The LORD Is Good

Father, thank you for your word. Thank you for your goodness and your mercy to us. We thank you for Christ, and we ask, Lord, that you would use the words that are spoken today to strengthen your people, strengthen us, Lord. Give us a greater understanding for who you are and what you've done. And God, I pray that you would remove anything that is not from you from my lips, God. that you would help us to grow to love you more and to love one another more. In Jesus' name, amen. All right. So this morning, I want to begin by talking about there have been some folks that I've been talking to lately that have talked to me this week and said, I feel unhappy, I feel discouraged, I feel sad, but I don't know why.

If you're like me, you've had those kinds of days where you don't understand why you feel the way you do. And you don't want to do the work of figuring out why you feel the way you do. And so that has been a week for me, and it's also been a week for others that I've spoken with. And what I'll say is I woke up this morning, and I kept trying to think about, okay, so what's going on there? I was thinking to myself, okay, many of the reasons for unhappiness ultimately stem from a lack of understanding of who God is. That's what it boils down to. A lot of times it's not understanding who I am and why I did what I did or why I feel the way I feel or why you feel the way you feel. But what about God?

What about God? It's a lot easier to talk about ourselves than it is to talk about God. This morning we're going to talk about God. Because the key to having a happy life, a blessed life that honors God, and that is enjoyable and fulfilling and God-honoring, is knowing who God is and what He's like and what His disposition towards us is. So this morning we're going to be in the book of Psalms chapter 34, and we're going to be going through verses 8 through 10, mainly focusing this morning on the opening verse. So would you stand now and we will read and hear from God's eternal word together. Oh, taste and see that the Lord is good. How blessed is the man who takes refuge in him. Oh, fear the Lord, you his saints, for to those who fear him.

There is no want. The young lions do lack and suffer hunger, but they who seek the Lord shall not be in want of any good thing. This is the word of the Lord. Please be seated. Now the first thing I want us to see right away is that the psalmist here, which is King David, he begins by declaring a simple but radical truth about God. Not about himself, but about God. And that's not simply that God is God, although that's true. But He declares what kind of God He is. You see that right out of the gate. Oh, taste and see that the Lord is good. Through these words, the Holy Spirit is teaching us something central to the very character of God Himself. His goodness. Now, when you think of goodness, What do you typically think of? What is goodness? Well, goodness refers, if you speak of something or someone as good, you're making a statement or a judgment or an assessment of their quality or their character. And so, that's what David's doing here. He's making an assessment of God.

And his quality and his character and what he is like. And he makes an assessment by saying that God is, that the Lord is, God, no, the Lord is good. And so the first point to understand first is that God's goodness is at the essence of who God is. God's goodness is at the essence of who he is. The goodness of God. refers to the perfection of His nature. God's perfect. 1 John 1.5 says that God is light and in Him there is no darkness at all. That's a reference to the character of God, the perfection, the goodness of God. There's an absolute perfection in God's being that nothing is lacking to it or defective in it. And nothing can be added to improve it.

God is the essence of goodness. God is good. The Lord is good. All the goodness there is in any creature has been imparted from the Creator. So anything that we have that's good, morally or otherwise, that comes from the Creator. But God's goodness is underrived. It doesn't come from any one of us or anything else. God's goodness is at the essence of His eternal nature. And God has in Himself an infinite treasure of goodness and blessing enough to fill all things. He's perfect in all that He says. He's perfect in all that He does. And He's perfect and good in all that He is. This is God. God is good. He is perfect.

So God's goodness refers to His perfection, but it also refers to His generosity. That God is generous. God's goodness is revealed in His generosity towards His creation. If you look at Genesis 1.31, it says this, God saw all that He made, and behold, what does it say? It was very good. It wasn't just good. It was very good. God's creation was very good. The perfect kind of quality when He made the world. It was perfect in quality, in craftsmanship. It was stunning in beauty. The perfect ordering of His creation is derived from Him. The perfect ordering of Him because He's good. He's the good God who made it.

And one of the highest things, if you think of the goodness of God, if you think of creation, you go out and if you, my wife and I took a drive to, we took a cross-country drive from California in Los Angeles, and we drove all the way through back to Indianapolis. And the beauty that you see out there is stunning. You see things that you didn't think existed. on this planet. Just go to Utah. You think you're on Mars, but it's gorgeous. It's just amazing. There's variation. There's diversity. It's creative. It's incredible. And you can just stare and stare and stare and get into a car wreck very quickly if you don't pay attention to the road because the beauty of God's creation, the quality, you say, this is good.

This is good. Whoever designed this did a good job. They knew what they were doing, and it looks good. Because it is good. But it doesn't stop there. Think of the highest of all God's creatures here on earth. Man. Mankind. Men and women. The psalmist in Psalm 139 points out the kindness and generosity of God in His creation and His design of man. He says this, I will praise you for I am fearfully and wonderfully made. Marvelous are your works and my soul knows it very well. Everything about the structure of our bodies even points to the goodness of our maker. You think of how suited our hands are to perform the work that we have. All of the little ligaments and joints and bones and God designed those.

To be suited for the work that you and I give ourselves to every single day. And you think of how God designed sleep to refresh our bodies when they get tired from work. How generous His provision to give our eyes lids that close and brows for their protection. I mean, we could go on and on, right? There's just... Things among things among things. There was a friend I was talking to the other day, and he has a son who had issues with his kidney, and he needed his son, young four or five-year-old son, needed a kidney transplant. And he decided to donate his kidney, the father, my friend, to his son. Now, he went through the surgery.

And he was, within a month, he was walking around and I said, man, what's going on? Like, did they put another kidney in you? What happened? Like, you look normal. And he said, no, no, actually what we learned is that the way God designed our bodies is that with that kidney removal, God designed the body so that the remaining kidney actually grows 20 to 30% larger so that it can compensate for the lost kidney. And you can have a fairly normal life with one kidney, apparently. The goodness of the Creator is not simply confined to mankind. It's also exercised towards all of His creatures. Psalm 145 says this, The eyes of all wait upon you, and you give them their food in due season. You satisfy the desire of every living thing. And whole books could be written about this stuff.

Whether it's the birds of the air, the beasts of the forest, or the fish in the sea, abundant provision has been made to supply each of these creatures every need. And you hear talk about survival of the fittest. God has ordered the world in such a way to provide for the needs of every creature. He gives food to all creatures for His mercy endures forever. As Psalm 33.5 says, the earth is full of the goodness of the Lord. It's just filled with the goodness of God. Filled with God's goodness. The goodness of God is seen in not only those things, but the variety of natural pleasures which He has provided for His creatures. You think of hunger, right? God could have been pleased to satisfy our hunger and could have given us food that fills us, keeps us alive, and that's it.

He could have done it without any food being pleasing to our palates or our senses. And yet, you think of how God's kindness appears in the diverse flavors that we have of different meats and fruits and vegetables. You actually can eat a meal, like one thing, and it tastes one way. And you eat something else and it tastes differently. And they both taste good. And yet, they're different. And you go on and God... has not only given us senses, but he's also given us the very thing that gratifies the senses, which reveals his goodness as well. The earth could have been, you think of flowers, right? Our physical lives could have been sustained without beautiful flowers. Why do we need flowers? It doesn't actually, it's not necessary for our life to live, right? What about mountains?

We didn't need grand, vast mountains to look at to be able to live. All of the different beaches and just the creation of God. We didn't need sweet-smelling fragrances even. And yet God chose to give us those things. We could have walked outside this morning without our ears hearing the music from the birds that happened this morning when I got out of my front door. I heard the birds chirping. What were those birds doing? They were praising God for His goodness. And yet our good God gives us His creation for us what? To enjoy. To enjoy. He gives us His creation to enjoy. He gives us the creation that He's made for us to work and glorify Him and enjoy Him in the process. You think of children, right? Children are a blessing from the Lord. Children are a joy. Children make you happy.

The gift of marriage. Work. Work is actually a gift from God. Work came right from the beginning when God created the world. And you have the Son of God who shed His blood on the cross for our sins. As if that is not enough. God is a God who designed us to take pleasure in the things that He has made. According to His design. And you go back to the psalmist. And he says this, taste and see. Oh, taste and see that the Lord is good. How blessed is the man who takes refuge in Him. Taste and see that the Lord is good. And so we serve a God who's good in His perfection. He's perfect in all that He does and He's therefore called and referred to as good. Actually, the English word God actually comes from the derivative of that means the good.

That's actually the word that we use. Originally, it meant the good. That's God. He is the good. God is good. He's perfect. He's generous. And God's goodness is the life of the believer's trust. Not only does the psalmist say that the Lord is good, but he actually says that God abundantly blesses those who put their hope in Him. In verse 8, you see he says, how blessed, how happy, is the man who takes refuge in Him. Verse 10, they who seek the Lord shall not be in one of any good thing. It is in the very character and nature of God to demonstrate His goodness and generosity towards His children. It's in His nature. He can't but do it. That's God. We don't serve as stingy, grumpy, curmudgeon-y, cold, distant God. That's so often the idea that we have of God. That's often when we're unhappy. That's what we think about God. That's what we think when we're struggling. We think God is in heaven right now watching you carefully, microscopically, and He is just waiting for you to fail so that He can jump all over you.

That's what we think about God often. That He's just ready. Some of us have had fathers like that, and some of us are fathers like that. Just waiting until something goes wrong, and He's going to let you have it. This is not God. We must get this lie out of our minds that a holy God cannot be a good God. Nothing could be further from the truth. The same God who brings us to our knees each week over our sin, is the same God that causes us to smile. These are the same God. There is no opposition. Scripture says, behold the goodness and severity of God. Those two things go together. A holy God and a good God. Hebrews 11.6 says this, more evidence of God's goodness and that He blesses those who hope in Him. Hebrews 11 says, for he who comes to God must believe that He is, And that He is what? Anybody know what comes next? A rewarder of those who seek Him. James 1.17 Every good thing given and every perfect gift is where? Is from above. Coming down from the Father of lights with whom there is no variation or shifting shadow. Every good thing that is given, every perfect gift, it comes from above.

This is not a God who's stingy. This is not a God who's disinterested in you or my well-being. This is a God who abundantly blesses those who put their trust and hope in Him. And these blessings and gifts come in all different shapes and sizes. Some of them we ask God for, and some of them we did not ask God for. But they are blessings nonetheless, even if we don't recognize them at the time. Why? Because they all come from the hand of a loving and good Father. They who seek the Lord shall not be in want of any good thing. This is one of the Psalms. They who seek the Lord shall not be in want of any good thing. Psalm 84.11 says this, For the Lord God is a sun and shield.

gives grace and glory. He gives it. He gives grace and He gives glory. No good thing does He withhold from those who walk uprightly. No good thing does He withhold. Now, let me ask you this. Is this what you believe about God? No good thing does He withhold. This is the God we serve. The Lord is good. Scripture says, no good thing does he withhold from those who walk uprightly. That means his children. And if you are a child of God, and you wake up in the morning and things go wrong in your day, God is not withholding any good thing from you. Whatever happens in your day, according to God's economy, is good for you. It's out of love for you. It does not mean it's easy. It doesn't mean it's...

Without sacrifice, it doesn't mean it's without a world of sin that we live in. But it does mean that He is not at that moment. You have to remind yourself, God is not withholding any good thing from me. This, in some way, is God's goodness to me. It's God's goodness to me. And I don't understand it now, but it's God's goodness. Because to say it's anything else is to say that God's a bad father. Either he's a bad father because he put something in your way that was bad, and he did the bad thing, or he could have stopped it and he didn't. God's not a bad father. No good thing does he withhold from those who walk uprightly. We may not recognize the blessings at the time, but they are blessings nonetheless because they all come from the hand of a loving and good father.

This is the God that we serve. And God delights in giving good gifts to His children. And His desire is to bless and to make happy His children. If you have children, you know that when you get them a gift, there's nothing that makes you more excited, nothing that gives you more joy, happiness, that makes your day when they actually have a good time with the thing that you got them. Whatever that is. And when they're laughing and enjoying themselves, and when they're sharing it with others, the good thing that you've given them, it makes you, it's like, I could die now. This is wonderful. This is excellent. We get that if you're a father. If you're a mother, you get that from God.

You get that as an image bearer of God. That's what God is like. You're an imperfect representation of God who delights in his children, knowing their imperfections, knowing their sins, and he takes delight in them because he's good. He's holy and he's good. Now, what should our response be to the goodness of God? Well, one word, gratitude. Gratitude. That's our response to God's goodness. Psalm 107.8 says this, Oh, that men would give thanks to the Lord for His goodness and for His wonderful works to the children of men. You and I could sooner count the stars, all of the stars that are in the sky tonight, than number all the ways that God has shown us over and over and over and over again His generosity and His kindness. There are more ways that God has been good to us in a single day than there are stars in the sky.

That we can count. A.W. Pink, he's a pastor and writer in the early part of the 20th century. He says this about our response to God's goodness. He says this, Gratitude is the return justly required from the objects of His benefits. Yet it is often withheld, gratitude is often withheld from our great benefactor. simply because His goodness is so constant and so abundant, it is lightly esteemed because it is exercised toward us in the common course of events. It is not felt. Why? His goodness is not felt. Why? Because we daily experience it. What he is saying is that we experience the kindness and blessing of God all the time.

And so we so easily forget it and take it for granted. And even worse, we look at the very blessings in our life that God gives us each day, and instead of taking delight and joy and praise in the goodness of God, we actually accuse God of being unfair. That's what we do. We actually tell God that He's not blessing us and that He's not fair. Where's the blessing, God? I'm looking for it. As you breathe the air. that he's given you. As you drive your car, as you're in your air-conditioned house, where's the blessing, God? I'm not seeing it. And brothers and sisters, this is why the psalm is so helpful. Because it's a command that King David gives to us and for us to stir ourselves up to experience and enjoy the goodness of God. Because it's actually been there the whole time. His goodness never went anywhere. We just never saw it.

We were not looking for it and we certainly weren't tasting it. And so where does gratitude come from? Well, gratitude, if you are at someone's home and they make the meal and you say, thank you for the meal. I really appreciate it. And your plate has all the food on it. It's not been touched. What's going on there? You're not actually grateful because you don't know. what it is that you need to be grateful for. You've never actually, you've never grabbed hold of and taken the benefit, taken the blessing. Your stomach's still empty. Your plate's still there. The food's there. You have no idea whether or not you should be thankful. I mean, you do because they made it, right? But you don't know if it's any good because you've never actually tasted it. And so with God, what we need to do, The psalmist gives two commands, verse 8. Number one is taste. Number one is see. So I'll start with the second one. To see God is to observe and marvel at what He's done and who He is. And that's what we've been doing. We've been going through who God is, what He's like, what He's done, His kindness, His generosity towards us constantly. But you have to taste it.

You have to experience it. You have to actually take joy in it. And like a good meal, you go, thank you. It's because it tastes really good and you're full. And you're not going to have gratitude towards the goodness of God and the things that God has done if you don't actually enjoy it. If you don't take joy. in the things that He's given you. You have to recognize them, but then you have to put your hope in God. You say thank you. And so as a Christian, you go through and you do the same things maybe that the world does. I'm not talking about sin. I'm talking about the normal things in life that every human being does. They work. Oftentimes it's marriage, children. You've got things that go wrong. You eat.

You might take vacations, but what's different? The difference is why you do it and what you're doing. For an unbeliever, those things just are the things you do. You just do them because they are or because there's something else you want instead. You work not because you love it. Sometimes you do, but you work to do something else that you really want to do. But as a Christian, you work, no matter what it is, because it's your worship to God. It's your thank you to God. It's the same thing with everything. Whether you eat, drink, whatever you do, do to the glory of God. Have some fun and worship God because he's good. He's given you good things. God delights in blessing his children who put their hope in him. The goodness of the Lord is the life of the believer's trust.

It is this perfection in God that appeals to our hearts. And because God's goodness is eternal, we never have to be discouraged. Never. Because His goodness never runs out. There's no expiration date on it. His kindness has no end for those who make God their refuge and trust. So God is a good God, and He's been good to us. Will we put our hope in God? Will we see his goodness? It's been there all along. Even if you're an unbeliever, even if you reject the God of the Bible and his son, he has still been good to you. And the purpose of it is to draw you to repentance, the kindness of God leading us to repentance. We can taste the goodness of God. Those who give themselves to seeking God, to placing their hope in Him, there's never any want. The well never runs dry. But the hope is placed in God. When you work, you hope in God. Maybe you're not in the job that you wish you could be in. Maybe you've been working a job for most of your life, and the thing you really wanted to do, you never pursued. Is it over?

No, you put your hope in God. Because no matter what you're doing, what makes it important, what makes it matter, is that it gives glory to God. And if you give glory to God, and you enjoy that, that you're giving God the glory, that you're worshiping him in what you do, you will be happy. And you'll be happier than if you would have delayed that and wait until you get what you really want. Because those things are going to let you down. But God won't. Taste and see that the Lord is good. How happy, how happy is the man who takes refuge in him. Let's take refuge in God. Let's pray. Father, we thank you for your goodness and your mercy. You are good, Lord. You're a God who is abounding in loving kindness. You show mercy to us. Lord, you know our failings. You know the failings we don't even know about ourselves.

and yet you're a God filled with mercy. You're not filled with second chances. You're filled with millions of them, Lord, to those who call on your name. And Lord, we want to taste of your goodness. For those of us, Lord, who have not tasted it ever, I pray that you would give them a new heart and that you would cause them to hope in Christ and that you would Add them to your people, Lord. For those of us who have not tasted your goodness in a while and we've been looking to other things, I pray, God, that you would turn our eyes away from those evil things or from things that you've given but we've made idols. And I ask, God, that you'd help us to focus our eyes back on Jesus, the author and perfecter of faith.

We pray for us as a church. Thank you, Lord, for blessing us. Help us to see your blessings in each and every aspect of the life of this church. And help us to know, Lord, that you are favorable towards us because we want to do your will. And Lord, we pray that you would help us to rejoice in you and your blessing. In Jesus' name, amen.