Today, we are continuing our summer message series that we started last week on the attributes of God. And when we talk about the attributes of God, we're talking about a lot, in a lot of ways, what he's like, what his characteristics are. And so when you think about God and what He is like, what do you think of how do you picture God in your own mind and what he is really like? When I talk to some people, they view God kind of like this, this bully, cosmic policeman, right? Not, not a good policeman, not a not a Corey Chamberlain by any means, but, but, you know, like a bully, cosmic policeman who who has no sense of humor, and he's just walking around constantly with this threatening look on his face, and he's kind of hitting his night stick in his hand all the time, and just just looking and waiting for you to make a mistake so he can lash out at you in Anger and condemnation. And that's how they picture God. Other people sometimes view God as like an angry parent who's just always critical. I mean, it doesn't matter how well you do on your report card, or how well you do in sports or whatever else you're doing, this critical parent always says that you could have done better. It's just never good enough. And so they're going, okay, that's kind of like how God is. He's always just critical, saying We never match up. I hear other people think and talk about him as like a demanding dictator. He's just always barking orders. He expects a life of sacrifice and and hardship, and just really get in there and get after it, kind of sacrificial Christianity, where, where, if you trust Him and where he's leading, it's going to be miserable. Your life is going to stink, because this guy really doesn't care about you. He just wants a life of difficulty and sacrifice from you, because he's the dictator. He's your boss, and he's a demanding boss. All of these views of God have one thing in common among them, and that's that God does not have your best interest at heart, it's this idea that God is not good and therefore cannot be trusted. And so the question we're asking this morning is that true, is God not good, and should he not be trusted. Is he like the demanding dictator? Is he like the critical, overbearing parent? Is he like the cosmic bully policeman, just constantly looking for you to mess up? And of course, the answer to that, as we've been singing about all morning, is no, the second attribute of God that we are talking about this week, to go along with the ones we talked about last week, is God's attribute of goodness. Turn to your neighbor and say, God is good. Turn to your other and say all the time. It really is true. God is good all the time. And Scripture declares it all over the place. Here's just a few of them. Psalm 52 says, the goodness of God endures sometimes, no continually, right, the goodness of God endures continually. Psalm 119 68 you are good, referring to God and do only good, not some good and some bad only good. Psalm 100 verse five, the Psalmist says, For the Lord is good, and his love endures forever. His faithfulness continues through all generations. Hey, man, some of you may even remember that God declares his own attribute of goodness to be a part of who he is when he was in a conversation with Moses in Exodus. We get this inside look at a conversation that Moses and God are having together, and, and Moses is asking him to go with them. And, you know, I don't know if I can do all the things that you're calling me to do, kind of thing. And God is saying, Listen, I'm going with you. I will provide and and Moses says, Then show me your glory. God. God's kind of like, I don't think you really want to see that. I don't know if you know what it is that you're asking for, but here's what he does say to him in Exodus, 3319, it says, And the Lord said to him, to Moses, I will cause all my What goodness, all of my goodness, to pass in front of you. The Lord declares that to be part of who he is, his nature, his character. And then the Lord does follow through with that. And as that happens in Exodus 34 it says, And the Lord passed before him and proclaimed this, the Lord, the Lord God, merciful and gracious, long suffering and abounding in goodness. The Lord Himself says, I abound in goodness. I'm just full. Of it. I'm jam packed with goodness. I'm so stuffed with goodness that it just overflows out of me. 17th Century Puritan preacher Thomas Manton talks about God's goodness in this way. He says, God is originally good. God is essentially good. He's infinitely good. He's eternally good, and he is immutably good. If you were here last week, you may remember that we talked about this, one of God's other attributes is immutability, which means he's unchanging. God never changes. And so if he declares that he is good, then that means that he's always been good, and he will never not be good. He'll always be good. It doesn't change based on the day. His goodness doesn't change on your behavior. It doesn't change based on the things going on in the world. God is just good, and he's good all of the time. So let's talk about some specific ways, though, that we see God's goodness on display, and we experience His goodness in our lives, in the way that that will reflect how we relate to him as our God. The very first one is God's goodness to share his intimacy with us. If you were here last week, we talked a little bit about this, and I just want to mention it again. Another one of God's attributes that we talked about is that of self existence. God exists in and of himself. He is just life himself. He's not a created being. He's just always been here. And that means that God has every thing that he needs in and of himself. And let's think about who he is, right? Three Persons, one God, God the Father, God the Son, God the Holy Spirit, three persons, one essence. In other words, he lives in a perfect intimate relationship or friendship with just himself.Think about the most perfect friendship and relationship you could ever have. I mean, there's no fighting, there's no bickering, there's no arguing, there's no gossiping, there's no lying, there's no backstabbing. There's just the most perfect relationship you could ever experience where there's not one thing that ever goes wrong with that, and that is the kind of relationship that God is in just within himself, and he experiences it every moment of every day, because he exists out of time. So he has all of that. And God says, You know what? I've got an idea. I'm going to create human beings. Why would I create human beings. Why should I do that? Here's why, because I'm going to take the perfect friendship that I have and get to experience every second of every day for all of eternity, and I'm going to share it with them. I'm going to create them so they get to experience what I get to experience in a perfect, intimate relationship with myself every day. Wow. You talk about God's goodness being on display that this was the reason he created you. He didn't create you to bark orders at you. He didn't create you to just to catch you doing something wrong. He didn't create you to serve Him in some lifeless, detached, cold hearted way. He didn't create you so that you'd always be looking over your shoulder, going, did I do it right that time? Did I do it right that time? I mean, don't get me. You're gonna get me this time. That's not why He created you. He created you for intimacy, so that you could experience what he experiences in that perfect union. Jesus even prayed that he talked about that John chapter 17. This is Jesus talking, and he says, My prayer is that all of them may be one, Father, just as you are in Me and I am in you. I have given them the glory that you gave me. Why that they may be one as in the same way we are one? I in them, you and me. Why? So that they may be brought to complete unity? Jesus is saying, I want them to be one. I'm praying that they might be one in the same way that the Father the Son and the Spirit experience three in one, what we were just talking about. And so he's praying that this would happen. And a lot of times we think, Okay, well, that's that's Jesus, and it is Jesus, and it's. It's way into the Bible. It is way into the Bible. A lot of times we think about the whole Bible as a story, right? There's there's Act One, there's the creation, and then the Act Two is the fall and what went wrong with it. And act three is what God did to redeem it and save what went wrong with it. And Act Four is glory and what will happen all the end of it. But what I want you to see is that when we're talking about this intimacy and this oneness and sharing in it with the father that even happened before Act One, we're talking about Jesus way into the story. But here's the way that Philip Yancey paraphrases what is written in Ephesians, chapter one, verses three through six in the message, he says long before he referring to God laid down earth's foundations. When would that be, before creation, before he ever even began to create anything? God had us, people, human beings, in mind and had settled on us as the focus of his love to be made whole and holy by his love. Long, long ago, he decided to adopt us into His family through Jesus Christ. What pleasure he took in planning this. He wanted us to enter into the celebration of his lavish gift giving by the hand of Hisbeloved Son.Before creation,God had you in mindso that you could share in the same intimate relationship that he shares with himself every moment.That's how good God is.He didn't keep it all to himself. He's so good. He wanted to share it with you, for you to get to experience it as well. So so we see this before creation ever is there. He's thinking of you. His goodness is on display, and just imagining thinking of you so that you can share in this. And then act one, he creates everything, right? And so we see God's goodness in and through creation. I mean Genesis, chapter one, verse 31 he finishes creating, he looks back on it, everything that he's made, and declares it was very good. Well, duh, it's part of his attribute. It's who he is. And so if he creates it, God's going look what I made is good, because it's a reflection of me and I'm good, right? The Psalmist looked out and saw everything in the world and says, The earth is full of the goodness of the Lord. You can look out among the world and just notice, oh my gosh, it is full, full of the goodness of the Lord. Think of the sunrises that you've been up early enough to see the colors on display. Think about when you're sitting outside and slowed down enough to watch it set in. The same type of thing you see across the sky. Think of the majestic mountains that they're full of, the goodness of the Lord, the vast oceans where you stood on a beach and just looked out and see water forever and ever. Think of waterfalls and fields of blue bonnets and herds of horses running through fields and graceful swans flying across a glassy body of water. I mean, the earthis full full full ofthe goodness of the Lord.And this is even after sin entered the world like sin has marred God's very good creation. In some way, it's not exactly the same as it was in the beginning, when sin didn't exist and enter into the world, but we can still look out, and even though it's been affected in some ways by the fall go, Oh my gosh, the earth is full of God's goodness. Now, speaking of the fall, speaking of sin, entering the world, that is yet another way that we see God's goodness on display. God is good even in our rebellion against Him. God thinks of you before creation, before the foundations of the world. I want to share my intimacy. Get them to experience it. Act one he creates. It's very good. They're walking in the garden. Adam and Eve are experiencing the very intimacy and sharing in that union that he created for them. And then Satan shows up and tempts them, and all of a sudden, in their mind, they're going, I feel like God is holding out on me for some reason. So yes, I'm gonna take that and I'm gonna receive something. That he is not providing for me, we rebelled against God, and in that moment, everything changed. Now what we see immediately is God reacting to that. When you go to Genesis chapter three, he begins to pronounce judgment upon Satan, and I want you to see what he says in Genesis, chapter three, verse 15, he's talking to Satan, and most people believe that he right. Here is a reference to Jesus. It says Jesus will crush your head, referring to Satan, the serpent, and you Satan, or the serpent will strike his Jesus's heel. What we talk about this verse, and we don't all the time think about that when maybe you're just reading through it, but it's called the proto Evangelium. It's the first announcement of the good news of Jesus Christ, right after sin enters the world. It's okay. Think of whatever your favorite movie is, where the beauty in the story gets captured. The bad guy catches the beauty, drags the beauty away into bondage, into slavery, into a horrible situation, and the good guy shows up and sees him dragging her off and goes, make no mistake about it, sir, I will hunt you down. I will pursue you. I will find you. And when I do most of the time, he says, I will kill you and I will rescue her. You've got to think about that in the same way with what God is saying right here to Satan. Satan is entering his garden. He tempts them, he lures them away into bondage and slavery from their lover, right? They're one that created to be in this intimate relationship. And God is looking at Satan saying, make no mistake about it, I will pursue them. I will hunt you down. I will chase after you. I will find you, and I will win them back. I will rescue them from you. He will crush your head one day, even though you think you'll strike at his heel and get him. I will rescue them. Talk about God's goodness being on display, and it's a result. He's saying this to Satan, but it was even our choice, right? I mean, think about what God is saying to us. I know you turned your back on me. You fell for his temptations, but I'm still coming after you. I will pursue you. I will sacrifice myself for you, even so that you can still experience what I had in mind long before the foundations of the world and what I created this world in for you to be able to experience. So yes, we see God's goodness even with our rebellion when sin enters the world. And of course, that leads us with this proto Evangelium, this announcement of the good news of Jesus Christ, or see God's ultimate display of goodness. Of course, came through the cross. This was that rescue mission that he talked about in Genesis chapter three, when you see it in Galatians, this is the way Paul words it there. But when the set time had fully come, I'm coming after you. I will come after you. I will hunt you down and chase when that time came, he chased after he sent his son. He pursued us into the story, to go after us, born of a woman, born under the law, the same law that we were under a curse to to redeem those under the law, under the curse of the law, because we couldn't get ourselves out of it. We couldn't rescue from that bondage that we might receive. Adoption to sonship, in other words, family intimacy, to share in what it is that He created us to share in. And look how good his goodness is. You just get to receive it. He pursues after he does all of the work to rescue you, and then he offers you the freedom, all as a gift that you just have to receive. You don't have to clean yourself up and make yourself acceptable to him. So we ultimately see God's goodness on display through the cross and this rescue mission coming for us to share with us in the intimacy that we had. But But I want you to see something else, and it's going to sound like I'm saying something similar to before. I'll just put it up here. All right. The next thing I want you to focus on is God is so good that he even shares his goodness with you. Think about it this way. You weren't good. It you were a sinner, you were unholy, you were unrighteous, you were even considered God's enemy. But when you receive His gift of salvation and you are joined into an eternal union with Jesus, Christ, the one who is goodness, watch what happens now that goodness is attached to you in an inseparable union where you're made into a new creation. In Christ, your old self dies, your sin nature is killed off. You're given a new nature. You're made holy, you're made righteous, you're made acceptable. And so in Christ, you are made good. God is good. It's his attribute. We're talking about the attributes of God. But what we cannot miss is that this is a communicable attribute. There are some that are incommunicable. He's self existent. You'll never be self existent. He can't share that with you, but he has a shared value, a communicable attribute of goodness, and he shares that goodness with you so that you're made good. One of the things we've got to recognize when we're talking about the attributes of God in the the correct perception of the way we view him, secondarily, means we also have to understand how God views us who we are, and so God is good, and when we say yes to him, he shares his spiritual DNA of goodness with us, that we're intertwined in this union, that you are made good. Some people understand God's attribute of goodness, but they think of themselves as bad. I'm just a terrible, dirty, rotten sinner. No, if you're in Christ, that's who you were, but it's not who you are now that will affect your relationship with God, even if you view him as good, but you being not good. But then you go, he's good, and he's made me good. Now we can really enjoy an intimate relationship that we were meant to have, and that goodness can be expressed through me, the apostle Paul in Ephesians, 210 For we are God's handiwork. A lot of translations say masterpiece. It was he crafted us and worked us into who we are, and recreated us in Christ to do good, not just any works. Good Works. Why God is good, his attribute of goodness, he makes us good, and then he recreates us in Christ to do good works. So His goodness even gets expressed through us, so that other people in the world are then recipients of God's goodness through us. We're the vine. We're the branches. He's the vine. His goodness comes pouring through us and expressed into other people's lives. Here's the final thing I want you to see about how good God is. God is good even in suffering. This goes back to what Autumn was talking about, and even Ashlyn was here in the first service and had some special music and talked about waiting on God, and it seems like you're in the middle of some really difficult things and just waiting, and it doesn't feel good, and all of those things, but, but here's the deal. Sometimes the suffering in our lives is caused by our own choices. Sometimes we make sinful choices, and those choices have consequences, but listen, even that is God's goodness on display,because Satan is tempting you to make sinful choices, to step into something that he promises is so life giving. It's going to supply for your every need in so many ways. And and then you step into it. And by God's grace, He allows you to experience the consequences of sin so that you feel it, it's yucky, and you go, Oh, that's not where the life is. Do you see God's goodness in it? It's his goodness to go. That's not where my goodness is found. Here's where my goodness is. It's found in me. And you following and trusting me in these ways. And so God is so good that even in our own suffering and choices, he allows us to experience consequences so that we can experience His goodness. Now, there are certainly other times when Satan causes suffering that had nothing to do with our choices.You get cancer,someone you love just walks out on you for no apparent reason. You lose someone in your life, and you're dealing with things that just happen in our world, but God promises is even in those things that aren't good in and of themselves, that he will be with you. Providing for you in comfort, and that you won't be alone and you can experience His peace and assurance, and that in really, his goodness will be with you even in the middle of the suffering and the pain. The apostle Paul put it this way in Romans, 828, we know that in all things, not some things, all things, including the suffering that God works for the good of those who love Him have been called according to His purpose. It might be helpful, helps me to think of it in terms of, there's kind of this upper story and this lower story going on all the time. There's this this upper story that God is writing right Act One, creation and the fall and redemption and act four. And there's a story that God is writing being sovereign. We'll talk about that as one of his attributes later. But then there's this lower story, if you will, that Satan is involved in with the things of this world. And so sometimes Satan, who is the thief, the deceiver, the one who's out to steal, kill and destroy, is causing destruction in the lower story. And you feel that, and it's wrong, and it hurts, and it's painful, and it's, ah, he's he's stealing from me and and robbing from me and threatening me. But then this upper story, even though God's allowing that to happen, and Satan doing what he's doing down here, is somehow at work in an upper story to bring good even the middle of what Satan is causingfor destruction.This is how good God is,that through the stories that we live in, we get to experience God sitting above it all, and even when these really rough things are going on, he's still with us in the middle of it, and he still somehow, even though we can't see it, going to use it for our good and his glory. Talkabout a God who is good, andso what's our response to that? Knowing more about this attribute of God and who he is. I think the first response, the first thing in the way of application, is that we should thank God, then for His goodness in our lives. An appropriate response to God being good to us would be to thank him. Psalm 10780, that men would give thanks to the Lordfor Hisgoodness. A lot of times we focus again, so much on everything that we don't have, everything that if we had it would make our lives so much better, everything that other people have. Their lives are good. My life is not good. I'm focusing on all the lack all the things that aren't good in our lives most of the time. And that's where the stress and anxiety and the fear and the worry creep in. You remember in our road block series, those of you who were here not long ago when we talked about fear, worry and anxiety, one of the things that we mentioned there was how it's either impossible or is impossible. It's pretty much almost impossible for us to be thankful and experience anxiousness and fear and worry at the same time. And so that's the response when we live in gratefulness and thankfulness for God's goodness in our lives, and we look for it and we call it out and name all of the things that he's been so good to us in. Then now we even begin to experience that goodness, maybe a little bit more. And then the fear, the worry, the anxiety, all of those things that we live in, begins to move to the side. I think the other appropriate response then, as if God created us out of His goodness before creation, as he's thinking about us to experience the intimacy that he shares within himself, and then he puts us in that spiritual union where we now can experience The intimacy that He created us for. Are you pursuing it? Not that you it's somewhere way away, and you have to run to try to find it. It's there. He's with you. He's in you. You're in that spiritual union. But sometimes our mind and our focus again, is what I just said, so much attention out there so much of what's going on and what Satan is capturing us to deceive us from what we don't have, rather than just turning our focus inwards. That's what I mean by pursuing the intimacy, just a realization that God is good. He created me out of his goodness to enjoy this. He dwells in me. I'm going to turn my focus there. And experience what it is that He created me to experience, and we have to have the right view of God for those things. But here's what John Eldridge says about that we looked at this in our rhythms of grace series. He says, If you do not experience Jesus intimately, if you did not know the comfort or the goodness of his actual presence, do not hear His voice speaking to you personally. You have been robbed, and you have been because Satan comes to rob, to steal. God created you for intimacy. If you're not experiencing it, then he's robbing you of what he created you for. So what's in the way between you and experiencing the intimacy that God created you to have. He's a good God. He's provided everything necessary, all He's calling us to do, and it's why he says it over and over again. Keep your eyes fixed where on Jesus and His goodness. I guarantee you, the more you start keeping your eyes on Jesus and His goodness and who he is, you'll see it way more often, and you'll experience it way more often. So that may be, may that be true of you, may that be true of me, may that be true of us as a church Amen?