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God Is Good

We’ve been going through a series I’ve been calling God Is, looking at the character and attributes of God. I’ve come across a quote this week by A. W. Tozer, a well known pastor and writer who said, “A local church will only be as great as its conception of God.”

This is another example of what you think of God and who God is to you is everything, pretty much. It’s the foundation of just about everything in life. What it means when you say that He’s loving or that He’s good or that He’s a judge. That He heals and any of that. So much of your life depends on what that means and who He is and how you understand Him. And I’ve said before that everyone of these sermons has its own unique challenges. Some of them are more intellectually challenging, like God is Trinity, God is Three in One. Some of them, like God is Holy is one that’s just very hard to get across. Just that perfection of God in a way that makes you understand what it’s like to stand before God.

This morning I’m going to talk about what that is challenging in its own unique way. That is God is good. God is good. The challenge of that is not helping you to understand what the word good means maybe, but the challenge is that when you look with your senses at the world around you, I would say that for many of us, the evidence seems to point to the contrary. For a lot of people out there, you say God is good, but then you look at the world and you see a lot of people starving. And you look at your life and you look at the tragedies and suffering that you’ve experienced and you say, okay, explain this one to me. What do you mean when you say God is good? Good as in lets babies die and lets 8 year olds get cancer? Is that what you mean by good because I’m not sure that matches up with my definition of good. You must mean something different when you say God is good because the evidence that I see out there doesn’t seem to support God being a good God.

So this is the challenge for me this morning. When you talk about God is good; sure you reach for the Bible and you find Psalms and sayings and everything just testifies to how good He is. And then you look around the world and you say, I’m not sure I understand the goodness of God. So many people call this the problem of evil. If God is all good and all loving and if God is all powerful, then why does he allow evil? Why is there so much suffering? Because if He’s good and loving, then He’d want to get rid of evil. And if He’s all powerful, He should be able to get rid of it. But there is evil. There is suffering, so how do you make sense of that?

This is a timeless question. It’s one that books have been written about. So I’m going to take the next eight hours to try to answer this one. Well, I know I’m trying to do it in 30 or 40 minutes and there’s no way I’m going to be able to satisfy, but I’m going to do my best. Not only to the philosopher who asks that philosophical question of how you reconcile those things with God, and then I want to speak to the personal questions. Because this is where a lot of people give up on the faith, right? We all know people who believe until they’ve lost a child or until something tragic happens and they couldn’t reconcile how this good and loving God that I’ve heard so much about allows that to happen. I cried out to Him and I asked Him to come through and He didn’t. And so they gave up their faith. So this is kind of a central question to a lot of people’s faith. Maybe it’s one that you’re struggling with. This is one that you don’t want to struggle with and you’d rather just pretend it’s not there. So we’re going to try to tackle this this morning. The goodness of God, what it means that He is good.

Because when I say God is good, I think you all understand what I’m getting it. Is that, by saying that, we’re saying that God’s intentions for His creation are good. That He is benevolent, that He’s generous. He is gracious and He wants the best for us. He wants the best for His creation. That’s what it means that God is good. That He is always working everything out for the best possible outcome. That’s what it means that God is good.