God is Good - Part 1 of 2

Oh, for a thousand tongues to sing, my great Redeemer's praise, Thou the praise of my God and King, Thou triumphs of his grace.

This is Lecair Bradley Jr. welcoming you to another broadcast of the Baptist Bible Hour. Heiress, Lord Jesus, ruler of all nature, O thou of God and man the Son, Be will I cherish, Be will I honor, Thou my soul's glory joy and crown. There are the meadows, there still the woodlands, Gold in the blooming morn of spring. Jesus is forever, Jesus is ruler who makes the woeful heart to sing. There is the sunshine, there still the moonlight, And all the twinkling starry flows. Jesus shines brighter, Jesus shines purer than all the angels can boast. Our subject today, God is Good. You may say, we all know that. Well, certainly we do, but to see how it is delineated here in Psalm 119 is a special blessing.

If the program is a blessing to you, we'd like to hear from you. Our mailing address is Baptist Bible Hour, Box 17037, Cincinnati, Ohio 45217. How can I, a holy mortal, born an earthly form of clay, Seem to praise the Lord Jehovah, who hast turned by night to day? How can such a one of Adam, longest strains from God above, Home to find his blessed favor, home to know his blessed love? For his eye is far too pure to look upon this sinful frame. His own perfect being never can accept my sin and shame. Oh, that I knew where to seek him, oh, that he might smile on me, But unless my sin is covered, such a joy can never be.

But, oh, listen, do you hear it, do you hear that glad new song? It is telling how the Savior has been sent to claim his own. Blessed Jesus, die to save me, save me from the fatal sting. Now I know that he's my Savior, praises to my Lord and King.

Amen. Turn with me to Psalm 119. I want to look at two verses. Verse 65. Thou hast dealt well with thy servant, O Lord, according unto thy word.

Verse 68. Thou art good and doest good, teach me thy statutes. God is good.

Thou hast dealt well with thy servant. Thou art good and doest good. The fact is very clearly expressed in scripture that God is good. God is essentially good. It is his nature. It's not something that he has to strive for. But that's the way he is.

He is good. Let's look at the book of Exodus chapter 33. Exodus chapter 33, reading in the 18th verse. And he said, I beseech thee, this is Moses speaking to the Lord, show me thy glory. And he said, I will make all my goodness pass before thee. And I will proclaim the name of the Lord before thee and will be gracious to whom I will be gracious and will show mercy on whom I will show mercy. The goodness of God was essentially God. It's who God is.

He is good. And it's interesting that in this very passage where it speaks of the goodness of the Lord, it refers also to his sovereignty, a passage which is quoted by Paul in the Roman epistle. I will be gracious to whom I will be gracious and will show mercy on whom I will show mercy. So the fact that God, according to his sovereign purpose, bestows mercy on some and not upon all does not detract from his goodness. God is good.

Chapter 34, verse 6. The Lord passed by before him and proclaimed, The Lord, the Lord God, merciful and gracious, longsuffering and abundant in goodness and truth. God is perfectly good. That being true, there is nothing that can make him better. God cannot possibly improve.

He will be no better tomorrow or next week than he is today because he is all good. There are those who hold a position today that God is in the process of change. God is growing. God is learning. That there are things that God cannot possibly know about the future until man ultimately exercises his free will and then based on those future decisions, God may know a little more about what's happening. All such folly is clearly condemned in scripture. The God that we worship is a God of power, God of greatness and glory, a God of sovereign majesty.

He is perfectly good and therefore could not possibly be better. There's nothing that restrains him from evil. God is not inclined toward some evil action and being held back either by his own determination or by some other force or influence.

And think of the vivid contrast when we think about man. Man must be restrained. Man is often restrained by the thought of the consequences of his actions. There are things that people would like to do that they will not do because they know there would be some dire consequence to be suffered.

Just by some sickness that they might incur, some physical pain that might come, some loss that will ultimately be meted out upon them, some terrible consequence, they are held back, they're restrained by considering what the results of their action might be. They are restrained by law. Can you imagine what it would be like to live in this country if suddenly there's no more law? There are no more courts. It doesn't matter what anybody does, they're not ever going to be taken to court, they're not ever going to be put in jail because they don't have any laws.

Everybody can do what they want to do. Now it's tough enough sometimes with the laws in place, is it not? You read about the crimes that are committed, how often there are murders. One case on the news today about people torturing a woman, just think, what kind of corrupt creatures are they that will impose such suffering upon others? And all of this is done even with the realization that their action may cause them to be arrested, put in jail, or even the death penalty meted out. So if there was no law, man would just be rampant in his evil actions. Furthermore, man has to be restrained by the hand of God.

Psalm 76 10 says that God will make the wrath of man to praise Him and the rest of it He will restrain. If you think conditions are bad in the world today, if God just lifted His hand and put no restraints in place, it would be far worse than you can even imagine. God is still in control. God does put barriers in men's way.

God does disrupt some of the conspiracies that might otherwise be enacted. And so there are restraints to keep man in place, but not so with God because God is good and therefore He is not being held back. And according to this passage, the psalmist says that He hath dealt well with thy servant according unto thy word. He is good according to His word, according to what is laid out in scripture, according to promise. God is good in harmony with what is revealed about Him. Psalm 86 verse 5 says, For thou, Lord, art good, and ready to forgive, and plenteous in mercy unto all them that call upon thee.

That's a wonderful promise, isn't it? To know that God is good, He is not a tyrant who is seeking to harm His subjects. He is a God that is good, He is ready to forgive, He has plenty of mercy, and He bestows that mercy upon all that call upon Him. So you see, the goodness of God is not something that is just a happenstance, something that just is displayed periodically. Some of the Greek gods that men had devised in their own imagination often had a change of personality and might be good one time and evil the next, kind one time and vicious on another. And of course there were a variety of gods that they had developed in their own thinking and some were mean all the time and others of a little better turn in nature, showing the absurdity of what man develops when he begins to try to make his own god. But the God of the Bible reveals Himself as being one who is good. And this is not by chance, this is by design.

This is by purpose. He says, the Lord is good. So as God reveals the fact that He is good, it is His purpose to be good.

And He is always good, no exceptions to it. That's reassuring. It would be a frightening thing to imagine that the God that we worship, who is good today, might at some future time change, no longer be good. But such is not the case. Malachi chapter 3 verse 6 says, For I am the Lord, I change not, therefore ye sons of Jacob are not consumed. If it were not for the goodness of God, it says you sons of Jacob might well have been consumed. But because I do not change, I am the same, I am going to continue as I am. He is the good God, always has been, is now, and will forever be good.

That's comforting to know. And then we see the evidence. The fact is declared, then the evidence is to be reviewed. Thinking about the scope of His goodness. Back in Psalm 119 verse 64, it says, The earth, O Lord, is full of Thy mercy. Teach me Thy statutes. The earth is full of His mercy or full of His goodness.

Not on a limited basis. God is everywhere present and therefore His goodness is universal. In Psalm 145 verse 9, The Lord is good to all, and His tender mercies over all His works.

Good to all. Now, somebody might have a question about that, but just keep that verse in your mind as we look at two or three others that deal with that same question and we'll expand it a little bit. Psalm 104 verse 13, He watereth the hills from His chambers, and the earth is satisfied with the fruit of Thy works. He causeth the grass to grow for the cattle, and herb for the service of man, that he may bring forth food out of the earth, and wine that maketh glad the heart of man, and oil to make his face to shine, and bread which strengtheneth man's heart. The trees of the Lord are full of sap, the cedars of Lebanon which He hath planted, where the birds make their nest. As for the stork, the fir trees are her house.

The high hills are a refuge for the wild goats and the rocks for the conies. He appointed the moon for seasons, the sun knoweth his going down. Thou makest darkness, and it is night wherein all the beasts of the forest do creep forth. The young lions roar after their prey, and seek their meat from God. The sun ariseth.

They gather themselves together, and lay them down in their dens. Man goeth forth unto his work, and to his labor, until the evening. O Lord, how manifold are Thy works! In wisdom hast Thou made them all.

The earth is full of Thy riches. You see, the goodness of God is seen on a broad scale. This certainly doesn't sound like God created everything in the beginning, wound it all up, and stepped aside to see what would happen.

God is involved on a detailed basis with His creation. What's it say about the grass growing? He causeth the grass to grow. You might be proud of your lawn, probably not at the present with the lack of rain we've had, but at some point you might have been.

And you think about all the work you did in preparing the soil and putting on the right weed killers and the right fertilizer and digging out the weeds and all the different things that you did. To know when it was all said and done, if God doesn't cause it to grow, it doesn't go anywhere. And this is what the text says, that God is still in charge of this universe. God is good, and His goodness is seen in so many directions, so many areas. Isn't God good to bless us to see His handiwork? You look at the beauty of a tree, just a marvelous thing to see how the trees provide the shade and add to the beauty of the landscape. And then to see the colors as they come in the fall of the year. You know, God could have created the heaven and the earth in black and white and not be any color.

But isn't God good that He has created many colors for us to enjoy, many beautiful things in His creation that we admire? We look into a clear blue sky, as we had today, and you just say, that's so delightful, so refreshing, there's just something uplifting about looking into a clear sky. But then there are days that the clouds are beautiful also, and you stand amazed at the various shapes and sizes of clouds.

I remember on one airplane trip a few years ago, it was a smaller plane, and so they could maneuver it a little more than maybe some of the larger airliners. And the pilot determined we were just going to work in and out of those clouds, and I've never seen such unique cloud formations in my life. It was just one shape after another, one color after another. And it was like he could just find this path and we were just going through, never did go through a cloud, we just maneuvered around them and were able to look at them as we went.

I thought I observed that. It's just remarkable. Nobody's up here to see it usually, just somebody in an airplane gets up on the top side of it and looks and sees all this, but it's here and God has made it and it's just a display of His greatness and power. And what can be more beautiful than the colors in the sky at sunset?

Just rich colors, beautiful colors. You see it sometimes just stunned by the striking beauty and that's the God I worship, the God that put that in its place, that created this marvelous earth upon which we live and the celestial bodies around it. You hear the birds sing.

Isn't it amazing that these birds have an instinct that God has given them that they know how to seek out their food and God provides for them and some of them fly south and find their way back. All of these remarkable things, it's just a beautiful thing to behold. Look at the flowers.

They say all the different colors, all the different kinds, all the different odors that come from flowers. Even down to the marvel of insects, Brother Huffman has some pictures on our website at the moment of some rather unique insects of most unusual shapes and striking colors. They say, God made all that. And I have to admit that there's been a time or two down at the zoo I looked at some unique animals and I wondered why. I wonder why God made that thing like He did, but He had a purpose in it. And we just look at all that and say, this all speaks of the goodness of God that He created such a unique place for us to live.

So many things for us to enjoy, to be able to see and hear. God is good. Let's look at Psalm 33. Psalm 33 verse 5, He loveth righteousness and judgment. The earth is full of the goodness of the Lord.

Must we not agree that it's so? Now we all have our burdens to bear, our troubles to face, challenges to deal with. But let's be careful that we don't become so consumed with them that we forget that the earth is full of the goodness of the Lord. There's so much of the display of His power, the beauty of His handiwork all around us to look at and observe every day. We ought to appreciate it.

We ought to thank God for it. We ought to rejoice in His goodness. His goodness which is universal, which is seen everywhere you turn. And God is good to all men. So many people say, I know God's good to His people, but He's good to all men.

Paul mentions that in his sermon at Mars Hill, Acts chapter 17 verse 25. Speaking of the fact that the God that he's going to tell them about, the God that we worship is the God that made the world and all things are to their end. He says, neither is He worshiped with men's hands as though He needed anything, seeing He giveth to all life and breath and all things. He giveth to all life and breath and all things.

Somebody might say, well, I just don't believe there is a God, and yet the breath they breathe, God gives them. God gives life to all. Well, we all know that God is good, but to see His goodness unfolded in this portion of scripture is indeed a great joy to us. If you'd like to help keep the program on the air, you can go to our website at BaptistBibleHour.org and make a donation there. Till we greet you at the same time tomorrow, this is LeSaire Bradley, Jr. bidding you goodbye and may God bless you. This is my story, this is my song, praising my Savior all the day long. This is my story, this is my song, praising my Savior, praising my Savior, praising my Savior all the day long.