Sunday Morning at Believers Center

God is good

I get the opportunity today to speak something to all of you that some of the ladies that have been with us for women’s night. It’s a phrase, but it’s also a part of our identity in God. It’s not gender specific, it’s to all men, all women. And this morning I get to speak to you about how God sees us as a force for good on the earth. He sees us that way. He sees you that way. Not just the moms, not just the dads, not just the married, not just the young, not just the old.

I know this that in our modern culture today, good, the word good, and the idea of goodness has become such a weak, powerless, almost meaningless. I think of the word vapid. You might not use that word. I don’t use it either, but that word came to my mind. And that word means it offers nothing that is stimulating or challenging. And most often in the world today, when we use the word good, yeah, it’s just kind of mediocre. But that is not what God means when he talks about good or when he talks about goodness.

This world trains us to want to be great, not good. I want to be great. Well, Jesus said, if you want to be great in the kingdom, you got to become the servant of all. Greatness is achieved in God’s world completely differently, opposite of the way this world. You think about when Jesus was born, Herod attached to his name, Herod the Great. Herod was great, but he wasn’t good. He wasn’t good.

So I want us to look at what the Word of God says. And I’m going to take you through a whole bunch of scripture really fast. And the reason I do this is because I believe that it’s the word of the living God that helps us renew our minds and wash our brains from the way the world thinks to the way God thinks. And I want what God has promised. I want what God wants, not what the world does. You know, you and I, we’re different people than we were when we just lived in the world. God made us new. And so we’re learning new ways of being and doing. So are you ready? You ready?

The number one point this morning is God is good. God is good. And because God is good, we want to understand goodness from God’s perspective. So here we go, Genesis 131. God saw everything that he had made, and it was very good. Genesis 34 8. Listen, let the word of the living God wash over you. Because his word is alive. It’s powerful. My words aren’t powerful. God’s words are powerful. And if you will let them in, they go to work in you to begin to change how you see God and how you see yourself in this world.

Psalm 34, 8. Oh, taste and see that the Lord is good. Blessed is the man that trust in him. Psalm 69, 16. Answer me, Lord, out of the goodness of your love. In your great mercy, turn to me. Psalm 86, 5. For thou, Lord, art good and ready to forgive. Oh, thank God. And plentious in mercy to all them that call upon thee. Psalm 100, verse 5. For the Lord is good, his mercy is everlasting, and his truth endureth to all generations. Psalm 107 1. Oh, give thanks unto the Lord, for he is good, and his mercy endures to forever.

That truth is repeated over and over and over. Why? Because we need to hear it over and over and over. The Lord is good, and his mercy towards us endures forever and ever. Teach me thy statutes. And Micah 6 8. He has shown you, O man, what is good and what does the Lord require of you, but to do justly and to love kindness and mercy and to walk humbly with your God. God is good. If you’ve forgotten, have it revived.

I want you to remember this morning that God loves humans. God loves humans. I don’t know why. But He does. He made us, He created us. Imagine this. The scripture says children are a blessing, and He left that blessing that He created in the hands of people that don’t know what they’re doing. Right? He loves humanity. His goodness and His mercy, they’re following behind us every single day that we are alive on this earth. He never leaves you. He never, never stops the flow of His goodness and His mercy towards you. God is good. God is good. God is good. And even when things aren’t good, God is still good. He’s always good.

Jesus came to earth and He demonstrated God’s goodness

The second point for us this morning is this. Jesus came to earth and He demonstrated God’s goodness and He instructed us, His followers, how to do good also. See that. When you go back to read through the Gospels, you see what Jesus does. That’s how we come to know what good is according to God’s definition. Do you know people have all different kinds of definitions of good, but God doesn’t? God’s real clear on what’s good.

In fact, in the scripture, it tells us that we’re living in a day when some people will call that which is evil good, and they will call that which is good evil. Do you know that when my kids were little, when I said no, they didn’t think I was a good mother? But sometimes I said no to be a good mother. I remember this day so clear. And she wanted sugar coated cereal, which was an outlaw in my household. She wanted that so bad for breakfast. She was so mad at me. And she and a cute, adorable little friend of hers, Michelle’s, I can still see them. They’re just darling little girls. They’re five or six, but they don’t think I hear their conversation at the breakfast table that is not sugar coated cereal. And they say to each other, with their little dolls sitting beside them, when we’re mommies, we’re gonna let our kids eat all the sugar coated cereal they want. And I said, When you’re a mommy, you can do that. But today I’m the mommy, and we are not having it at mommy’s house. And I bet you today, Grace James Eifert does not eat sugar-coated cereal every single day. Why? Because her mommy is a good mommy. Remember that. God defines what is good.

So you ready for some more verses? This is what Jesus said about and showed us about being good and tells us how we can be good, a force for good. Not just good, not just sweet, a force for good on the earth.

Acts 10 38 tells us that Jesus went about doing good, healing all were who were oppressed of the devil. For God was with him. In Matthew 5 16, it says, Let your light, Jesus said, let your light so shine before men that they may see your good works and glorify your Father which is in heaven. Matthew 5 44, Jesus again said, But I’m saying to you, love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them, which despitefully use and persecute you. Matthew 12, 35, a good man out of the good treasure of the heart flings forth good things. Matthew 25, 23, his Lord said unto him, Well done, good and faithful servant. Thou hast been faithful over a few things. I will make you ruler over many things. Enter into the joy of the Lord. John 10, 11, Jesus said, I am the good shepherd, and the good shepherd gives his life for the sheep.

Romans chapter 2, verse 10, but glory, honor, and peace to every man that worketh good. Romans 10 15, how beautiful are the feet of them that preach the gospel of peace and bring glad tidings of good things. Remember, gospel is good news. Romans 12 21, do not let yourself be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good. Galatians 6 10, as we have opportunity, let us do good unto all men, especially unto them who are of the household of faith.

Are you getting it? God likes good.

Ephesians 2 10, for we are his workmanship created in Christ Jesus unto good works. Ephesians 6, 7 and 8, rendering service readily with good will as to the Lord and not to men, knowing that for whatever good anyone does, he will receive his reward from the Lord, whether he is slave or free. Philippians 2 13, for it is God which works in you both to will and to do of his good pleasure. First Thessalonians 5 21, prove all things and hold fast to that which is good. We pray for you that God will would fulfill all the good pleasure of his goodness.

Titus 2 7, and show your own self in all respects to be a pattern and a model of good deeds and works. Philemon 1 6, that the communication of thy faith may become effectual by the acknowledgement of every good thing, acknowledgement of every good thing which is in you in Christ Jesus. Hebrews 10 24, and let us consider one another to provoke unto love and to good works, not forsaking the assembly of ourselves together. Hebrews 13 21. Now the God of peace make you perfect in every good work to do his will, working that which is well pleasing in his sight. And James 1 17. Every good and perfect gift is from above and comes down from the Father of lights.

Congratulations. You just completed an exercise in meditating on what God says instead of what the world says. That’s how you and I begin to renew our thinking so that we’re not just swallowed up by what goes on in this world, but we live from that place of newness of life, new creation, new thinking, new understanding, new believing, new attitudes, new responding, living from God’s goodness, so that we can pour out his goodness, even in an evil world. That’s how it’s possible. Evil has the microphone in this world. We hear it every day. Shouting at us what it’s doing. But it has to amplify itself. Do you know that? Evil has to sound bigger, louder, bolder, more authoritative, because good always overcomes evil. The same way that light always overcomes dark.

So when evil is shouting at you, when evil is right in your face, you begin to speak forth the goodness of God, the good things of God, because your good will overcome evil. It’s guaranteed by God.

God has called us to be his force for good on the earth

The third thing for us to know this morning is that God has called us to be his force for good on the earth. Now you and I cannot do that because we decide to be good. We can never get this mixed up that our goodness will be good enough. No, no, no, no, no, no. It’s the goodness of God poured all over us, poured into us, underneath us, following behind us, leading us. That’s how we become a force for good on the earth.

In the Old Testament, God sees, God calls goodness a virtue. And in fact, we see a couple of more words in the Old Testament that I think need to be redeemed. We just spent five, six, seven minutes redeeming the word good out of the world and bringing it back into what God says about it so that we can think with the mind of God regarding good and being good. There’s two more words that I think need to be redeemed. And the word is virtuous and valor. These sound like old Victorian words to us. And we know this in Proverbs 31. It speaks about a virtuous woman, a woman who is capable, intelligent, full of goodness, who can find her.

I will tell you, my generation pretty much looked at Proverbs 31 10 through the end of the chapter and said, no, thank you. I don’t even know what a spindle is. And if I did know, I don’t want to learn how to use one. It’s not about that. Listen, those women in that day, they would not know how to drive your minivan or operate your coffee maker or your washing machine or your dishwasher. But you are still a woman that is capable, intelligent, and full of goodness because God deposited it in you. It’s the exact same Hebrew word. The Hebrew word is high. I don’t speak Hebrew. Talk to Dr. Jake Oldstead. But in both cases, it’s speaking of men and women.

You see, this quality of goodness, this quality of virtue, this quality of valor is something that God values. And he puts it within us so that we can go out into the world, not based on our standing as determined by the world, but the standing that God has given to us. And this is how we conduct ourselves. This word literally means a force of people, means or resource. It signifies ability or power, the ability to affect or produce something. Goodness produces in our lives. It’s not just dormant. It’s not just a nice, sweet word. It is a force that is needed in our world today. It is a power that God empowers within us. It’s dynamic. It is not a weak word because God is the supplier of this goodness, of this strength, of this ability, of this intelligence, of this endurance that you and I bring into our world.

And in the Old Testament, it’s used numerous times in numerous ways. But there’s two people in particular that we should think about this morning. The first person is Ruth. Her whole story is a book in the Old Testament. You can read it. It’s very short. But Ruth was not a believer. She was a Moabite woman. She married into a family of Jewish people that believed in God. And after she married into this family, a great famine came upon the land. And the dad, her mother-in-law’s name was Naomi. Her husband died. Her sons died. Married the man, the son that Ruth was married to. They all died. And these two women who had no power, no station, no help, no support in their world were literally starving to death in famine.

And Ruth took took charge and began to give honor to this God that she had just come to know and honored her mother-in-law, and God gave her instruction and showed her the way that He would redeem her life and Naomi’s life. And she turned towards God. She had nothing, she had no station in this world, but God saw her. There’s a man named Gideon. His story is in the book of Judges, chapter six. And Gideon says about himself, I’m from the poorest tribe. I can’t do a thing. And the Lord God said, Gideon, the Lord thy God is with thee. And you, Gideon, are a mighty man of valor.

Do you see what God did? God took two people and He’s done it over and over again, and He still does it today. I’ve done nothing. I have nothing. I’m the least. That nothing will work for me. God doesn’t want me. God doesn’t use me. And God said, I am with you. And when I am with you, everything changes. When you turn to me, God saw them when they were nothing. He picked them when they were nothing. He didn’t pick them because they had the might and the power and the strength and the politics and the position in themselves. He picked them when they had none of that. And he lifted them up and he said, I am with you. And everything changed because they put their trust in the God who is good.

And do you know what happened? Gideon led an army into battle and they beat Israel’s enemies. Do you know what happened with Ruth? Ruth became the great grandmother of King David. Imagine without Ruth. We don’t have King David. I just like that grandmothers get a little love in the scripture. How about you? I like it. Truth is, we always get, we all get this kind of love from God. This always happens, it always happens when the relationship between God and a man or a woman is restored through Jesus Christ. It’s the only way that it can be restored. It’s through what Jesus did, not your goodness, not my goodness.

It’s the goodness of God that sent Jesus to carry all that was wrong with me and all that was wrong with all of humanity and sacrifice himself, shed blood poured out so we could be forgiven and we could be cleansed and we could be put back into right relationship with God. And that’s the only way that we become a force for good on the earth. This is never about us trying harder to be good. We can try harder and we should do better, but we’re not trying harder to be good so that God will love us. We’re not trying harder to do good things to make up the deficit for the bad things. There’s not enough good that all of us together could do to make up for that. It took Jesus. And Jesus willingly did that for us so we receive it so that we can have the absolute power and goodness of God living on the inside of us, transforming us from the inside to the outside into capable, intelligent, resourced people that God designed us to be so that we become His force for good on the earth. We’re a force for good, and we are a force for God because He made us so.

How do I become a force for good?

The fourth and final thing that we need to know this morning is how do I become a force for good? The only way you become that is through Jesus. That’s it. That’s it. And then you start clinging to Jesus. You start building your trust in Jesus. You start renewing your mind to Jesus. But what does this look like in my everyday eating, sleeping, going to work, going to school, the grocery store, working out at the gym, dropping the kids off at their zillion activities, waiting, waiting, waiting. How much time do you spend waiting? A lot. Or caring for other people. What is this force for good? Because that’s where it goes to work, family. It goes to work in the everyday parts of our life. That’s where it shines the brightest.

Dallas Willard said this: God’s will and design for us is to learn how to use what we are in charge of to create good. That is God’s will. Use what we’re in charge of. Hey, we’re not in charge of everything. And if you think you are, you’re not. If you think you’re in charge of the world, if you got if you’re carrying the weight of the world on your shoulders, dump it off. You are not in charge of everything. God is. And we need to take those things that we’re in charge of our bodies, our time, our attitudes, family, our skills, our money, all of those things we’re in charge of. Nobody else can do that for you. Nobody else can steward that for me. I have to steward that for myself with the help of God. And we have it. We have the help of God. He is not saying to any of us, just do better. We tried that. You tried that? How long did you last? Those of us that are very strong willed, we last longer, but we all we all can’t do it on our own. He’s not expecting that.

So let’s look at three things, just three that we’re in charge of, and how that can look, how that can look for us to be a force for good in our everyday life. Number one, time. It’s our time. How do we use our time? It looks like it looks like this. It looks like we give time when we don’t think we have it to somebody else. We give time, we need compassion. We give our time to a person that needs compassion or kindness or just to be seen. Family, notice people in our city that other people don’t notice. How many people in our city never get a soft touch, a kind look, eyeball to eyeball contact with another human being. So just use your time to notice, show God’s compassion and kindness. It might be a child, it might be an older person, it might be a single man or woman, it might be your boss, it might be your coworker, it might be that person that is in front of me in line that is always taking forever. Seeing them as a human, seeing them as someone that God loves.

I train myself to think this way when I am not just driving, because if I don’m driving, I have somewhere to drive 35 on tramway. If you want to drive 35, go to Wyoming. The street, not the state, the street. But here’s what I did. I would see an older person driving 35, and I would think, what if that was grandma? Right? I would think, what if that was my dad before my sister took the keys away? Okay, I’d want somebody behind grandma or behind my dad that was kind of watching out for them. And I tried to become that person. They never knew it, but God knew it. I wanted to be a force for good in that situation.

The Bible tells us in Ephesians 5 15, redeem the time because the days are evil. In that word, in that verse, evil means the days are full of labor, annoyances, and hardships. Yes, they are. And because our days are full of labor, annoyances, and hardships, we redeem that day. How do we do that? We put goodness back out in this world where evil thinks it’s winning. That’s what we do.

The second thing is our attitudes. Ephesians 4 23 says, be constantly renewed or made young. Did you know that? Renewed sometimes means made young. Be constantly renewed and made young in the spirit of your mind, having a fresh mental and spiritual attitude. Listen, family attitudes leak all over the people that we come in contact with. And the people that we come in contact with don’t need another bad attitude. They don’t need another gripey complaining, whining, can’t see anything good person. We need some people that see the good, that are the good and do the good and release the good in the earth.

The third thing is our resources. You know, our resources, God resources us with all kinds of things. They’re to be employed. Everything that God puts within us under our stewardship, He expects us to employ it as a benefit and as a blessing to other people. It is for me, but not just for me. It’s for other people, it’s for my family, it’s for my church family, it’s for the people in my city, it’s for the the people, the two people that live next door to me. It’s for that gripey lady that lives behind me. It’s for the man that just moved in across the street that has more equipment than we have ever seen. That it’s all loud, it’s all for them. My attitude, my resources, my goodness.

Goodness is expressed when we do something for benefit of others. And listen, money is not our own re our only resource, but our money is not exempt from doing good for other people. Yes, take care of our family, but yes, do something out beyond what benefits just you. Do you know? Over a number of years during women’s night, the women that have come together, we have pooled our resources in what we call a force for good offering. And over a several years’ time, a group of several hundred women have used a force for good offering to send out fifty thousand dollars to other places that will help women and children that are in need. We overcome the evil with good.

And every single time that you and I are hurt, we’re wounded, and it happens, family. If we learn how to not be reckless, then we can use what God gave us to be a force for good. It was wrong. But we’re choosing to let that thing go and to forgive that person. I want you to know this that every time we do this, that hard good thing that you did, you overcame evil. You stopped it from corrupting your life. And you stopped evil from corrupting the people that you’ll leak all over. Your goodness has power because God is with you.

Every day that you provide for your family, you provide a safe, healthy, life-giving home. Every day that you do that, you overcome evil abandonment that is so rampant in our world. Because people have become more and more selfish. They have abandoned their children. They have abandoned their families. They have abandoned God. And every time you step up to the plate and you’re responsible over the things that God put within your sphere, you work, you provide, you love, you give, you do all of that, it overcomes evil. Because good is always greater than evil.

And family, every time that you and I gather ourselves together with the family of God, with the church of Jesus Christ, we’re overcoming that evil antichrist spirit that says it will overcome God, that I will be God. You, Antichrist, will never be God, and you will never overcome God. God has already overcome you. And every time you and I gather ourselves together in his house around the world in his name, and we lift up our voices in praise to our God, we overcome evil. And every single time you and I come together in agreement in prayer that the will of God will be done on earth in the city of Albuquerque, in the families of our city, and in the places that we go day by day, we come into agreement, we become that army of God that enforces the will of God, not by natural might or power, but by the power of the spirit of the living God, because we know as God’s army, our warfare is not with flesh and blood. Our warfare is with principalities and powers that God has already disarmed through Jesus Christ. Amen. Amen.

Because God created the heaven near earth, and he created humans so that we would go out in his name and we would be a force for good on the earth, and good would continuously overcome the evil. Let the good run wild. Amen.