness, for his closeness, asking for God to be to make himself known in your life. That's the kind you have. Not a close relationship with God because you ask not for it.
That's primarily, I think, what is being said there. Oh, God's ready to forgive. In fact, his goodness should cause us to. It should stir us to movement. Romans, chapter two.
It says, or do you despise the riches of his goodness, of his forbearance, of his long suffering? Not knowing that the goodness of God leads you to repentance, it is looking at him and saying, wow, how could you still redeem? How could you still love? That should drive you to your knees in prayer. It should drive you towards him, not away.
Now, there's this wonderful story in the Old Testament about this lady named Ruth, a very short book. If you've not read it, it's a great love story that's foreshadowing the loving redemption of God. The whole point of Ruth is really not Ruth. It's not even Boaz. It's who they model.
It's who this story is really about. Ruth is not even a member of the people of God. This is a moabite woman. This woman is not. She doesn't belong in the rich history.
And yet here she has her own book, and she's. There's very few named after women in the Bible. Here's this woman who's not even an israelite. And this love story is meant to paint this wonderful picture because Ruth, we have to be honest, loses everything in this story. And the only thing she's left with is her mother in law.
And just let that sink in for a second. For some of you, you're like, yuck. Seems like they had a pretty good relationship, Ruth and Naomi. Naomi totally goes into a state of depression. If you read this story, she's really in a pit.
She wants to change her name tomorrow, which means bitterness. Just let people call me bitter lady. And Ruth is just faithful for some reason, she's just faithful. She doesn't know the answers. There's this opportunity to go and glean the fields of this man named Boaz, who's a wealthy man.
And this is a common thing that they would do. The good men, the good people, would allow the needy and the hungry to come and glean the fields that is, you come in after harvest has happened, and there's still quite a bit left that just didn't harvest well. So they come in and glean these fields so they don't have to go hungry. And she does this, but she bumps into Boaz. It's a longer story.
You need to check this out. But Boaz does this thing that really models this idea of redemption. He's called here. He's called this same word that we have in psalms. He's called Goel.
That means kinsman, redeemer. He's of no relation to Ruth. In fact, you could argue this is a really bad financial move. This is a really bad step for him. He goes to the city square where there's apparently someone closer in line to redeem Naomi and her family and Ruth.
And he comes to basically argue for the right to be the one to step in and take and redeem her. The other one gives up his right, and Boaz takes her in now, saying that she is now part of mine and I'm going to take care of her. I'm going. I'm now responsible for her. Now, this is this wonderful love story, and it wouldn't take you long to read it, but this is meant to model what God has done.
It would have been good enough for Boaz to simply let the people not go hungry. Wouldn't we still say that God is good if he simply feeds us and sustains us and takes care of us and when we die, it's just whatever. But that's not who God is. Like Boaz, he's more. He's more than just there to feed and sustain.
He wants a relationship. He's come to redeem. He's come to take us out of a broken situation and make things well. This is the right response to God's goodness. He says this almost says, hey, give thanks, but if not, hey, redeemed of the Lord, shout, say so.
And then there's this final, and I think maybe the most. This is really meaningful to me for some reason. Psalm 103 or 107, verse three, says he gathered. The third reason is that we are gathered into his family. Okay?
He loves. His love is steadfast. It's eternal. He redeems. But then he gathers from every direction, north, south, he's gathered lands far and wide.
All this word here is the word eretz, which means the whole earth. He has gathered his people to himself. Certainly, he's talking to dispersed jews here, who their history is that of being pushed all over the known world, persecuted. But now this is this bigger scatological thing, this end times kind of thing, this God, God's ultimate plan to bring every nation, tribe and tongue to himself and the new heaven and the new earth. We just talked about that a few weeks ago in the heaven series, that this is what God is doing, and he wishes he could do it all the more.
Jesus, in fact, lamented in his life that he couldn't gather them all. In Matthew 23, it says, jerusalem, Jerusalem, the city that kills the prophets and stones, those who sit, who are sent to it. How I would have gathered your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings and you were not willing. How God desires to gather them all. The psalmist in Psalm 22 points to this future day when all will be gathered.
It says, all the ends of the earth shall remember and turn to the Lord, and all the families of the nation shall worship before you.
I think this might be the most, maybe the most clear sign of his goodness to, to us. Let me argue for that for just a second. I'm fascinated, first of all, by his love and by his redemption. But I find it even more fascinating that God would be so generous to this point that he'd want us to be around. Okay, just follow me for a second.
Follow me for a second. Because this is mister introvert. I don't really want people around very often, not even the people I chose in my life. I'm good to separate myself for a while. I'm full hermit.
And God, God is dealing with a very corrupt people, with a very messed up people. I mean, even on my best days, I have got massive issues. And this is, this kind of generosity. Look, it's good to be generous, to help those in need, to try and redeem those who are broken. When you shelter the homeless or you feed the hungry, that's amazing.
That shows a sense of love and compassion. That's not what God does. Yeah, sure he does that, but that's not even his end game. You ever invite those people over? And not just for a little while?
Eternity. Hey, street peddler. That clearly you need a shower. How about you come on over and shower and you just keep showering every day. Just stay here.
Now, I'd love to say I have that kind of compassion, but I don't want those kind of people in my life constantly. Am I okay? You're looking at me like, oh, what a terrible thing to say. I can't believe you. No, it's you.
It's me. I got family members I'd like to not stay too long. Like, don't wear out your welcome. We have phrases for this. And yet God's goodness says, I'm going to take you messed up people and I want you forever.
That's, that's too much.
I would ask you, church, I would ask you for a second. If you're really struggling in this area, like maybe God's good, I'm just not sure he's good to me. Would you pause for a second and just look at his plan? Would you pause for just a second and consider who he is? Why in the world would he have to come and die for us?
Absolutely not. He didn't have to do that, and yet he chose to do that. Why in the world would he want to spend everlasting eternity with you? I don't even want to spend eternity with my thoughts. And yet, here he is, made me for himself for all time.
I can't help but say, thank you, God. I don't know how you would have that kind of compassion and mercy for me. I don't know how you would have that level of grace for me. I know just how tough, how wicked I can be at times. No, he doesn't just say, hey, I'll feed you.
Hey, I'll redeem you. He says, I adopt you. You're now a son. You're now a daughter of the king everlasting. Do you see this?
Oh, I don't think there's any harm in questioning his goodness, but I pray that the resolution for you would be, wait a minute. But he is altogether good. I'm not just singing that. When I go to sing a line like that, it means something to me. I know very well that he's good to me.
Yeah. Not everything in my life is good, because this terrible thing happened called sin, and is the opposite of God. To give you just a cliff notes of what the problem of evil is. The problem is that there is not God that exists. If there is a problem at all, is that God made this decision that I will make people in my image that will have the capacity to choose, not me.
And evil exists as a result. Oh, God could have made us robots. He could have made us these automatons. All they will do is choose me. They will never have the option otherwise.
But that's not the image of God. No. He made us with the power to say, I don't want you. Why would he do that? Now, that's a bigger question.
I would say I would bring it back to his love, because what God, at the end of the day, wants is a people who love him back. And love isn't automatic like that. Love isn't robotic.
Oh, you can do all the right things with someone else, but you can't make people love you. This is what God has done here, and he loves us so much that he's given us away and he loves us so much that his goodness says, I'm going to gather you from all nations, from all tribes. I don't care about races, I don't care about cultures. I'm not interested in any of that. I'm interested in those who call in the name of Jesus for eternity.
You are welcomed in. God's goodness is revealed in this plan. One Peter writes, therefore rid yourselves of all malice and deceit, hypocrisy, envy, slander of every kind, like newborn babes crave for spiritual milk, so that by it you may grow up in your salvation. Now that you have tasted that the Lord is good, have you tasted and seen?
We should be giving thanks. We should be praising him because he loves us, he redeems us, and for eternity will gather us to himself. Let's pray now to gather church.
Heavenly Father, we thank you.
There's not much else we can give other than ourselves and say, lord, this life that I live, Lord, I pray that it is a sweet offering to you, that my thank you note is a life lived following you and being and doing good where you already are. That I would be just a little, a little shadow of your great goodness. That at the end of the day, my greatest thank you would be to simply, I just want to be like you. God, I thank you for your great goodness to me, that there is no shadow in you of evil at all, that your intentions, that your motivations are perfect and pure for me. Oh, wow, that's surprising.
It's almost difficult for me to understand that. Lord, I thank you for who you are. I thank you for your son Jesus and redemption. I'm prayerful for that person that may have come today. Maybe they've been coming to our services a while.
They've never received this promised gift of God's redemption for us through Jesus his son. If that's you, my friend, you've come today. You'd very much like to understand the goodness of God, but you've not received his redemptive offering yet. This gift he's given, you've not received it. Maybe you've heard about it.
If that's you today, I pray that you would say yes to Jesus, that you would profess Christ and believe. The Bible is very simple on this, my friend. It says in romans ten that if we confess that Jesus is Lord and believe in our heart that God raised him from the dead, we will be saved. If you've come today and you would very much like to understand his goodness and the fact that he's redeemed. You pray simply with me.
Jesus, I believe. I believe that you are lord of my life. You're in charge. You're the ruler, you're the kingdom. Jesus, I believe that you died on the cross for my sin, that my guilt and my shame and the terrible things I've thought and done, that you've paid for those things on the cross.
I believe that today. And, God, I believe that you raised Jesus from the grave, that he is resurrected and lives today. And, Lord, I'm thankful for these things you've done to redeem me. And I'm more. I'm equally, if not more, thankful that you love me and want to be with me for eternity.
God, I'm asking now, would you guide my life according to your will and your purpose? Help me to be good and do good as is your character. Dear friend, if you prayed that with me. Welcome to the family of God. We're all being gathered together in his name.
Name. And we're praying right along with you. God, help us to be good and do good according to your character. Let the fruit of the spirit, your goodness, really be modeled in our lives. Do this in us, Lord Jesus, we pray.
Amen. I.