Goodness in Me

Today on Summit Life with J.D.

Greer. The greatest enemy in your life is not your spouse. The greatest enemy in your life is not even Satan. The greatest enemy in your life is not your critics or your boss. The greatest enemy in your life is your pride.

Pride is the queen mother of all sins, leading to a whole colony of other sins. Happy Monday, and thanks for joining us again today on Summit Life with Pastor J.D. Greer. As always, I'm your host, Molly Bittovitch, and I hope you're ready for another great week of biblical teaching here on the program. So let me ask, have you ever wondered how much goodness God can bring about in your life?

The reason I mention it is that many of us aren't even sure that any goodness is possible. Pastor J.D. Greer tackles that question today as he examines the sufferings of the apostle Paul, and more importantly, God's goodness through his suffering in today's brand new teaching called Goodness in Me. He's continuing our teaching series in Psalm 23, so if you've missed any part of it and would like to catch up, you can always do that free of charge at jdgreer.com. But for now, open your Bible to Psalm 23, and let's join Pastor J.D.

for this important teaching. Psalm 23, we've got your Bibles with you this weekend, and I hope that you brought them. Here is something I have observed as a pastor, and that is a lot of people quit following Jesus like shortly after high school or out of college. And for a lot of them, it's because they asked God to do something that to them seemed perfectly reasonable, but when God didn't do it, they wondered if God was even there or if he was there, what the point of this whole church thing was, because they just could not understand why a good and loving God would not do what they had asked. They even upped their game, upped their religious game when they asked God. They started getting more consistent in church and started praying every night, even started giving. But after a few weeks or months of doing this and nothing happened, nothing changing, they started thinking things like, well, what's wrong with me, and that turned into God, what's wrong with you?

And that turned into God, are you even there? And then it turned into, even if you are there, I'm not sure that all this religious effort is really worth it. For some, that happened in a more dramatic kind of, I'm not going back to church anymore kind of moment. For others of you, in fact, for more of you, it was kind of a slow fade.

Church became less and less of a priority until one day you just looked up and realized that you hadn't been to church in six months and you're not really sure what you believe anymore. Believe it or not, Psalm 23 was written to people in those circumstances. Scholars, I told you, believe it, David wrote this Psalm at one of the lowest points in his life.

David was on the run in the wilderness. He felt betrayed and misunderstood. Those who were closest to him had let him down and some had outright stabbed him in the back. Things had not worked out the way that they were supposed to. And that was after David had done everything right.

Maybe that's where you are this weekend, joblessness, divorce, a miscarriage, betrayal by a friend. In the midst of all of this ugliness, David wrote the most beautiful Psalm. Y'all, this Psalm is not sentimental.

It's not sentimental. It is a gritty wrestling with what it means for God to be good in the midst of real deep disappointment. What we've called this series, Goodness in the Middle. And the idea is that a lot of us have no problem believing that God was good in the past. He died on the cross for us and paid for our sins. And so he's good over there. We also believe that he's gonna be good in the future. One day we're gonna go to heaven. He's gonna wipe away every tear.

And so he's gonna be good there, but it's right now. It's right here in the middle that we struggle to believe in God's goodness. It's hard to reconcile God's goodness with what we are experiencing right now. Psalm 23, I told you, has three basic ideas. The first is that the presence of the shepherd is our life, our joy, our safety, and our fulfillment.

That was what we looked at the first week. David says, the Lord is my shepherd. I have no needs. He said that, I showed you, not because he had no needs. In fact, when you look at his life at the time, it looked like he had a lot of needs. But David knew that if the shepherd was close by, then he was good. And so he said, if I got the shepherd, I'm good. If the shepherd is close by, my soul can be at rest. And we use the story of Job to illustrate that, how Job came to that point. It's what we call the level three faith, the faith of sufficiency.

If I have the shepherd, I'm good. The second point that we looked at was that God is always good, but a lot of times the arc of his goodness is longer than we typically expect and certainly longer than we desire. At the very end of this Psalm, David says, because the Lord is my shepherd, I know goodness and mercy will follow me all the days of my life. I know that God is always at work, even in my worst moments, turning my tragedies into triumph and weaving my miseries into miracles and goodness and mercy follows me.

And a lot of us are like, I wanna believe that. I wanna believe that, but if I'm gonna say that goodness and mercy are following me all my days, I mean, for goodness sake, how far back there are they? Because I can't see any goodness and mercy coming out of that mess. And the answer is that God is always good, but that the arc of his goodness is longer than we usually expect. And there we use the story of Joseph. Joseph had to wait a long time to see how all the chaos and tragedy of his life were being used by God to produce something good.

The same I explained is true for you. God is always good, even though the arc of his goodness is longer than you usually expect. Every single saint of God experiences that. Our third major point, which is what we're gonna look at today, is that God uses these times of waiting to work good in us. He uses the times of waiting to work good in us.

Before we unpack this truth, you just got super comfortable sitting down. But this is our last week in Psalm 23. So I know you're comfortable, but could we all just stand and read Psalm 23 together?

Everybody stand up. Here we go, Psalm 23, let's read. The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want. He makes me lie down in green pastures. He leads me beside still waters. He restores my soul. He leads me in paths of righteousness for his name's sake. Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for you are with me. Your rod and your staff, they comfort me. You prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies.

You anoint my head with oil, my cup overflows. Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life, and I shall dwell in the house of the Lord forever. And if you believe that, would you say amen? Amen, amen, you may be seated. Let me make a few really quick observations from this Psalm that demonstrate that David realizes that God is doing something good in him through his ordeal in the wilderness.

Not just through him, not just around him, but in him. The first observation is in verse four, where David says your rod and your staff, they comfort me. Rod for a shepherd meant discipline or protection. Staff would have meant guidance.

Usually they were the same instrument, but one means guidance, one means discipline and protection. David says, I recognize that some of this affliction, some of this pain is you disciplining me and you shaping me more into your image. This wilderness feels painful, but I know that your rod of discipline and your staff of guidance are at work on me in this to shape me into something beautiful.

In fact, every time I make this point, every time I get to that verse, I think of that song my mom used to sing to me when I was a kid, that he's still working on me, to make me what ought to be. Right? Like three of you, okay? It took him just a week to make the moon and stars, the sun and the earth and Jupiter and Mars. How loving and faithful he must be.

Seriously, nobody? He's still working on me. So God, David says, he didn't know that song, but he was like, God is doing a great work in me. And God is my shepherd, has that rod and staff, and he's always using it to shape me into his image. Verse three, there's another little clue here.

David says, he leads me in paths of righteousness for his name's sake. Sheep, I told you, are terrible creatures of habit. Sheep like to walk the same paths over and over and over again because they feel safe in familiarity.

That sound familiar to you? The problem with that familiarity is that they tread these paths over and over until all the grass is gone, and even worse, they contaminate the soil with layers and layers of their waste until the soil becomes a breeding ground for all kinds of parasites and diseases. So the shepherd comes along and he leads them into new paths which you'd think the sheep would be excited about because that means fresh grass and non-contaminated soil, but the sheep don't like it because the sheep like the old paths because they were familiar with them. And now in these new paths, they feel compelled to stay close to the shepherd because they don't know where they're going anymore. But of course, that's exactly what the shepherd wants. And David said, I sense that's what you're doing with me. You're putting me into new spaces, unfamiliar spaces, new trials, new temptations, where I'm gonna have to learn to trust you all over again.

Some of you are right there this weekend. Listen, and I will say this from very personal experience. God uses upheavals. Sometimes they're simple things like changing of jobs or switching houses or a new family situation.

Sometimes they're more significant things like marital discord or chaos in your career or a problem with one of your kids or a medical challenge. He uses those as severe mercies that force you to lean on him in new ways and experience new mercies and new graces. He is leading you into new paths of righteousness, breaking up your foundations so that you will stay more closely tethered to him. That's probably what's in David's mind when he says, he leads me in these new paths of righteousness for his namesake.

Verse five is another one. David says, you anoint my head with oil. Now, this is an interesting analogy to use in Psalm 23. Most of us, if we grew up in church, when we see that word anointing, we think of like anointing in terms of like anointing for some ministry. Like when Samuel anointed David as king, and maybe that was in the back of David's mind.

But I mean, let's just be honest. You typically don't anoint a sheep for service. That's not why you would anoint a sheep. I don't know any shepherd that would do that.

Philip Keller, who wrote the book, A Shepherd Looks at Psalm 23 that I've referenced a few times in this series. He says that shepherds anoint sheep's heads with oil for three different reasons. He said, first of all, in the ancient days, when flies and gnats and mosquitoes were bothering the sheep would drive poor sheep crazy. And so they put oil on their heads because oil acted like a repellent. Second, when the sheep broke out with some skin disease, a lot of times that took place on their head.

And so oil worked like a medicine that would keep that disease from spreading. Third, and this is probably the best one, during mating season, the rams, the male sheep would battle to establish dominance by butting heads. You've probably seen this on the National Geographic channel. It's quite dramatic. They really give each other a good whack. These rams can in that process get maimed and die. So the shepherd would anoint their head with oil so they would just kind of slide off of each other. By the way, some of y'all ought to try this.

Parents with your middle school age boys, it just might work, okay? Something in this sermon for everybody. Oil in the Bible almost always represents the spirit. And Phillip Keller says he believes that David is referring to how God in the midst of trials and temptations pours out his spirit on us in an unusual way. He'll give us peace in the midst of all of our pestering little worries and niggling anxieties. He will fill us with the spirit to be able to fight against the contagion of worldliness and the sin that is growing around us or in our hearts.

Yes, we are in temptation, but God is faithful to make a way of escape and he does that by the spirit. You're listening to Summit Life with J.D. Greer. For more information about this ministry, visit jdgreer.com. This month we want to say a special thank you to an incredible group of people, our gospel partners. Every day when you listen to biblical teaching on Summit Life or read one of our daily devotionals or peruse an article on Pastor J.D. 's blog, you have a gospel partner to thank because their support fuels every part of this ministry. Our gospel partners do exactly what the name suggests. They partner with us financially each month and because of their giving, we're able to faithfully use those resources to spread the gospel as far and as wide as we possibly can and help equip others to do the same. If you've been blessed by Summit Life or any other part of this ministry, I want to invite you to consider becoming a gospel partner today.

You can do that by calling us at 866-335-5220 or by visiting jdgreer.com. Thanks for being with us. Now let's get back to today's teaching. Once again, here's Pastor J.D. Thirdly, he pours out his love on us so that we can forgive and be patient with others like he is. David says, in the midst of all this trial, God is doing good in me by pouring his spirit out into me. One more, verse five, David says, my cup overflows. David said, God used this time in the wilderness to force me to soak more in him like a sponge going into water and the more I became filled up with him, the more I just became a blessing to others because when I'm filled up with Jesus and life squeezes me, what comes out of me is Jesus and that's a blessing to others. David says, my cup is not only full now, my cup overflows and that was only gonna happen by learning to lean more on Jesus during the hard times. The point I'm trying to make in these observations is that David is clearly aware that God is doing a good work in him during his time of wilderness. God uses the times of our waiting to work good in us. Now, I want you to say goodbye to Psalm 23 for the morning and I want you to scoot over to 2 Corinthians 12 in the New Testament because I wanna show you in 2 Corinthians 12 how Paul experienced these same realities.

Paul did not quote Psalm 23 verbatim in this passage but you can see Paul wrestling with the same concepts and of course, Paul would have known this Psalm by heart and so he's wrestling with the ideas of Psalm 23 in 2 Corinthians 12. 2 Corinthians 12, seven, okay, there in your Bible. As always, if you don't have your Bible, begrudgingly, I will put it on the screen for you. I say begrudgingly because I'm telling y'all I feel like I'm enabling the bad habit of you not bringing your Bibles to church. Now, listen, statistically, I learned this in seminary. You are much less likely to go to hell if you bring your Bible to church than if you don't.

Try and deny the logic of that, okay? I'm just teasing, sort of, okay, but bring your Bible. 2 Corinthians 12, verse seven, here's what the apostle Paul says. So to keep me from becoming conceited because of the surpassing greatness of the revelations, Paul's there for a moment. Paul had a pretty lofty assignment, did he not? God gave him revelations that he was to write down as scripture. It's pretty heady when what you say is synonymous with what God thinks. And so Paul says, because of the loftiness of that calling, a thorn was given to me in the flesh, a messenger of Satan to harass me and to keep me from becoming conceited. That's clearly the purpose that God has.

He says it twice. The reason God gave me this was to keep me from becoming conceited. Three times, I pleaded with the Lord about this thorn that it should leave me. But the Lord said to me, no, Paul, my grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in your weakness. Therefore, I will boast, Paul says, all the more gladly of my weaknesses so that the power of Christ may rest on me for the sake of Christ in. I am content with weaknesses and insults and hardships and persecutions and calamities. For when I am weak, that's when I'm really strong. Y'all, I love this passage.

Let's explore it, okay? Paul had a thorn of the flesh. And of course, we all wanna know, what was it? This is the kind of thing that commentaries spill great amounts of ink over trying to figure this out. Maybe it was Paul's eyesight. I've seen commentaries made the case that Paul had an eye disease that caused his eyes to ooze and it was gross, it was painful, and it made it hard for him to see. And they're like, well, clearly this was his thorn and that would have been a thorn. Now they say, no, no, no, Paul is referring to certain people who are a thorn in his side.

And maybe that's true also. Paul certainly refers to both of those problems at some point in his writings. But the bottom line is, we don't know. Paul doesn't tell us.

And y'all listen, I would love for you to learn this. When the Holy Spirit leaves something vague in the scriptures, he leaves it vague on purpose. He doesn't leave it vague so you and your Bible study can figure it out. So you gotta ask, why would he leave this vague? Why not fill in the blank here for us?

I think the answer is obvious. It was so that you could fill in the blank with your thorn. You likely have a thorn in the flesh and Paul wants you to understand yours just like he understands his. If Paul had told us what his thorn was, what would probably happen is we'd all start playing the comparison game.

Am I right? Well, what I have is nothing compared to Paul's. Mine's not even worth talking about. God's not really concerned about mine. Or we'd say, well, mine's way worse than Paul's was. See, nobody understands my pain. God can't possibly have a good redemptive purpose in something this bad or probably worst of all, if we had the exact same one as Paul, we would be like, boasting like, you know, me and Paul, we got the same pussing eye problem. And so clearly, clearly I'm special. The Holy Spirit leaves Paul's affliction vague so that you could apply what Paul says about his to yours.

You know what, write this down. Suffering is not a competitive sport. You understand that?

My suffering does not gain meaning by comparing how bad it is to yours. The point is for you to look in your life and you will see where God is doing something similar in your life to what he did with Paul. I want you to see how Paul processes this, okay? Verse seven, Paul calls it a thorn of the flesh, which means it was some kind of physical thing. Wasn't a spiritual thing, it was an actual physical thing, an actual physical problem. But then he says, it's a messenger of Satan.

Oh, I mean, that dials it up a bit, doesn't it? This physical thing has spiritual power. Satan is using this physical thing to attack me, to discourage me, to tempt me, to slow me down, to bring me down, to wear me out.

Oh, wait a minute, there's even more. Paul says this thorn was given to me in the flesh, given by who? You say, well, by Satan, of course, it's a messenger of Satan. No, see where it says the thorn was given to keep me from becoming conceited? Who would want to keep Paul from becoming conceited? Satan, hardly.

Satan would love for Paul to get conceited because then Paul would be more like Satan. No, the thorn ultimately comes from God. Like write this down, the thorn may come through Satan, but the thorn comes from God. And that's good news.

You say, now, why would that possibly be good news? Because it means that God is using even the affliction of Satan to work good in you. I'm talking about things like marriage problems. I'm talking about career frustration, a bodily affliction, an ongoing temptation you just cannot seem to shake, mental trauma, struggles and failures in ministry, problems with a child. All of these, yes, Satan may be a part of them, but they are severe mercies that God is using to lead you down new paths of righteousness.

In verse 10, Paul summarizes a whole drag bag of possibilities. He says, I got weaknesses, some of your insults, hardships, persecution, calamities. You say, no, no, no, I know, listen, this trial is caused by Satan. This trial is caused by my evil boss.

This trial is caused by my spouse. They are just trying to absolutely destroy me. It is used by Satan.

I know it, I can feel his power at work in it, maybe. But if you are a believer, Satan never has the last word in your life, never. Your affliction, your weakness may be caused by your flesh, may be caused by your failures, your enemies.

It might even be caused by Satan himself, but they are ultimately from God for your good. Verse seven, and what is God's purpose? To keep me from becoming conceited.

He says it twice in that verse. God sent a messenger of Satan to harass me to keep me from becoming conceited. You see, the greatest enemy in your life is not your spouse. The greatest enemy in your life is not even Satan.

The greatest enemy in your life is not your critics or your boss. The greatest enemy in your life is your pride. Pride is the queen mother of all sins, leading to a whole colony of other sins. Pride leads you to feelings of self-sufficiency. And the problem with self-sufficiency is that it makes you comfortable being independent from God.

It makes you okay with being distant from him, wandering from him, doing things your way. If you're proud, you won't be often in prayer. You won't be presenting your needs to God.

You won't fast that much because you're just not desperate to know his will. You're not like Moses who would say, God, I'm not gonna go anywhere with any kind of success if you're not gonna go with me. So God lets believers struggle because he's trying to keep them from pride because pride leads to independence from him and humility leads to closeness to him. Do you feel like you have a thorn in your flesh?

Some kind of burden that stays with you? What a powerful reminder today of God's goodness through it all. And by the way, our team would be honored to be praying for you.

Either give us a call or reach out through jdgrier.com. Pastor JD, we've been talking about our gospel partners all month long. Remind those who don't know what exactly is a gospel partner and how can someone become one? Yeah, Molly, gospel partners are those individuals or families or couples that give on a monthly basis because they believe in the messages that we share here, these messages have had an impact on them or their family and they wanna have a role in helping other people here.

What we're saying here is we share God's word. You can become a gospel partner today by going to the donate page on jdgrier.com and then selecting the monthly option. I just wanna say that I personally, and we here at Summit Life are so grateful for your commitment to the gospel, for your generosity.

We take the responsibility very seriously to be a wise steward of what you give and to make sure every bit of it is used for the purposes of getting the gospel to the ends of the earth. We'd be honored to have you join the gospel partner team today. And when you do, we'll send you a copy of our latest monthly featured resource, an eight part study in Psalm 23 that shares a name with our current teaching series, Goodness in the Middle.

Give us a call at 866-335-5220 or you can visit us online at jdgrier.com. I'm Molly Venovich. Thank you so much for joining us today. Don't miss tomorrow's program as we wrap up our teaching series in Psalm 23. See you Tuesday right here on Summit Life with J.D. Greer. Today's program was produced and sponsored by J.D. Greer Ministries.