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CPC Sunday School | Attributes of God 5 (10-22-2023)
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This transcript is a prayer and introduction to a lesson on God's goodness in a church setting. The speaker mentions that the lesson is adapted from a book and will cover various aspects of God's goodness, including its definition, where it is revealed in scripture, and how it is challenged by sin. The speaker also discusses different theologians' perspectives on God's goodness and how it relates to other attributes of God. They mention that God's goodness is seen through his creation, his mercy, and his provision. The lesson will conclude with a discussion on how Christians should respond to God's goodness. All right, let's go ahead and pray. Dear Heavenly Father, we thank you for this opportunity to study your character this morning. We thank you for what you revealed about yourself through your scriptures, and we pray that our study and our analysis this morning would be faithful to your word. I pray that you would help me to speak what is true, teach what is true, and nothing more and nothing less. We pray that you'd bless our time together this morning. In Jesus' name, amen. Good morning, everybody, and I would thank you for your time and your continued prayers. This is my first time teaching in a church setting, so your prayers through the course of the Sunday school would be immensely appreciated. We're going to be talking about God's goodness, continuing in the series of lessons that we've been doing, looking at God's attributes. I think we have an excellent lesson in store. I hope that you're as blessed by a look at God's goodness as I have been just in studying it this week, and we're going to look at the captain attribute, as Stephen Charnock calls it, and you'll see why he calls it the captain attribute, but it's good stuff. So before we get going, I will just acknowledge this lesson, pretty much the entire content, is adapted from a book called The Identity and Attributes of God by Terry Johnson, who happens to be our pastor, Alyssa is my pastor from our old church in Savannah. He wrote an excellent book. About 50% of the book is quotes from Puritans and excellent theologians, so it's drawn from some pretty good sources. You'll see those sources cited in here too, but basically my work has been adapting it to this lesson format. So just to give you a quick idea of what we're going to look at today, we're going to spend a little bit of time just introducing the concept of God's goodness, looking at some things that we want to remind ourselves about when we look at studying God's attributes. We'll go through defining and describing what it is in some general terms, different facets and different ways we can define God's goodness. We'll look at how and where it's revealed to us in terms of what we see around us. Then we'll pause from that and look at sin as the challenge to God's goodness, and then resume looking at how God's goodness is revealed specifically through his work of redemption, and finally close with some practical stuff, talking about our response as Christians, how we should respond in light of God's goodness to us. So of course, as we've already been talking about, the first place that we can go and ought to go is our church's confession, the Westminster Confession. The Shorter Catechism asks a question for what is God, and so I think it's always helpful when I read through this answer to think about it in terms of the sentence structure. So God is a spirit. That's the first thing. God is a spirit. He is infinite, eternal, and unchangeable. It's a subset of three things. He is infinite, eternal, and unchangeable in his attributes, his being, his wisdom, power, holiness, justice, goodness, of course, what we're looking at today, and his truth. So that's where we're going to start from, and we're going to remind ourselves that we are looking at God's attributes, and we speak of them as being essential. We speak of them as being part of his very being, that is to say they are not expressions of his character. They're not labels that we put on things that God does. We have to grasp for words to apply to God's essence. That's what we're doing here when we look at God's attributes, but they are his very character. They are his very being, and the example that I've given there is we can't look at them apart from one another, separate from one another. So when we look at an example, like let's say God's judgment on sin, it's kind of easy for us to look at it and think, okay, yeah, that's God's holiness at work. It's his judgment upon sin. He cannot tolerate sin, and so we think of that through a lens of holiness, and we think that's not his goodness at work, that's his holiness at work, but that's not exactly true. That's not how we should look at God. That's not how we should look at his attributes. We have to see them as inseparable from one another. So it is no less than his holiness and his goodness and all of his attributes at work in any one particular act. So that said, the very first place we can stop is, of course, by looking at what Scripture has to say about God's goodness. So here's just a few, a very small selection of examples from Scripture of where God's goodness is mentioned by name. Genesis, of course, tells us that what God creates is good. It calls it both good and very good. So we look at God's creation, we see God's goodness. The psalm says, you are good and do good. So we're basically equating God to goodness, and everything that he does is good. The Lord is good to all, so not just some, but all. The Lord is good to those who are pure in heart, which is to say he is particularly good to his elect, those who are pure in heart. How great is God's goodness, says Zechariah. So we're not looking at something small, something trivial. We're looking at something that is great, expansive. And maybe one of the most important, oh, taste and see that the Lord is good. So we can actually observe and we can experience God's goodness. It's not merely something that exists, but we have no particular knowledge or experience of it. But we can experience and do, of course, experience. So having looked at where God's goodness is mentioned in scripture, we can then first begin to attempt to define God's goodness. And what I think of as kind of going through the scope of this lesson is that we're less going to define God's goodness than we are going to look at facets of God's goodness and what different theologians and, of course, scripture have to say and put some different definitions, just like there are different definitions in the dictionary for different words. We're going to look at different definitions of God's goodness. So first of all, in just very, very simple terms, we can define it both positively, that is to say by defining what it is, and we can also define it negatively by defining what it is not. So just in broad terms, that which characterizes him as kind, generous, trustworthy, gracious makes sense. Negatively, we can define it as that which sets him apart from malice, from cruelty, from harshness. It's just a very simple way to think of God's goodness. And you'll see the name Stephen Charnock a lot through this whole presentation. By design, his work, the existence and attributes of God is excellent. So he says God's goodness is his inclination to deal well and bountifully with his creatures, which is his creation. That perfection of God whereby he delights in his works and is beneficial to them. I think that's a really profound spin on thinking about what God's goodness is, the modus operandi, if you will, by which God reveals his character to be beneficial to that which he has created. I think that's a little bit of a heavy way to put it, but it makes sense. Looking at it differently, we can look at the example of Moses. So Moses asks God, please show me your glory in Exodus. And God answers, I will make my goodness pass before you. Matthew Henry, another Puritan, in his commentary on Exodus explains that God's goodness is his glory and he will have us known by the glory of his mercy more than by the glory of his majesty. That's a theme that we will see in how God chooses to display his goodness to us. Charnock, again, Moses is allowed to gaze on the train of all of his lovely perfections, namely those attributes that spring from his goodness. I think those are some really beautiful examples to look at for sure. Another scriptural example, Amos chapter 5. So Amos says, he's relaying God's word and he speaks God's words that God tells him to speak. So God essentially says, seek me and live. And two verses later, he stops quoting God and Amos himself is preaching, he says, seek the Lord and live. And then a third time in the same chapter, just a few verses later, he says, seek good and not evil that you may live. So once again, we have sort of an equation of God and goodness, which is consistent with our definition and God's attributes as being essential to his nature and being. If you want to try to summarize it, you can look at the idea that all of his other attributes flow out of it as their fountain. The other acts, that is to say, anything that God does are but effluxes or things that flow out of his goodness. As Stronach says, I love this, his goodness is the luster of all of his attributes. It puts a gloss on all of his other attributes. It is the splendor and the loveliness of all of God's attributes, which again, the idea of his attributes being essential, God's goodness being that which is good about everything that God is. So looking even more broadly at some different examples of God's goodness, we can almost take an approach of looking at it in terms of genus and species, looking at taxonomy and nature. So if God's goodness is the genus, then there are some different species of God's goodness as well. This is again from Stronach. When goodness confers happiness without merit, it is grace. When it bestows happiness against merit, it is mercy. When he bears with provoking rebels, it is long-suffering or patience. When he performs his promise, it is truth. When it commiserates a distressed person, it is pity. When it supplies an indigent or needy person, it is bounty. When it secures an innocent person, it is righteousness. When it pardons a penitent person, it is mercy. So all of those being aspects of God's goodness, we start to see that God's goodness is of course expansive. It touches every interaction that God has with his creation. We're seeing God's goodness at work, and we're going to see that more when we look at how else God's goodness is revealed. So this is where Stronach says God's goodness is the captain attribute, in that it leads the rest of God's attributes to action. So only when we see God's goodness as the thing that leads God to act, the thing that leads him to act in ways that are beneficial to us as subjects, as creation, will we truly understand the meaning, the impact that his goodness has upon our lives. So in short, just kind of wrapping it all up, we can say, like David says, I have no good apart from you. We can honestly say, we can truly say, there is no good apart from God. There is no good except by what flows from God. So again, less a definition, there's not exactly one definition that I want to put upon God's goodness, but those are some ways in which we see God's goodness, and we can apply different definitions to it. So let's turn our focus a little bit and look at God's goodness described. We see in the Bible, God's goodness is compared to different things, so it's compared to things that are pleasing, like fountain light, bread, water, that are helpful, that are protective, that are, generally speaking, good, as we would use the word good, things that we find that are good in his created world, and this is, of course, a short list, but some examples, some examples of different facets that you can see of God's goodness. More generally, all that we can observe with our senses, have you thought about that? All that we can observe with our senses, know with our minds, that is pleasing, that is enjoyable, is a reflection of God's goodness, and indeed, it is a dim reflection of God's goodness, because in light of the source of the goodness, James 117 says, every good and perfect gift is from above. I remember reading a little portion of this book that I don't think I have put in one of these slides, but the very fact that we are able to both observe and reason about the things that are good in this world is evidence of God's goodness. God has given us the capacity to both observe them and understand them. In George Swinick's work, The Incomparableness of God, he says, whatever excellencies we find, that is to say, whatever, anything that's good, anything that's excellent, scattered throughout this universe, it is united in and centered after the infinite manner that is God's goodness, the infiniteness of God's goodness as the creator of the universe. Just some more gold from Sharnock, honestly, most of this lesson is apparently going to be just quotations from Stephen Sharnock, but that's fine. Goodness is not a quality in him, but a nature, which we've been speaking of. It's not a habit added to his essence, but his essence itself. It is as inseparable from his nature as his holiness. Nothing can add to make him better, nothing can detract to make him worse. There is no mixture of anything which can be called not good in him. I think that's an important way to state what we've already talked about negatively, that is to say, we can't look at one of his actions, or one of his promises, or one of his words in scripture, place it adjacent to another action, and say, these two things are incongruent, therefore this mixture of things makes God not good. We can't look at any two things and say that. It's an important definition, it's an important description of God's goodness. He is good without mixture, good without weariness. Have you ever thought about God being good without weariness, and how important it is that God is good without weariness? He's not merely good sometimes, and then gets tired of being good, but rather he is part of his goodness, not to be weary of showing his goodness, and what a blessing that is to us. So that's God's goodness described, God's goodness defined somewhat. Of course we can only grasp the words, in a sense, to define and describe God's goodness. But next let's look at how God's goodness is revealed to us. So first, in order, chronologically, it's revealed to us in terms of his creation. We can actually just go straight back to Genesis, of course, in the creation story, and look at the fact that in the very act of creating, God is displaying his goodness. Of course, he's a surrounded man with good things, in a beautiful world, we'll look more at that in a second. But just the very evidence of his creation, his voluntary goodness is what Charnot calls it. He didn't have to create anything, and yet he does. And that in and of itself, that he brings things into being that did not need to be into being, is evidence of his goodness. It was not out of a need that arose from some lack within himself, it was purely out of his good bounty. It's both for our support, which is to say it is there to provide us nourishment, provide us the materials and things that we need, and it's also for our delight. And it didn't have to be that way. God's goodness is evident in the fact that his creation is for both our support and our pleasure. We can engage with all of our senses, it's not merely for our sustenance. We see in Genesis the language, every tree that is both pleasant to the sight and that is good for food. And further, it's seen in his sustenance, his providence, his care for everything that he's created. We see later on in the Bible, Jesus' examples of the fact that God cares for even the smallest and most inconsequential of animals. He clothes the fields, he clothes the grass, and his kindness extends both to redeemed and fallen humanity, that's his common grace at work. He provides for the needs of both his chosen, his elect, and of course those who hate him, those who are evil and those who want nothing to do with God. And as a matter of fact, through his commandments to us, he requires us to extend that goodness to similar extents as well. So we see that he's commanded to treat animals with humanness, you can look at the examples, even in the Old Testament where sacrifices are being prescribed for the Israelites, he commands humanness even in how those sacrifices are to be conducted. One of the examples given was the fact that he commands the Israelites not to kill both an animal and that animal's young on the same day, and I didn't ever really think too hard about that, but I think it was Stephen Charnock that points out the fact that that's evidence of God's goodness because he would have his worship delayed rather than be inhumane to animals. It's not explicitly stated in scripture, but that's the logical consequence. It's a beautiful thing. He also would have us extend that same goodness to people like slaves, fugitives, criminals who are convicted of lesser crimes, people who are poor, people who are debtors. These are all just examples of people who are weak, who are helpless, who are despised, people who are unlovely. God requiring his creation to treat those people and those things with humanness, with goodness. Further, not something that I think about particularly often, his law is good for us. And there's a subset of people who would say, well, his law was good for us before mankind sinned, but now it's a snare, it's not good for us. But that's not true. Actually, his moral law is good for us, both before and after the fall. It forbids us nothing but what would be to our injury, withholds from us nothing that would be a real pleasure to us. Even his warnings, even his warnings and his threats are meant to discourage wickedness and thereby delay or prevent any occasions of severity, which is a hard thing to wrap your mind around sometimes, admittedly. Isaiah calls God's justice his strange work, and Sharonach says it's strange not because it's against his nature, but because it's against his first intention as creator, which is to manifest his goodness to us. Again, that points back to goodness being the modus operandi by which God shows his beneficialness to us, to put it in a different way. So that said, we see God's goodness at work chronologically in the Bible, first through his creation and second through his providential ordering, sustenance, and care for all things. And of course, chronologically in the Bible, we go through Genesis chapters one and two and then we get to Genesis chapter three, which is where sin enters the equation, and we see that sin is actually a challenge to God's goodness, it is the ultimate challenge to God's goodness. So even with such expansive and profound evidence of God's goodness manifested in the garden, even today, even with God's good gifts to us today, we still live in a beautiful world that still provides for all of our needs. Many, many people still look at that and say, well, how do you explain evil? If God is so good, then how do you explain evil? And the argument can really be boiled down to the Christian claim, the Bible's claim, that God is both all-powerful and all-good. The argument there being if God were not all-powerful, then maybe he wouldn't be able to restrain all evil, and then the presence of evil would make sense. Or if God were all-powerful and just not actually all-good, then he wouldn't be inclined to restrain evil, he wouldn't care about restraining evil. So if either one of those things were true, then you could look at evil and say, well, that doesn't make sense, because God is not all-powerful or not all-good. But if we, Christians, claim that God is all-powerful and all-good, then we have to reckon with this idea that God is both good and powerful, and yet there's evil. So let's take a look at that question by looking at sin and redemption. So the context, as we've already said, of the original sin is the garden, where, think about this, God has created a good man, he gave man a good woman when it was not good for man to be alone. Everything that he's created is good. And they have perfect fellowship with God, with one another, and with their surroundings. So it's not as if God has placed all kinds of restrictions, he's not been unreasonable. As a matter of fact, he's been purely benevolent, purely good towards his creation, and that's where we see sin. It's an important backdrop. The challenge to God's goodness basically comes in three parts, and they happen one right after the other. So first, Satan casts doubt, and it's not just any doubt, it's actually doubt upon God's goodness. He says, did God actually say, and he specifically misquotes God, actually, he says, did God actually say, you shall not eat out of any tree in the garden? And of course, the answer to that question should have been a very easy no, because God had in fact placed all of the trees at mankind's disposal, and the one that he required Adam and Eve not to eat of was simply a mark of his sovereignty, says Sharnock. But with that seed of doubt planted, he succeeds in essentially getting Eve to respond to the premise of his question. And then he denies God's goodness, and he says, you will not surely die, and the interesting thing is, we look at that statement, and it seems like he's just lying, but essentially, what he's implying is that God lied, and not only did God lie, God lied out of self-interest, and therefore is not benevolent, is not good. God has a self-interest at stake in preventing your eternal life and your knowledge, which is a direct assault on God's goodness. And so all that was left for them, of course, was to defy God's goodness by doing that which God had prohibited. So if we zoom in even closer, we see that the emotions or desires were engaged, she saw that the tree was good for food, that it was a delight to the eyes, her mind, second, her mind and intellect were engaged, she saw that it was to be desired to make one wise, and finally, the will was activated, she took of the fruit and ate, and it's interesting to note that for any action, not just a sin, but any action, all three of those things have to be in harmony, they have to all consent, if any one of those things does not consent, then the person will not act. So when we look at it like that, when we see that her emotions, her mind, and her will were all totally aligned in that action, that initial action of sin, and by the way, Adam's too, we see that the entire, the whole person, the entire person, the sum of her existence and Adam's existence, acted against the entire known will of God, remembering, of course, at this point, that God has not made any other prohibitions, commandments, except the one. So we have total rebellion, total rebellion of the entire person against the entire will of God, and it's really profound to think about that as a challenge to God's goodness, and that's where we find ourselves. God's goodness revealed in creation, and God's goodness challenged in the act of sin. So now we move back to the most important and the most beautiful place where God's goodness is revealed, and that is in his redemption. So where did that leave us? Having looked at the ways that God's goodness is revealed to us in creation and providence, we've seen just how flippant that challenge is, but when sin enters the picture, we'll see that God's goodness is supremely revealed in redemption. So we take a look again at the contrast. We look at the rest of Genesis, and we see that the inclination, the intention of the thoughts of man was only evil continually, another remarkably complete statement, and yet it is God who decides in his goodness to be good to those who hate him. J.I. Packer says, it is staggering that God should love sinners, yet it is true. God loves creatures who have become unlovely and, one would have thought, unlovable. There was nothing whatever in these objects of his love to call it forth. Nothing in man could attract or prompt it. So we will very briefly look at a handful of different ways in which redemption manifests God's goodness, and I think this is, if you leave with nothing else, just remembering some of these nuggets will be well worth your time here this morning, because God's work in redemption is the beautiful thing. And again, we're going to be following the thread of Sharnock's logic in his discourse on God's existence and attributes. So first, chiefly, redemption's source. God determined to redeem us because he is good. There is no other source. There is no quality within us. There is no requirement placed upon God to redeem us. It is solely out of his good pleasure that he redeems us. Second, the benefits of our redemption to us. Our sins are forgiven, of course. We are reconciled to God. We are granted eternal life. We are regenerated. We're justified, sanctified, preserved, or glorified. Why? We didn't have to be. It's because God is good. The cost of redemption, and here's quoting Sharnock, God was desirous to hear Jesus groaning and see him bleeding, that we might not groan under his frowns and bleed under his wrath. He spared not him, that is Jesus, that he might spare us. In God's giving Christ to be our redeemer, he gave the highest gift that it was possible for divine goodness to bestow. I think that's, I can't say it any better than that. And we take it even a step further. Who bore the cost? Who bore the cost of God's goodness but himself? An ultimate cost borne by God and not by us, the benefactors of his goodness. So we can also look at the extent of our redemption. Beyond being merely forgiven of our sins and justified before God. God could have simply forgiven our sins and placed us in right standing with him and left us there. But he doesn't. He doesn't leave us there. We are adopted into God's family. We are raised with Christ in his resurrection and we are seated with him in the heavenly places. We enjoy, not just some good benefits, but the benefits of Christ's exaltation. With Christ in heaven. The extent of God's goodness is remarkable and profound. The terms of redemption, have you ever thought about the fact that God's goodness is so easy that it would require of us nothing other than belief in Jesus Christ? What prince could require less upon any promise that he makes, his subjects, than to be believed as true and depended on as good? No lesser cost. And even that, again, even that, the faith that he requires, what is it? It's a gift. It's a gift that he gives us. Redemption's methods. We see in God's goodness, not God dragging us tooth and nail to himself, but rather his methods are characterized by gentleness and sweetness. In Matthew 11, Jesus says, come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light. And again, I can't really go beyond that. The provisions that God makes for us in his redemption for our life as Christians, both to draw us to himself and to continue to guide us and meet with us in our flesh, are also very special in terms of how God's goodness is revealed in them. So he's given us his scriptures, he's provided us with his word, which guides us to salvation, but it also teaches, reproves, corrects, trains, and equips us for every good work, from 2 Timothy. He also gives us prayer, in which we can seek God, we can treat God not as simply as the God of the universe, but as our father. Because we've been adopted into God's family, we get to meet with him as a son or a daughter meets with a father. Astronach says he condescends to hear our prayers, so weak, so cold, so wandering, and gather up our sincere petitions from the dung of our distractions and dividends. He promises to answer. Isaiah says, before they call, I will answer, and while they are yet speaking, I will hear. And it does not have to be that way, and yet God in his goodness makes it so. He also gives us the sacraments, wherein he complies with our senses and condescends to our weakness. He instructs us by the eye, that is to say, by what we see in the sacraments, as well as what we hear by what is preached. He lets us see, taste, and feed, and feel him, as well as hear him. He veils his glory under earthly elements and informs our understanding in the mysteries of salvation by signs familiar to our senses. So God condescends to meet with us where we are and manifest himself, provide grace to us, impart grace to us through his sacraments in a way that he did not have to, but in his goodness he provided for. We can even see it in the limits of the redemption that he provides, as in when we encounter temptation or suffering. He does not let us be tempted beyond our ability, says 1 Corinthians. He himself provides the means of escape from our temptation. And occasionally he uses our afflictions and our temptations to prevent us from being vulnerable to sins that we otherwise would have been vulnerable to had we not been tempted or not been afflicted, which is a hard thing to come to terms with sometimes, but nonetheless true. So we can look at an example like the Apostle Paul and his thorn in the flesh, which Paul himself says prevents him from glorifying himself, a sin that he would have been vulnerable to had he not been afflicted with whatever his thorn in the flesh was. Hebrews tells us when we suffer, it is for our good that we may share in his holiness. Sharnock adds to that, the goodness of God makes the devil a polisher while he intends to be a destroyer. I think that's one of my favorite quotes from this lesson. Think about that. God in his goodness makes it so that while Satan intends to destroy us, destroy our faith, all he can do is make it better. Through God's goodness and his providential care for us, all that Satan can do is polish our faith. And finally in redemption's scope. So God redeems not only us as the first among his creation in terms of prominence, but all of his creation, all of his creation is to be redeemed. Everything that he created physically is going to be redeemed. While Romans 8 says that it's been subjected to futility, yet it will be restored. And the remarkable and amazing thing is that it is not only going to be restored to its original state, the state in which Adam found it. Sharnock says his goodness was so great that after rescuing us, it would not content itself with the old furniture, but makes all new for us in another world. Thus hath goodness prepared for us a straighter union, a fuller glory, all more excellent than was within the compass of innocent Adam's possession." That's remarkable that we have not just Adam's creation, not just the goodness of Eden to look forward to, but an even fuller and greater goodness provided by God in his redeemed creation. So how do we put that all together? How do we put that all together to answer the question of why does evil persist in spite of God's goodness? And we have to look at that, we have to look at that and conclude that perhaps even beyond our finite comprehension, almost certainly beyond our finite comprehension, God's goodness in the work of redemption is and must be the way in which he brings to himself the most possible glory, which is a hard concept to explain and an even harder one to understand. But we have to see from how redemption works, what it redeems us from, and how God manifests his goodness in his redemption that he would not be as glorified were he to redeem all of his creation, that is to say all people, and he would not be as redeemed were he to redeem none. But in redeeming some and displaying his justice upon others, he brings himself the most possible glory, the highest possible glory. And like Martin Lloyd-Jones says in his sermon series on Romans, it's one of those things we have to bring ourselves to scripture in a posture of humility and submission and believe at face value what God tells us about himself and his word. That's what we're left with in terms of the presence of evil in spite of God's goodness. So that brings us to the last point of our lesson, which is our response. How do we respond to God's goodness in terms of our daily life, the practical items of our daily life? And of course, there's any number of specific and individual ways in which we can and must respond to God's goodness, but we'll look at a few general categories. The first, of course, we respond to God's goodness by receiving the promise of the gospel. We receive the greatest of God's good gifts, which is Jesus himself by faith. And that seems relatively intuitive and obvious, but just to grasp the weight of that, it's also helpful to look at it in the negative. It's a good gift, but the rejection of this gift can only be understood as the greatest of all evils. It's unquestionably the most important way in which we must respond to God's goodness. To reject God's goodness in his redemption is to disbelieve him in a manner on par with or going beyond the very first in itself. Other ways that we can respond would include enjoying all of the rest of God's gifts to us, his lower gifts that we see in his creation. So our food and drink, the world that he gave us to dwell in, the love that we share with others, and so on. And the important thing is that we enjoy these gifts as from God, and we not abuse them and turn them into idols. So if we look at these God gifts, these good gifts that God gave us, and we find or look for ultimate fulfillment in them, then we're usurping God's place, God's rightful place in our hearts as the sole object of our worship. But when used rightfully, all of God's good gifts to us lead us back to him in gratitude and thankfulness. Second, we also learn to trust God's goodness and his provision for us. So if we understand and we believe that everything that God gives us is for our benefit, and that anything that he has withheld would be to our injury, then we can arrive at a place where we trust God, we practice that trust consistently, with God's help we will learn contentment in every circumstance. And again, looking at it negatively, if we are discontent with anything, whether it be our finances, our relationships, our possessions, or anything, that list goes on, that would represent a lack of trust in God and a denial of God's goodness. It's to say that I believe that something that God has given me is not good, and it would be better if he did something else. Or conversely, I believe that there's something that I'm missing, that God was not good enough to provide me, and we have to avoid that. Third, we respond with faithful service to God. In light of his goodness to us, we present our bodies as living sacrifice, as Romans says, holy and acceptable to God, which is our act of spiritual service as the NASB renders it. And finally, we model our own conduct in any place that we find ourselves in life, we model our conduct after the goodness of God. As our father John says, beloved, we do not imitate evil, but imitate good. And of course, as we've already mentioned, God himself being goodness itself, it is therefore God, and specifically the example we see in Jesus in the New Testament, that we may strive to better reflect, and specifically, that we may better serve him, serve him with gratitude, and lead others to glorify and serve God as we do. And all that we are left with, then, is we make it our prayer that we might hear the divine commendation, as mentioned in Matthew, well done, good and faithful servant, enter into the joy of your master. Questions? We're a little bit early. So, you have a good one-liner to explain God's good, and I'm not sure if that's the right, what would you say to that? It's in the computer, and defining good, by things that they think are good. So, and I think that you come to, I believe this is from Ravel, God's good comes frequently, but defining it as really God's goal, and that, you have a good one-liner? Well, I mean, obviously, yeah, depending on the conversation, and what specifically you're talking about, I'm almost hesitant to say that there's a, yeah, here's a one-liner you should pull out, like, you know, in every circumstance, because that's just not how, I don't think that's how we see, on the one hand, I think you just have to trust that, you know, by continuing to have conversations with people, either the Holy Spirit is going to work in their heart to open their heart to the gospel, or not, and that is not, like, that's not something that you can affect yourself, that's to say that's not something that you can bring Genesis to yourself. So, of course, we have to point to the, That was not good. No. So, yeah, I would say, of course, there's things that we can point to, we can say, well, what you're thinking of as good does not overlay with what the Bible tells us is good. So, if you want to examine the possibility of whether the Christian world view makes sense, then you can't come to it with your own frequency of notions and then decide, well, what this says doesn't fit my definition of goodness, you have to say, okay, let's look at what the Bible says and what the Bible says about God's goodness and decide whether that's something that you can ascribe to or not, because the Bible does clearly reveal to us, as we mentioned earlier, he doesn't act in his goodness in one circumstance and in his holiness in another circumstance. We have to understand sin as being antithetical to good, and so I can't call something good that's evil. I don't know, that's a long rambling answer, that's the opposite of a one-liner, but is there anything more specific that you're thinking of, like a specific objection? No, it's just that I just want to, if I try to do what you're saying about putting it in a physical context, but then weaving in holiness because it's worse, I can't find what is good. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. No, I don't think I can say it any better than that. Any other questions? Comments? Yeah? Kind of a conjunction to that, what would you say to believers, like maybe in the prosperity doctrine, that would say, if you're going through a trial or something bad, oh, that's not from God? Count it all joy, you know, when you encounter trials. I mean, thankfully, I would say that's a fairly easy one to point to in Scripture. There's some very specific guidance in Scripture to say, don't expect to be prosperous. You should expect trials. As a matter of fact, we should count suffering as Christ suffered to be the highest privilege. And so, conversely, there's no place in Scripture that says, if you exercise faith, you'll have riches. We see, time and again, examples not specifically saying that riches are evil, but saying that it's harder for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God. I mean, yeah, I think the weight of evidence against that movement is pretty substantial, for sure. Dan, this was an excellent presentation, so thank you. Thank you. I see a comment and a question. So, when we think about the event at the lowest levels of God's goodness, you talked about there's an aspect of predictability that is an incredible validation for goodness that you take for granted is a predictability that every day the sun will come up, so you don't walk outside wondering. You've got your Dan, Jr. That happened in more or less maybe four to nine months that we have this beautiful predictability of when babies are born. Yes. So, the question for you as you prepared for this, even in this last hour, you know, reorienting ourselves on this is beneficial on yourself in preparing for this, but then some of the practical maybe fruit of just spending a lot of time dwelling on God's goodness in terms of your life and thinking about this rich man. Yeah, no, that's an excellent question. First of all, I would say, as an aside, I would highly commend the book that I referenced. It's available from Banner of Trust, and sometimes reading some of the greatest Christian works, especially the Puritans, is a little bit daunting. I don't know if it's daunting for me, but the collection of Puritan writings, basically selecting the choicest stuff, like the best stuff, and putting it all kind of in a spot where it's available to peruse in a matter of a couple days, that's fantastic, because it's relentlessly high quality. So, and to more directly answer your question, I would say that probably the most profound thing for me to just have been thinking on through the course of preparing for this presentation is the constant nature, the unwearying nature with which God is good. And if we're to strive after that, if we're to strive to do good and imitate God, be imitators of that which is good, which is to be an imitator of God's character, then that means striving to be relentlessly good as well. And that inherently means relentlessly not being harsh, relentlessly not being ungenerous. Everybody has a different personality, everybody has different tendencies, I would say. But like, you know, for us even in parenting, it's easy to get frustrated, but being frustrated, being flustered, being short, those are all not in God's character. Even when He is just, it's a perfect justice, and that's something that I can't have. So keeping the rich, abundant, overflowing, like incomparable, incomparable, inconceivable goodness with which God has blessed this world that He's given us, keeping that in mind, if you dwell on that frequently, and dwell on the fact that God has not forbidden anything that is not good, and the things that He has forbidden are specifically only the things which are not good, that can't but help you appreciate what you have, and help you to be kinder, more patient. It has immense practical applications. Dwelling on those very intellectual and heavy things, the way that God describes His character, I'm in wholehearted agreement with what Terry Johnson says in his introduction to the book. He talks about, you know, the fact that that's one of the primary problems facing our church, is that we don't have an adequate understanding of God. We deal with the practical, we deal with issues, but if we dealt more with God's character and understanding Him, then we would have a lot more understanding with how to deal with issues. I don't know, that's kind of a long rambling answer, does that make sense? Yeah, thank you for the question. What is 10.03, unless there are any other questions? Yeah, we'll wrap up in prayer. Dear Heavenly Father, we thank you for this day that you've given us, and again we thank you for this time to look into your character and your nature and study it. We thank you that you have given us the capacity to grasp even to degrees the nature of your goodness and how rich, how immense it is toward us and toward all. We thank you for your goodness displayed in your creation, in your providence, and in specifically your act of redemption, redeeming us as an elect people for yourself. We pray that you would help us to emulate that goodness, we pray that you would help us to lead others to see your goodness, and we pray that your goodness would weigh upon our hearts and minds in each day, in each hour, so that we might better reflect your goodness in the way that we speak, in the way that we think, and in the way that we act. We pray now that you would please turn our hearts toward worship, help us to worship you rightly, which is in spirit and in truth. In Jesus' name, Amen.
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