The Goodness Of God

INTRO.- Is anyone truly good? We often say, “He or she is really a good person.” Or “they have a good heart.”

ILL.- CASPER, Wyo. Perhaps you heard the story. Two college students returned a lost purse to its owner, not knowing the handbag contained her life savings.

Derek Hepner and Adam Simanton spotted the purse lying in the gutter of a street last Monday as they drove past it. Stopping to examine the bag, they pulled out a wallet and an Arizona driver’s license and immediately took the purse to police.

What they didn’t see was an envelope containing $43,000 in cash that was the owner’s life savings, police Sgt. Larry Baker said. The owner had been traveling through Casper and apparently misplaced her purse during a stop, police said.

The woman phoned Hepner on Thursday to inform him of a $200 reward for the two Casper College students. Hepner is studying criminal justice, and Simanton plans to be a lawyer.

“I can’t believe we had that much money in our possession and didn’t even know it,” Simanton said.

Brothers and sisters, I would say those boys did very well. They did a good thing and were acting from a good heart. Hopefully, we all would do the same good thing.

Now on the other hand, there is that guy named Chai Vang from St. Paul, Minn, a deer hunter, who shot and killed six other deer hunters over a dispute of him using their deer stand in Wisconsin. When I read about that incident I could hardly believe it, thinking, “How could a person go that crazy over a deer stand?”

His younger brother said of him, “I still don’t believe it. He is one of the nicest persons. Maybe something provoked him. He is a reasonable person.”

Reasonable? And you shoot and kill six people? That doesn’t sound very reasonable to me. You don’t go around shooting people if there is good on the inside of you!

Matthew 12:33-35 “Make a tree good and its fruit will be good, or make a tree bad and its fruit will be bad, for a tree is recognized by its fruit. You brood of vipers, how can you who are evil say anything good? For out of the overflow of the heart the mouth speaks. The good man brings good things out of the good stored up in him, and the evil man brings evil things out of the evil stored up in him.”

Both evil and good come from within. If it’s on the outside, it came from within.

ILL.- One time I saw an interview with the actor, Burt Reynolds. He made some comment about God, saying, “You blew it, God. You’re wrong.” I don’t recall why he said God was wrong. It’s been years and I have forgotten the whole story. But I thought, “Burt, you are the one who has blown it. You are wrong.”

Burt Reynolds has blown it so many times in life He certainly doesn’t have any business accusing God of evil! No one does, and yet some people do question the goodness of God. When some people see the war in Iraq, starving and homeless people, famine in the world, violence, etc. they tend to say, “Where is God?” Or “How could God be good?”

Matthew 19:16-17 “Now a man came up to Jesus and asked, "Teacher, what good thing must I do to get eternal life?" "Why do you ask me about what is good?" Jesus replied. "There is only One who is good.”

There is only one person who is truly good. Only one who is good to the core and that is our God.

Even though we may not understand everything that goes on in this world (the good and the evil), there is one thing that we must understand. GOD IS GOOD!

Don’t go around blaming God for all the evil in the world. Blame Satan. Blame sinful man, but don’t blame God. God created a perfect world but mankind has corrupted it. Now we’re paying the piper.

We of all people should recognize the goodness of God! We can’t expect all people to see God’s goodness, but people who truly know Him know that He is good.

PROP.- Our text in Ps. 16 focuses on the goodness of God in the sense of how good God is to us.

1- Good fellowship

2- Good heritage

3- Good counsel

4- Good hope

I. GOOD FELLOWSHIP

Ps. 16:3 “As for the saints who are in the land, they are the glorious ones in whom is all my delight.”

God has given us good fellowship with one another and for this, we should be thankful.

ILL.- A little girl once cried out in the night and woke her mother. She asked if she could get in bed with her mother.