The Goodness of God
Notes
Transcript
Today I want us to consider the amazing goodness of our God. Not all understand just how good God is. In fact, verse 43 tells us that the wise person is the one that understands the lovingkindness of our God. The majority of people in the world have no idea of how good our God truly is. As natural as it is for us to understand the goodness of our God, most people do not. The problem is that most people have not seen God. As Christians we see Him through the revelation of scripture, the Person of Christ, and through the eye of faith. All one must do to recognize God’s goodness is to see Him. He radiates goodness.
If you and I could travel through the heavens and into eternity where the throne of God dwells, and we could gaze upon our magnificent God we would cry out very naturally, “God is good!”
The term “good” is “Tov” in the Hebrew. It is an adjective that means a variety of things. Some of its meanings are: beautiful, excellent, lovely, precious, kind, & righteous. The goodness of God does not merely refer to the way in which He deals with His creation. God was good before there was a creation. His goodness is not determined by how He reacts and responds to creation. God is good by virtue of who He is. Therefore, he will always be good & all He ever does will be good. Just as anything that we may take up out of the water is wet, whatever proceeds from our God is good.
The goodness of God tells us that God is beautiful, excellent, lovely, precious, kind, righteous and absolutely perfect in all His ways. God is eternally good just because of Who He is. He does not need to prove or earn His goodness. We must simply recognize it.
The Psalmist tells us that we are to give thanks to the Lord because He is good. Primarily, we are to thank God for Who He is. He is the merciful, kind, & good God.
Therefore, if God never did anything for His creation it would still be our duty to give thanks to him. He is still good. If He never made the sun rise, the rooster crow, flowers bud, crops yield fruit, sick whole, thirsty quenched, hungry full, dead rise, prayers answered, if there never was a Calvary God would still be good! You see friend, before He did any of these things, He was already good!
Psalm 107 reveals that God is good to the lost, the bound, the fool and the storm tossed. There is a key phrase in this Psalm that summarizes it. The phrase is found in verses 8, 15, 21, and 31. The Psalmist has a great desire for mankind to praise God for His goodness and His wonderful works to us.
Let’s begin by considering God’s goodness toward the lost (1-9). Verse 2 says “Let the redeemed of the Lord say so!” The entire creation is to praise God, however, the redeemed are encouraged to shout into all the earth that they are redeemed. The word “redeemed” means to “buy back something”. As unbelievers we were lost in our sin. Our sin had sold us into slavery. We owed a debt that we could never pay. Christ went to the cross for our sins and purchased our pardon by paying our debt. Now we are redeemed! It is the duty of the believer to sing as Fanny Crosby wrote,
“Redeemed, redeemed, redeemed by the blood of the Lamb,
Redeemed, redeemed, His child and forever I am.”
The redeemed of the Lord are to say so! It seems that many of the professing redeemed of our day simply say “Redeemed? So…” We are no longer amazed by grace. When we cease to be amazed by God’s grace, we become unthankful. When we are unthankful, we fail to tell God of His goodness. Let’s consider our text as it tells us what it means to be lost.
First of all, verse 2 tells us that to be lost means to be under the hand of the enemy. The reference to “hand” here refers to power. When we are lost, we are under the power of the enemy.
To the Jew the reference was to the days of Egyptian bondage. As slaves they were under a death sentence. They had no power to keep their own lives. They were property of Egyptian pagans that had no problem with slaughtering even the youngest of the Hebrew children.
The Bible reveals that we are all under the power of a great enemy called death. Death haunts us all. It is no respecter of persons. It will take the child or the elderly. Without Christ death will ultimately culminate in what the Bible calls the second death which is the lake of fire. Death is a great enemy of mankind. However, Jesus defeated death for all who would believe in Him. He suffered the most horrific death in all of human history. He was placed in a borrowed tomb for three days. He then rose from the dead proving to all the world that our great enemy has been defeated.
We have other enemies as well. The Bible teaches us that the world, the flesh, and the devil are our enemies.
This present world system stands against the ways of our God. Its goal is to fit us into its mold. One day, the word of God promises us, this world will pass away, and a new earth will be created.
The flesh is a great enemy of the soul. The flesh is that nature we received from Adam. Paul speaks of our struggle between the old Adamic nature and our new nature in Romans chapter seven. We’ve all struggled with the weakness of the flesh as it strives against the desires of the Spirit within us. One day we will no longer struggle with that. In heaven we will have a glorified body untouched by the effects of Adams sin. Every thought and deed we do in glory will be pure. “we know that when he shall appear, we shall be like Him, for we shall see him as He is” ( 1 John 3:2).
And finally, the devil will be destroyed. We have no greater enemy than the devil. He hates us. He wants to see us unforgiven. He desires that we live in sin and fail to give God the proper place in our lives. He is roaming the earth even now seeking whom he may devour. The redeemed will soon live in a world where there is no devil. He will be confined eternally to the lake of fire with his angels and all who reject Christ.
To be lost means that we are under the power of all of these enemies. We are under the power of death, the world, the flesh, and the devil. But to be redeemed means that we have victory over these enemies!
Let the redeemed shout in victory! Let us shout in adoration! Let us shout with joy toward our God who has sought after and found the lost sheep who was under the power of all his enemies.
Secondly, to be lost means to be hungry and thirsty as revealed in verse 5.
It is only a matter of time before the lost run out of food and water. They journey for some time living on the rations they have. But soon they run out of nutrients. The story was told by Jesus of a certain prodigal son. He demanded his fortune be given him before the appropriate time. His father honored the request. For some time, the young man enjoyed his new life. He feasted on the best foods, drank the sweetest wine and had a multitude of friends. Then the food and wine ran out. He found himself in a famine, hungry and thirsty. He was so hungry that he was contemplating eating the food the pigs ate. It was then that he came to his senses. He knew that no one went hungry at his father’s house. In humility he returned to his father. Upon seeing the son’s brokenness, the father received his son. He clothed him with a ring, shoes, & a robe. Then he had the fatted calf killed and celebrated the homecoming of the son with a feast.
Before we came to Christ we were hungry and thirsty. For some time, we lived off of the rations provided by our own selves and the world around us. But for the redeemed there came a day when they realized they had a famine in their soul. They were starving spiritually. We came to our senses and went to the only place we could be eternally filled. We went home to our Father in humility. He received us with a robe of righteousness and a satisfaction that only He could give.
It all happened when as verse 6 says, “We cried unto the Lord in our trouble and He delivered us out of our distresses!”
As a result of all of this verse 8 tells us what we ought to do! We ought to praise God for His goodness and for His wonderful works to the children of men.”
The Psalm also tells us that God is good to those that are bound (10-16).
Let’s consider some truths about the bound mentioned here.
They were imprisoned because of their own sinful acts. Verse eleven reveals that these individuals were ungodly rebels that hated the laws of God. It is not the persecuted for the faith we are looking at. These are men that wanted nothing to do with God. They lived their lives by their own rules.
They were imprisoned in a dark dungeon according to verse 10. The prisons of old were nothing like the prisons of today. There was no recreation time, no television, no weight room, and no windows. These men sat n damp darkness.
They were awaiting their death according to verse ten as well. The only thing they had to look forward to was death. At any moment a soldier may appear to take them from the dungeon and have them executed. They had no hope.
Verse 10 also says that they were bound with iron. They had no opportunity for escape. Heavy chains bound them to the walls, other prisoners, and themselves.
They were forced into hard labor in verse 12. The labor was not optional. It was required.
And finally, verse 12 tells us that there was no one to help them. Who would dare attempt to rescue a guilty prisoner from such a place? To do so would have been to condemn themselves.
Then something amazing happens. They cried out to God and He saved them. He took them out of darkness, out of death, and out of slavery. No doubt we would expect the righteous to rejoice when they are set free from such a place. But how much more should the guilty rejoice when they are rescued from the dungeon?
Friends we were like these imprisoned men. We were guilty, imprisoned in darkness, awaiting our death sentence, bound in our sin, with no one to help us. Then we cried unto God and He delivered us from darkness to light, from death to life, from bound to free! We ought to praise Him for His goodness and His wonderful acts toward us!
We see God’s goodness toward the fool in verses 17-22. Affliction comes to the fool because of his sinful lifestyle.
The fool lives his life apart from God. He usually indulges in behavior that affects him physically. He may indulge in alcohol. As a result of his indulgence affliction comes into his life. He may develop cirrhosis of the liver. The fool may turn to drugs. Addiction may cause his body to be afflicted. He may turn to immorality. His sin may be rewarded by the contraction of diseases.
The fool may become so depressed that he no longer wants to eat or drink. Even at a young age he may find himself near death because he lives a sinful lifestyle.
In the midst of his despair the fool realizes he needs God in his life. He cries out to the Lord and the Lord saves him.
God’s hand of mercy is extended toward the drunk, the prostitute, and the drug addict. Those who foolishly hurt themselves with their lifestyles can still find help in the Lord.
The fool understands that he has caused himself all the pain he is enduring. That is why he is to praise God. God could have said, “I told you so!” or “You deserve it!” Instead He says, “Come unto me and I will give you rest.”
We ought to thank God that we are reaping better than we have sown! The wounds he has healed in our lives were a result of our own foolish choices. Thank God He restores what we destroy as we call on His Name.
The last group of people we see in Psalm 107 is the storm tossed (23-32). Our text has dealt with sinners so far. Now we come to a transitional point in the Psalm. The storm tossed are not referred to by any sin they have committed. Because of this we can interpret this group of people as God’s saints.
They are on the boat (23). They have entered God’s grace. They know of God’s goodness because they have tasted of His salvation.
They have seen the works & wonders of the Lord (24). As they have traveled the high seas they have stood in awe at His creation and been blessed by His provisions.
God’s people do not escape this life without experiencing storms (25).
When storms come, hold on (26-27). Many jump ship when storms come. They only find themselves swallowed up by the storm. The sailors knew to hold on in the storm. The storm would eventually pass. Their only danger would be if the ship sunk. The believer doesn’t have to worry about his ship sinking. Our ship is the Lord Jesus Himself. He cannot sink.
Don’t be afraid. Children are naturally afraid of thunder. It’s the fear of the unknown. As they grow, they understand that storms, while scary, bring abundant fruit to the land. Without them the land would be a desert. The mature believer understands that storms water our lives. An absence of storms would produce believers that brought forth little fruit. We are not to faint when storms come. We are to rejoice knowing that our faith is being tried and God is doing a work in our lives.
When storms come, don’t try to handle them by yourself (“wits end”). You and I can’t stop the storm. How silly we look when we try to stop the storm. We can only endure the storm. When we try to rescue ourselves from storms in our lives, we come to our wits end. It is an impossible task.
The storm-tossed saints cry out to God in the midst of the storm.
He calms the storm. To every storm there is an end. Whatever trial the saint is enduring will pass. We should be sure to remember to praise God for deliverance from the storms. It’s easy to forget the turmoil the storm had us in. It’s easy to forget the prayers and promises we made. It’s easy to forget the fear we were in. We often forget the desperation we were in once the waves subside. We must always remember to praise God when the winds stop.
He takes us to our destination. Notice it is our desired haven. Soon our ship will dock. When we exit, we will find ourselves on the shores of glory. Heaven is the desired haven of the saint.
We ought to praise God friends! We ought to praise Him because He found us when we were lost. We ought to praise Him because He set us free when we were imprisoned. We ought to praise Him because heard us despite our foolish choices. And finally, we ought to praise Him because He calms every storm we weather.
Praise God!!!