God Is Good

God is Good

8-27-00 Kingman, Az

Thank you for the invitation to share with you. Greetings from the fellowship in Sedona. We live in a strange community, where it is not uncommon to see bumper stickers that say things like, I am Light, or Due to circumstances within our control Armageddon has been cancelled. But the one that really gets me is the one that reads simply, I AM. Thank God, the I AM doesn’t drive a VW van. If the guy driving that van has numbered our days, we’re in trouble. Somehow I don’t think he was the one that hung the stars in space and sustains all things by his word. It would be funny if it weren’t so sad. I want to talk about God who is infinitely above his Creation.

It is important for us to listen to a number of men with the gift of teaching. I believe it is a part of God’s plan for us as God gives each man a unique revelation of Himself. The Holy Spirit has revealed Jesus to John in a way that is a different angle from what I have seen. And each of you, I trust, have a revelation that adds something to this fellowship’s revelation of Jesus. RC Sproul has a wonderful revelation of the Holiness of God, for example. When I listen to him talk on that subject I am always in awe. But other things he speaks on – well lets just say I disagree. What I would like to share with you is the revelation that is dearest to me, the goodness of God.

An Air Force study showed that we forget 95% of what we hear in 72 hours. Right up front, I want to share with you the 5% I would like you to remember, so that Thursday morning you will still be able to remember it. God is good, all the time and all the time God is good. It is sometimes done as like a very short responsive reading. I say God is good, and you respond all the time, then I say And all the time, and you respond, God is good. Practice- and then like we mean it. If we really believe that it will change our lives.

In AW Tozer’s book Knowledge of the Holy he wrote, “The whole outlook of mankind might be changed if we could all believe we dwell under a friendly sky, and that the God of heaven, although exalted in power and majesty, is eager to be friends with us.” Let me say that again but apply it to us personally. Your whole outlook would be changed if you could believed you dwelt under a friendly sky, and that the God of heaven, although exalted in power and majesty, is eager to be your friend.

TB McCully said that the measure of a man’s true character is what he would do if he knew he would never be found out. Why is that? Why should we be any different in private than we are in public? If we really believe we serve a good God and that He sees us in everything that we do, and that we are his, why would we be any different? I’m talking about what the Psalmist said were secret sins. Maybe it is in your thought life, maybe your family knows, but the community doesn’t have a clue.

Real character is realizing that you are always in the presence of God and acting accordingly. If you really believe that God is good and only has good things for you then your public and your private life wont be any different. Ps 16:2 I said to the Lord, you are my LORD, apart from You I have no good thing. In Mt 19:17 Jesus said, “God alone is good.” The call of God on our life is for us to forsake our ways and thoughts because they are not good. Isaiah 65:2 (NIV)2 “All day long I have held out my hands to an obstinate people, who walk in ways not good, pursuing their own imaginations” But if we forsake our ways then we need to accept his ways for they are only and always good. So as we go through this, I want to expand your understanding of the goodness of God. I want to give you an unchangeable motivating factor for your public and your private life.

Read together Jeremiah 29:11 , Psalm 73 first and last verse, John 10:10, Psalm 16:11.

Sounds like a good God doesn’t it? Jeremiah said God has good things planned for us. Ephesians 2:10 tells us that God has planned for us to do good things, and He provides the gifts and his life within you, to do those good things. God has made a way for you to participate in His goodness. All goodness is of God but He has made a way for you to experience his goodness personally. He has made it possible for you to share in his goodness. If we could grasp the truth of this, that God is good and is directing our lives into good things with good results, it would change our outlook.