In our study of Galatians chapter 5, we're going to turn today to Exodus chapter 33. If you would please, Exodus chapter 33. We'll begin our reading there in chapter 33 of Exodus in verse 13. So let us hear the word of the Lord. Moses is speaking with the Lord. Verse 13, Exodus 33. Now, therefore I pray thee, If I have found grace in thy sight, show me now thy way, that I may know thee, that I may find grace in thy sight, and consider that this nation is thy people. Presence, go not with me. Carry us not up hence. For wherein shall it be known here that I and thy people have found grace in thy sight? Is it not that thou goest with us, so shall we be separated, I and thy people, from all the people that are upon the face of the earth. And the Lord said unto Moses, I will do this thing also that thou hast spoken, for thou hast found grace in my sight. And I know thee by name, And he said, I beseech thee, show me thy glory. And notice what God says. And he said, I will make my goodness. I'm underlining that. I will make my goodness pass before thee and I will proclaim the name of the Lord before thee and will be gracious to whom I will be gracious and will show mercy on whom I will show mercy. And he said, Thou canst not see my face, for there shall no man see me and live. And the Lord said, Behold, there is a place by me, and thou shalt stand upon a rock, and it shall come to pass, while my glory passeth by, that I will put thee in a cliff of the rock. and will cover thee by my hand while I pass by. And I will take away mine hand and thou shalt see my back parts, but my face shall not be seen. That is so interesting that it will be standing upon a rock and the one by him, none other than the Lord Jesus Christ, The cliff of the rock, the hiding place to see the Lord and our Savior is the one beside the Father with the riven side. Come down to chapter 34 and verse 5. And here, actually, the Lord shows Moses his glory, his goodness. Verse five, and the Lord descended in the cloud and stood with him there and proclaimed the name of the Lord. And the Lord passed by before him and proclaimed, the Lord, the Lord God, merciful and gracious, long suffering and abundant in goodness and truth, keeping mercy for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin. and that will by no means clear the guilty. Visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children and upon the children's children onto the third and fourth generation. Amen. We end our reading there and we trust that the Lord will bless his word to us as we meditate upon The goodness of God. Galatians 5 and verse 22. And the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, longsuffering, gentleness, goodness, faith. meekness and temperance. And it says without which about which there is no law. Now, that is so interesting. We have temperance is less faith, meekness, temperance against such there is no law. And now we remember that the fruit of the spirit is given in these three clusters. Clusters of three. The first three have to do particularly with the Lord himself. Love, joy, and peace. This is the upward aspect of the fruit of the spirit. In fact, we might say it's the downward aspect as God demonstrates his love to us. And we love because he first loved. And then joy. You remember what the Lord said? Jesus said, my joy shall remain in you. And he said, he was giving his joy that our joy might be full. He's the giver. of love and joy and peace. Not only do we enjoy peace with God, but we read of our Lord Jesus Christ. He is our peace. So I say, along with some of the older commentators, that the first three in that cluster have to do with the Lord in particular. The next three have to do with our outward expression of this fruit, longsuffering. Are we indeed showing patience to others? That really puts us to the test. Will we jump suddenly into anger and wrath or will we in patience deal with others as God has been so patient with us? And then gentleness, that is so obvious how we need to be manifested with gentleness. I had a man that was probably snowbound. in Canada last Lord's Day. And he said he just happened to listen to the sermon. And he said that God used it because he really needed gentleness in his life, in his relationships. And he was very thankful. I shared that email with several, but gentleness, we need that. I need that, you need that. And then we come to this third one of our outward showing to others, goodness. And this wonderful little word, goodness, this is a very common word. in the New Testament, but it has a particular angle on this word that it means doing that which benefits others, that which is beneficial. And I thought it was just wonderful how the Lord said to Moses, I'm going to let my goodness pass before you. And what did that goodness contain? There were seven expressions that the Lord said to Moses is going to pass by you. And six of those expressions have to do with his goodness. Only one, the final one with his justice. Notice the first one. in chapter 34 of Exodus where we were reading verse 6. The Lord God, He proclaimed His name and then these characteristics of Himself. First, merciful, His mercy and gracious, His grace, His long-suffering or patience, Abundant in goodness and also abundant in truth. Keeping mercy for thousands, forgiving iniquity, transgression, and sin. That is so beautiful. He is merciful, He is gracious, He is long-suffering, He is abundant in goodness, abundant in truth, and in forgiving iniquity. But only in that seventh one is there justice. He says, he will by no means clear the guilty. What is he saying? He is stating what he otherwise states in Scripture, that all sin will be visited with punishment. All sin will be paid for personally. either by you personally suffering forever in hell, or by Christ suffering most horribly, infinitely and eternally in those terrible hours of darkness on Calvary's cross, in your place and in my place. This certainly shows us that God is so overwhelmingly good that for him to condemn sinners to hell in his wrath is what the Scripture calls his strange work. Isaiah 28 and verse 21, the Lord shall rise up, he shall be wroth. What does that mean? He will be filled with anger and wrath. that he may do his strange work, and bring to pass his act, his strange act." That word, strange, means that which is alien to him, that which is unusual, that which is loathsome to the Lord to do. As Thomas Watson wrote, the Lord is more inclinable to mercy than He is to demonstrate His wrath. Micah 7 and verse 18, He delights in mercy. And that is a part of His goodness. As we see here, the Lord defined it Himself. Goodness is including mercy. Mercy. He states it over and over. Now, we are thinking about the fifth part of the fruit of the Spirit, goodness. It is that which benefits others. And you know God is so essentially good in Himself. And He is good in all that He does in His relationships with others. It is His nature that He loves to do good. Psalm 119 verse 68, Thou art good and doest good. He does good because He is good. In common grace, God is so good to all His creatures. And this is what so many people often overlook. He made man so graciously and gloriously in His own image that we are made in the image of God. Genesis 127. In man He made in the image of God. In the image of God made He Him. It was His goodness to make us in His image. Even though sin has so marred that image, there are still the remaining vestiges of His image in us. He not only made man in His own image, He furnished mankind with a great variety of food and gave man dominion over all created things. In God's providence, He demonstrates His goodness to all. As Jesus said in the Sermon on the Mount, He maketh the sun to rise on both the evil and the good, and He sendeth rain on the just and on the unjust. And you know in the Gospel, the Lord shows His common grace. He sends out the offer of free salvation to all. And then He patiently gives much time to lost sinners to think about their needs, to consider if they would only consider, and to repent and to seek the Lord. But in special grace, distinguishing grace toward His elect people, God not only offers us salvation, the Holy Spirit works with awesome power to enlighten our naturally darkened eyes and our minds, to see our loathsome sin and to see our loving Savior The Holy Spirit continues His work on us to subdue us in our naturally stubborn will so that we would submit ourselves to King Jesus. And He persuades us to embrace Jesus Christ as He is freely offered to us in the Gospel. And if you have not yet embraced Jesus Christ and taken Him to yourself by faith, you need to embrace the Savior today by faith. So the Holy Spirit brings God's chosen people out of the estate of nature and into the estate of grace and salvation. But the Holy Spirit doesn't stop there. He shows us the goodness of God, not only in revealing the will of God for our salvation, but this goodness that He shows us by the very word that He has breathed. The same Holy Spirit who produces the fruit in the believer's life is the one who has breathed for us every word of Holy Scripture. We read in 2 Timothy 3.16 that all Scripture is given by inspiration of God. That's a wonderful word. It actually is literally saying Theopneustia, that is the scripture is God, Theos, breathed, neustia. It is the breath of God. God's Holy Spirit's breath breathing into the very page through all the human writers of the original text. We still have the pure God breathed Word of God in our hands today. He shows us in His Word what is good. As Micah 6-7 declares, To the Lord Jehovah the High God, He has showed thee, O man, what is good, and what doth the Lord require of thee, but to do justly, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with thy God. He shows us what is good. Again, in Deuteronomy 6 and verse 24, the Lord commanded us to do all these statutes, to fear the Lord our God for our good always. God only gives us these words for our good. Of course, it's for His glory, but it's always for our good. As he goes on to say that he might preserve us alive as it is unto this day. And you know, there's such a wonderful preservative in the obedience to the Word of God. Generally speaking, long life is one of the benefits of submission to God's Word. What God has spoken for us to do is both good in itself and it is good for us. And if we would do good to others, which is what this goodness is about, benefiting others. If our kindness to people is to reach the level of goodness, It must be according to the Word of God. Because only God can define what is truly good. So we only and really do good to others as Scripture defines what doing good actually is. So the Holy Spirit produces goodness in our lives. by showing us in the Word, the written Word, but He also shows us in the incarnate Word. Our Lord Jesus Christ is goodness itself. Acts chapter 10 verse 38, God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Spirit and power who went about doing good. How did he do good? He made, as we sang in that song, yesterday, today, forever. He made the lame to walk again. He caused the blind to see. He restored the hearing of the deaf. He enabled the speechless to talk again. He raised the dead to life. And He healed all manner of diseases. But the Lord was always doing good. Lives and homes and communities and whole countries have been blessed and changed by His goodness and His grace. You know, our Savior was still demonstrating His goodness each of those days when He drove the money changers from the temple. He was doing good. For He was showing those sinners that they were sinning right then, as well as when he addressed the scribes and Pharisees as hypocrites in the same breath. He was speaking truth to them for their good. And you understand that after our Savior rose from the dead, and the Spirit of God descended upon His church, that a multitude of the Pharisees and the chief priests believed. They were so shocked that they later realized He is indeed the true Messiah, and they believed on Him. He is goodness itself. He was doing good. by not leaving sinners in their gross ignorance. He was doing good when He multiplied the bread and fish for thousands of hungry people. And He said of Himself, the Son of Man came not to be ministered unto, but to minister and to give His life a ransom for many. He took upon Himself the form of a servant, a slave. And as a slave, in order to be crucified for us, he was actually given a slave's death in being crucified for us. And you know, when he converts sinners to himself, he makes those that he saves into servants like himself. The apostles often referred to themselves as the servants of Jesus Christ. Even so, when we are converted by grace, the Holy Spirit produces goodness in us that is doing good to others. Like the virtuous woman in Proverbs 31, the Scripture says that she will do her husband good all the days of her life. And so when we are born of God, we will gladly serve our heavenly bridegroom for the rest of our lives upon this earth by serving others and by loving and worshiping Him. We are taught in Galatians 6.10 to do good to all men, but especially unto them who are of the household of faith. You know, when we were born of the Holy Spirit, He put within us the strong compulsion to do good to others. And that is an evidence of saving grace. When we're converted, we are ready to minister to others, to help others, to do whatever we can. for their good and for the glory of God. Now you remember the work of the Holy Spirit and His fruit in us. This is so contrary to what's natural. You probably get it on your phone, you get it on all your devices. constantly advertising at what is the big line that they give. You deserve this. You deserve this. And I'm thinking all these people say you deserve it. If you knew what I really deserve, you wouldn't try to blow this over on me. The world tells us, society tells us that we deserve everything for ourselves. We deserve to just sit back and take our ease and let others serve us. That's the philosophy of sinful man. But the blessed triune God shows us in his word and by his own example, that it is more blessed to give. than to receive. Now we all like to receive. We all appreciate when somebody does something nice for us. But the words of Jesus are exactly true. More happiness comes from giving than in receiving. Especially in serving others and giving them the saving gospel of Christ. Doing good to those who are in the household of faith. Let us be busy this year in doing good to others, especially those of the household of faith, but also in giving out the good news of salvation to others by the verbal witness, by the gospel tracts that you can hand out. There are many of them back there. By our genuine Christ-like servanthood, the very attitude. by which we present ourselves, of being willing to serve and to do good to others. The fruit of the Spirit is goodness. That is, doing and being for the benefit of others. Let us pray together. Oh, Father in heaven, we thank Thee that thou hast so condescended to us, to men of low estate, that thou would take sinful, selfish, self-consumed rebels and give us a transformation by thy redemption so that We have a desire to do good to others. We thank Thee for Thy blessing. Please make us all live in that consciousness of being a blessing to others, rather than trying to dig it all and heap it all upon ourselves. We pray in Jesus' name, amen.