Welcome to the InTouch podcast with Charles Stanley for Monday, June 23rd. Evidence of our Heavenly Father is all around us. You just have to know how to see it. Today's message invites us to discover the expressions of God's goodness. How important to you is your view of God?
Is it important enough that You know exactly what you believe, at least to some degree, about some aspects of God. Is it important enough that You're able to share it with someone else. Is it important enough that you keep on pursuing your understanding and your knowledge. To help you know how to relate to this God whom you serve. You see, the truth is that it affects every aspect of our life.
Your view of God. Is either going to strengthen your faith or it's going to cause you lots of uncertainty. And as we think of all the attributes of God and been thinking about His greatness and who He is and how He works. I want us to think about The privilege of knowing the goodness of God. The privilege of knowing the goodness of God.
Now, when we usually think about it, most people don't think about him just being good. They think about him being just and omniscient and omnipresent, all the rest. But the truth is, he is a good God. What I want to do is I want to talk about something. that are expressions of God's goodness.
that are absolutely, totally beyond my help. or my strength or yours to do anything about whatsoever. The goodness of God is expressed in more ways than material and physical things. Listen, the best. Of God's goodness is expressed in ways that only God could express it.
They're gifts of His goodness that could only be from Almighty God. No amount of manipulation, no amount of anything that you and I could possibly do would ever bring this about. And so I wanted you to think about Three aspects, three expressions of God's goodness to you and me that we cannot do anything about and can't get them unless God provides them. And He certainly has, and all of this is on the pathway of God's goodness. One of the ways that God expresses His goodness.
Is in his mercy. One of the expressions of God's goodness is His mercy.
Now, what is God's mercy? God's mercy is his tender-hearted Loving, caring, concern for us. And usually, when you think in terms of mercy, you think in terms of mercy is expressed toward those who are in distress. People who are needy. of people who are suffering.
Go back, if you will, to 2 Samuel, the last chapter of 2 Samuel, and I want you to notice, if you will, in the 14th verse, David is talking to a man by the name of Gad, and here's what he says to him. 2 Samuel 24. Then David said to Gad, I am in great distress. Let us now fall into the hand of the Lord, for His mercies are great. But do not let me fall into the hand of man.
The mercies of God, that is, God's tender-hearted, loving kindness and care for us.
Now, there's some very significant things about God's mercy that I want us to think about because Usually, when we think about the mercy of God, we think only in terms of salvation. But here's what I want you to remember. That when the Bible talks about mercy, usually it's talking about God's tender-hearted, loving, caring concern for people who are suffering, people who are needy, or people who are in distress. And sometimes it's very humiliating to people. to have to acknowledge the fact that there's not anything in you.
Anything in me that is deserving of the mercy of Almighty God. Not one thing. Mercy is God's tenderhearted caring of us, not because He's motivated by something within us, He is motivated by the fact that it's His nature to be that way. Listen, God wants to express His goodness through His mercy toward everyone. And the truth is that he does.
If God were not merciful, there would not be a single lost person left on the face of this earth. If God were not merciful, most of us would have been wiped out a long time ago. He took the initiative to reach down and express something toward us that we were undeserving of. Seeing us in our distress and our hopelessness and our helplessness to save ourselves, to forgive our own sins, God in His mercy reached down and has done an awesome work in our lives. You say well Would he do that for my life?
Yes, he would. Would God be merciful to me? He already is. Because listen, you're able to hear this message. And God gets the message to you, and the Lord says to you, I have been merciful to you.
Look how patient I've been. I've been waiting for you. I've been calling you. I've been pursuing you. I've been inviting you.
I've been putting pressure on you. And all of this is an expression of God's wonderful mercy. Listen, a person can hate God. Defy God, deny God, curse God. And what happens?
This merciful God Patiently Waits. That's the mercy of God. One of the expressions of His goodness is that God, in all of His goodness, in all of His love, and all of His kindness, and all of His caring toward us. Mercy. It's an expression of his goodness now.
A second way he expresses his goodness is by his grace.
Well What's that all about? Here's what grace is all about. Grace Is God Having assumed Full responsibility. For our guilt The penalty of our guilt and our sinfulness.
So, no, wait a minute. How could God assume full responsibility?
Well, let me ask you a question. If he doesn't assume full responsibility, who does that leave responsible? If you and I are responsible For our sinfulness, our guilt, And the penalty of it Where are we going to spend eternity? Eternally separated from God.
Now stay with me. He has assumed full responsibility. For our sinfulness, I didn't say it made us sin. Our sinfulness, what did that sin do? It brought guilt.
And what does that guilt bring? It brings the penalty of our sin. Grace. Is God looking down upon us? and seeing our helplessness.
Seeing our hopelessness, Seeing the absolute desperation in which we find ourselves. And doing what? Seeing all of that, And knowing that you and I could do nothing for ourselves. God Chose to justify us and declare us no longer guilty. He chose to forgive us.
He chose to redeem us. Sanctify us, in essence, save us from the guilt, the penalty of our sinfulness. God cannot simply say Forgiven. Redeemed. Reconciles.
Sanctified. He cannot. Why? Because God is a just God. And being just He is truthful.
And being truthful, God abides by His own character and His own nature. There is nothing in the Bible that says God overlooks sin. God ignores sin. Or God bypasses sin. Every single solitary sin.
And every single sinner Their sin must be dealt with. That sin is not just pardoned and forgiven by the whim of a great grandfatherly God who decides, I'm going to do a good thing for you. Listen carefully. You cannot Explain grace. You cannot explain forgiveness.
You cannot explain salvation. Listen, there is no goodness of God. That is expressed in grace apart from. The crucifixion of Jesus Christ. The only way God can assume full responsibility for my sinfulness.
and the penalty and the guilt. is to do something about it. What does he do about it? He can't say. Forget it.
Forgiven. Because he said, the soul that sinneth it shall die. And because God has decreed the soul that sinneth it shall die, and if He's assumed responsibility for it, God's got to do something.
So, what did He do? God chose to come to this earth in the person of Jesus Christ and die on the cross, shedding His blood, paying the full, absolute, total, adequate, sufficient penalty for your sin and mine and for the sins of the whole world. It is in the death of Jesus Christ that God's goodness is able to be expressed through grace that brings about our forgiveness and our salvation. You cannot have grace apart from the cross. The goodness of God cannot be expressed in grace apart from the cross.
You can't have salvation, redemption. You can't have sanctification, justification, glorification. You can't have anything of the goodness of God expressed in grace apart from the shed blood of Jesus Christ. Period. That is the law of Almighty God.
And that is the heart and the core. Listen, that's the foundation of the whole Christian life. I cannot express that. Adequately enough.
So, when somebody says, Well, God's good, well, if God's good now, you know, if He's going to be good, He'd just forgive me of my sin. He has assumed full responsibility for your sin.
So how does he do it? He does it by sending His only begotten Son, Jesus, to the cross to die for our sins, and He says, Whosoever believes in Him shall not perish, but have everlasting life. My responsibility. It is to receive the grace of God. How do I receive the grace of God?
I receive the grace of God the moment I accept His Son, Jesus. Death at Calvary is full payment for my sin. Till I do that, there is no forgiveness. And I listen, as good as God may want to be to you, you cannot receive the goodness of His salvation until you receive Jesus Christ as your Savior. No man comes to the Father but by me, and the pathway of goodness is paved through the blood of Jesus Christ.
And that isn't just some Idea, some biblical terminology, that is the reality of life. And my friend, when I think about the fact that anybody could live their life and ignore God when it is absolutely crystal clear in this book. That he's the source of every single good thing. And that he's expressing his goodness in his mercy, and expressing his goodness. Listen, not only in his mercy, but expressing it in his grace.
He also expresses it in his love for us. You see, I thought mercy and grace and all that stuff is love.
Well That's an aspect of it. It's going to be expressed that way. But I think about. How do you define the love of God? Absolutely impossible.
How do you define the love of God? Now I want you to think about something. Just think. Just think. That you and I Are loved by someone.
who is so infinite In every aspect of his being, we can't even describe his love. It's immeasurable. It's unfathomable. It's indescribable. And you know what he's doing?
Every single moment of our life, he's expressing that toward us. Mercy. And raise Love. compassionate Tender. Kind, all of these are expressions of the goodness of God.
And when I think about How loving he is. And how he expresses this love in so many ways. He says, for example, he says, the Bible says, God is love. But now remember this. That's only part of the truth.
Isn't that waiting? Are you questioning God's word? No. But when the Bible says God is love, that's only part of the truth. That's not the whole truth.
Because, listen, God isn't just love. There are lots of people who would like for us to think, or like to believe, God is love. And their idea of God as love is this. He overlooks my sin. There's no such thing as a hell.
God isn't going to judge me. In other words, their idea of love is that he's a one-sided kind of being that he is not.
Now listen. You can't have The love of God. And Avoid the holiness of God and have God. You can't have him omniscient, omnipresent. Omnipotent.
Holy, just You can have any of those things unless you have it all. God isn't Part one thing to some people and part something else to others. God is infinitely, eternally, and wholly, and completely God. He is indeed a God of love, but he is more than love. He's merciful, yes.
He's gracious, yes, but he is just and God is holy. And therefore, because he is just, and because he is holy, The love of God is expressed in different ways. And so, therefore, he is not just love. And so, when somebody takes this verse and says, Well, yes, I believe that because the Bible says that, yes, God is love. And he certainly expresses that love toward us.
And so, usually, a person would say, they look at the good things that have come on and say, Isn't God good? And they get sick. Uh oh, God's not good. Then they have a financial problem. Uh oh.
Something happened to the goodness of God. Or something happens to their children, uh-oh, God's not good.
So, what happens is. We interpret the love of God and His goodness toward us on the basis of how does it fit. My presupposed plan. In other words, if I should ask you, if you took a sheet of paper and I said, Write out on this piece of paper what God would need to do to express His goodness towards you. My goodness, this would be the wealthiest crowd you've ever seen in your life, probably, because people would begin to think about all the things.
If God just expressed His goodness, He'd give me this, He'd give me that, He'd let me do this, He'd let me go yonder. And you know what? That's not necessarily True. He is a loving God. And so if God loves us.
He's always going to be looking out for the best for us. He says he's always working everything to our good.
So there are some things in life that I may choose that, you know what? God says, Because I love you. Forget that. May it be some place that you'd like to go and because God loves you, mm-mm. Because you see, God's love is unlike ours.
Our love can be influenced. God's love can't be. You can't influence God's love. You know why? Because, listen, it is absolutely eternal, it is absolutely perfect, and it's absolutely unchanging.
So the truth is, all of that is security for us. Praise God, it can't change.
Now, all of us have probably done things that we think, well, he won't love me anymore. You know what? You listen to this. You can't sin so much, God ceases to love you. Does that give you license for sin?
Absolutely not. Because I want to say that the love of God is not only expressed in good things He sends your way, but it's also expressed in discipline.
Well, why did you have to get around to that?
Well, because that's what love is. Discipline is loving correction. For the good of the one being corrected. Motivated by the love of the one who's doing it correctly. That's what discipline is all about.
Discipline is God loving us, expressing goodness toward us. And so sometimes in our suffering, what's God doing? He's expressing goodness to us because you see, God knows what those expressions of love will ultimately bear fruit with. And I think all of us have been through circumstances and situations we look back at, maybe in the pain and the suffering of the moment, we didn't like it. And we said, God, if you are good, how do you justify this?
But you know what? Sees past, present, future, and because he sees the fruit. He sees the bounty. He sees how he's going to be able to use you. He sees what he's going to do in your life.
That this hurt, this pain, this suffering at this moment, this is God being very, very, very good to you. Because he is equipping you To bring Him glory and equipping you to sense satisfaction and completeness and wholeness and totality in your life that never would have been there had God not sent you through this valley of weeping, which we see it as weeping because that's what we did. And on the other hand, God sees it as a loving valley of preparation. Is he a loving God all the time? Loving all the time.
Does it ever cease to love us? No, it doesn't.
Well, you say, Well, I believe somehow surely you could sin enough that God ceased to love you, can't do it. I didn't say that the expressions of God's love, listen, the expressions of God's love and tenderness and compassion and grace would always be there eternally. No. But can you stop God from loving it? No, He can't.
Why, it is his nature to love you.
Now I want you to think about something. I've told you the truth, the pure, simple truth of the Word of God about God's goodness. At least some facet of it.
Now let me ask you a question. If you and I have the privilege of being recipients of a God of mercy and grace and love, And we have a pathway that God has prepared for us. Paved in the blood of Jesus Christ. The pathway of goodness that has on it only the best. Only the best that an absolute, sovereign, perfectly good God can provide.
Would you not agree? That it is very foolish. to build your own pathway. And ignore The plenitude and abundance. Of mercy.
Grays and love of Almighty God. Friend, You can't be in your right mind. And know the truth. about Almighty God and walk away from him. I don't know about you, but something in me.
Will not let me walk in disobedience. to a God who is so loving.
So gracious.
So merciful.
So everything. And all he desires? Is that worship? Our obedience, our service, our praise to Him. Would you not agree?
He is worth. All that we can give him. First of ourselves. all of our life and everything that's involved. Thank you for listening to part two of Expressions of God's Goodness.
If you'd like to know more about Charles Stanley or In Touch Ministries, stop by intouch.org. This podcast is a presentation of In Touch Ministries, Atlanta, Georgia.
