God Is Good All the Time

[0:00] God is good all the time, and there are many who doubt that, who doubt the goodness of God. Many have questions about, if God were good, why is there war?

[0:13] If God is so good, why does He allow natural disasters like the latest hurricane and the other typhoons that are out there around the world?

[0:23] If God is good, why do children die? There are so many people that have those questions, and it's questions that we deal with on a fairly regular basis.

[0:37] I know with some of the things that we do when we're dealing with people who have been through traumas, people who have been through critical incidents involving children, involving things of that nature, very often there's the question, how could a good God allow this to happen?

[0:54] And at that point in time, they're not necessarily wanting an answer, but they're hurting, and so that's where they reach out to. And the fact is, we don't know all the answers to life's questions.

[1:10] We have God's Word that tells us about Him, that tells us about His will, but we really don't know the answers to all of life's questions.

[1:22] We know the basic answer because there's sin in this world. Because of sin, everything has been cursed, and there are consequences to sin, and there are also things that we go through that are just simply because we are part of the human race.

[1:39] But when we bring it down to questions like, why did this person die? Why did that happen? We have to kind of let things up to God, and know that God's ways are higher than our ways.

[1:54] The things that God does are beyond our comprehension. We see that in Isaiah 55 and verse number 8. It tells us, God says, for my thoughts are not your thoughts, nor are your ways my ways, says the Lord.

[2:12] God says, the stuff that you've got in your mind, that's not what I think about. My ways are your thoughts are not my thoughts, and your ways not my ways. And so our knowledge is limited.

[2:25] We don't always understand why God is doing what He is doing. God's knowledge is unlimited. Our knowledge is limited. We see in Isaiah 55, 9, God's Word says, for as the heavens are higher than the earth, we can't reach out to the moon.

[2:44] Now, we may be able to send a rocket ship to the moon, but what about the farthest galaxy that the telescopes can see? We can't, and we know that there's even a creation beyond that.

[2:56] And so the Bible says, for as the heavens are higher than the earth, God says, so are my ways higher than your ways. No comparison. We can't even come close to understanding how God operates and why God does what God does.

[3:14] And He says, and my thoughts than your thoughts. So if someone presumes to say, God is not good because, then we can ask them, are you God?

[3:33] Do you understand everything that there is to understand about God? And what if they tell you, well, there is no God? Do you have all of the knowledge in the universe?

[3:44] How can we know what we don't know? Has there been any point in time in your life where you said something was not true? And it turned out later that you were wrong because you didn't have all the facts and all the knowledge?

[3:57] And there is no one, if they're intellectually honest, will say that we can know beyond a shadow of a doubt that we know everything. So God says, my ways are higher than your ways.

[4:08] My thoughts higher than your thoughts. God's knowledge is unlimited. So why does God do what God does? We don't know. And so when we think about the goodness of God, we may not know everything, but this is one thing that we can know from God's Word and that I believe if we truly understand God, we know that God is good.

[4:34] If we look at our text this morning, Psalm 72, 18, and this closes out, Psalm 72 closes out book number two of the Psalms.

[4:47] Psalms is divided into five books and this is the second doxology in the book of Psalms or the book of songs. And David is closing this out in his second book of songs.

[5:01] He says, blessed be the Lord God, the God of Israel, who only does what? Who only does wondrous things.

[5:11] Who only does marvelous things. Who only does things beyond our comprehension. So God is good. The God of Israel only does wondrous, marvelous, wonderful things.

[5:27] We may think, well, from this perspective, God, it doesn't look like that you're doing wonderful things. But remember, what does the Bible say? God's ways are higher than our ways.

[5:38] God's thoughts higher than our thoughts. God has a plan. There is an end in mind. There is a goal that we are not aware of. There are times when someone says, do this.

[5:49] And we go, well, why? If we don't have all the facts, we may not understand why someone wants us to do something. But in their mind, they know the goal.

[5:59] And what they're asking us to do will accomplish that goal. It may make absolutely no sense. It may be totally contrary to our understanding. Or even our values.

[6:12] But if we realize, sometimes we don't always understand what God knows. And there are things that may yet be for us to understand. And so, this second doxology in David's second book concludes book number two.

[6:28] So we ask ourselves the question this morning, as we're going to go throughout Scripture this morning, asking ourselves the question, how do we know God is good?

[6:39] How do we know that God is good? Well, first of all, we can say that we know God is good because of who He is. Because of who He is.

[6:50] Let's look at Isaiah chapter 6. And let's take a glimpse into Isaiah's experience as he was in the very presence of God, in God's throne room.

[7:02] We see in Isaiah chapter 6, beginning with verse number 1, In the year that King Uzziah died, I saw the Lord sitting on a throne, high and lifted up, and the train of His robe filled the temple.

[7:15] Above it stood seraphim, one of the classifications of angels. Each one had six wings. With two He covered His face, with two He covered His feet, and with two He flew.

[7:26] And one cried to another and said, Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts. The whole earth is full of His glory.

[7:36] And the posts of the door were shaken by the voice of Him who cried out, and the house was filled with smoke. So I said, Woe is me, for I am undone, because I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips.

[7:55] For my eyes have seen the King, the Lord of hosts. Then one of the seraphim flew to me, having in his hand a live coal, which he had taken with the tongs from the altar.

[8:09] And he touched my mouth with it, and said, Behold, this has touched your lips, your iniquity is taken away, and your sin purged.

[8:22] And also I heard the voice of the Lord saying, With whom or whom shall I send, and who will go for us? Then I said, Here I am, send me.

[8:34] Isaiah had a vision of God's what? What were the angels crying out? Holy, holy, holy. So Isaiah had a vision of the holiness of God, that God was holy.

[8:49] The creatures of heaven, the angels, all of God's created beings in heaven were crying out, that He is holy, that He is righteous, that He is wonderful.

[9:00] And then John confirmed that in his vision in Revelation 5. He heard the angels crying out, Holy, holy, holy. Do you realize that holiness and evil cannot coexist?

[9:15] So there is no evil in God. Holiness cannot coexist with evil. And since God is holy, He must therefore be, according to the laws of logic, be good.

[9:29] Evil and holiness cannot be mixed. If God is holy, then therefore God is good. We see that from Scripture. So we can be sure that God is good all the time.

[9:44] And all the time, God is good. So we see from Scripture that God has a plan. That we see that what He is doing also is good.

[9:57] And that brings us to our second reason why we can say that God is a good God. We know that God is good because of what God has done.

[10:08] The goodness of God is revealed in Genesis chapter 1. God creates, and then He looks at His creation and says, it is good.

[10:19] God confirmed that His creation was good multiple times. Genesis chapter 1, verse 10, verse 12, verse 18, verse 21, and verse 25.

[10:31] God says, He looked at His creation and said, it is good. It is good. And this is just kind of an aside. There's one thing that God says was not good.

[10:43] And that was, man did not have a helpmate. Adam did not have someone to compliment him and help him through life. Adam was not complete. God said it's not good.

[10:55] And so, He took a rib from Adam's side and created woman, created Eve to be there for Him. Even the heavens declare the glory of God.

[11:08] We see that in Psalm 19. 1. The Bible says if man won't declare the praise and the glory of God, that even the rocks are going to cry out.

[11:19] And so, man, mankind, was created for God's glory. We were created to praise Him. And the goodness of God is also revealed in something else God has done.

[11:34] God loved you and me. God loves you and me so much that He sent His Son, Jesus Christ, to die on the cross in His place. God could have left us in our lost condition, but He did not.

[11:49] We see in Romans chapter 5, verses 8 through 11, we see, but God demonstrates His love toward us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.

[12:02] Much more then, having now been justified by His blood, we shall be saved from wrath through Him. For if when we were enemies, we were reconciled to God through the death of His Son, much more having been reconciled, reconciled, we shall be saved by His life.

[12:25] And not only that, but we also rejoice in God through our Lord Jesus Christ through whom we have received the reconciliation. So God has redeemed us.

[12:37] God, through Jesus Christ, paid the penalty for our sin and redeemed us. So everything that God does is good.

[12:47] We see it in what God has done. So sinners can be saved because of God's love. We can have a relationship with Him because He is so good.

[13:00] He reached out even though we were His enemies and He sent His Son, Jesus Christ, to die on the cross in our place. So this is God's wondrous work of redemption.

[13:12] And then, thirdly, we see the goodness of God is revealed in what He's doing now. So we know that God is good.

[13:23] The angels say so. We know that God is good in what He has done and what He has created. He looked at it and said, it is good. But also, God is at work now.

[13:34] And some may think, well, it doesn't look so good. But we don't, there are many who don't know the goal that God has and why God is allowing what God is allowing.

[13:48] Because if we don't have all the information, we may not understand why something is happening. Think of it from the perspective when you were a child and your parents disciplined you and they told you it was what?

[14:04] It was for your own good. And you're thinking, that did not feel good. It still does not feel good, especially if you were grounded or especially if you had a privilege taken away.

[14:18] And depending upon how not good you were, that might have lasted for a period of time. time was added on to that.

[14:36] And so it might be a week, two weeks, three weeks, a month, and you're thinking, this is not good. How can this be good? Well, because your parents knew that you needed to learn the lesson.

[14:49] And it did turn out to be good in your life. And so from mankind's perspective, we look at the world, we look at wars, we look at natural disasters, we look at mass victimizations and mass casualties, and we think, how can this be good?

[15:08] Remember, God's ways are higher than our ways. God's thoughts are higher than our thoughts. So who are we to presume that God is not good based on our own limited knowledge and our limited perspective?

[15:24] So we say, well, God's not good because of this. Well, we don't have all the information. And so God has a plan. God is doing wondrous things as we saw in Psalm 72.

[15:38] One thing that he's doing is he's saving all who come to him. All who call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved. Romans chapter 5, verse 1, Therefore, having been justified by faith, we have what?

[15:54] This is what God's doing now. We have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. And so we can come to him, he will receive us, and he is receiving all who come to him.

[16:12] John chapter 6, verse 37. All that the Father gives to me, Jesus says, will come to me and the ones who come to me I will by no means in no wise cast out.

[16:27] And so everyone today who surrenders to him and says, I know I'm a sinner. I need Jesus. All who come to him will be delivered from the penalty of sin and will be received into God's family.

[16:46] God is also causing all things to work out, to gather for good to them who love him. He is working in our lives. If you have trusted Christ as your Savior, know that he is working in your life right now.

[17:04] He is using everything in your life right now ultimately to work out his good plan in your life. We see that in Romans chapter 8 and verse number 28.

[17:17] We know that how many things? We know that all things work together for good to those who love God, to those who are the called according to his purpose.

[17:37] So what are we being told? What do we see here? We see that God is doing good things now in our own lives.

[17:48] He's also moving circumstances in our lives to make us more like him. We see that in Romans 8 29.

[17:59] for whom he foreknew. God looked ahead in time and he saw you and he saw me. He also predestined that those who would come to know Christ as their Savior, he says, would be conformed to the image of his son.

[18:17] So God's plan and what God predetermined beforehand is that everyone who comes to know Christ, everyone who turns to Jesus, God will conform and make us to be more like him.

[18:29] For whom he foreknew, he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his son, that he might be the firstborn among many brethren. Jesus was the first. Jesus was the one who became a human being, who was perfect, died on the cross for our sin, and as Jesus is the son of God in his humanity, the Bible says he has become the firstborn among many brethren.

[18:56] He was the one who was raised from the dead and we too shall be transformed and for some, some won't taste death, some, Jesus Christ will come back before they die, maybe in our lifetime, but we have the opportunity to be transformed into the image and the likeness of Christ.

[19:19] What does all this mean? Number one, everything God does is good, even though to us it seems bad, even though to us, why wouldn't God do something to stop this evil?

[19:32] Why would God not do something to keep this horrible thing from happening, whatever that thing is? Because we don't understand God, because his plans are higher than our plans, we don't understand everything about God, we don't understand everything that is going on and how this puzzle piece fits with that puzzle piece in life.

[19:58] We can't see the big picture, but God can. So know that everything that God does is good, because God is a good God. God is holy, therefore everything God does is good.

[20:12] And then, God wants to do wondrous things in your life. not everything in your life will be wonderful, meaning it won't be fun, it won't be great, meaning it might hurt, it might involve pain, but everything that God wants to do in your life is wondrous, marvelous, because God has the plan to make us perfect one day.

[20:42] It won't happen on earth, but one day you and I will be transformed completely, and we will ultimately experience what it's like not to have the presence of sin in our life.

[20:57] We've been saved from the penalty of sin. During this lifetime, we are being delivered from the power of sin, but one day we will be delivered from the very presence of sin when we are ushered in to the presence of God.

[21:13] So God is doing wondrous things in our life. All things work together for good to them who love God and who are the called according to his purpose. So our question as we leave this morning is, will we respond in faith to God's wonderful plan?

[21:30] Will we respond in faith to say, God, I trust what you are doing. I may not understand what you are doing, but I trust that what you are doing is right and is good.

[21:44] God is a good God. God is good all the time.

[21:58] God is good all the time and all the time. What? God is good. Let us pray. Father, this morning as we've gathered together in your name to look at your goodness and realize, dear Father, that even though we may still have questions about why things happen, why things work out the way they do sometimes, the Lord help us to, by faith, trust in your goodness and trust in your overarching plan and to know that ultimately good will come.

[22:42] We thank you, Father, this morning. We pray that you would work in each heart and life here today to bring us through this week. May we honor you.

[22:55] May we bring glory to your name in what we do and what we say. help us through the times, the difficult times in our life and may we lean on our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ.

[23:12] We pray this in Jesus' name. Amen.