The Goodness of God (Part 1 of 4)

Do you know anyone who's a grumbler? Anyone who frequently is dissatisfied or continually complains when life doesn't meet their expectations.

Maybe you're a grumbler. Today on Truth for Life, Alistair Begg explores a common element at the root of such complaining and shows us how to change our perspective. I invite you to take your Bibles once again and let's turn back to Nehemiah and to the ninth chapter. With your Bibles open on your laps, let's seek God's help as we come to study these verses. As we have sought to give you praise, our Lord and God, so we now seek to hear your voice. Your voice alone we seek to hear. And so we pray that you will take this written word and make it alive to us. Open our hearts to receive it. Take our minds and help us to be alert and attentive. Take my words and grant that they may be your voice.

In these moments, for your name's sake we ask it. Amen. Why would we ever decide that it might be profitable to take time in reviewing what is essentially a substantial chunk of the history of ancient Israel? Because that's largely what we're dealing with throughout the whole of chapter 9. Why would we ever determine to take the time—after all, we have plans and ambitions, places to go and people to meet—why would it ever be profitable to stop and engage in what is essentially a history lesson? Because after all, many of us hated history at school to begin with.

And we were very, very glad when that chapter of our lives closed and we were able to move on. It seems that that was particularly so of men. I don't know why that would be, and if you're not one of those men, then that's okay, neither am I. But many men tell me they hated history at school, largely because I think we were convinced of the kind of cynical notion that history teaches us that history teaches us nothing, and that there is really very little purpose in spending time stumbling and bumbling around, as it were, in the past. And the fact that it's biblical history does not immediately change our view in relationship to that. Now, the question is not simply a rhetorical question.

It is a realistic question. Why would we ever do this? Charles Haddon Spurgeon recalls in his biography that when he was a young man, he was subjected to a series of studies in the epistle of the Hebrews, which, he said, presumably meant something to the Hebrews, because it sadly bored one poor gentle lad called Charles—namely, himself. Now, the answer to the question is simply this—that a knowledge of this particular history gives us a framework of theology. Oh, goodness gracious, there's somebody that doesn't take me very far from history, which I don't really like, to theology, which I don't really know anything about. Well, theology—we need to demythologize theology and just explain what we're talking about when we use the word theology—is essentially an understanding of the relationship between God and man and the universe. Theology addresses and answers the questions, Who am I? Where did I come from?

Where am I going? And does it matter? Theology addresses the issues of, Where did this universe come from? Why does it exist?

And is there any purpose in the future for it? Now, any thoughtful person addresses themselves to these issues, sometimes in a formal way, in a class of moral philosophy, but more often than not, simply in the ebb and flow of our lives. We have occasion when we drive past a cemetery, as we're driving in the car on our own, and we look at all of those tombstones, and it triggers thoughts in our minds that have to do with, Why do I exist? Where am I going?

Does it matter? And so on. And so a knowledge of this history will allow us, then, to establish a theology. And Bud says, Somebody, that really doesn't take me much further, because what possible relevance is there in theology? After all, shouldn't we be more concerned in spending our time with the practicalities of life? Of course, that presupposes that any knowledge of the things of God and how it relates to our lives and to the universe is somehow impractical information. When, in point of fact, I want to show you that it is the most practical of information. Indeed, for individuals to take the kind of approach to life, which is to say, Don't confuse me with any thoughts about design or plan or theology—let me just get on with my days—is akin to inviting somebody to come into your home and do some remodeling work without them producing any kind of schematic design or plan.

They just show up one morning with hammers and saws and chisels and various implements of destruction, and you say to them, Choose a section of the house and go at it. Now, it's just a ridiculous notion. And yet, you see, this is the same kind of naivety that is attached to the thinking of people when they say, I don't want to be bothered with learning all of this teaching and this theology and these things.

Just give me the practical things and let me on with life. I want you to understand, loved ones, that if you don't have etheology, which is biblical, you have no scheme of reckoning by which to understand yourselves, make sense of your family, constrain your marriage, teach your children, go about your days—it all hinges or is founded upon the right kind of knowledge of God. Those of you who have read the book by J. I. Packer, which is arguably going to be his best-known and best-loved, the book entitled Knowing God, which begins with those immense words in the introduction, As all clowns yearn to play hamlet, So I have longed to write a treatise on God. Well, what a first sentence in a book, huh?

And it just gets better and better. Now, if you've read the book, you may recall that in his introduction he establishes the reason for his writing. If you haven't, you would do well to purchase this book. But in his introduction, he says the conviction behind this book is that ignorance of God—ignorance both of his ways and of the practice of communion with him—lies at the root of much of the church's weakness today. The absence, if you like, of muscle within the church, the absence of vibrancy and fluidity of movement. Packer says, can be traced to the fact that there is a generation growing up without a knowledge of God. And certainly, the people who are the most dangerous are those who are the most clueless. I mean, you walk along the beach, the Atlantic shore, with some of those characters with those fishing rods, and you're starting to get them in your gaze forty, fifty, a hundred and fifty yards before you reach them, if you're sensible. Because many of them are down there for the one occasion in the year—in certain cases, the one occasion in their lives—where they're gonna do this offshore fishing rigmarole.

Now, the seasoned and the able you need have no concern with. But the clueless, those things go fleeing all over the place, where the hooks are going, and you need to be making a wide berth around these characters, because they're clueless. The fact that they want to fish and that they have the equipment to fish does not mean that they know how to fish. Some of them don't even know what to do with a thing if it ever jumps up and bites the jolly little thing.

Because then again, you need to avoid them. The thing is flapping all around, all over the place. So they got maybe a book on fishing, they got a fishing rod, they got a desire to fish, they got a place to fish, and they set out to fish, and they're clueless, and it is chaos. They got the people. They said, Well, I want to be religious. I got a book about religion. I want to try and be religious. I want to do some religious things.

I want to get involved in the thing. And they're totally clueless. Packer, he says, the modern way is to set God at a distance, if not to deny him altogether. And the irony is that modern Christians, preoccupied with maintaining religious practices in an irreligious world, have allowed themselves to become remote from God. Now, that may seem like a lot of verbiage. Let me just distill it for you. He's saying this, that men and women have become preoccupied with maintaining religious practices in a world that is irreligious while personally being remote from God.

Now, let's put that in the most concrete of terms. Who are these people? They are the people who have come regularly to church on a Sunday, and it means absolutely zero in terms of practice, implication, knowledge of the Scriptures, witnessing for the next six days. Their neighbors and their friends never hear from them about Christ. Their neighbors and their friends never discover from them what it is that makes them tick. All that our neighbors and friends know is that somehow or another we're involved with a group of people that is consumed, preoccupied, with maintaining religious practices in a world that is irreligious. But we do not personally know God.

That seems to me to be the most facile and futile of all ways in which to spend one's life. So all of that by way of introduction to this chapter which I want to suggest to you is vital. It's not all cherries and whipped cream, but you know your mother told you that you can't have cherries and whipped cream all the time. You remember she told you? Eat your broccoli. Eat your vegetables. You must have your greens.

And all those kind of little statements. Why? Well, I hate them. Yes, but I want you to grow up strong. Drink your milk. Why? So your bones won't fade away.

Okay? Now, my task, you see, in opening up the Scriptures—and I like to remind myself of this with frequency—is not to come up here and talk about things that will ring your bells, wind your clocks, float your boat. My responsibility is to come up here and, having studied the Bible, explain the Bible.

A lot of vegetables, varied diets, not all immediately attractive, not all immediately beneficial, not all immediately responded to with grace and with kindness, but all absolutely necessary. Because you see, dear ones, I want you to grow up strong. I want to know, as Peter says, that after my departure, you will always be able to remember these things. You will be grounded and stabilized in the knowledge of Scripture so that in a world of changing values and shifting shadows, you may stand when others stumble. Now, it is with that in mind that we come then this morning to what is essentially a description, a great panorama, of God's goodness. The goodness of God. You can go out, the youngest or the oldest, the brightest or the dimmest, and someone can ask you in the afternoon, Did you go to church?

Yes. And what was the message about or the sermon or the address or whatever they call it? And you can answer in one phrase, We discovered that God is good. We discovered that God is good. Now, the goodness of God is an immense subject. Stephen Charnock, who wrote two volumes on the existence and attributes of God, gives 145 pages to the theme of God's goodness. And we're not talking pages that have pictures in them. We're talking tiny, tiny print. In many books today, it would run to 250 pages or more—145 pages on the goodness of God. Now, to grasp something of the wonder of that, imagine taking a plain sheet of paper, writing across the top the goodness of God, and then underneath, write down everything that has occurred to you concerning what it means to say that God is good.

And probably, and sadly, many of us would be scribbling little diagrams before we were down into the second half of the page. But not Charnock. Let me give you a little taste of Charnock, in case you would like to track him down and buy these volumes.

They're not for the faint-hearted. All the acts of God, he says, are nothing else but the effluxes of his goodness. That effluxes word sent me to the dictionary to begin with. It essentially means effulgence, which sends most of us to the dictionary as well, and it means the outpourings of. And all these acts, he says, are the outpourings of his goodness, distinguished by several names, according to the objects it is exercised about. And then he expands on that.

All are streams from this fountain. God could be none of this were he not first good. When it confers happiness without merit, it is grace. When it bestows happiness against merit, it is mercy.

When he bears with provoking rebels, it is long-suffering. When he performs his promise, it is truth. When he meets with a person to whom it is not obliged, it is grace. When it commiserates a distressed person, it is pity.

When it supplies an indigent person, it is bounty. When it suckers an innocent person, it is righteousness. And when it pardons a penitent person, it is mercy. All summed up in this one name of goodness. God is good. Now, if Packer is right that an absence of an intimate, progressive knowledge of God lies at the weakness of the church, perhaps it is equally true to say that a distrust of the goodness of God is at the root of many of our problems. Many of our problems may actually be traced to the fact that when push comes to shove, we have not come to a conviction deep in our hearts that God is actually good. For example, if we believe that God is all good and wants only the best for his children, even when we wander and when we err, then why is it that we grumble and complain? For my grumbling and my complaining is simply an evidence of the fact that I question God's goodness. Because we do not have what we expect, we slight his goodness in what we enjoy. When he takes something from us or someone from us, there is actually, when we begin to think properly, more cause to be thankful that we have enjoyed it or them so long than to murmur because we possess it no longer. For it was only on account of his wonderful goodness that he gave us that individual or he gave us that provision, and he will not remove it or him or her from us except within the framework still of his goodness. When we distrust the way in which he has provided for us, we condemn his goodness, and we end up sitting conceiving of God to be either without the goodness to exert his power or somehow devoid of the power to display his goodness. So let us then take this history lesson as it is given to us here, an unfolding of the goodness of God, learning from the past so that we might live in the present.

I have one main heading this morning. It's the first of four which will follow, and it is simply this—God's goodness is revealed in all that he has done. And this is expressed very clearly between verse 6 and verse 15. Well then, in what way has God revealed his goodness in his dealings with man? First of all, we're told in verse 6 in the act of creation, You alone are the LORD, you made the heavens, even the highest heavens and all their starry host, the earth and all that is on it, the seas and all that is in them.

You give life to everything, and the multitudes of heaven worship you. God, you see, is self-existent. God is self-sufficient. God did not need a universe, nor did God need creatures. God is perfectly at one within the framework of the Trinity. So then, why a universe?

Answer? Because God is good. And it is only his goodness which explains the fact that the whole of creation was brought out of the womb and the darkness of nothingness. It is, says the writer here, God who set the stars in place and structured the heavens. It is God who has set up his lampstands, if you like, or his lampposts, to direct our motion and to regulate our seasons. The activities of our world, of the solar system, are directly under the control and the care and the creative power of Almighty God. He has created the earth, we're told, and he has regulated the seas, both in terms of their tidal movements and also in terms of the content of them. God has provided for us all that we need, and it is he who on account of his goodness has done it. The psalmist says, How many are your works, O LORD, in wisdom you made them all?

He didn't simply give us a variety of senses, but he provided us with a whole host of objects to gratify the senses he had given us. You see, loved ones, when we begin to think about the universe and the act of creation in terms of a personal God, it is a wonderful thing. And every time that we look from an aircraft at the manifold provision and development of color scheme on the earth, we ought to say, at least in our hearts, if not out loud, truly, God is good. You're listening to Truth for Life, that is, Alistair Begg, directing our focus to God's goodness.

We'll hear more from Alistair tomorrow. As life continues to get busy, it is easy to take God for granted. We hope the teaching you hear on Truth for Life provides a time of purposeful reflection on God's word and on his goodness. We hope it's a welcome part of your day-to-day routine to remember God's character and to rest in his care. This study in the book of Nehemiah is a great way for us to pause and reassess our lives in light of God's providence and faithfulness. I hope you are finding this helpful. If you missed any of the messages in this study, or you'd like to re-listen or share a message with a friend, you can stream or download any of the messages in this series for free. The series is titled simply a Study in Nehemiah. You'll find the messages on our website at truthforlife.org, or you can purchase the complete three-volume study on a USB.

That way you can listen at your convenience as you drive to work or on a road trip. The USB sells for just five dollars and you'll find it in our online store at truthforlife.org slash store. Now addition to the daily Bible teaching you here on this program, we also select high quality books that we recommend to you that will help you better understand the scriptures. You may have heard me mention today's book. It's called The Beauty of Divine Grace. It's a book that will help you gain a clear understanding of how we receive the gift of salvation. It's so easy to go astray on this, to try to justify salvation through our good works. As you read The Beauty of Divine Grace, you'll understand more fully why salvation isn't dependent on your efforts, but solely is the result of God's grace. Today is the last day we're offering The Beauty of Divine Grace. Request your copy when you give a donation through the Truth for Life mobile app or online at truthforlife.org slash donate or call us. Our number is 888-588-7884.

I'm Bob Lapine. You have no doubt heard the phrase carpe diem, seize the day, used to urge someone to make the most of the present time. Tomorrow, Alistair tells us why Christian thinking is quite different. The Bible teaching of Alistair Begg is furnished by Truth for Life, where the Learning is for Living.