Our God is Good (Part 1)

But it diverges into mainly two parts, And I want to look in for purposes of our Sunday school lessons, I want to look just primarily one part of those, because I feel like the other is largely covered in other attributes that are related to it. So and you’ll see what I mean in just a minute. But the word good, does anybody know off the top of your head where the first dimension of the word good is found?

Right, very good. Let’s look at it. Genesis one, Genesis one. Genesis chapter one. We’ll just read a few several of these verses here. Genesis one, look out at verse number four, the very first thing that God created after in the in the days of creation, the first day is in verse number four, and God saw the light that it was good, and god divided the light from the darkness. For this is the first mention. Look at verse 10 and god called the dry land earth and the beginning the gathering together of the waters called he sees and god saw that it was good.

Then, you look down at verse number 12 and the and the earth brought forth grass and herb herb yielding seed after his kind and the tree yielding fruit whose seed was in itself after his kind and god saw that it was good. Verse 18. Look at verse 18 if you would.

This is referring to the the sun and the moon and to rule over the day and over the night and to divide the light from the darkness and god saw that it was good. Verse number 21 and god created great whales and every living creature that moveth which the waters brought forth abundantly after their kind and every winged fowl after his kind and god saw that it was good.

Then, verse 25. And God said, let the earth bring forth the living creature after his kind and cattle and creeping thing and beast of the earth after his kind and it was so. Did I say, I said 25, I read 24. Here’s 25. And god made the beast of the earth after his kind and cattle after their kind and everything that creepeth upon the earth after his kind and god saw that it was good.

Then lastly, verse 31. Now, just note that at this point, mankind has already been created. We saw that in verse 27. So you get down to verse 31, the Bible says this, this is kind of the summary. And God saw everything that he had made and behold, it was very good. And the evening and the morning were the sixth day. So all the things that God created were good.

Alright? Now let’s go a little bit further and and see this word occurring in chapter two verse number nine. And out of the ground, god made the lord out of the ground, made the lord god grow every tree that is pleasant to the sight and good for food and the the tree of life also in the midst of the garden and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Look down a little bit further verse eight and number 18.

And the lord god said, it is not good that man should be alone. I will make and help meet for him. Now, here’s the here’s the here’s where we get into the the idea of of of good. So, you see everything that god made, god made this thing, that thing, light starting with light and then the, you know, the the the the various other elements of creation and of course, he made the animals, the the creatures that move upon the dry land, and then he made man and at for at each stage, basically, he says, he looks at it, he examines what he’s made, and he says, it’s good. It’s good. Now he does listen, why is that in the Bible?

Why is that? It’s not in the Bible for God. God knew it was good. But why does why in his word did he go the extra step to let us know that he stopped and he examined what he had made and declared it to be good. Well, that means he wants us to know something about it. It’s not for himself but for us. It’s not to inform himself of what of the success of his creation but it’s because he wants us to know that everything that he made was good, and that included man.

And in this sense, good is the is the idea of perfection, the idea of excellence. In other words, of all the things that God had made in in the six days of creation, there was no lack at all. There was no part of it that was in any way deficient or harmful or in any way in any way anything that could not be considered good or excellent.

And so that’s that’s one aspect to it. Now you see it a little bit further because that that idea of God that you know you know, when when God created everything that God created in the original creation was excellent, was perfect, was without error, without fault whatsoever. And what does that reveal to us about God? It reveals God’s own character. So what God created is an extension of himself.

The goodness of God. And in the goodness I mean, the goodness in the sense of that he is without fault, he is the epitome of perfection, he is excellent in all of his ways. And you know all these verses that say that, you know, and in some sense, it kind of overlaps with this idea that God is that God is righteous, that God is, you know, he has no fault, that kind of thing. And you see this a little bit further when you go down to verse number, when you go down to chapter, let me make sure I don’t I don’t miss it. Chapter number two, verse number 18, Well, let’s skip verse number 18. Let’s go to chapter two and let’s look down at verse nine.

Chapter two verse nine. We read it before, let’s read it one more time. And out of the ground, may the Lord God to grow every tree that is pleasant to the sight and good for food, the tree of life also in the midst of the garden. Now, this is an kind of a new way to to view the word good and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.

You see that? So, when you when you put the the idea of good next to the word evil, it gives contrast And so in this sense, the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, it has multiple facets but as we’ll see, there’s a moral element to it. What do I mean moral element? Not that fruit trees are moral. What I mean is the tree of the knowledge of good and evil is attached to God’s commandment and thereby it has a moral element. Alright? Look down at verse number verse number 16.

This is God’s command to Adam and Eve. And the Lord God commanded the man saying, of every tree of the garden thou mayest freely eat, but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil thou shalt not eat of it, for in the day thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die. Alright, pause a second. The whole, this is the Lord introduces the idea of dying, death, and that is rather we we can see obviously is the opposite of good, that’s not good.

And God is the one who introduced something not good into a world, into a universe that he created all good. You see that? So he is introducing something not good and what is that thing that he’s introducing? He’s introducing sin which is his the violation of his commandment. So the Lord is and this is this is the good and evil that we’re talking about in reference to moral quality, moral excellence.

We might say similar to, you know, in a way similar to holiness or righteousness. And so when we say God is good, you can see that in this. God indeed is good. That’s why he gave a good command and he contrasted good with evil and all of those things all of those things show god’s moral goodness but that’s not what I want to focus on. That’s not what I want to focus on. I want to focus on a different aspect of god’s god’s goodness.

Now, know that God made everything with imperfection. Okay? So that raises a question. The question is, why do we then see so many things around us that are not that way? And of course, this is a common objection because it’s true, we see much in the world that is not good. That is even in the natural world that is not good. You saw, I’m sure you saw this week how a part of a glacier detached from the main body of the glacier and fell down into a valley in Nepal, on the border of Nepal and China and led to a cascade of, caused a cascade of flood and landslides and all of that. It just absolutely obliterated these towns and that valley including a border crossing. Did anybody see those videos?

Horrifying, horrifying. I mean in comparison you think of what happened with Hurricane Helene down in like Black Mountain and Sawanoa and that was bad. But this was orders of magnitude worse in the speed and just the devastation, the depth of all of that stuff. That’s not good, right? That’s not good. And so when god created the world, it was all good and we so we see god creating everything, his perfection, so everything he made was was perfect and then he had a he had a command.

He talks about the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. So, he introduces the idea of evil not in in a way for them to experience but just so we know god understands what evil is in the sense of moral evil, moral good, okay? Now, the second part that we see which is tied to the first, the second aspect or variation of the word good is the idea of benevolence or graciousness.

Now, we looked at all these examples of of good. God made these things that were good. They were good. They were good. And in that way, they were perfect. There was no fault in them, but there’s another way you could look at that which is you think about all of those things that God created, whether it be light, whether it be the heavenly bodies, whether it be the grass and the plants and the herb, the living creatures on the ground, and even mankind. God made all of those things not for His own benefit, but for, I’m talking about the physical world now, He did it for the benefit of His creatures.

And even when God says these things are good, that is another way of saying, God is taking care of His creatures. God is taking care of His creation. And of course, the the pinnacle, the apex of god’s creation is man is mankind. And so, it shows us all of the times we see the word good referring to god’s creation. It shows us something about god himself. God made the light. God made the sun and the moon. God made the plants. God made the animals as a demonstration of his own character. They are good because god is good, not only perfect in quality but also as an expression of his benevolence, his kindness, and His graciousness. Because all of those things were made primarily to sustain mankind.

You think about the things that God created, the beautiful things that God created. God, there’s no like inherent, like the Lord created those things. He doesn’t, He never stands in awe of a sunset. He never stands in awe of the colors of flower petals. He never stands in awe of the changing of the leaves of the trees. None of that wows God, right? He created it, but it does us.

And the fact that those things exist came, listen, came directly from God’s own mind. No one said, hey Lord, I would really like some pretty flowers that I could plant in my front yard, can you make that? No. It came out of his own mind and heart. He did those things for our benefit, for our supply and for our, if you will, our desire. Think about that.

All of the good things that God made. And this is not the only place where we see this truth. Psalm, listen to, listen to some of these verses. You can note down the references. We’ll look at a couple as well. Psalm 145 verse nine. Listen to this. The lord is good to all and his tender mercy mercies are over all his works. What I want you to see is when he says all in these verses we read, he’s he’s extending that not only over mankind but over all of all of his creation.

All of the animals, all of the plants, all of that. Are we saying that God is good over all of those things? Yeah, that’s exactly what we’re saying. Psalm 145 goes on in verses fifteen and sixteen to say this, the eyes all wait upon thee and thou givest them their meat in due season. Thou openest thine hand and satisfiest the desire of every living thing.

Thou openest thine hand and satisfies the desire of every living thing. Why does God do that? He has no obligation. He created it, listen, by right, if God chose, He could have created the world and just taken His hands off and let it just destroy itself. But He doesn’t. He doesn’t do that with lions and cattle and grasshoppers and even plants. The Lord doesn’t do that. He, when He created it, He created it so that He could take care of it.

Why? Because He’s good, because He’s kind. He’s kind even to beings, His creation, that aren’t, that can’t give Him any love, right? They can’t know Him. He’s kind even to those things. Was sort of like why do you feed your dog? Why do you feed your cat? Why do you feed your lizard? Or in the case of brother Ari, your snake. Why do you feed? Well, mostly because from a human perspective, the reason we do that is because we want to sustain the life of that creature.

We don’t have an obligation to do that, well I guess you could, cruelty to animals is somewhere in there, but you understand what I’m saying. You do that as an act of goodness and kindness. And so it is with the Lord obviously in greatest way. Look at Psalm 147 if you would.

Psalm 147. And then if you can go to Job 38 as well. Psalm 147 verse number eight. Verse seven says, sing unto the Lord with thanksgiving, sing praise unto the upon the harp unto our God who covereth the heavens with clouds, who prepareth rain for the earth, who maketh grass to grow up in the mountains, he giveth to the beast his food and to the young ravens which cry.

Why is God doing that? Why is He doing that? He’s doing it because He’s good. Even to those things, yes, even to those things. Acts 14 verse 17 says this, Nevertheless, He left not Himself without witness, in that He did good and gave us rain from heaven and fruitful seasons filling our hearts with food and gladness and this reminds us of a fact as we look at Job Job 38. It reminds us of a fact. The goodness of god is extended to all of his creatures and that includes mankind, even men who do not know God, even men that hate God.

So God does that not because they are the man is good or in any way deserving, He does that because He is good. Because that is His nature. That is His nature. Look at Job 38. Job 38.

This is part of the speech of Elihu. Oh no, this is Job, I’m sorry, we’re past Elihu here. Verse 25, Who hath divided the watercourse for the overflowing waters or away for the lightning of thunder?

To cause it to rain rain on the earth where no man is, on the wilderness where there is no man, to satisfy the desolate and waste ground and to cause the bud of the tender herb to spring forth. You ever wondered, why does God cause it to rain in places where there are no people?

Right, or even for the plants you could say based upon these verses. You say, that strikes me as kind of petty. Well, you might view it like that, but okay, well let’s reverse it. What would happen if God didn’t do that? All the animals will die which is not good, right? All the plants would wither away, right? And the ground would be just like the Sahara, just be arid, right? There would be nothing there.

Why doesn’t he do that? He created it good, right? And so he takes care of it. Just let that sink in and meditate. Look, in the Scripture you see places where it specifically says that God causes it to rain where there are no people.

Have you ever said, Lord, thank you that you showed your goodness in making it rain where nobody is? Right? So we can see we can see through all of these things in God’s creation that he is good. He seeks to supply the needs and fill the wants of His creation. Not just man, but most importantly man, but not just man. And all of those things that He does, He does not do them because He is coerced, He does them because out of his own being is benevolence and goodness.

That’s just amazing. Now, man, you could probably if you’re thinking ahead a little bit, you could think, man, this because God’s goodness, this is really just the very tip of the iceberg of God’s goodness. That exudes, that comes out, comes forth out of His being. There are so many more things that are demonstrative of God’s goodness that we can see and will see. But let’s talk very quickly one more thing about what God’s goodness is not.

What God’s goodness is not. We can see God’s goodness, but we should not misunderstand God’s goodness by thinking that it means that God will not do things that are not good to his creatures, right? God does do things that are not good to his creatures. And again, mean that in a sense not of a moral quality but I mean in the sense of it’s unhappy, it is harmful.

Does God do harmful things to His creation? Absolutely, absolutely He does it. I mean, is like everywhere. So when we say God is good, especially when we say this term and you probably heard this before and there’s a reason why I don’t I’m not I’m not gonna really use it. Some people say God is all good. And in a sense that’s true, but when I hear that, maybe it’s different for you, but when I hear God is all good, that lens, that that causes me to think we’re saying that God doesn’t do anything that’s not good, but he does. He does things that are harmful from time to time. He does do that.

And so when we say that God is all good, sometimes people mean that God is incapable of doing anything that is not good or not benevolent, but he absolutely is. When God judges a sinner and sends him to the lake of fire, that is not benevolent.

It is right, it is good in the moral sense, but it is certainly not benevolent. Now there’s reasons for that. There’s reasons because God’s character is not only good, But we have to be careful when we talk about this idea of God is all good. Because there are some skeptics that hear that and they say, oh, well you say God is all good and they’ll set you up and they’ll say, I’ve heard it in debates and things. So you believe that God is all good And of course, the person kind of walks into the trap and says, oh yes, of course.

And they say, well, what about evil in the world then? Why is there so much harm? Why is there so much disease? Why is there so much bad in the world if God is all good? If God is all good, there should be no evil at all ever. Look back at Genesis two.

Genesis two. And so people use the fact of evil in the world to argue that God is not all good, which is actually an argument that doesn’t exist. It’s so funny how people argue about a God they don’t believe is there to begin with, but anyway. Genesis two, Look at verse number nine and out of the ground, the lord the ground made the lord god to grow every tree that is pleasant to the sight and good for food, the tree of life also in the midst of the garden and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.

Alright, so there were introduced to evil. Verse 17, but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it, God commands. For in the day thou eatest thereof, thou shalt surely die. And then we know in chapter three verse number 11, after Adam and Eve have eaten the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, God confronts them and he says, and he said, who told thee that thou wast naked? Hast thou eaten of the tree where have I commanded thee that thou shouldest not eat?

Now notice this, did God want Adam and Eve to eat the fruit of that tree? Was it God’s will that they eat the fruit of that tree? And here’s an interesting kind of deep theological question. Was it God’s will that they eat that fruit? The answer is no. The answer is no. How do you know He did not want them to? It’s very simple.

He commanded them not to. Okay, here’s the problem, here’s the problem. This is where you have people start dividing up the will of God into these different convenient little groups so that they can defend absolute sovereignty. But anyway. But it’s really simpler than this. God states His will. He did not want Adam and Eve to eat it. What and what and because remember, it was god who introduced the tree and it was god who called it the fruit of the of the tree of knowledge of good and evil. So, it was the lord who introduced it and he was also god who who who attached to the violation of that command, a judgment which was evil, right? Death.

That was all things god introduced but in introducing it, it was not that god was introducing evil. He was actually expressing His benevolence. Is He not? He’s expressing His benevolence to His creation, to Adam and Eve by saying, I don’t want you to eat this because I don’t want there to be evil to come upon you. And that is an expression of God’s goodness. So even the command forbidding them because the Lord knew very well that in the moment they ate that, that the righteousness and justice of God would rise and must answer that violation.

And so what does he say? Don’t eat it because I want to do you good. Isn’t that amazing? Every time God gives us a command, sometimes God’s commands seem a bit maybe oppressive to our mind, it shouldn’t, but sometimes, let’s just be honest, sometimes it feels that way. You know why God gives us commands? Because God is benevolent and good and He wants good for us. That’s why He does it.

That’s why He does it. In God’s original creation, He knew of evil and He warned man against it. So, the evil that we see, of course, is not part of God’s original creation, that was all good.

But even in this, He expressed His essential goodness, the essential goodness of His nature in His warning, which was the expression of his will. So when we say God is all good, it does not mean that God cannot or do or will not do things that are unpleasant because he will. And that’s a misunderstanding. God is all good. He’ll, God is so nice He would never send anybody to hell. No, you are wrong. You are dead wrong.

Because God is not only good, maybe that’s the way to put it. But His desire is that nobody go, right? Just like his desire was that Adam and Eve didn’t eat that fruit. Let’s pray together.