He is Good!

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For those of you who are visiting with us tonight for the dedication of these little children, let me just tell you that we're in the middle of a study about God, what the Bible teaches about the character of God and His attributes. Tonight, by God's providence, we find ourselves in a very appropriate one for our seeing of these little ones and being reminded of all of God's good gifts to us including their lives. Children, Psalm 127 says, are a gift from God. They're a demonstration of His goodness to us. So tonight we come in our study to the attribute of God that's called His goodness.

A few years ago—you may have read—there was a book that came out that was a best seller for a number of weeks written by Robert Fulghum. It was called All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten. Some of you need to go back to kindergarten, probably. Maybe you missed some of those lessons there. But when you think about that book, when you think about that sort of premise, in a sense there's validity to it, even when it comes to our theology. Because when you think about the theology that you learned in kindergarten, what was it? Before each mealtime, you prayed what? God is great, God is good, let us thank Him for this food. There's a lot of rich theology there. And interestingly enough, that theology, that you said in that little prayer in kindergarten, is the basic foundation of the theology of a man the Bible says was a man after God's own heart, David himself.

Let me show you that as we start this evening. Turn to Psalm 100. And this is only one of many places we could look. I just want you to see it here. And in fact, I hope it sparks a study of your own into this. But notice Psalm 100. We're told, verse 1,

Shout joyfully to the Lord, all the earth.

Serve the Lord with gladness;

Come before Him with singing.

Know that the Lord Himself is God.

This emphasizes the greatness, the godness of God. He says I want you to understand a basic foundational truth about the character of our God, and that is that He is God, that He's in control. The Hebrew word is Elohim, the strong One, the powerful One. It speaks of His greatness. But then He says, verse 4, "Enter His gates with thanksgiving and His courts with praise. Give thanks to Him, bless His name. For the Lord is good." Essentially, the psalmist, (and David does this throughout the Psalms that he wrote) he breaks the character of God down into these two great categories. And if you and I could really come to grasp the richness of these two concepts, our image of God, that is, our perception of God in our minds, would be far more biblical. God is great (He's God, and He's not like us), and God is good. And that's what we want to look at to night.

You know, understanding God's goodness is basic to Christian living. If we were to go back—and we won't take the time to do this—but if we were to go back to Genesis 3 and look at the very first sin in human history, in the human race, we would find there what begins to take Eve away from God, what begins to show up in her heart seems to be a doubting of God's goodness. Certainly in the end when she actually sins that's what it was. God is withholding something good from me, something that I could enjoy. And when you and I sin, essentially we come down to doubting either God's greatness or His goodness. Every time we sin it's a reflection of our bad theology about God: either [doubting] that God is God and that there's nowhere we can run, nowhere we can hide; or we forget His goodness. We assume that that thing we want is somehow going to be good for us, and God didn't give it to us, just like Eve.

God, the Scripture tells us, instead is summum bonum, that is, the greatest good. In fact, you know what's interesting is the original Saxon meaning of the English word God is "the good One." When we use the English word God, that's what we're really saying, the good One. A. W. Tozer, in his little book The Knowledge of the Holy, writes this about the goodness of God:

That God is good is taught or implied on every page of the Bible and must be received as an article of faith as impregnable as the throne of God. It is the foundation stone for all sound thought about God and is even necessary to moral sanity. [What does he mean by that? Well, he goes on.] To allow that God could be other than good is to deny the validity of all thought and end in the negation of every moral judgment. If God is not good, then there can be no distinction between kindness and cruelty, and heaven can be hell and hell heaven.

Everything that you and I hang on about God, everything we rely on in regards to God stems from this attribute, His goodness. God is essentially good.

Now what do we mean when we say God is good? Well, let me give you several definitions as we've done throughout our study. First of all, Robert Reymond writes, "God's goodness is that perfection of the divine nature which prompts Him to deal bountifully and kindly with all His creatures." Wayne Grudem, in his Systematic Theology, writes, "God is the final standard of good, and that all that God is and does is worthy of approval." But I like Tozer's. He says,

The goodness of God is that which disposes Him to be kind, cordial, benevolent and full of good will toward men. He is tenderhearted and a quick sympathy, and His unfailing attitude toward all moral beings is open, frank and friendly. By His nature He is inclined to bestow blessedness, and He takes holy pleasure in the happiness, especially, of His own people.

Now when we talk about God's goodness, in the Bible it's expressed in several other attributes. And we're gonna look at these attributes in the weeks to come, but let me just give them to you. First of all, when we talk about God's goodness, we talk about His general goodness or (the word is often used) benevolence. That's what we're going to look at tonight. God's general goodness to His creation. But we also speak of God's goodness expressed in His love, in His grace, in His mercy, and in His long-suffering or patience. Each of those we'll treat as individual attributes, but in reality they are God's goodness expressed to a specific group of people or a specific kind of group. For example, grace is God's goodness expressed to those who deserve punishment, and so forth. So we'll look at each of these as we go along.

But tonight I want us to look at the first expression of God's goodness, which is general goodness or benevolence. When we say that God is good in this sense, what do we mean? Well first of all, God is good in Himself. What do I mean by that? I mean that God was good before creation. Before there was anything else, there were only the members of the Trinity and their relationship with one another, God was still good, and His goodness expressed itself even in that relationship. But when we say that God is good in Himself, we mean that God is all that He should be as God. God meets the standard of God. God is everything that God should be expected to be. Scripture speaks of this throughout. Exodus 33:19 says God says to Moses, "I... will make all My goodness pass before you." And then He goes on, you remember, to recite His character to Moses. God says my character is good. That's who I am. Psalm 25:8, "Good and upright is the Lord." Psalm 34:8, "O taste and see that the Lord is good." This is His character. "How blessed is the man who takes refuge in Him!" We looked at Psalm 100:5. Nahum 1:7 says, "The Lord is good, a stronghold in the day of trouble, and He knows those who take refuge in Him." And in Christ and His ministry, you remember, the young man came up to Him and called Him good. And Jesus said to Him in Mark 10:18, "Why do you call Me good? No one is good except God alone." Christ wasn't saying He wasn't God. He was saying, young man, you don't acknowledge Me to be God, and if you don't acknowledge Me to be God, then why are you calling Me good, because only God is good. God is good in Himself. He meets the standard of—and the Hebrew and Greek words for God's goodness imply completeness, maturity. God is everything that God ought to be. He is good in Himself.

There are a couple of applications of this when we say God is good simply in who He is. The first is that God is therefore the ultimate good that you and I should seek. Let me show you Psalm 73. Turn there for a moment. Psalm 73 is one of those great Psalms where the psalmist just opens his heart and lets us see him warts and all. He begins by saying, verse 1,

Surely God is good to Israel,

To those who are pure in heart!

But as for me, my feet came close to stumbling,

My steps had almost slipped. [Why?]

[Because] I was envious of the arrogant as I saw the prosperity of the wicked.

He says look, I looked around me, and I said look at how prosperous these people are who hate God. They don't have "pains in their death." Verse 5, "They are not in trouble as other men." Verse 13, he comes to this conclusion:

Surely in vain I have kept my heart pure

And washed my hands in innocence;

[And] I have been stricken all day long

And chastened every morning.

He says I look around me, and those who are arrogant against God seem to prosper. The wicked prosper, they grow in wealth, they have none of the problems I have, and yet I seem to be afflicted all the time. He said that I almost slipped, because this is what I was thinking in my heart. He comes to a resolution in verse 15. He says, "If... 'I will speak thus'... I would have betrayed the generation of your children." There are times not to reveal every sin that you're tempted to to others. And He said when I pondered to understand this conundrum of evil and God allowing it, "It was troublesome in my sight." But here's the solution. Verse 17, "Until I came into the sanctuary of God; then I perceived their end." He said it bothered me, the prosperity of the wicked, until I understood their end. There's a day of reckoning coming. Verse 19, "They are destroyed in a moment!" Verse 18:

You [have] set them in slippery places;

You cast them down to destruction.

How they are destroyed in a moment!

They are utterly swept away by sudden terrors!

So where does he come, where does the psalmist come? Verse 25, "Whom have I in heaven but You? And besides You, I desire nothing on earth." God is the source of goodness. And because God is good in and of Himself, He is the only One we should seek. In other words, we should delight only in God.

There are a lot of good things you enjoy in this world, aren't there? One of them we just saw—children, grandchildren. These are good gifts of God. And yet because God is good and the ultimate good in and of Himself, we are called upon to delight, not in the gifts God gives us alone, but only in those gifts with reference to Him. We are to bring Him glory and praise for those good gifts He's given us. We are to enjoy the gift but keep our hearts focused on the Giver, the good Giver of all of these gifts. Augustine put it this way. He said, "I call charity [that is, love for God] the motion of the soul toward the enjoyment of God for His own sake, and the enjoyment of oneself and of one's neighbor for the sake of God." You see, loving God is delighting in God and delighting in everything else that He's given us for His sake. Our ultimate delight is in God and His goodness.

But not only is God the ultimate good we should seek as a result of this, but He's the source of everything good in the world. James 1:17 says, "Every good thing... and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of Lights." Have you ever thought about that? Every good thing you enjoy in life comes to you from the hand of God. Let's just take a couple of examples. Take the variety of natural pleasures. Take your senses, for example. God gave you five senses, and then He filled our world with ways to gratify and enjoy those senses. Take the variety of colors. If you're from St. Louis, I apologize to you beforehand for giving this illustration. I picked on St. Louis this morning as well; there was no intention in this. But you ever traveled through the St. Louis airport? It's all grey. Now, I've asked myself as I've gone through the airport there, why would you—It was just the terminal I was in, probably, but it was all grey. Why would you make an entire terminal grey? God could have done that. God could have given us an appreciation for a variety of colors, and then made the whole world grey. Last night I took a walk, as I was thinking about my morning message, right at sunset. I was walking, and I don't know if you saw it or not, but just a splash of brilliant color across the sky at sunset. And I was thinking about this very thing. God is good. He gave me the sense of sight and the ability to enjoy color, and then He filled His world with color for me to enjoy. It could have been grey. Take the variety of flavor. God gave us sweet and salty taste buds, the ability to pick up different kinds of tastes, and then He filled the world with it. Thank the Lord there's more than oatmeal in the world.

He gave us ears. He gave us the sense of hearing, and then He filled the world with sounds, with different pitches and keys and beautiful sounds. I learned something this week I didn't know before. Did you know that you and your head, the resonant chambers within your sinuses, are tuned to a certain key. That's true of any chamber. It finds one key particularly natural. And God tuned you to a certain key, so that not all of us speak exactly alike. Some of us are especially gifted to be able to speak like southerners. Others of us have that nasal, raspy quality to our voices that, unfortunately, makes us sound like Bill Clinton. But regardless—I say that only because for sixteen years in southern California, about once a week someone asked me, has anyone ever told you you sound exactly like Bill Clinton? Go figure. But God has given us variety of sounds, even in how we sound. That's God's goodness.

There's a variety of plants and trees and flowers, a variety of foods. Take another area of our senses. Think of the joys of married love. That is a demonstration of God's gift to us, of His goodness to us. God is good. Take another area. Take medicine. Every good gift we enjoy comes to us from the hand of God. Take medical procedures. A few years ago I needed to have surgery. About twenty-five years ago now, they discovered that I have glaucoma. It's a hereditary condition in my family, and I needed surgery. I thank God that they were able to come up with a way. In His goodness He allowed men to discover the procedure to do surgeries, so that I'm not blind in my right eye today. That's God's goodness, and you've experienced those as well.

It's amazing. God is the source of every good thing. He is good in Himself. But, and I've already begun to take us this direction, God is also good toward His creation. Since God is good in Himself, He is the fountain of all good to His creatures. Psalm 119:68 says, "You are good and [You] do good." You are good, and You do good. This is the most common sense of God's goodness in Scripture, the way it's used most frequently. It's that perfection of God which prompts Him to deal bountifully and kindly with His creatures. God is concerned about the well-being of His creatures, and He acts to promote it.

But who are the objects of His goodness? First of all, all creation is the object of His goodness. We don't have time to do it, but read Psalm 103, as we went through it last week. Read Psalm 104. Those Psalms focus us on the goodness of God to all creation. But let's do turn to Psalm 145. God is good to everything He's made. Psalm 145:7 says,

They [that is, all men] shall eagerly utter the memory of Your abundant goodness

And will shout joyfully of Your righteousness.

The Lord is gracious and merciful;

Slow to anger and great in lovingkindness.

The Lord is good to all,

And His mercies are over all His works.

[Absolutely nothing God made is excluded from His goodness.]

All Your works shall give thanks to You.

Notice verse 13: "Your kingdom is an everlasting kingdom, and Your dominion endures throughout all generations." Here are some demonstrations of God's goodness to everyone. "The Lord sustains all who fall and [He] raises up those who are bowed down." We don't typically live a life continually bowed down.

The eyes of all look to You,

And You give them their food in due time.

You open Your hand

And [You] satisfy the desire of every living thing.

Why do you think Christ taught us to pray, "Give us this day [what?] our daily bread"? We kind of forget that in our culture, because we just go to the refrigerator. But the fact that we can go to the refrigerator, that we were born in the country where we have a refrigerator, is all a demonstration of the goodness of God. All creation benefits from God's goodness. And even those who live in poor, poverty stricken areas around the world, the goodness of life (as we'll see in a moment) that they do enjoy is a demonstration of God's goodness in a fallen, sin-cursed world.

God's also good to His own people. You know this, but let me just call these verses to your attention. Psalm 31:19, "How great is Your goodness, which You have stored up for those who fear You, which You have wrought for those who take refuge in You." Do you fear God? Have you believed in the person of His Son? Have you taken refuge in Christ? Then God's goodness towards you is great. Psalm 34:10, "They who seek the Lord shall not be in want of any good thing." That doesn't mean God's going to give you everything you want. It means God is going to determine what's good for you, and He will give you what is good for you. He's looking out for your interests. Psalm 84:11, "No good thing does He withhold from those who walk uprightly." Nothing God determines is good for you and you need will He withhold from you.

Lamentations 3:25. I love this, because it's right in the middle of a lament—Lamentations. The city of Jerusalem has been destroyed. Terrible things have happened. And yet Jeremiah says, "The Lord is good to those who wait for Him, to the person who seeks Him." Even in the midst of the darkest periods of your life, you can cling to the goodness of God, even as Jeremiah did. Matthew 7:11, Jesus says, "If you then, being evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father who is in heaven give what is good to those who ask Him?" He says if you're one of My children, I look out for you just as you look out for your own children. Romans 8:28 affirms it: "We know that God causes all things to work together for good to those who love God, to those who are called according to His purpose." It's absolutely amazing what God does in demonstrating His goodness. You say, well, what about the difficulties and the troubles I go through? Listen, even in His discipline God means good for you. Listen to Hebrews 12:10: "He disciplines us for our good, so that we may share His holiness." God still has your good in mind. He's still looking out for you, even in bringing trouble into your life. Louis Berkhof writes this: "While God's goodness is not restricted to believers, they only manifest a proper appreciation of its blessings, desire to use them in the service of their God, and thus enjoy them in a richer and fuller measure." If you're one of God's own, then you enjoy His goodness more than anyone else, as you'll see in a moment.

But God isn't only good to all creation universally and to His own people, the Bible teaches that God is good even to His enemies, to those who hate Him, those who refuse to accept His Son. Job 22:17-18, "They said to God, 'Depart from us!' …Yet He filled their houses with good things." That's God's character. He does good even to those who say, "Go away, we want nothing to do with You, we will not have You to rule over us." He does good even to them. Matthew 5:45,—I love this—"[God] causes His sun to rise on the evil and the good, [He] sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous." That's a sort of funny picture when you think about it. Imagine for a moment that God only sent rain on the yards of those in your neighborhood who loved and feared Him. Be pretty obvious, wouldn't it, here in Texas? What if God only made the sun come up on the lives, in the homes of those who loved Him? That's not like God. God is good even to His enemies.

Turn to Acts 14. I want you to see this first hand. Paul is in Lystra, and He's preaching the truth of Christ to a bunch of idol worshipers. And they begin to worship Paul and Barnabas. Verse 14:

When the apostles Barnabas and Paul heard of it, they tore their robes and rushed out into the crowd... saying, "Men, why are you doing these things? [verse 15] We are also men of the same nature as you, and we preach the [good news] to you that you should turn from these vain [worthless] things to a living God, who made the heaven and the earth and the sea and all that is in them. In the generations gone by He [has] permitted all the nations to go their own ways; and [but watch this] yet He did not leave Himself without [a] witness."

Listen, there is nowhere in the world that God hasn't established a witness of who He is. How has He done that? Here it is, Paul says. "In that." Here's how He witnessed to you, he said, to you people here in Lystra and to anyone anywhere in the remotest part of the world. "He did good and gave you rains from heaven and fruitful seasons, satisfying your hearts [literally, filling your hearts] with food and gladness." Listen, God is good to all men, even His enemies. He shows His nature by doing them good, by filling their hearts with food and gladness. God is good even to His enemies.

You see, unbelievers experience God's goodness in a profound way. Even those who have not embraced Jesus Christ experience the goodness of God. There is no valid complaint that God has not been good to them. He's given them more than they ever deserved. In fact, (And this is what we see here in Romans 2:4.) God's goodness has a specific purpose when it comes to those who are His enemies. Notice what he said in Romans 2:4. "Do you think lightly of the riches of His kindness and tolerance a patience, not knowing that the kindness of God"—God's goodness to you in all of these ways we've been looking at: in giving you children; in giving you life and the joys of life and times of celebration, food and gladness. God's goodness, Paul says, is intended to lead "you to repentance." What does that mean? God's goodness and your experience of it should bring you to the point where you see your own sinfulness and you're willing to turn from your sin.

You say, well, how does God's goodness show someone their sinfulness? Well, because unregenerate men, that is, people who don't know Christ, tend to be ungrateful. Nehemiah 9:35, "But they [that is, Israel and her kings], in their own kingdom, with Your great goodness which You gave them, with the broad and rich land which [You've] set before them, did not serve You or turn from their evil deeds." Or Paul puts it more directly in Romans 1:21. "Even though"—and he's talking about the entire human race here. "Even though they knew God, they did not honor Him as God or give thanks." Think about that. The apostle Paul, this brilliant mind, when He wants to illustrate how mankind has strayed from God, He brings it down to this most basic truth: they weren't thankful for God's goodness. So how does God's goodness lead you to repentance? You look at God's goodness on the one hand, and you look at your ingratitude and your grumbling and your complaining about what you don't have, and you realize the gulf between, and you turn to God in repentance and faith. "God, I am such an ingrate. I've taken Your good gifts, and I have been unthankful. I have been ungrateful. And I have even taken Your good gifts and I have perverted them for my own use."

It's even accurate to say that God will express His goodness to unbelievers, His enemies, in hell forever. That's a very strange thing to say, and let me explain what I mean. God's goodness, I don't believe, will be absent from hell. Why do I say that? Well, in several passages in the New Testament—Luke 12:47-48, Matthew 10:15, etc. There are a number of passages that teach us that there will be degrees of punishment in that place of eternal torment. That's God's goodness. Not everyone will get the absolute worst punishment. In fact, while it will be horrible, and it will be a place no one desires to be for a moment, God's goodness will mitigate the justice sinners really deserve. Even there there will be degrees of punishment. Men will see God's goodness in His justice and in His wrath.

Now let's look at God's goodness applied. How exactly should this truth about who God is, that He's good, that He does good, how should it affect us? Well let me give you several ways, and I hope you'll be encouraged. These are targeted toward all of us who have come to the place of genuine faith in Jesus Christ as our Lord and Savior. We've repented of our sins, we have taken His wonderful gift of forgiveness, and we've committed ourselves to follow Jesus Christ as our Lord—to all of us we can enjoy these things from God's goodness.

First of all, it should strengthen our faith. Turn to Hebrews 11, the famous faith chapter. You see, God's goodness (as I mentioned before) is the ground of every hope we have before God. It is the foundation of our faith. In fact, faith itself is simply confidence in the goodness of God. Let me show you this from Hebrews 11, this great faith chapter, the hall of faith, as it's often called. Verse 6, the writer of Hebrews puts it this way: "Without faith it is impossible to please [God], for he who comes to God must believe that He is [that is, that He exists, and that He is all that He claims to be] and that He is a rewarder of those who seek Him." In other words, faith is in essence a confidence in the goodness of God, a confidence in God's goodness to reward those who come and ask, who cry out to God for His forgiveness, who cry out to God for the promises He's made. It is ultimately confidence in God's goodness. So the more we understand the goodness of God, the more we understand that this is how God is toward us, then the more it strengthens our faith to say He wants me to come, He wants me to put my confidence in Him. John Calvin, in The Institutes of the Christian Religion, writes about this. He says,

Until men feel that they owe everything to God, that they are cherished by His fatherly care, and that He is the author of all their blessings so that nothing is to be looked for away from Him, until that happens, they will never submit to Him in voluntarily obedience. Nay, unless they place their entire happiness in Him they will never yield up their whole selves to Him in truth and sincerity.

You see, until you come to really understand and appreciate the goodness of God and to, as it were, launch yourself into the ocean of the goodness of God, anticipating Him to be a rewarder of your confidence in Him, then God is not going to be pleased. So God's goodness and our knowledge of it strengthens our faith in Him.

Secondly, God's goodness should be the object of our praise and thanksgiving. I won't look at all of these references, but let me just show you a couple. Turn to psalm 106. When we understand God's goodness toward us in all of the ways that He's provided that goodness, it should cause us to praise Him and give Him thanks. Psalm 106:1, "Praise the Lord! Oh give thanks to the Lord, for He is good, for His lovingkindness is everlasting." Psalm 107:1, "Oh give thanks to the Lord, for He is good, for His lovingkindness is everlasting." And on and on it goes. In each of these references we're called upon to give thanks to God for His goodness.

We're coming up on Thanksgiving, and you should be thankful at Thanksgiving. But the expression of a true believing heart is thanksgiving throughout the year, and that thanksgiving begins at the wellspring of the goodness of God. Let me encourage you to do something this Thanksgiving, something that our family has found beneficial and profitable. Take time some time that afternoon and sit around with your family and just take turns going around and around and around again expressing one thing that you're grateful for, one expression of God's goodness to you and your family. At first it seems like you'll run out of things, but the more you rehearse, the more you do it, the more it seems an inexhaustible supply of God's goodness. That's what we're to do. We're to praise and thank God for the goodnesses and the many expressions of that that He gives us. When's the last time you thanked God for His creation, you thanked Him for the beauty of a sunset, for the variety of birds and animals, for life, for children, for so many things that God has given us?

It causes us, interestingly enough, God's goodness, to fear Him. Turn to Jeremiah 33:9. As the prophet Jeremiah is describing the coming restoration of God's people in the end times, he says this in verse 9. "It will be to Me a name of joy, praise and glory before all the nations of the earth which will hear of all the good that I do for them [that is, my people], and they will fear and tremble because of all the good and all the peace that I make for it." It's kind of a strange thought, isn't it, that God's goodness should cause us to fear Him? Why is that? Because the same God who gives is the God who can easily take away. The God who grants us those expressions of goodness is the same God who if He closes His hands we wither away. It should teach us to fear God.

We enjoy God's blessings, and let me tell you what happens. We begin to think we did it. We begin to think that what we enjoy is the product of our own labor, the product of our own intelligence. That's exactly what Israel did. Moses says listen, when you move into houses that you didn't build. and you reap fruit from vineyards you didn't plant, don't forget that God is the One who has prospered you and given you that wealth. But let me tell you, that is a human condition to enjoy prosperity and to begin to think that it's what we did, it's something we accomplished. And therefore God's goodness—when we really come to understand that every good thing we have didn't come from us, it wasn't the product of our own labor, it wasn't the product of our own ingenuity, it wasn't the product of our own intelligence, when we really come to understand that, then we'll come to fear God.

God's goodness means that we too should do good to others. Turn back to Matthew chapter 5. We touched on this verse a few minutes ago, but I want you to see it in its context. Matthew 5:43. It's in the middle of the Sermon on the Mount. Jesus is teaching His disciples and the people about the basic principles of kingdom living, what it's like to live in the kingdom He rules. And He says, verse 43,

"You have heard that it was said, 'You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.' But I say to you, love your enemies, pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be the sons of your Father who is in heaven; for He causes His sun to rise on the evil and the good, [He] sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous. For if you love those who love you, what reward do you have? Do not even tax collectors do the same? [In other words, those who have no morals do that.] If you greet only your brothers, what are you doing more than others? Do not even the Gentiles do the same? [He said no, I want you] to be perfect, as your heavenly father is perfect."

In other words, I want you to show perfect, unbiased love, just as your heavenly Father shows perfect, unbiased love or goodness. Both to enemy and friend, we are to do good to all. There's no place for revenge and grudges in the Christian life and experience. If you sit here tonight and you know in your heart there is a wall between you and a brother and sister in Christ, because you have built that wall, because you have allowed a grudge to fester, because you've harbored bitterness in your heart, then you are not honoring the goodness of God to you, even if they've sinned against you. Christ says love those who've proven themselves to be your enemies, much less a brother or sister in Christ who may have sinned against you.

But our care and our goodness toward others is to be especially toward one group. Notice Galatians 6:10. Paul says, "So then, while we have opportunity, let us do good to all people, and especially to those who are of the household of... faith." We're to concentrate our care and goodness toward those who are in Christ, toward everyone, but especially those who are of the household of faith.

A couple of other applications. God's goodness should motivate us to encourage others to taste His goodness and to take refuge in Him. I won't have you turn there. We quoted the verse a few minutes ago. O taste and see, the psalmist says, that the Lord is good; how blessed, how happy, are those who take refuge in Him. You see, when you have tasted of God's goodness, when you have come to comprehend and understand that God is good in His basic character, He's good to all of His creatures, then you'll be quick to say to others, "Taste and see. I found Him to be good. Taste and see that the Lord is good."

By the way, I skipped one thing that I want to go back and touch on briefly. When I said that it means we must do good to all, I meant to mention a couple of things there that I didn't. Doing good to others is a part of the fruit of the Spirit. If you're a true believer, then you demonstrate goodness to other people. You remember, in Galatians 5:22 we're told that part of the fruit of the Spirit is what? Goodness. We reflect the character of God if we're one of His children. We do good. And in fact, in 3 John 11 we're told that it's a test. Let's look at that. I meant to look at this before we left this point, and I inadvertently skipped it. Look at 3 John 11. If you're truly a Christian, here's how you respond: "Beloved, do not imitate what is evil, but what is good. The one who does good is of God; the one who does evil has not seen God." He's speaking of a couple of kinds of good here. One is the moral kind of good; that is, reflecting God's character, obeying His laws, doing what He's command. And part of what He's commanded is to actively pursue the good of others. To do good to others is a demonstration of the reality of our faith.

Just a couple more I want you to see. God's goodness should compel us to cast our burdens on the Lord. I love1 Peter chapter 5. Peter is hard not to like when you see his character in the gospels. He was forever getting himself in trouble. But Peter came to understand something about God, and you see it in 1 Peter 5:7. He said, verse 6, I want you to "humble yourselves" before God, and you do that by "casting all [of] your anxiety on Him." Humble yourselves by casting everything that is a cause of anxiety to you on Him. Why? What's the motivation? Because you've come to understand that "He cares for you," that He's good, that He means your good. And so you come to Him, and you cast everything that's a cause of anxiety on Him, because you know that He means it for good in your life, that He only wants what's good for you. It compels us to cast our burden on the Lord.

I won't turn to any of these, but I'll just cite in the interest of time. God's goodness means that it's appropriate to ask for God's goodness to be shone on us, and you find that in each of these references. But other times it means simply to let the Lord do what seems good to Him. Sometimes to say God, do this, show me Your goodness in this way; and other times it simply means to say God, whatever You think is good, that's what I want. Both are wholly appropriate.

The last two I want you to see tonight are, because God is Good we should anticipate God's goodness throughout our lives. Notice Psalm 23, the favorite Psalm of many, a Psalm you memorized in the early part of your life, probably, if you're like most. Psalm 23:6. He ends this Psalm about God as our shepherd, our caregiver, our provider, our protector, he ends it this way. Verse 6, "Surely goodness and lovingkindness will follow me all the days of my life." What a beautiful expression. One writer called God's goodness and His lovingkindness to the believer "the hounds of heaven." It's as if, as you live your life and you walk through the paths that God has called you to, it's as if goodness and lovingkindness are right behind, following you wherever you go. Because God is good, believer, you should anticipate God's goodness to you throughout your life. You may go through difficult times, you may face trouble, but remember (we saw even in God's discipline) He means it for our good. Even hard times He causes us all things to work together for good. You can fall back—whether you find yourself in times of health and prosperity and plenty on the goodness of God, or whether you find yourself in times of want and sickness and trouble, you can fall back on God's goodness. He is good.

But I love this. Not only should we anticipate God's goodness throughout our lives here, but we should anticipate God's goodness throughout eternity. Look at Jeremiah. The prophet Jeremiah, again, is describing how things will be someday when God sets everything right, when we look at the end of time. Jeremiah 31:12. This is the chapter where he rehearses that new covenant that you and I are a part of. This is the chapter where he reminds us that someday God is going to set everything right, He's going to restore everything the way it ought to be. And it's in that context he says (notice verse 12),

"They will come and shout for joy on the height of Zion,

And they will be radiant over the bounty of the Lord—

[literally, "the goodness of the Lord" in the Hebrew text]

Over the grain and the new wine and the oil,

[all of those things that enrich life]

And over the young of the flock and the herd;

And their life will be like a watered garden,

And they will never languish again.

Then the virgin will rejoice in the dance,

And the young men and the old, together,

[And] I will turn their mourning into joy

And I will comfort them and give them joy for their sorrow.

I will fill the soul of the priests with abundance,

And My people [watch this] will be satisfied with My goodness," declares the Lord.

You know, it's a sad thing to confess, isn't it, that God is good to us here, but very often we aren't satisfied with His goodness? We want something else. We want something God hasn't given; we don't want what He has given. But the day will come when we are perfect, when He makes all things new, that we will be satisfied with the goodness of God. Think about that. We read it this morning in Ephesians 2, where Paul says in the ages to come God is going to work at demonstrating His goodness, His grace and His kindness toward us, so all the rest of creation can see. That's God's plan in eternity. He's going to so lavish us with His goodness and His grace that everyone else, and we included, praise Him for how good He is. What a good God we serve. Let's pray together.

Father, if we're honest, as we've studied this tonight, it seems almost too good to be true. Lord, when we think about Your goodness, when we think about all that You have expressed to us, we're overwhelmed. Lord, give us grateful hearts, fill us with praise and adoration and thanksgiving for Your goodness. Lord, we confess to You that we're prone to complain, we're prone to look at what You haven't given us, we're prone to concentrate on the difficulties we experience. Lord, forgive us. We are a people who whine constantly. But Lord, I pray that You would cause us to be satisfied with Your goodness. Help us to rejoice in all that You have provided. Help us to constantly be looking at all that's around us, at every manifestation of Your goodness, and giving You praise for it, lifting You up in our thoughts and in the minds of others, even as we talk about how good You are. Lord, don't let us be like those who don't know You who aren't thankful. And Lord, I pray for the person here tonight who's never come to really appreciate Your goodness, and particularly Your goodness as it's given to us in Christ. Lord, I pray that as they look at their lives, as they look at what You've taught in Your Word about Yourself, as they see Your goodness lived out in their lives, that it would do exactly what You intended for it to do, and that is it would produce true repentance in their hearts. Lord, help them to turn from their ingratitude, from their craving of other things, from all the sins that they've attached themselves to and to turn to You in repentance and faith. And Father, help us who know You to love You and adore You and praise You all our days, for You are good. We pray it in Jesus' name, amen.