God is Good
Ai Transcript
Amen. Thanks Holly. Happy Mother's Day. Happy Mother's Day you guys. If you would, why don't you make your way to Psalm 34. Psalm 34 is where it will be this morning, this Mother's Day.
We're entering into a strange new world, you haven't noticed. Mark Sayers, an Australian pastor and cultural analyst, argues that we are living in a gray zone. A cultural moment where the old world, what we know, is breaking apart. All the while, the new world has not yet been fully formed.
rewind to 2008, pre-COVID, pre-AI, and in the thick of that old world, Pastor Tim Keller wrote, The Reason for God, Belief in an Age of Skepticism. became a New York Times bestseller.
That book met a very particular cultural moment. As people in the old world were asking the question, can Christianity be intellectually credible? Can belief in God make sense in this secular age? Keller was helping skeptics see that that faith was more than reasonable. It was compelling.
This was the world we all once lived. It was post-Christian and very secular. Well, this new world we're heading toward is still post-Christian, but it's becoming post-secular as well. We're in the midst of what some are calling the shaking of secularism. In other words, the old secular story is beginning to break down.
People are realizing that they cannot live without meaning, transcendence, and hope. Even among cultural elites, there is a renewed openness to spirituality. The University of Harvard, for instance, offers classes now on happiness. Because in this anxious generation, nobody has it.
and everybody wants it. Some of those lectures include the happiness non-negotiable to transcend yourself. Whatever your higher power is, the happiness scholars are saying, find one because you can't be happy without it.
And yet, even though more people are spiritual and atheism is on the decline, the age old question remains when people begin talking about God. If there is a God and if this God is good, why is there so much evil? Maybe you've had the same question.
I remember being at Auschwitz a couple years ago and just having a pit in my stomach all day long looking face to face in this place where evil, so much evil took place. You can't help but to ask the question, why? Why God? Why?
Maybe you're in a season right now where you're experiencing the brokenness of this world and you're questioning the goodness of God. You look outside and you see wars, abuse, natural disasters. You look inside and you find a body that is not what it once was. A job you hate. A hard marriage.
Maybe for you, you long to be a mother. And that's just not happening. Mother's Day is brutally hard. It took so much courage just to be here this morning.
I'm so glad you came. Or you're struggling to trust God because life is just hard. You thought the abundant life that Jesus promised would be a little more, I don't know, abundant.
I'm glad you're here this morning because this is where we are headed. If God is good, what does it mean not only to explain the world around you, but what does it mean as you try to find meaning to your own existence? So if you're not already there, Psalm 34 is where we are going to be.
And if you're able, why don't we stand this morning for the reading of God's word. I'll read the whole chapter.
Amen. Psalm 34. I will extol the Lord at all times. His praise will always be on my lips. I will glory in the Lord. Let the afflicted hear and rejoice. Glorify the Lord with me. Let us exalt his name together. I sought the Lord and he answered me. He delivered me from all my fears. Those who look to him are radiant.
Their faces are never covered with shame. This poor man called and the Lord heard him. He saved him out of all his troubles. The angel, the Lord encamps around those who fear him and he delivers them. Taste and see that the Lord is good. Blessed is the one who takes refuge in him.
Fear the Lord, you his holy people, for those who fear him lack nothing. The lions may grow weary and hungry, but those who seek the Lord lack no good thing. Come, my children, listen to me. I will teach you the fear of the Lord. Whoever of you loves life and desires to see many good days, keep your tongue from evil and your lips from telling lies. Turn from evil and do good.
Seek peace and pursue it. The eyes of the Lord are on the righteous and his ears are attentive to their cry. But the face of the Lord is against those who do evil to blot out their name from the earth. The righteous cry out and the Lord hears them. He delivers them from all their troubles. The Lord is close to the brokenhearted and saves those who are crushed in spirit.
The righteous person may have many troubles, but the Lord delivers him from them all. He protects all his bones. Not one of them will be broken. Evil will slay the wicked. The foes of the righteous will be condemned. The Lord will rescue his servants. No one takes refuge in him will be condemned. This is the word of God. Amen. You guys may be seated.
Tov, tov, tov, tov. This is the Hebrew word that gets translated good four times here in Psalm 34. Taste and see that the Lord is tov. Those who seek the Lord lack no tov thing. Verse 12, to see many tov days in verse 14, turn from evil and do.
Tov. Last week I read Psalm 34 to my oldest before I dropped her off at school. We got to school early and it was a late start day. And so we just sat in the car. She was eating her morning popcorn, aka her snack. Sorry, Holly. And I asked her as I read this, want you to listen.
psalm closely. I want to know what pops out to you. Maybe the Lord is speaking something to you. Maybe you just have some question about this psalm. After I finished the psalm with popcorn coming out of her mouth, she said, taste and see that the Lord is good. And then she said, how do we taste God, I said, kind of like popcorn, but not really.
This is what I hope to do with our time this morning. We're not going to tackle this whole song, but we're going to launch off from verse eight. Taste and see that the Lord is good. And my hope is that as we walk out of here in just a bit, that our souls would be full. Full of the goodness of God.
I think the most helpful way we can attempt to not only look at the God who is good, but to also see Him in light of this world which is broken is to span what theologians call the fourfold storyline of Scripture. Creation, fall, redemption.
New creations. So that's our outline this morning. Creation, fall, redemption, and new creation. We'll start with creation. Genesis 1.1 says, the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. Right away, we find out that God, and God alone is the creator of all things. Out of nothing, God creates everything.
And by the fourth verse of chapter one, we get the word tov for the first time. God saw the light was good. If you read Genesis one and two, you're going to keep seeing that word all over the place. Tov or.
After God creates this world with all its animals, Genesis tells us, God saw that it was good. But he's not finished the pinnacle of his creation, verse 26. Then God said, us make mankind in our image.
in our likeness so that they may rule over the fish in the sea the birds in the sky over the livestock and all the wild animals and over all the creatures that move along the ground. God created mankind in his image in the image of God he created them male and female he created them God blessed them and said to them be fruitful and increase in number celebrate lots of Mother's Day's fill the earth and subdue it.
And by verse 31 of chapter one in our Bibles, says, God saw all that he had made and it was very good. Not just tove, it's very tove. And there was evening and there was morning, the sixth day.
Now we'll get to Genesis three here in a second, cause that is where we live. East of Eden post fall. But for a minute, I just want us to recognize how good his creation was. Everywhere you look in the creation account, Tove, Tove, Tove, Tove, Tove.
This word is defined by scholars to mean all sorts of things. Good, pleasant, right, beautiful, flourishing, most excellent of its kind. I like how Dr. Ryan Tafelowski explained it to us a couple years ago when he came and did a theology on the ground on the topic of work. says the word tov means something more like all systems go.
I love that. All systems go. When God calls creation good or very good, he's not merely saying, looks nice. Good job me, that Grand Canyon there. Wow. Now he's saying this is a perfect fit. Wonderfully ordered, majestically fruitful, beautiful.
functioning exactly according to my design all systems go. Now if you do look hard enough in the creation account there is one thing that is not tov. Be up on the screen here. Genesis 2 18 the Lord God said it is not good for the man to be alone I will make a helper.
suitable for him. The cultural mandate that God gave to humanity to be fruitful, to multiply, to fill the earth, to have dominion could not be accomplished. The man needed someone and not just anyone. Man needed woman.
Before you read this text on Mother's Day and think, Eve's a little less than Adam. She's just his helper. Well, this word helper or in the Hebrew, Ezer, is what God also calls, well, himself. So yes, happy Mother's Day. Once you notice one more thing from the creation account, that's the seventh day. By the seventh day, God had finished
the work he had been doing. So on the seventh day, he rested from all his work. Then God blessed the seventh day and made it holy, set it apart.
What's wild about what we call Sabbath is there's not an evening and a morning on the seventh day like there was on the other six. What does this mean? It means that the climax of creation, the culmination of all of creation is Sabbath.
Sabbath being this good God dwelling with his good people in his good creation Tov all systems Go now we'll come back to this idea of Sabbath, but but just know the goal of creation Shabbat Shalom
Well, we're done with creation, but before we jump right into the fall, I have to spend a minute talking about the God of creation. Remember we're in this series. God is, and if we're going to taste and see that the Lord is good this morning, we need to see that that God is good even prior to creation in the beginning.
In other words, before God started speaking galaxies into existence, He was. God is. Well, if we can, let's get a little theological here on the Trinity for a minute. I promise you this is going to help, especially when we get to the problem of evil. Now, God's goodness, friends, is not something that... It is not something that began.
in time. Like once he created the world rather it is always who he has eternally been. God doesn't have goodness. God is. We're getting it. God is good.
Now, if God were a solitary, single person God, if God were a solitary, single person God, not a Trinity, so think like Allah. He would need creation to love. He would need folks like Muhammad to show goodness to, which means love and goodness, for instance, would not be eternal to his very being. But the Christian God is Father.
Son and Spirit. Three persons, one God. And in this trinity, the unbegotten Father for all eternity loves and does good to the eternally begotten Son. In the fellowship of the Spirit. So when we say God is good, we do not mean God became good.
The moment he made us or helped us, we mean that from all eternity, God has been a fountain of self-giving life, delight, and love. Creation and as we'll get to redemption are just an overflow of that goodness. Augustine says that the Holy Spirit, this is how he pictures who God is.
It's hard to say who God is apart from creation. But Augustine, the church father, says the Holy Spirit is the bond of love between the Father and the Son. I love that picture of God. Or Jonathan Edwards says the Father eternally beholds His perfect image of His...
Sorry, let me just stick to the actual quote. Jonathan Edwards says, Father eternally beholds His perfect image in the Son. And the love and delight between them is the Spirit.
C.S. Lewis calls the Trinity something like an eternal dance, a living communion of love, joy, and self-giving life. In other words, before God ever created the world, He is not lonely or needy or empty. Rather, He was Father, Son, and Spirit, eternally full of life, love.
and goodness. God is eternally and infinitely good. So keep this in mind now as we transition into the fall. A Barnapole asked the question, if you could ask God only one question and you knew he would give you an answer, what would you ask? It's a good question.
anyone brave enough to throw theirs out.
the most common response from this poll, why is there pain and suffering in the world? Well, by Genesis 3, we begin to get an answer. And this won't answer everyone's question, everyone's questions about the problem of evil. But the awesome part about the Bible is that it is honest.
with these questions itself. Like there are prayers of lament all over the scriptures dealing with these types of problems. Here's a few of them. How long, Lord, must I call for help but you do not listen or cry out to you? Violence, but you do not save. Why do you make me look at injustice? Why do you tolerate wrong? Wow.
Or the Psalms, why, oh Lord, do you stand far away? Why do you hide yourself in times of trouble? Psalm 44, awake, awake. Imagine saying that to God, awake. Why are you sleeping, oh Lord? Rouse yourself. Do not reject us forever. Why do you hide your face? Why do you forget our affliction and oppression? Is this how you talk to God? Because you can. He's a big boy.
He can handle it and he already knows you're thinking it.
And just FYI, this sermon is going to be a part one to the reality of pain and suffering. Next week will be part two as we look at God is sovereign. So God is good. God is sovereign. He's totally in control, even amidst our pain.
even amidst the evil that we see in this world. So you're not going to want to miss next week. But for right now, Genesis 3, here we go, the fall. After God creates this good world, his good people doubt God's own goodness. Like what a sequence. The one who is himself, Tov, is thought to be depriving his creation of Tov.
This is where things begin to go downhill. God gives them commands to obey and they listen to Satan instead. They believe this good God is holding out on them and so they take matters into their own hands. And just like that, sin enters into the world.
Read Genesis three at some point this week. really does answer the question as to why things aren't the way they should be. Why things aren't all systems go. And now you're like, okay, I get the fall happened, but you didn't answer a question pastor. Why? If God is good, why would he allow this? Can he be all good?
all powerful, all knowing, and allow all that we see from the Rwandan genocide to the Cambodian killing fields, from the transatlantic slave trade to the Armenian genocide, from sex trafficking to child abuse to the broken foster care systems.
From a car accident that takes a loved one to cancer which does the same. From rejection to criticism, the list goes on and on and we all have things that we can throw into this list. If God is good, why? Why would He allow this?
I was leaving the coffee shop the other day and I saw an acquaintance of mine who's currently writing a book on philosophy. He literally sits at this coffee shop for 12 hours a day and he reads and reads and reads and writes. I've learned to only get into the conversations with him if I have at least 30 minutes of spare time.
But the dude can really think. I thought I'd ask him what he thought about my topic for this sermon. We've often talked about Augustine and Aquinas and all these big thinkers. Well, after a few F bombs, he told me that he's got a buddy who always tells him, man, when I see God, I have a bone to pick with the man upstairs. I hope they serve beer in hell.
My philosopher friend said, pastor, I always tell him, bro, if there is a God and you were even able to see him, if he's God, he would be a being so good that you and I would not be able to take him in, let alone question him. I don't know if he knew how good that answer was, but that's a good answer.
And I do think some of these questions are above our pay grade. Now God does have reasons, good reasons for doing everything that he does. We'll talk next week about what God can, what this sovereign God can and does accomplish through suffering. But we also need to humble ourselves and understand who we are. Finite creatures.
finite creatures trying to understand the deep things of this infinite God. Like the question, how did evil originate? Obviously God sovereignly allowed it. You could even say He ordained it.
And yet God does not evil and has. God is not evil and has never done evil. When the angel Lucifer turned on God and became who we know as Satan and likewise when God's people listen to Satan and brought sin. And sickness.
and suffering and evil and death into his good world. We might have to be okay, not knowing all the answers of how and why evil came to be. Randy Alcorn in his wonderful book, If God is Good, Faith in the Midst of Suffering and Evil says this, scripture addresses when evil came into being, but not how.
Deuteronomy 29, 29 seems to apply here. The secret things belong to the Lord our God. God has chosen to remain silent on this question, which may mean something significant. If evil is irrational, how can its point of origin be rationally explained? Perhaps God does not offer any explanation because evil...
defies explanation. It might make sense to an all-knowing God, but no sense at all to us. Every parent of small children knows that giving no explanation is sometimes better than a partial explanation that misleads little minds. Perhaps then we should interpret God's silence about the origin of evil not as a refusal to explain, but as kindness.
As our children will one day understand things we don't try to explain now. So one day in God's presence, we will have the reference points to understand what now remains a mystery. God is good. That's certain. This world is fallen. That's certain as well. And we see this in Genesis three.
And not only is this world marked by sin and suffering, evil and death, but Sabbath, remember Sabbath, where this good God was dwelling with his good people on his good creation, Sabbath ended in the fall. You will now die physically in.
Spiritually, all this happens at the fall. The goal of creation, Sabbath, lasts a whopping two chapters. But by the grace of God leads to our next section, redemption. Sabbath is lost. Will Sabbath be restored?
It doesn't take long after the fall for this good God to answer that question. And in talking to Satan, God is giving out the curse and he says this in Genesis three. I will put enmity between you, Satan and the woman and between your offspring and hers. He, seed of this woman, will crush your head.
and you will strike his heel. Well, what we have here is actually the first proclamation of the gospel that there's coming a Mother's Day that will be unlike any Mother's Day. This mother will give birth to the one who will crush, defeat Satan.
sin and death once and for all who will bring back Sabbath God dwelling with his people.
systems go.
Again, I can't even begin to answer on behalf of God how and why.
every how and why question that we might have regarding the problem of evil. But I will say two things because I just can't leave you with mystery, mystery. First, we learn from 1 Peter that the gospel is so glorious that even angels long to look into it. In other words, angels know of God's goodness. They know
God is holy, holy, holy. They know of God's love. They know nothing through experience of His mercy and grace. To experience the mercy and the grace of God is to taste and see that the Lord is good on a level even the angels bend down in heavenly curiosity.
That is no small thing. And second, though we might not have all the answers, we know one thing. God cares. God really cares. He cares so much that He enters the evil and the suffering Himself. He takes on flesh.
The only one who knew no sin, Jesus of Nazareth, the son of God incarnate, becomes sin for you, dies in your place so that you might enjoy Sabbath with God.
Friends, Christ, Sabbath is not a day we observe. Rather, according to Hebrews 4, Sabbath is a rest we enter. By faith in the Gospel, we receive true Shabbat Shalom. Peace. Wholeness.
Meaning and if that's not enough we ourselves through our union with Christ get to experience being connected to the inner life of our good God to know the love of Christ that surpasses our finite understanding. Talk about tov all.
systems go east of Eden. And yet in this place, we find ourselves in this this era of redemption, like we know it's an already and not yet redemption. We still long for new creation. But while we're here, check this out, everything we do recognize as tov or good from a beautiful sunset.
to the laughter of your kid, to the connection of a relationship, to climbing a 14-er. From good wine to getting a job done at work, to intimacy with your spouse. According to Jonathan Edwards, these are but scattered beams. God is the sun.
These are but streams. God is the fountain. These are but drops. God is the ocean. Even east of Eden, you exist to treasure God by enjoying Him and the good gifts He gives. All systems go, which points us to our final point this morning, new creation.
The Bible could be summed up in four words, Sabbath lost, Sabbath restored. And if you were with us in our Revelation series, you know that the new Eden is coming. Sabbath will be restored. So as I close this morning, church, let's get our eyes on that day. On that day when everything sad becomes untrue.
And until that day, imagine if we lived out our calling as Jesus had hoped for the church to be a city on a hill in this broken world east of Eden. In Scott McKnight's book, A Church Called Tove, he says, the gospel is about God's tove coming to us in Jesus who is tove and thus making us into agents of tove.
O Church, as we taste and see that the Lord is good, let us be a Tove people. Amen? Amen. Let me pray.