Make your way over to Genesis chapter 3. We're continuing our series of knowing God. Today we're going to be considering this question. It's a question that we actually ask more than we realize. Is God really good to me all the time? Now we don't ask this question when we get the doctor's report back and it says, no, it's benign, there's no cancer. We don't ask the question then. But when the doctor's report comes back and he says, I'm sorry, but it's cancer, then we ask the question, maybe subconsciously, but nevertheless, we're asking the question, is God really good to me all the time? And the way you answer that question will determine how you respond to your situation. You find yourself in a bad marriage. He is just selfish. He doesn't care about you and your needs and concerns. He just does what he wants to do. He does not listen to you. He's stubborn. He is self-consumed. He's a workaholic. You find yourself in that marriage. Or she nags all the time. She's never satisfied. And yet, you're stuck in that marriage. You don't see any hope that things are ever going to get better. How do you respond in that situation? Maybe you find yourself with a chronic illness. You are constantly suffering from pain. And your body is continually reminding you of this sickness that you have. It's so bad that it affects your everyday living. And you prayed and you asked God to heal you and take it away, but you still have it. And there doesn't seem to be any hope that you'll ever get relief and you're going to have to live the rest of your life with this chronic illness. How do you respond in that situation? Or maybe you find yourself in an unbearable work situation. Your boss is unreasonable. He makes demands on you that are just intolerable. You don't get paid hardly anything and the benefits are practically non-existent. But yet there's no hope for any other job. There's no hope for advancement. You're stuck right where you are. How do you respond in that situation? Maybe you're experiencing financial pressure. It just seems like every month You can barely pay the bills and even then you get behind in some of them and you're having to juggle each month which one you'll pay so you won't get too far behind and the collectors come after you. It seems that you just cannot get your head above water, but when you do, then something immediately happens and knocks it back down. The roof starts leaking, the car needs to be repaired. The kids need braces. The kids are sick. You've got to take them to the doctor and you have medical bills. And so you're constantly under this stress, this financial pressure. How do you respond in that situation? Because you see, in all those situations, we are at least subconsciously asking the question, is God really good to me in this situation? In Genesis chapter 3, Eve, I believe, was asking this same question. And her answer determined her response. In respect for the Word of God, let me ask you to stand as I begin reading in chapter 3 of Genesis. Now the serpent was more crafted than any beast of the field. which the Lord God had made. And he said to the woman, Indeed, as God said, You shall not eat from any tree of the garden, the woman said to the serpent, From the fruit of the trees of the garden we may eat, but from the fruit of the tree which is in the middle of the garden, God has said, You shall not eat from it or touch it, or you will die. The serpent said to the woman, You surely will not die, For God knows that in the day you eat from it, your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil. And when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, that it was a delight to the eyes, that the tree was desirable to make one wise, she took from its fruit and ate. And she gave also to her husband with her, and He ate. You may be seated. Whatever situation, difficulty, hardship we find ourselves in, there are three possible responses that we will give. And our response will be determined by how we answer that question. Is God really good to me all the time? Either you will respond in anger and bitterness and despair, Thinking, God, I don't like it, I don't want to be in this situation. I'm mad, I'm angry, I resent you letting this happen to me. And you get hard and you get bitter at life and at God. Or you might respond with what I call offensive obedience. You stay in the situation and you obey God in it, but you're offended by the situation. Our obedience is a duty. It's a chore. It's a burden. I'll stay in this marriage, God, because you've told me to, but I sure don't like it. And I'm offended that I have to. It's a burden. It's a drudgery. We'll seek to be a good employee in our situation, but God, I don't like it. It's a burden. It's wearisome. Our obedience is not from the heart. And then there might be a third response, which is joy and praise. Same situation, but instead of anger and bitterness, instead of offensive obedience, there's actually joy and praise. Genuine joy and praise in that chronic illness. Genuine joy and praise in that financial pressure situation. In that bad marriage. In our frustrated plans. Well, what makes a difference? The difference is an understanding and conviction of God's infinite goodness. That you answer the question, is God really good to me all the time, with a resounding yes. And not just from your head knowledge, but you really have a conviction that God is truly good to you. all the time. And in your situation, God is good. And therefore, you can respond with a deep sense of joy and even praise to God. This morning, we're going to be looking at God's goodness. We're going to see it defined in Scripture. We're going to see it questioned. We're going to see it exemplified. And then we're going to see what it says to you and to me. First, God's goodness defined. Now it's interesting that the original Saxon word for God was the good. That's why God and good are just one letter difference. But the good, and then it was shortened to God. So God is goodness. Goodness is the sum total of all of His divine excellencies, His divine attributes. And I get this from over in Exodus chapter 33. In this passage in Exodus, Moses desires to see God's glory. He has met with God on the mountain. He's been in God's presence, but he wants to see God's glory. And look what God says to him. Then Moses says, I pray you show me your glory. And he said, I myself will make all my goodness pass before you. And I will proclaim the name of the Lord before you. God says, Moses, you cannot see my glory and live. You cannot see my face and live. But I will make my goodness pass before you. Well then a few verses later, what we see is God passing before Moses in chapter 34. It says, Then the Lord passed in front of him and proclaimed, The Lord, the Lord God, compassionate and gracious, slow to anger and abounding in loving kindness and truth. who keeps loving kindness for thousands, who forgives iniquity, transgressions and sins. And yet, He will by no means leave the guilty unpunished. God said, Moses, I will make my goodness pass before you. And what does He reveal to Moses? He reveals His loving kindness. He reveals His compassion. He reveals His graciousness. He reveals His patience. He's slow to anger. God is revealing His character to Moses. And so when God says, I'll make my goodness pass before you, and then when God passes before Moses and reveals His character to him, this tells me God's goodness is the sum total of His divine character, of His divine attributes. of His divine excellencies. Next, God's goodness is the perfection of His nature. You see, God is infinitely good. God is eternally, immutably good. God is the essence of goodness. Any goodness that you and I have is derived from God. But He is goodness. Eternally, immutably good. His goodness is as great as His majesty. We see this over in Psalm 145. On the glorious splendor of your majesty and on your wonderful works I will meditate. Men shall speak of the power of your awesome acts and tell of your greatness. They shall eagerly utter the memory of your abundant goodness and will shout for joy of your righteousness. What's he saying? He is saying as great as God's majesty is, so great is His goodness. He is saying as great as God's power is, so great is His goodness. As great as God's righteousness is, so great is His goodness. God's goodness is the perfection of His nature. Now thirdly, God's goodness is His generosity that desires for His children to have all they need to have the best life possible. It's God's generosity toward His children that desires that His children have all they need, not just to have a good life, but to have the best life possible. God gives to us freely and joyfully everything we need to have the best life possible. Because God is good, He wills only what is the best for your life. His goodness allows nothing else from Him. That means that God has your good as the utmost in His mind. Now here's where we run into the problem. Your definition of a good life and God's definition of a good life. We define goodness as happiness, right? If I have a good life, I'm happy. I have a happy life. God's much more concerned about your holiness than your happiness, okay? So we run into problems when we're looking at our life and something happens that makes us unhappy, and so we're thinking, God, how are you being good to me when I'm so unhappy? When I'm so miserable? And we're not looking at things from God's standpoint at all, but from our human short-sightedness. God has all of eternity in mind. And He's looking at your holiness. He's looking at your Christlikeness. And He's saying, I am working good for you. Even though you and your small mind, your small sight can't see it. But God is good. God's goodness is witnessed throughout His Word. I'm just going to give you a few places that it is witnessed. But it is throughout His Word. In Psalm 25. Do not remember the sins of my youth or my transgressions. According to Your lovingkindness, remember me. For Your goodness sake, O Lord. Good and upright is the Lord. Therefore, He instructs sinners in the way. Good and upright is the Lord. Psalm 31, How great is your goodness, which you have stored up for those who fear you, which you have wrought for those who take refuge in you before the sons of men. Now to make this verse even more powerful, I want you to realize the context of which David is giving these words. Now he's not living in some high situation where everything's going great when he says, how great is our goodness. Let me just read from this psalm a few of the phrases David uses to describe his situation. Because you have seen my affliction. You have known the troubles of my soul. Be gracious to me, O Lord, for I am in distress. My life is spent with sorrow. My years with sighing. My strength has failed because of my iniquity. and my body has wasted away. He says, I have become a reproach. Terror is on every side. They scheme to take away my life. In the midst of that situation, David says, how great is your goodness. When David asked himself the question, is God really good to me in every situation? His answer was a resounding yes. What you've stored up for those who fear you. What you've wrought for those who take refuge in you. And then in Psalm 73. Now if you will remember this psalm, this is a psalm where the psalmist is wrestling with the fact that it seems like only good things happen to wicked people and bad things happen to good people. And he's thinking now, you know, this doesn't make sense. Why am I seeking to be good and all these bad things that happen to me and my neighbor here is as wicked as they come and he's getting all these blessings. In that psalm he starts it all. Surely God is good to Israel, to those who are pure in heart. Even though he's having some consternation, he's having some frustration, he states at the outset, God is good. Psalm 86, for you, Lord, are good and ready to forgive. and abundant in love and kindness to all who call upon You. God is good, unquestionably, eternally, infinitely good. And then over in James chapter 1, every good thing given, every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of light, with whom there is no variation or shifting shadow. Everything good you and I experience in life comes from our God. Now let's just take a brief moment just to think about this. This time of year is my favorite time of the year for several reasons. One of the reasons is because the leaves change. I love to see the beautiful colors of the leaves. That's God's goodness, folks. You know, most animals don't see in color. You and I do. Now God made us to see in color so we could enjoy the beauty of colors. The beauty of the fall leaves. Now, God didn't have to make the leaves turn beautiful colors. He could have just had them fall off the trees and not turn beautiful colors. But He designed the creation and made them turn beautiful colors so we human beings could enjoy the beauty of the leaves. Something else that I enjoy, the reason I enjoy this time of the year is because the holidays. The Thanksgiving feast? Christmas dinner? New Year's eating? Alright. Now, God didn't have to give us taste buds. You know, everything could just be bland. And you would still eat to stay alive. Right? But God in His goodness gave us taste buds. So we can enjoy The taste of a pumpkin pie. Or enjoy the taste of ambrosia. Or enjoy the taste... I better stop. I'm going to lose you. I've already lost Mark Baker right there. Come back, Mark. But we enjoy it. God made it that way. Because He's good. He didn't have to. He's good. All the little pleasures and joys that we get out of life. Folks, I enjoy a nap. I got to admit, I enjoy a nap. Particularly on Sunday afternoon. That's a blessing from God. To enjoy a rest and wake up refreshed. When you're thirsty and you get that nice, cool drink of water, how satisfying. That's a blessing. That's God's goodness. Everything good comes from God. To feel that nice, soft pillow or that nice, soft fabric, that fur. That's a blessing from God that we can feel. All these things are blessings. Every good gift comes from God. But we question God's goodness, don't we? We question it. Eve was put to the question. Now Satan helped Eve. He came up with the question for her. Now you can imagine, Satan wants us to question God's goodness, doesn't he? Because if we question God's goodness, and if His goodness comes into question, then every one of His other attributes come into question. If God's not good, then His power becomes fearful, because He might use that power for evil. If God is not good, then His omnipotence, He knows everything, is not good, because He could use that to take advantage to evil. So when you start looking at things, If God is not good, then this brings into question His other attributes as well. And so Satan wants us to think God is not good to us in every situation. He wants us to think, well, if God really was good to us, this wouldn't be happening to us. In fact, God's out to harm you. He's out to get you. That's what God's doing. He's doing you wrong. And then you get all bitter and you get upset and you get angry and you get resentful. Look at his approach to Eve in Genesis 3. Now Eve had a perfect situation. She was in the Garden of Eden. Sin had not entered the picture. So she had a loving husband who was very attentive, not selfish. Her relationship with God was unhindered by sin. She had food galore, fresh fruit and vegetables. She didn't have to stand in long lines at the supermarket. She didn't have clothes to wash. She didn't have diapers to change. She had it great! Right? So, what approach do you use with somebody that's got everything? You convince them they don't have everything. And that's exactly what Satan did. Satan's angle with Eve was to get her to question if God wasn't holding back something that was really good for her. Satan doesn't come and say, Eve, look at all the things God's given you to eat. No, he doesn't say that. What does he say? Is there anything that God's holding back from you? He comes and He says, indeed, has God said you shall not eat from any tree of the garden? Is there anything God's holding back, Eve, that He's keeping you from having that would really be good for you? And Eve says, well, He has said that there's one fruit of this tree that we can't even eat And Eve adds, or touch, God never said not touch it. Say, she's making it worse. He won't even let us touch it. And what does Satan say to her? He says, you know why God won't let you eat that? Because He knows if you do, you'll become like Him. God's holding back on you, Eve. This is something that would be good for you. But God's not being good to you because He's holding it back. He doesn't want you to be like Him. He's holding it back from you. And so Eve answered the question, is God really good to me all the time? No, He's not being good to me in this situation. It would be good for me to have this fruit, and God's not giving it to me. So I will take it myself. It all goes back to questioning the goodness of God. Gideon questioned God's goodness. We see it over in Judges chapter 6. The Israelites were being run over by the Midianites. They were being mistreated. The Midianites would wait until the harvest had come in and then they would come into Israel and they would take all the harvest that the Israelites had worked and had provided. And they would loot them and they would bring havoc upon them. And so Gideon was down in a wine press sifting the wheat trying to hide from the Midianites. And so the angel of the Lord comes to him. And here we pick up our story. The angel of the Lord appeared to him and said to him, The Lord is with you, O valiant warrior. Then Gideon said to him, O my Lord, if the Lord is with us, why then has all this happened to us? And where are all His miracles which our fathers told us about? Saying, did not the Lord bring us up from Egypt? But now the Lord has abandoned us and given us into the hand of Midian. If God's with us, then why is this happening to us? You ever been there? If God's with me, then why is this happening to me? He's left me. He's abandoned me. We're thinking He's not good. He's not good to me. And therefore He's left me and He's just letting this happen to me. Gideon didn't realize they were in sin. God was bringing this upon them to bring them back to repentance. They had disobeyed God. They had rejected God. They were worshiping false gods. And so God brings this discipline on them through the Midianites. But he couldn't see that in his finite up close vision. His myopia. He couldn't see that God was bringing on something bigger. And we do the same thing. All we see is our little situation. We have such near-sighted vision that we can't see anything far off. And we doubt God's goodness. Now let's affirm the goodness of God. over in Psalm 119. Again, the psalmist was going through a difficult time. And what we see is that God will only work what is good for your life. Now the psalmist was going through a difficult time. We don't know exactly what was happening, but it was difficult. And we see, he begins at verse 65, You have dealt well with your servant, O Lord. according to Your Word. Teach me good discernment and knowledge, for I believe in Your commandments." The psalmist is saying, Lord, I'm in a hard place. I've been through a difficult time and please give me discernment. Give me wisdom and knowledge that I can understand this situation and I can see it as an expression of Your goodness. And then he goes on to say, Before I was afflicted, I went astray. But now I keep Your Word. He recognized that the affliction that he was going through caused him to come back in obedience to God's Word. 71. It's good for me that I was afflicted. He came to the point of realizing and seeing this is God's goodness for me. It's good that I was afflicted that I might learn Your statutes. God, it was good for me that I was afflicted because it brought me back to You. This was God's hand of loving discipline in His life. He says, You are good and You do good. So He affirms it. That even in His hardship, even in His difficulty, He could praise God in his situation. He could have joy because he knew God was good and God used it to bring him back. Can you affirm God's goodness in your situation? No matter how bad it might appear to be to you. Can you praise God and say, God, I believe you are working out a good plan. Your good plan. for me, because you're always good to me in every situation. Next, God will give you everything that's good for you to have. Psalm 84, 11. For the Lord God is a sun and shield. The Lord gives grace and glory. No good thing No good thing does he withhold from those who walk uprightly. No good thing. If you don't have it, it's because it's not good for you to have it at this time. in spite of the billion dollar business is trying to convince you and me that we do need it, that it would be good for us to have it. God says if you don't have it, it's not good for you to have it. How much worry and frustration would we save ourselves if we would come to the place that we really believe that God withholds no good thing from those who walk uprightly. good thing. If God's not provided it, it's not good for you to have it right now. If God's not provided it so you can go off to college, it's because it's not good for you to go off to college. He wants you to stay at home. If God's not provided for you to go to that college you really want to go to because your SAT scores were too low and you had to go to a different college, it's because it wasn't good for you to go to the college you wanted to go to. God has only your goodness, your best, in His heart, because He's a good God. Only if Eve had had this verse, and when Satan came and said, Oh, but has God withheld anything from you? She could have said, Yeah, He's withheld this, but you know what? It's not good for me to have it. because He doesn't withhold any good thing from those who walk uprightly. So, because He hadn't given it to me, it's not good for me to have it get lost. How much better would we all be right now, right? Just this simple verse. And then thirdly, God has promised to bring good in all things. Now this is one of my favorite verses, and I know I refer to it a lot, but it needs to be lived every day. We know that God causes all things to work together for good, through those who love Him, to those who are called according to His purpose. For those whom He foreknew, He also predestined to become conformed to the image of His Son. Notice God causes all things to work together for good. This means to me that it's not a simple thing, but God is taking a lot of different variables, a lot of different situations, a lot of different things that are going on in your life, and if you look at any one of them, you may say bad, but God says no, I'm able to take even what you call bad, and I'm working to bring good out of it. God has a big picture in mind and this big picture is going to ultimately result in your good in His glory. And that good is to bring you into conformity to the image of Jesus. So God has promised in His goodness, His eternal goodness, to cause all things to work together for you as His child. the one who loves Him, the one who is called according to His purpose. Now, I will be the first to tell you, you need to settle this issue when you are not going through an adversity and a hard time. Settle it today. So when you are in that situation that looks tragic and everything about it looks bad, you can say, I don't care how it looks, I will not deny and question the goodness of my God. He is eternally, immutably good, and He is being good to me in this situation. Now this says to me, and to you, that as a Christian, nothing bad happens to us. Nothing bad happens to us. Your definition of bad and God's definition is two different things. You've got to get on God's vocabulary. You need to get in His dictionary. Alright? Nothing bad means nothing that can destroy your walk with God, nothing that can thwart His will in your life can happen to you. Everything, no matter how bad it may look to you and me, No matter how tragic it may feel to us and may look to us, we affirm that God is good and He can bring and will bring good in this situation. Everything that comes into our life is an expression of God's goodness. seeing your hardships from that perspective. And then thirdly, God is working out His good plan for you. Now when you truly believe, truly are convicted of these things, then even in that situation, there can be a measure of joy and praise to God. God is good. And that brings us back to the original question, is God really good to me all the time? How will you answer that question? How are you answering that question? How will you answer it the next time you ask it? Let's pray. I'm glad that you have taken opportunity to listen to a sermon on our internet. And I want you just to know that everybody in the church is not like me. I have these fellows up here, our leadership team. This is Filiberto Medina, who is our Hispanic pastor. And our Hispanic congregation meets every Sunday evening at 6.30. This is Paul Kumar. He is our Minister of Community Connections. And to my left is Mark Baker, who heads up our Reformers Unanimous Ministry, which is a Christian addiction recovery program that meets every Friday night at 7 o'clock. So if you live in the Mableton area, and it doesn't matter what race you're from, it doesn't matter your cultural background, I want you to know you are welcome at Westside Church. This is where everybody is somebody and Jesus is Lord. Hope you'll join us soon. Thank you for being with us for this message. Each week, Dr. Stewart gives practical applications and ways to live out the Word of God. If you would like more information, please take a moment to view our website at wbcfamily.org. That's wbcfamily.org.