Join us as we discuss the often misunderstood aspects of God’s nature, such as judgment and discipline, and how they are expressions of His unwavering goodness. Through enlightening examples, including the story of Korah’s rebellion, we understand how God’s actions, though seemingly harsh at times, are rooted in divine wisdom. By examining how discipline can lead to righteousness and peace, we gain a deeper appreciation for God’s constant pursuit of our well-being, even through life’s trials.
Welcome to the InTouch Podcast with Charles Stanley for Thursday, March 6th. Have you ever felt like God is trying to spoil your fun? Too many rules, too many thou shalt nots? Well, today, let’s see how God’s laws are an expression of His kindness and love.
SPEAKER 01 :
All through the Old Testament, you’ll find verses that speak of the goodness of God. In fact, Moses said that as God passed by him, that he revealed to him his goodness. And you’ll recall in the 23rd Psalm, surely goodness and mercy shall follow us all the days of our life. Oh, taste and see that the Lord is good. And you remember that Jesus said in Matthew chapter seven, that God would give good things to those who ask him. So he says in the Psalms here, verse 19, how great is thy goodness, which thou has stored up for those who fear thee, which thou has wrought for those who take refuge in thee. Now let’s read it again. Notice what he says. How great is thy goodness, which he has stored up Now, when the Bible talks about fear in the Old Testament, we’re not talking about being scared or being afraid of, but those who reverence Him, that is, those who obey Him. So we could say, which you have wrought for those who take refuge in you, who rely upon you, who look to you, who trust you. So the psalmist says that the goodness of God is great. Now, when we think about the goodness of God, I want us to think about it in terms of two things. First of all, in the terms of goodness as an attribute, that is… Goodness is characteristic of God. Now, what is that goodness? Goodness is the highest standard of good, which God himself is and can perform. And so when somebody says, well, how good is God? Here’s how good God is. God is as good. as absolute perfection, absolute holiness, absolute purity can possibly be. Which means that not only is God good, but God is the standard of all goodness. All goodness has to be compared with God’s goodness because He is the only one who is absolutely perfect. He is the only one who is absolutely holy. He is the only one whose standard is absolutely perfect. And so… When we talk about whatever God approves of as good is certainly good. Why? Because God is good. What He approves of as being good is good. And sometimes we don’t always agree with what God says is good. Sometimes we think some things are very painful and difficult and hurtful and trying, and therefore, how could they be good? So from our limited viewpoint, we’d say, well, that certainly is not good. But goodness is what God says goodness is. And goodness is an expression of the very character and the nature of God. Let me just say this, that there’s some things that God allows that appear to not to be good. That is, God doesn’t cause things to happen that is sinful, wicked, vile, but he allows them to happen. And his response to those things, we say, well, that wasn’t very good. Let me give an example. In the Old Testament, for example, in Numbers, when Korah and about 250 of the Levites, they decided that they didn’t like Moses and they didn’t like his leadership. And so they just decided they were going to rebel against that. And so they decided that they ought to take over. So in the conversation, Moses said, well, I’ll tell you what you do. You get your 250 and we’ll meet tomorrow morning and we’ll let God decide who is holy and who is not. And so the next morning, of course, they got together and the Bible says the earth swallowed up Korah and his band, swallowed up those 250 rebels. Now somebody says, well, that was bad. That was terrible. Was it bad? Let’s ask ourselves the question. Was this a God who ceased to be good and decide to open up the earth and swallow up Korah? Those 250 men who had rebelled against God, was that bad? Or was that the goodness of God cleaning house? Because if those 250 rebellious men had been allowed to continue their rebellion, they would have divided the nation of Israel. They would have never gotten out of the wilderness because they would have been living in rebellion. They would not have been following Almighty God because they refused to follow God’s leadership. And so as a result, God swallowed them up. Now, the event itself was a tragic event, but it was an expression of sin. And this good God of ours, knowing that it was better to remove the 250 than to have them absolutely poisoned and destroy the whole nation of Israel, absolutely swallowed them up. He taught Israel a tremendous lesson that day, that rebelling against divinely asserted authority is absolutely intolerable in the eyes of God. And ultimately, of course, they rebelled and rebelled and God each time would bring down his judgment upon them, his chastisement upon them, and the deaths that were taking place and the things and the harm and the pain and the hurt and the suffering. You say, well, how could all that be good? God’s discipline of his rebellious children is an act of goodness. Their actions were not good. God’s response to their actions, always good because he always acts out of love, not of goodness. Now, what about this whole idea of judgment? How can there be a judgment of God as a good God? Well, let me ask you a question. Is it just and right and fair? Is it good for people to just do anything they want to throughout life and all stand before Almighty God and all have the same reward? There’s not a single one of us who would agree that’s good. Here’s the goodness of God. The day Jesus died, He placed your sin debt and mine on Him and forever we are the forgiven children of God and what we are forgiven for He does not bring up. So, here’s an expression of the goodness of God that in His judgment, when you and I stand before Him, we will be rewarded for the good things that God has approved of in our life. We will experience the reward of the good things that He has approved of in our life. We will suffer loss in the fact, not that He’s gonna tell us about all the sins we’ve committed, we will just have lost the reward of those things, misuse of time, misuse of money, misuse of abilities and talents and gifts. wasted time. We’ll just lose that. We just won’t be rewarded for it. But in the judgment seat of Christ, we will be rewarded. That’s the goodness of God. He’s not going to throw up in our face all the things that we have done wrong. The goodness of God. And so the judgment is good. It’s God’s way of finally bringing everything to its proper order and rewarding accordingly. What about the other judgment, the great white throne judgment, where only the lost people are going to be? Well, how can God be good and allow such a judgment to take place? For the simple reason that everybody will not suffer alike. Justice says that everybody will not suffer alike. And besides that, at that moment, no matter what’s been going on in those persons’ minds who’ve rejected the Lord Jesus Christ, absolutely refused to receive Him, hate, some of them hated the Bible, hate the church, hate God, hate everything that’s godly. When they stand before Him, what’s good about that judgment? They will understand absolutely and perfectly why they will be eternally separated from God. And God is not going to force anybody to believe Him. He’s not going to force anybody to heaven. He’s not going to drag anybody to heaven. It is in the goodness of God that he respects and honors a person’s will. He will put pressure on a person. He will do everything in his godly power in order to influence a person to receive him, to love him, to obey him for their own good. But there is a point at which God will not cross. He will not cross a person’s free will, which is, of course, limited. He will not cross that will and force a person to heaven. Therefore, how can there be a hell if God is a good God? Because God isn’t going to force someone to live somewhere for eternity if they hated it here and despised it here. And when a person dies, their character is fixed. If a person dies hating God, they don’t suddenly start loving God on the other side. There’s not one single verse in the Scripture that says that they do. When a person dies, there is no second chance. If they have heard the gospel of Jesus Christ, they don’t get a chance on the other side. People have deliberately, willfully rejected him. Knowing the truth, they stand in a judgment and will be judged and justly given their reward. What is that? It is an expression of the goodness of God that everybody doesn’t get dumped into hell to suffer the same way. So, when you look at the Scriptures from God’s viewpoint, from God’s viewpoint, it’s all good. Is hell a good place? No. Hell wasn’t even created for people. It was created for the devil and his angels. That’s what the Bible says in Matthew 24. It is man’s sin and his rebellion against God, his insistence on having nothing to do with God, separated from God. And if a person desires and refuses and commits themselves to live separated from God here, they will live separated from God for eternity. Is God going to drag them, beat them over the head, knock them in the head and change them and drag them into heaven to live among holy people? No. God is too good to encroach upon your will ultimately. It is all an expression of the goodness of God. So when somebody says that he can’t be good and have those things, yes, he absolutely can. Now, turn, if you will, to Hebrews chapter 12. Because here’s a good expression of the goodness of God in a little different light. Will you not agree that most of us would consider things good that are comfortable, convenient, delightful, peaceful? Profitable. These things are good. What about pain and suffering and hurt? They don’t exactly fall in our category of things that are good, but they do fall in the God’s category. Look at this. The twelfth chapter of Hebrews is about God’s discipline. So, let’s look at two or three verses here. He says in verse seven, “‘It is for discipline that you endure. God deals with you as with sons, for what son is there or daughter is there whom the Father does not discipline?’ But if you’re without discipline, of which all have become partakers, then you’re illegitimate children and not sons. Furthermore, we had earthly fathers to discipline us, and we respected them. Shall we not much rather be subject to the Father of spirits, that is, our heavenly Father, than live? For they that is our earthly fathers disciplined us for a short time as seemed best to them. But he disciplines us for our what? our good, that we may share his holiness. Look at that. All discipline for the moment seems not to be joyful, but sorrowful. Yet to those who have been trained by it, look, trained by discipline, afterwards it yields the peaceable fruit of righteousness. What does he say? He says that God’s discipline, when God has to put a stinging hand to us, when we get out of His will and He disciplines us, He says it’s good. Why? It’s an expression of God’s goodness. Now, here’s the reason. Now, watch this. Whatever trains me to be holy, whatever trains me to bring me peace and to make me more righteous in the way I live, whatever trains me has got to be good. Well, what about hurt? Yes. What about pain? Yes. What about tribulation? Yes. What about trials? Yes. What about things that I don’t like and I’d like to run away from and can’t escape? Are those things good? Yes. Why? Because he said, God is in the process of causing all things to work together for good to those who love him. So, behind every single pain and hurt, tribulation, trial, there is a good God doing what? Working something good in the life of the believer. And when I am able to accept the fact that this is goodness, I’m able to accept the fact that God is being good and he is not being ugly and unkind, something will happen to my thinking. Now, let’s get this out of the heavenlies and get it down here where you and I are living for a moment. I want you to turn to Psalm 23. And let’s talk about how we can experience God’s love for us and God’s goodness to us. Look at this. All of us know the 23rd Psalm. But I’ll bet you if the truth were known, if we were just honest about it, we read this and the Lord is my shepherd. We love that. I shall not want. We love that. Lying in green pastures and quiet waters restoring my soul and walking through the valley of the shadow of death, not fearing any evil, rod and staff comforting us, anointing us and so forth. But I’ll bet you if the truth is known, when it gets down past that fourth verse, our interest level goes, look at this. Because it says, Period. I wonder how often we forget this part. Listen, you have to read this the way God said it. Surely… Surely, surely, goodness and mercy are going to follow me all the days of my life. And I’m going to dwell in the house of the Lord. That is His protection, His provision, His love forever. Surely it’s going to happen. When he says follow, that word in the Hebrew means to pursue, to get after. Now think about this. What he’s saying is that God’s goodness is such that, listen, God’s goodness is pursuing you and me every day. God is in our presence desiring to pour out his goodness upon you and me every day. In our toils, in our trials, in our ease, in our comfort, in our place, whatever it may be. God is doing what? God desires to pour out his goodness. He says, surely, look at this, surely goodness and mercy will follow me. me down. It’ll come after me. Surely the mercy and the goodness and the love of God, he says, is going to track us down. It’ll follow us all the days of our life. God is a good God. What is he doing? He desires to pour out his goodness. He wants to grace us and aboundingly overflow his goodness toward us. And yet, what happens is we walk right through life and we think, well, you know, God is good to some people, but somehow God seems to have left me out. No, he hasn’t. What’s happened probably is that you have become… numb to the good things of God. You’ve become so enmeshed in other things that you don’t see God trying to express his goodness towards you. And oftentimes if it comes in the form of some pain or some difficulty or hardship, more than likely, we don’t see that as goodness. And so we complain in the morning, well, God, if you were good to me, you would do thus and so. And if you were good, you would do thus and so. The truth is God is good and what he is doing is good. We just have to get his viewpoint. But I want you to think about this. Think about the whole idea that God by his nature is good and he doesn’t change. That no matter what’s going on in your life, you say, well, you mean to tell me that if I do evil, God’s goodness is going to be expressed to me? Right. It’s going to be expressed to you in the form of discipline to keep you from walking off the cliff. So even when you and I act ungodly and rebellious, God’s goodness is still there. It is not there with a little pat on the head saying, well, bless you. His goodness may come like this to get my attention, but it is still the goodness of God seeking to protect us, seeking to provide for us. Now, when you and I get God’s viewpoint, and I can think back oftentimes when I’ve complained to God and told him I didn’t like what was going on, all kinds of complaining I did. Well, I’d get on my knees and get all that stuff behind me and say, okay, now, God, what are you saying? Without fail, I’d think, well, thank you, Lord. Thank you very much. I somehow didn’t see that. And you’d think that we would, after a while, learn to get on our knees first, get it all straightened out so we wouldn’t complain. But we don’t, and we never will until Jesus comes. We’re still going to enjoy some bit of complaining with the Lord. And that’s our human nature. What I want you to see is this. God is a good God. This whole Bible is witness to the fact that God is a good God. And he, listen, you are living in the presence of the goodness of God. You and I live under the umbrella of the goodness of God. Listen, I want to challenge you that before you get up tomorrow morning, while you’re still in the bed. You put it in your own words, but say something like this out of your heart. Father, I just want to thank you today that you are going to pursue me today to pour out your goodness in my life. You said, surely goodness and mercy shall follow me, pursue me, come after me all the days of my life. So, Father, thank you that today that you are going to be looking for ways and you’ll be looking for opportunities and you’ll know them all already. You’ll be looking for ways to express your goodness to me today. Father, I want to walk in your will today and I want to be able to identify those expressions of your goodness so that tonight I can just spend my time praising you and thanking you before I go to bed, thanking you for all the expressions of your goodness, because I know that today I’m going to live and walk under the canopy of your goodness all day long. Now, I want to challenge you to do something. You say, suppose I wake up and feel terrible. Well, are you going to go by your feelings? You’re going to go by the truth. Now, think about this. I’ll challenge you to do something. If you will wake up Twenty-one mornings. Don’t ask me why 21. Just take my word for it. If you will wake up 21 mornings thanking God for His goodness, that today that you’re going to live in His goodness, live under the canopy of His goodness, that you’re going to experience His goodness, you’re going to look for the evidences of His goodness, you’re going to thank Him for His goodness, thank Him for the fact that you are going to live in the goodness and under the expressions of the goodness of God today. Twenty-one days. Something’s going to happen to your thinking about God, about what’s happening around you, what’s happening in you, what’s happening to you. And listen, something will happen on the inside of you that will absolutely change your perspective about your relationship to God. You know what else will happen? God will begin to be able to express his goodness to you in ways that now are all plugged up. You see, he says in this passage in Psalms, he said he has stored up his goodness for those who obey him. You want God’s goodness in your life? Obey him. Do you think God’s going to disappoint you? No way. Listen, God is not going to disappoint you.
SPEAKER 02 :
If you walk away and forget that challenge, all you’re going to do is cheat yourself out of the goodness of God that He wants to express in your life today.
SPEAKER 03 :
Thank you for listening to part two of The Goodness of God. If you’d like to know more about Charles Stanley or InTouch Ministries, stop by InTouch.org. This podcast is a presentation of InTouch Ministries, Atlanta, Georgia.
