One of the ideas the planning team for our Harvest of Blessing Thanksgiving Celebration had was to paint a tree on the back wall of the sanctuary. The committee members then distributed leaves made from construction paper and asked families and individuals to write down on the leaves things they were thankful for.
Yesterday I came in and jotted down some of the things you wrote. One child wrote, "I'm thankful that I come from a family that loves Jesus." Another child simply wrote, "Food, parents, God" and still another wrote, "My family." A parent wrote, "I'm thankful for my three wonderful, beautiful girls who love Jesus with all their hearts and bring such joy to my life."
One father wrote, "I'm thankful for a wonderful wife, great kids, good job, good health and a nice house." On one leaf someone wrote, "GRACE" in big letters. Another person wrote, "I'm thankful for God's grace and presence in my life." I liked this one. "I thank God for his goodness and mercy and grace that covers all my shortcomings."
We have much to be thankful for.
We have so much to thank God for. He has been so good to us. Our God is a good God. I think of James 1:16-17 (NIV) which says, "Don't be deceived, my dear brothers. Every good and perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of the heavenly lights, who does not change like the shifting shadows."
In Acts 14:17 (NIV) Paul says, "Yet he (God) has not left himself without testimony: He has shown kindness by giving you rain from heaven and crops in their seasons; he provides you with plenty of food and fills your hearts with joy." Make no mistake about it, every good thing in our lives comes from God the Father.
The other day I was flipping through radio stations and heard someone praying. For several minutes the man went through a whole litany of things that he was grateful for. "I thank God for my morning newspaper and for the man at the fill up station." It was a great reminder that all of the creature-comforts we enjoy, big and small, flow forth from the throne room of God. Our God is a good God. He is good to us.
In Acts 17:25 (NIV) Paul says, "And he (God) is not served by human hands, as if he needed anything, because he himself gives all men life and breath and everything else." In 1 Chronicles 29:14 (NIV) King David says, "But who am I, and who are my people, that we should be able to give as generously as this? Everything comes from you, and we have given you only what comes from your hand." God's unceasing goodness pours over into our lives like a never-ending waterfall. We cannot possibly absorb the entirety of God's abundant blessing in our lives.
One of God's faithful missionaries, Allen Gardiner, experienced many physical difficulties and hardships throughout his life of service to God. Despite his troubles he used to say, "While God gives me strength, failure will not daunt me." In 1851 at the age of fifty-seven, he died of disease and starvation while serving on Picton Island, located at the southern tip of South America. When his body was found his diary lay nearby. It bore the record of his hunger, thirst, wounds, and loneliness. The last entry in his little book showed the struggle of his weak, shaky hands as he tried to write legibly. His labored words read, "I am overwhelmed with a sense of the goodness of God."
In his pain, hunger, disease, intense loneliness, poverty, and even in the face of death, Allen Gardiner was fully convinced of the goodness of God. If Gardiner could be overwhelmed with a sense of God's goodness in death, how much more, in our prosperity, in our abundance, in our lives, should we sense God's goodness? Our God is a good God. He has been so good to us in so many ways.
Not everyone is convinced of God's goodness.
I think it is important to realize that not everyone is convinced of God's goodness. There are many even in Christian circles who deny the goodness of God. I'm thinking of a friend who has been angry with God for several years. His mother, a devout woman who loved Christ and served him with all her heart, was diagnosed with cancer. There was little hope from the start and she died after a very short time. Even after all these years my friend still has a lot of unresolved anger toward God. Through tears he asked me, "Why, if God is so good, did he take my mother with such a terrible disease? Why did he take her before she had a chance to meet my son?" He rarely, if ever, sets foot in church anymore. His heart has been hardened. He will hear nothing of the goodness of God.
Several years ago when the Mississippi River was flooding over its banks, thousands of homes were destroyed, families were left homeless, and entire communities were wrecked. Millions of dollars in personal property was forever lost. After listening to his wife lament the loss of their dream home, their wedding pictures, their family heirlooms, their clothing and countless treasured items, a man angrily told a reporter, "I refuse to believe in God anymore. If God existed, if God were good, he would not have allowed this to happen to my family."
As Christians, we have long insisted that God is good, and rightfully so.
First, we refuse to measure God's goodness by our circumstances.
I received a letter recently from someone who is at the lowest point of his life. For quite some time, he has been reaping the consequences of all his choices. He dropped out of high school. He messed around with drugs that have permanently wrecked his emotional self-control. He repeatedly drove on a suspended driver's license and may never get his license back. He has mounted thousands of dollars in legal and medical bills. His doctor told him to change his lifestyle or he'd surely die by time he reached thirty years of age.
He perhaps does not feel that God has been good to him. I wrote him letter and said, "Without consequences, our choices wouldn't mean anything." By God's design, every choice we make has a consequence. God allows for the possibility that we could wreck our lives with foolish choices. God wants us to take our choices seriously and to live responsibly. Sometimes our choices can impact innocent people. This too is part of God's design. In order for us to be truly free, God had to allow for the possibility of evil. As Christians we refuse to measure God's goodness by our circumstances because they lead us to false conclusions about God's character.
Second, we refuse to measure God's goodness by our expectations.
In John 16:33 (NIV)Jesus said,"...in this world you will have trouble." When sin entered the world, everything fell apart. Our relationship with God, our relationship to one another, our relationship to the world, and even our relationship to ourselves. We are alienated from God. We have conflict with our fellow man. Disease, disaster, and death entered our world. Our thoughts and emotions were corrupted. When we sinned God said, "Look, the consequences will be severe. In this life you will have many troubles. Life will be rough."
Our expectations often run opposite to these truths. We look for paradise on earth. We want everything about our lives to snap together like a nice, easy puzzle. We want the perfect marriage, perfect home, perfect health, perfect family, perfect kids, perfect job, perfect boss, perfect neighborhood, and perfect circumstances. When something is out of place, many fault God.
But as Christians, we refuse to measure God's goodness by our expectations. We acknowledge that in this world we will have many troubles. And we trust Jesus when he says later in John 16:33 (NIV), "But take heart! I have overcome the world."
Over the years many of us have learned to take comfort in the words found in Romans 8:28 (NIV). "And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose." God is powerful enough to work through our circumstances. God is powerful enough to work through the imperfections of our world. God can weave his goodness through the fabric of our lives and work things for the good of those who love him. Our God is a good God. He has been good to us in so many ways.
Jesus affirms the goodness of God.
As we come to Matthew 7:9-11 (NIV) Jesus offers some deeper teaching on this point with a question. "Which of you, if his son asks for bread, will him a stone? Or if he asks for a fish, will give him a snake? If you, then, though you are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give good gifts to those who ask him!"
In these verses Jesus is affirming the goodness of God. As parents, we give good gifts to our children. We clothe them, we feed them, we show them our love, and we encourage them. Even when we're angry with our children, we still give them good gifts. No responsible parent would set a poisonous snake before her child. Responsible parents never offer gifts with viciousness or ill intent. The great majority of parents are wise and loving and responsible and compassionate.
Jesus essentially says, "If we know how to give good gifts to our children, how much more will our Father in heaven give good gifts?" In other words, we should assume that God is every bit as good as we are! God is not malicious. He is not a sadist. He doesn't delight in sending calamity. God doesn't sit on high causing automobile accidents, floods, tornados, and disease. It is not God's desire to crush your spirit, to harden your heart, or to enrage you.
In fact, the total opposite is true. God gives good gifts. Our God is a good God. In time, in eternity, in our lives, God's goodness will always be vindicated. His goodness will always emerge from the ashes of our pain and circumstances.
Jesus wants us to trust in God's goodness.
Looking at Matthew 7 it's evident that Jesus wants us to trust in God's goodness. In Matthew 7:7-8 (NIV) Jesus says, "Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives, he who seeks finds; and to him who knocks, the door will be opened."
God is not a stingy parent with a closed fist. He extends the most profound blessings of his kingdom to us. We just have ask, seek, and knock. He promises that if we have the courage to ask for his good gifts, that if we seek his good gifts with diligence, that if we come knocking on his door, he will pour out his overflowing blessing into our lives. The experience of God's goodness is only limited by our reluctance to ask, seek, and knock.
If I may, let's turn for a moment to a story I told you earlier about Allen Gardiner. As he died from starvation, thirst and disease, do you remember what he said? He said, "I am overwhelmed with a sense of the goodness of God." Allen Gardiner surely did not detect God's goodness in his circumstances. He surely did not detect God's goodness in his defeated, dying, lonely flesh. He detected God's goodness somewhere else. He had a sense of the goodness of God as expressed through God's Son, Jesus Christ.
In Ephesians 1:3 (NIV) Paul says, "Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in the heavenly realms with every spiritual blessing in Christ."
God's blessing, his goodness, is most evident to us in Jesus Christ. God sent Jesus Christ to die on a cross for our sins to restore us to our Father. God sent Jesus Christ to die on a cross to bring peace with our fellow man. God sent Jesus Christ to die on a cross to bring us victory over our sin-marred world of death, disease, and disaster. God sent Jesus Christ to die on a cross so that the power of sin might be undone in our lives, in our souls, in our minds, in our hearts, in our wills, and in our thoughts.
In Christ we find everything we truly need to be happy and content. God has blessed us in the spiritual realm with every imaginable spiritual blessing. An overwhelmed Allen Gardiner sensed God's goodness to him in Christ even in the face of death, because death wasn't the final word.
Many refuse to ask God's spiritual blessing on their lives.
Now this is what grieves God's heart. There are so many who refuse to reach out their hands and ask for God's spiritual blessing in their lives. There are many, perhaps because of their pride, who will not seek the good gifts God offers to all men in Jesus Christ. This includes the gifts of forgiveness and redemption. There are many who out of sheer apathy, refuse to go to God's house and knock on the door and enter into all the blessing God wants to offer us in Christ.
Our God is a good God. He has been so good to us. But if you have not yet received Christ you are missing out on the best God has to offer! And boy what a shame, because all you have to do is ask, seek, and knock.
The golden rule doesn't mean anything until you have experienced the goodness of God.
Now some of you are scratching your heads right now. You saw the sign out front and expected to hear a sermon on the Golden Rule. Friends, the Golden Rule as stated in Matthew 7:12 (NIV) says, "So in everything, do to others what you would have them do to you...".This sentence doesn't mean a thing until we first taste the goodness of God. Why should we do good things for other people? Why should we go out of our way and be inconvenienced by others' needs? Why should we waste our thoughts on acting generously to those around us?
Perhaps you know the answer. Let's just look at our text one more time. Matthew 7:7-12 (NIV) says, "Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives; he who seeks finds; and to him who knocks, the door will be opened. Which of you, if his son asks for bread, will give him a stone? Or if he asks for a fish, will give him a snake? If you, then, though you are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give good gifts to those who ask him! So in everything, do to others what you would have them do to you, for this sums up the Law and the Prophets."
This is the "so what" of God's goodness." So in everything, do to others what you would have them to do you." God continually makes himself aware of our needs. God continually responds to our needs. He gives us his best, his Son Jesus Christ. God initiates and regularly takes action on our behalf. Likewise, we should do to others what we would have them do to us. This is what is known as the Golden Rule.
Before Jason and the worship team comes up to lead us again, I want to challenge you with what a fellow by the name of Leonard Sweet calls the Platinum Rule. The Golden Rule suggests that we do to others as we would have them do to us. The Platinum Rule suggests we take this a step further and that we do unto others what God has done unto us.
Friends, God has been so good to us. He is a good God. He is a generous God. Let us be conductors of that goodness. Let's let the energy of God's goodness flow through us and into the lives of those who do not know God's goodness. Let's roll up our sleeves and do good things for one another and be just like our God. Let us do unto others what God has done unto us and attract people to our God.