This is why we Christians tell others about the GOD OF THE BIBLE AND HIS LOVE AND GOODNESS.
The reason some do not talk more about the God of the Bible than they do is because they really do not know Him well enough to talk about Him!
Illus: Dr. Odell Belger said that he arrived his first year in Bible College with all the other freshmen who thought they knew a great deal about God.
One of his professors could detect this “KNOW IT ALL ATTITUDE”, so the first thing he did was ask everyone to open their notebooks and start to write all they knew about God. He, along with all the others, smiled and thought this would be an easy assignment. They started writing such things as:
• God is great
• God is love
• God is patient
• God is kind
And what they discovered was that everything they knew about God could be easily be written in one paragraph.
DO YOU KNOW ENOUGH ABOUT GOD THAT YOU COULD FILL A SHEET OF PAPER?
If you really know Him you should be able to describe Him.
Illus: If I asked you if you knew a certain person and you told me that you did, then I would assume that you could tell me some things about that person.
For instance, I would think you could:
• Tell me the color of their hair
• Tell me approximately how tall they were
• Tell me approximately how much they weighed
• And, if you knew them well enough, you might be able to tell me what color eyes they had
Many claim to know God, but they know so little about God they have a hard time describing Him to someone else. They can only tell you things they have heard from others.
Illus: Speaking of knowing someone, a school teacher asked her class about the Mason Dixon line that divides the North from the South. She asked what this line divided.
One little boy raised his hand and said that the Mason Dixon line described two kinds of people.
• The ones that live on one side that say, “You all”
• The ones that live on the other side that say, “Youse guys.”
Illus: One of the things we are known for in the South is for having rednecks. They say YOU MIGHT BE A REDNECK IF...
• You’ve been married three times and still have the same in-laws
• You tell Grandpa he has something in his teeth and he takes them out to see
• You punish your children by taking away their chewing tobacco
• You lost your wife in a poker game
• You had a receding hairline in the sixth grade
• Your Thanksgiving centerpiece has been prepared by a taxidermist
• You refer to your dog as your youngest
• You select a date’s corsage to match her tattoo
• You’ve slow danced at a Waffle House
• Someone asks, "Where’s your bowling bag?" and you answer, "She’s at home with the kid.”
• Your wife has a set of earrings that you use as a fishing lure.
• You stare at a can of orange juice, because it says "concentrate."
• You use channel locks for a nose hair trimmer
• The best five years of your life were in the second grade
• A full tank of gas doubles the value of your truck
• Your wife is so ugly you take her everywhere you go so you never have to kiss her good-bye
Many can describe someone they know as a redneck, but they do not know enough about God to describe Him to others.
When we talk about knowing God, we are referring to the fact that we have learned certain characteristics that are unique to Him from HIS WORD, and through PERSONAL EXPERIENCE.
Let me show you some things the Bible teaches about the God of the Bible and His GOODNESS. We see . . .
I. THE BIBLE DECLARES GOD'S GOODNESS
There are many scriptures that tell us about the GOODNESS OF GOD. One of my favorites is Psalm 25:8, which says, "Good and upright is the Lord..."
But even if there was not one scripture in the Bible that told us of His goodness, the way He deals with evil man is proof that He is a God of Goodness.
We SEE AND HEAR ABOUT OUTWARD sin every day. We hear about it from our family and friends.
• We read about it in the newspaper
• We hear about it on radio and television
• Every day, OUTWARDLY we are aware that we live in a world that is full of sin
However, we do not SEE OR HEAR ABOUT INWARD sin. Even though we see and hear about all the OUTWARD SINS, every day there are millions of INWARD SINS that only God can see. And the fact, that God can look down and see …
• All the OUTWARD sins
• All the INWARD sins
… and not destroy this earth with fire and brimstone, is only because God is a GOOD GOD!
In our society, evil men do not just commit evil, they get on national television and brag about it. If God was not a GOOD GOD, He would have sent a bolt of lightening a long time ago and made mankind look like burnt toast.
God’s goodness is manifested to mankind in two ways.
A. IT IS MANIFESTED IN SALVATION
I want to remind you what the Psalmist said, in Psalm 25:8, "Good and upright is the Lord..." Every one of us are here today because God is a GOD OF GOODNESS!
Only God is GOOD! In other words, none of us can say, "I deserve to be saved, look what a good person I am." The fact is, God says that all of our righteousness is as "filthy rags."
Have you ever really looked at a bunch of “filthy rags”? For example, a wash rag when it is first created is soft and clean. Once that wash rag comes into contact with dirt and grease it is A MESS!
Not one person can come to God on his own merits! God’s Word says we have all been contaminated by sin.
Illus: Dr. J. Vernon McGee said, "God forgives us for Christ's sake, never for our sake."
We are saved because God is a GOOD GOD! He saw that we could not come to Him on our merits. He teaches us, as sinners, to come to Him on the merits of His Son, Jesus Christ.
B. IT IS MANIFESTED IN HIS DAILY PROVISION
We read of this GOODNESS in Matt. 5:45, "That ye may be the children of your Father which is in heaven: for he maketh his sun to rise on the evil and on the good, and sendeth rain on the just and on the unjust."
Every day, as the sun shines on the just and on the unjust, it proves God is a good God.
Illus: What if you or I were God, and there were two farmers whose farms were located across the road from each other.
• Suppose one farmer was a godly man who tried to please God. He worshipped God in his daily life.
• The other farmer was an ungodly man who made it obvious that he did not appreciate a thing God did for him. In fact, the only time he mentions the name of God is to take His name in vain.
Now suppose both of them planted their crops at the same time and both of them needed rain for their crops. If you or I were God, we would send rain to the godly farmer and let the ungodly farmer's crops dry up in the ground.
But God is not like us, God does not like the sin in man’s life but God loves the sinner.
The Bible teaches that God is a good God. He is good TO ALL MANKIND.
Psalm 145:9, "The LORD is good to all: and his tender mercies are over all his works."
Even if the Bible did not tell us that He was GOOD, we would know by His goodness that is shown to us each day.
THE BIBLE DECLARES GOD'S GOODNESS and -
II. THE BIBLE DESCRIBES GOD'S GOODNESS
All of our goodness is acquired.
Illus: A lady who had lived a very wicked life, was gloriously converted. After she became a Christian, she gained the love and respect of other believers because she lived such a fine Christian life. A man who had known her before she was saved was talking about her one day. He said, "I know she is a Christian because I knew her before she got saved."
In other words, he was saying, "She is now a fine Christian woman, but she has not always been that way!"
Her goodness was a goodness she ACQUIRED after she came to know Christ as her Savior. ANY GOODNESS in one's life is a goodness that was ACQUIRED.
Outside of the righteousness of Christ, we have no goodness by God's standard. All OUR righteousness is as filthy rags.
We are righteous because His righteousness has been IMPUTED TO US. This is the GREAT THING that HE HAS DONE FOR US -
• HE TOOK OUR SINS
• HE GAVE US HIS RIGHTEOUSNESS
You and I can stand before Him clean and pure because we stand before Him in THE RIGHTEOUSNESS OF CHRIST.
GOD DID NOT ACQUIRE HIS GOODNESS. GOD IS A GOOD GOD!
A. HIS GOODNESS IS INTRINSIC
God’s GOODNESS is built in, it is deep-seated. He was not ONCE BAD and NOW GOOD; He is intrinsically good.
In Malachi 3:6, we read, “For I am the LORD, I change not…” GOD ALWAYS HAS BEEN AND ALWAYS WILL BE GOOD. He is intrinsically good.
Illus: Now sometime folks will say to me as a pastor, “You are a good man!” And I must confess there are days I am a pretty good fellow. But honesty compels me to also admit there are days I am not so good (And I do not want my wife to say a thing, not even nod her head.)
Now to be honest with you, I have a hard time trying to be good from hour to hour because I live in a world filled with nutty people.
I can get in my car and drive down the road with all these nuts ON THE HIGHWAYS, and sometimes I am ready to lose all my goodness and I am ready….well, you know what I mean!
Sometimes husbands have to deal with their contrary wives and they get upset and when they do, they lose all their goodness.
Illus: A husband and wife had a heated argument and were not speaking to each other. Rather than speak, they were writing notes to each other.
One evening, the husband gave the wife a note which read, "Wake me at 5:00 a.m. in the morning."
The next morning, when he awoke, he was horrified to discover that it was 8:00 a.m. and that his wife did not wake him up. As he turned over, he saw a note on his pillow which read, "Wake up, it's 5:00 a.m.!"
We all get upset when we see the way the government spends our money.
Illus: A fellow stopped at a rural gas station and, after filling his tank, he paid the bill and bought a soft drink. He stood by his car to drink his cola and he watched a couple of men working along the roadside. One man would dig a hole two or three feet deep and then move on. The other man came along behind and filled in the hole. While one was digging a new hole, the other was about 25 feet behind filling in the old. The men worked right past the fellow with the soft drink and went on down the road. "I can't stand this," said the man tossing the can in a trash container and heading down the road toward the men.
• "Hold it, hold it," he said to the men. "Can you tell me what's going on here with this digging?"
• "Well, we work for the county government, " one of the men said.
• "But one of you is digging a hole and the other is filling it up. You're not accomplishing anything. Aren't you wasting the tax payer’s money?"
• "You don't understand, mister," one of the men said, leaning on his shovel and wiping his brow. "Normally there's three of us--me, Rodney and Mike.” “I dig the hole, Rodney sticks in the tree and Mike here puts the dirt back."
• "Yea," piped up Mike. "Now just because Rodney's sick, that don't mean we can't work, does it?"
We all have a hard time each day trying to be GOOD! And all of you that look shocked at me saying this can snatch those halo’s off your heads because you are the same way.
• We all have days we are GOOD and we also have days we are as mean as a red-headed step child that did not get a thing for Christmas.
• We can ALL BE THANKFUL TODAY THAT GOD IS A GOOD GOD.
It is essential that He be that kind of God, or we would not be around today. If man had the power that God has, we would have already done away with the whole universe centuries ago.
Illus: Consider this. This is the Lord's day. God has given people six days to work and take care of their business. People should be grateful for God's blessings and come and worship on God's day, yet the majority of people are doing everything except worshipping God.
If we were God,…
• We would have barbecued every golfer, fisherman, hunter, businessman, etc., who desecrated God's day.
• We would withhold the sunshine and rain from every farmer who did not tithe.
James 1:13 tells us, "Let no man say when he is tempted, I am tempted of God: for God cannot be tempted with evil, neither tempteth he any man."
There are some things that God can not do and one of them is NOT TO BE GOOD.
This is why James says, when a man is tempted, do not say God tempted you because God does not even know how to be evil and tempt anyone.
In our Lord there is only goodness.
• He is not 50% good and 50% bad
• He is not 75% good and 25 % bad
• He is not 99% good and 1% bad
• He is a 100% good and there is no room for anything except goodness in Him
This old world stands today as a TRIBUTE to God's goodness.
B. HIS GOODNESS IS INTENTIONAL
God is INTENTIONALLY good to every one of us for a purpose. What is that purpose?
Look at Romans 2:4, "...despisest thou the riches of his goodness and forbearance and longsuffering; not knowing that the goodness of God leadeth thee to repentance?”
God is so good that is it difficult to understand why ALL MEN do not turn to Him. If God used all His powers to make life miserable for humanity, it would be easy to understand why men reject Him and would not want to worship Him.
Illus: God has been good to unsaved men and women, even some in this congregation. He has been good to you and your family. He has given you healthy children, a nice home, a nice car, clothes to wear and food to eat, and many give more attention to the dog that God created than to the God Who has blessed you with all these things.
Illus: Most of us, if not all of us, consider ourselves to be good neighbors. Can you imagine living beside a family that, at one time, did not have a thing. Then you, out of the goodness of your heart provided everything they needed. Then suppose the neighbors, in the car you gave them, in the clothes you gave them, and with the food in their bellies that you gave them, drove by your house and never paused to thank you. How would you feel? You would feel that your goodness had been trampled on.
Again, we can all be thankful that God is a good God because we all would be in a mess if He was not. Did you know that the goodness of God will be bad for those at the judgment? Why? Because they will not have one single excuse for rejecting Him. They will have to acknowledge they chose to live in sin because they loved sin more than they loved God.
Conclusion:
Illus: Someone wrote a poem titled, “What If God Stops Loving You.” (The author is Unknown, but it goes like this)
• What if God couldn’t take the time to bless us today because we couldn’t take the time to thank Him yesterday?
• What if God wouldn’t hear us today because we didn’t listen to Him yesterday?
• What if God decided to stop leading us tomorrow because we didn’t follow Him today?
• What if we never saw another flower bloom because we grumbled when God sent the rain?
• What if God took away the Bible tomorrow because we wouldn’t read it today?
• What if God took away His message because we failed to listen to the messenger?
God is a GOOD GOD to put up with the likes of us!
We see that . . .
I. THE BIBLE DECLARES THE GOODNESS OF GOD
II. THE BIBLE DESCRIBES THE GOODNESS OF GOD
