Psalm 103. Bless the Lord, O my soul, and all that is within me. Bless his holy name. Bless the Lord, O my soul, and forget not all his benefits, who forgiveth all thine iniquities, who healeth all thy diseases. Redeemeth thy life from destruction, who crowneth thee with loving kindness and tender mercies, who satisfieth thy mouth with good things. so that thy youth is renewed like the eagles. The Lord executeth righteousness and judgment for all that are oppressed. He made known his ways unto Moses, his acts unto the children of Israel. The Lord is merciful and gracious, slow to anger and plenteous in mercy. He will not always chide, neither will he keep his anger forever. He hath not dealt with us after our sins, nor rewarded us according to our iniquities. For as the heaven is high above the earth, so great is his mercy toward them that fear him. As far as the east is from the west, so far hath he removed our transgressions from us, like as a father pitieth his children, so the Lord pitieth them that fear him." Let's pray. Lord, how kind it is of Thee to reveal to us so powerfully in the Psalms and throughout the Scriptures Thy glorious and beautiful attributes. We thank Thee for portions of Scripture like we just read that magnify Thy loving kindness in our lives that we may see it in bold relief and cry out, How good, how great Thou art! Please bless us as we stammer a little about these attributes, especially those of goodness and love in this hour, that our hearts may be touched and humbled by who thou art, and that we might be the more encouraged at the end of this hour to take refuge in thee with all our needs and cares, our fears and our hopes. Lord, remember the many sick people in our community, in our church family, also some impacted with the swine flu virus. O, graciously have mercy and heal, Lord, as Thou alone canst do. Please make everything well and be a wonder-working God, we pray. And help us in lecturing today. Be with all the professors, each student. Help us, too, as the Midterm grows closer. We pray for clarity of mind and warmth of soul. Bless this class. Bless each one. And bless our wives, our families. Heal those who are ill. And let us draw near to Thee, the living God. We pray in Jesus' name. Amen. All right, our goal today is to say just a little about God's goodness and God's love. God's goodness and God's love. I've put the appropriate Greek and Hebrew terms on the board for you. And we'll begin there by looking at some of the biblical terminology for the word goodness. Certainly goodness is one of God's most commented on attributes, one of the most familiar themes in the Bible. Goodness really can cover many of the attributes of God. God is good to all his creatures in many different ways. He's a merciful God, that's his goodness. He's gracious, that's his goodness. His loving kindness is his goodness. His long-sufferingness is his goodness. None of these terms is exactly identical with the other, but God's goodness is a large umbrella that seems to bring many attributes under its domain. God is fundamentally good. I still remember as a teenager reading various chunks of Stephen Charnock's The Existence and Attributes of God, the greatest classic ever written on the attributes of God till today by an old Puritan and certainly a standard work. Those who plow through it will be amply rewarded. I know of one One man who got converted reading this two-volume, massive work, and for the rest of his life, he's passed on now, but for the rest of his life, he gave a free set of Sharnaks, existence and attributes of God, to anybody who would ask him for it. If they promised to read it, he'd give it away to them. It is a massive, it's a beautiful work. But as a teenager, when I was looking at it and reading parts of it, I didn't read straight through it, unfortunately, but it struck me that Sharnak has more pages devoted to God's goodness than to any other attribute. Part of that is simply because the Bible has so much to say about it. There's so much to say about God's goodness. Well, The basic Hebrew words are tolb and tob. Good is really derived from the verb tolb. And it means to do something that is morally proper or beneficial. to show kindness. It can mean to be bountiful. It has the idea behind it of welfare. You're passing on something that helps people when you're good to people. The Bible speaks of God's goodness at least 84 times. in terms of the usage of the word Tob. One example would be Genesis 50, verse 20, but there's, of course, 83 other examples, so I'm not going to give them to you. Tob, however, closely related and used only 17 times of God in the Old Testament, speaks more of the beauty of God's goodness. It refers to a kind of a glad goodness that is beautiful, that has this scenic welfare in mind. Now, in the King James Version, Sometimes also the word chesed, transliteration would be like that, which is often translated loving kindness or compassion. But that is often also translated as goodness in the King James Version. And that really focuses on the covenantal goodness of God, the patient goodness of God, that he's long suffering in that goodness. And then there's the word Yatab. Yatab, which means to make well or to make sound. or to make better. This is the idea that God deals well with us. He has our welfare in mind. And this is used at least 19 times in the Old Testament. One scholar says that when you combine all these terms together, You can differentiate in the Old Testament various kinds of goodness of God, and he mentions five of them, I'll just give them to you. First is the practical, economic, or material good, the good of physical things. The second is the abstract form of goodness such as desirability and pleasantness and beauty. And third would be a qualitative goodness, something that's got a good quality to it or an expensive quality to it. Fourth, and most importantly, would be his moral and spiritual goodness. And fifth, he calls it the technical philosophical goodness of God. Technical philosophical goodness of God. And by that he's referring to God as the highest good. highest good a person could pursue in this life, as we're told in Ecclesiastes 3, verse 22. God is essentially supreme goodness. In fact, you can say He is goodness with a capital G. But He also gives His creatures all kinds of goodness to meet their everyday needs. Now, the verb yatab, therefore, not only means to do good, but also to be good. It can mean that at least. To be pleasing. In that sense, it refers particularly to the beneficent, attitude of God, the beneficent attitude of God toward his dealings with sinners, with his people. Clearly, when people ask God to do good to them, or when scripture says God will do good That is because deep down we know that God has this attribute of goodness. And so we can say that from his goodness stems this beneficence to his people and to his creatures. And we'll come back to beneficence shortly. Now, in New Testament terms, the major word here is Christotes. Christotes. This word, which can also mean a human attribute, as it's used in Romans 3, verse 12, when used of God, conveys the idea of being kind. and helpful, as reflective of God's moral excellence. Paul, in particular, uses it of God's kindness and gentleness in salvation through Christ. Romans 2 verse 4. And so in the Gospel, in Jesus, God's goodness comes to a very rich expression that reflects who God is. The Gospel, in a sense, as amazing as it is, it is appropriate to God because God is a good and kind God. That is to say, In Christ, God acts as one whom he really is, one whom he is by nature. Now, the other word that's used in the New Testament is Agathos, which is usually just translated good. It's the most general New Testament word for goodness. And it simply depicts what is morally proper. It's used of God's goodness ten times in the New Testament. And Christotes is used six times. So if you add up all the numbers I've given you, in the Old and New Testament, you will discover that 136 times, this is minimum, at least the number of times I could find, maybe there's more, 136 times God explicitly speaks of His goodness. Now, let's look then at how God displays this goodness. That's our next major thought. How does God display this goodness? The first thing we need to say here is that God is concerned to display his goodness. And he does so by doing what is morally good and upright displaying his righteousness, his kindness, looking after his creatures in a variety of ways. James 1 verse 17 tells us that every good and perfect gift comes down from the Father of lights, with whom there is no variableness or shadow of turning. God displays this goodness, first of all, in His very creation. That's displayed, for example, in His finished work of creation. You might call this God's creative goodness. Psalm 136, verses 5 through 9, expresses that. Let me just read those verses to you quite powerfully. And you'll recognize, of course, that this is typical of many other psalms as well. To him that by wisdom made the heavens, for his mercy endureth forever. To him that stretched out the earth above the waters, for his mercy endureth forever. to Him that made great lights for His mercy endureth forever, the sun to rule by day for His mercy endureth forever, the moon and stars to rule by night for His mercy endureth forever." Well, you could translate that word mercy there, goodness. This is God's goodness in His creation. And He shows His wisdom here and stretches out the earth. makes great lights, the moon and the stars, it's all God's goodness. So the psalmist, here and in many places, sees God as this good creator, who has this sensitive and benevolent hand, and fashions and furnishes a good home for all his creatures, and particularly for man. In fact, God says of creation, Genesis 1.31, that he looked at it himself and said, pre-full now, it was very good. So the whole atmosphere that God provides for man to breathe air in, the dry ground that supplies home and food, the sun and moon and stars and their recurring cycles. All is designed by a kind and sensitive and caring and generous and good God. Some of you have come from far and You didn't know what you were going to experience when you came here at all. When you got off the plane, one of the first things that happened to you is some of us took you to your new home and you wondered, what is this home going to be like? And when you saw that the home had actually been prepared for you, that people had done some work to get things in order, to buy some possessions, and it was ready for you. And you walked in. Many of you said afterward, wow, this is much better than I thought it would be. This was really good. This was good. And of course, we were happy to see your response. But isn't that what happened to man when God made Adam and set him in this creation in which everything, his whole home of Eden was good, supremely good, without a single flaw. As good as the home was when you entered into it, when you came here, maybe there were certain things that you missed and you said, well, this is good, but that over there could have been a little better. But of Adam, he could never say that. It was a perfect home. It was very good. Pre-sin, pre-fall, because God's character is very good. God is that essentially good God, could not make a bad creation. It's his character to be good. I mentioned Stephen Charnock. He spends 11 pages upon the display of God's goodness just in creation. Just in creation. He said, the world was made for man. God crowned the earth with his goodness to gratify man. God richly furnished the world for man. He erected a stately palace for his habitation and provided all kinds of furniture as a mark of his goodness for the entertainment of his creature man. And he arched over his habitation with a bespangled heaven and floored it beneath with a solid earth and spread a curiously wrought tapestry upon the ground where he was to tread. Isn't that beautiful? Too often we take nature, even in our fallen world, we take nature around us for granted. And it's good sometimes just to stop and look at it. This is our good God. I tell you quite often when I come over in the morning, there's something about fresh morning air that makes you contemplative, isn't there? And I come over that little walk and I see the seminary building here and I can look to the left and see the woods in the back as I'm coming to work in the morning. I usually have a cup of tea in my hand and a few books. Often what happens is I just can't walk to the building unless I'm last minute to lecture. I just stop. I just stand there. I just soak it in, this beautiful nature all around. It's wonderful. This is my God. And I'm going to work today to study this God who displays with a big paintbrush right in front of my eyes His goodness in these trees and leaves and sky and grass. This is wonderful creation. drips with God's goodness. But secondly, God displays His goodness in Providence. He gives food to all flesh, says Psalm 136, for His goodness, His mercy, His loving kindness endures forever. God doesn't only show his goodness in creating things, but he shows his goodness in the fact that he's not a deistical God. He does go on with his creation. He doesn't destroy the world anymore with a flood. God's providence is good. Now this providential goodness of God has a covenantal framework and foundation, a covenantal framework and foundation. God says as much in Genesis 6 when he says to Noah that he'll establish his covenant with Noah. And though there are dimensions of the salvific aspects to God's covenant with Noah, I believe, there's also a natural kind of providential covenanting that God makes here, that he will preserve Noah and his family, and that he will no longer destroy the world with a flood. You can find this material in Genesis 6, verses 17 through 19, Genesis 9. verses 8 through 11. Covenantal framework is particularly manifest in the word that Noah found favor, favor with God. And so when Noah and his family and the animals emerged from the ark, God lavishes his goodness upon them. and says he will continue that goodness for as long as the world remains. So every benefit that we enjoy from God's providential goodness really in some sense is a fruit of this Noahic economy. There are many more instances, and I can't trouble you with all of these, but there are many more instances that Scripture talks about various general categories in which God displays His goodness in providence. Part of that are all the texts that refer to how He perpetuates life in family and in society. Think of Genesis 9, verses 1 and 7. what we call the nuclear family, is really the providential blessing of God and the foundation of any healthy society. Yesterday I was driving somewhere and I was going to slip in a tape and as I turned on the radio, my attention was caught by a guy who was speaking and he was just saying, for a moment there he was saying, I challenge you, I challenge anyone, any listener to send to me a better blueprint for how to live in society and the blueprint God has revealed in his own word of family. And then, well, that caught my attention so I thought I'd better listen on to what he has to say. And basically what he said in the next two minutes was the whole headship principle of the man and the whole attitude of how the woman should respond to the man and the obedience of the children and the whole family network of how God organized the family to be and suited and fitted the man and the woman and the children to live in this society and then by extension to form churches and citizenry. No one could have thought of a better plan. to display God's goodness. And of course the point he was getting at was the whole homosexual agenda and that type of thing is really trying to cross up this plan, trying to rub up against it. But this is the plan that makes man most happy because this plan reflects God's goodness. In His goodness, God also tempers the curse. In His providential goodness, God tempers the curse that we brought about upon ourselves because of sin. Call this common grace, if you will. Whatever you call it, there's something there. God doesn't treat us, despite sin, the way we deserve. He is even gracious in things like this, that he puts in animals the fear of man, to protect human life and to lessen human hardship. Isn't it amazing that if you walk through the woods in British Columbia and you stumble upon a bear, that 99% of the time the bear won't attack you, the bear will run away from you when the bear is a lot stronger than you. This is God's goodness. And then there is this abundant provision for the sustenance of life, Genesis 9, 3 and 4. That God now gives us not only herbs and vegetables, but all kinds of meats for food. Hope there's no vegetarians in the class here. God provides clothing and shelter. He gives medicine and healing. He gives medical knowledge and various checks to stop the spreading of diseases. In all these ways, you see, God provides for the sustaining of our lives. This is His goodness. And then, too, it's His goodness that He restrains sin in society. Genesis 9, verses 5 and 6. You see, I'm working off of all of these just from Genesis 9 alone. And you can take other chapters and add to the themes I'm giving you. God institutes capital punishment for murderers to check violence and to engender respect for the dignity of human life. God graciously preserves human society by putting a conscience in man, by providing moral parental training, by instituting civil government, all to restrain man's inhumanity to man. And finally, in His goodness, the Lord grants ample time in His providence for the multitudes to come to repentance. Genesis 9, 8-11. While the earth remains, He stands committed to allowing seed time and harvest and so on in the seasons. Seasons which He calls us to repent and turn to Him. Now Paul summarizes in the New Testament, he summarizes all these things and many more in the phrase in Acts 17 verse 25, that God gives to us life and breath and all things. And see, we so often take that for granted. But this is God's goodness. Every day. One of my daughters had an assignment two days ago in school to interview a hero in your life. And she picked my wife's mother, so her grandma. So she had to call grandma and ask grandma some questions. I think Grandma felt pretty good being the hero of the granddaughter. But one of the questions was, what makes you thankful? Now, Grandma is still taking some chemo pills, but she's been through breast cancer. And that's rather traumatic. She's done very well. and she's not the type of person to talk about her own problems and so in family time you hardly know that she's been through anything because she doesn't draw attention to herself. But isn't it interesting that when my daughter Lydia asked her the question, what she was thankful for, that the first thing she said was, life. I wonder if that's what we would have said. If you're not sick, it probably won't be the first thing you say. Life. And then she paused and she said, Awaking every morning. Health. Spiritual health. Closeness to God. And she went on, you see. But she began just with that word, life. It kind of struck me. Life. This is God's goodness. He gives to us life. breath and all things. Acts 14.17 says that God did us good and gave us from heaven rain and fruitful seasons and filled our hearts with food and gladness. You see, there's so many things here in Providence, it's unbelievable. God gives us life and health and sustenance and property and liberty and prosperity and tranquility and beauty and skills and society and family and marriage and children and friendship. Yay, every good thing. Every perfect gift comes from His hand. The amazing thing is this goodness comes to us even when we're unworthy and ungrateful people. Even on the ungodly. Look up Matthew 5.45 on your own. Also Romans 2.4. many other places, those who treasure up for themselves the wrath of God and don't deserve in any way, shape or form the least token of God's goodness, God is still patient and generous and kind. Why does not God Execute judgment against the evil work immediately and speedily. You would think that would be his nature. He hates sin. Well, God wants to give his enemies time and space to repent. And during that time he feeds them and he clothes them and he showers upon them rain and sunshine and gladness. And too often you see wicked men Take these things for granted and their hearts are fully set in them to do evil. But still God shows them His goodness. And they actually trample on that goodness on their way to their own destruction. Storing up for themselves the wrath of God. But if God focuses goodness on all creatures, including evil men, how much more that focus isn't particularly upon those who fear Him. Providence comes to all men, but there's a kind of special providence that comes upon His people. Psalm 37 is full of it. So is Psalm 145. So is the last part of Matthew 6. As a father pities his children, I read to you from Psalm 103, so the Lord pities those who fear Him. You see, if we being evil know how to give good gifts to our children, how much more will not our Father in Heaven give good things to those that ask Him? And so the righteous really can trust this providence. They know that God means well to them. And then finally, God displays His goodness, most of all, of course, in His redemption. We might look at this from several different angles. First, you have the corporate display of God's goodness to the entire society of His people. From the beginning, God bestows redemptive benefits and favor upon his people in terms of his covenant with them. Deuteronomy 7, 9 and 12. He's a faithful God who keeps covenant and loving kindness with Israel. Luke 1, verse 72 and 73. God shows mercy toward our fathers and remembers His holy covenant, a covenant of goodness, grace. So God blesses His people in conjunction as a nation under the old covenant with redemption from Egypt and with the inheritance of Canaan. Under the new covenant, he blesses his people in conjunction with redemption from sin in Christ and a heavenly inheritance in the Holy Spirit, through the Holy Spirit. And in this new covenant, God lavishes spiritual blessing upon his people through the gospel. And He calls His people to continue, as the Bible puts it, to continue in His goodness, to walk in obedience, to respond to these spiritual privileges with love to God. There's a whole corporate sense in which God does this. Isn't that true? One of the times in my life that this becomes the most true Maybe it's particularly poignant for me as a pastor, but it's when we're sitting at the Lord's Supper, and I can look around that table, and I see the lives of all these people, and I know them. I don't know everything about them, but I know them pretty well. And I can just see all the problems God has delivered them from. I know their family secrets. And there they are. sitting around this table with me. Just a bunch of sinners saved by God's goodness. And here we are with all of our sets of problems and needs and shortcomings and fickles and frailties and inconsistencies and sins. We're all around the table confessing one thing. God is good. Supremely good in Jesus Christ. and we can't live without his goodness. That's a corporate feeling. So the vertical relationship we have with God and the love that we feel at his table for this great God, as we meditate on what he's done for us in Jesus Christ, that spills over in our hearts and just makes us want to, not only makes us want to love, but makes us feel love for everyone around that table. But secondly and finally, there is also an individual display of God's goodness to every true saint. Individual display of God's goodness. That is true from eternity to eternity. God displays His goodness by planning our redemption from sin in eternity past. That's what we heard Sunday night in our church from Ephesians 1, 3 through 6. Having chosen us in Him before the foundation of the world. What is that, brothers? This is the supreme goodness of God. God is so good. He adopted us, foreordained to adopt us. sons through Jesus Christ unto himself according to the good pleasure of his will to the praise of the glory of his grace. This is all goodness. And then of course God displays this to all true saints through the objective accomplishment of his salvation in Jesus Christ through Christ's suffering and dying and resurrection and ascension into heaven in time and then applying that individually to his people as Paul puts it the son of God who loved me and gave himself for me it becomes personal walk in love Ephesians 5 says Ephesians 5 verse 2 even as Christ loved you and gave himself up even as Christ loved you and gave himself up for us." There you see the corporate and the individual coming together in one expression. And then, God displays this goodness to his true saints, particularly by regenerating them and bringing them into fellowship with Himself. Hearing His love, not that we love God, but that He loved us and sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins. While we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. What goodness in transferring us from death to life and then applying all these benefits to us. God is incredibly good, applying redemption to us initially and then continuing that throughout all our lives. Oh, how great is thy goodness, which thou hast laid up in store for them that fear thee. Psalm 31 verse 9, and the Psalms are full of it, aren't they? For thou, Lord, art good and ready to forgive. And so all our lifetime, we experience this goodness of God. Nahum 1 verse 7 says, the goodness of God is a stronghold for us in the day of trouble. Isn't that true? How often I've seen that, not only in my own life, but in other people as well. You come in great trouble. You get cancer, or you have a heart attack. Or like Reverend Bilkus, the pastor in town, Dr. Bilkus's father, just suffered a mild stroke, as you know. I think you know. And you go to visit him. What does he talk about? He talks about God's goodness to him. It's beautiful. Why is he talking about God's goodness? Well, right now, he needs to lean on that goodness. If he just looks at what happened to him and doesn't see beyond that, doesn't see God in his goodness, well, it's discouraging. But now, God's goodness is a stronghold in a time of trouble. A time of trouble. God's been so good to me, he said. And his word is so good for me. I went down for some tests, he said, and I didn't want to focus on some of the tests because they weren't too pleasant, so I began to sing the Psalms in my heart. It started with Psalm 139, he said, and I worked my way backwards. I sang 138, I sang 137, I sang 136, I got to 134 and I couldn't remember all the words, so I went down to 133, and I got all the way to 131 by the time the tests were all over. God is good! He said it with tears in his eyes. What a beautiful thing, you see. All these things came rolling back into his mind. God's goodness, God's goodness in his word. It's a beautiful thing about being a minister, too. You work with the Bible all your life, you've got a whole bunch of scripture texts memorized, and then suddenly you're flat on your back in bed, and you're in great trouble, and you're sick, and you don't know if you have a future at all in this world. And then God takes all these years of study and He fills your mind with His Word. His goodness comes back to you. It's so beautiful. So beautiful. I was by the deathbed of an old minister. He was 89 years old. He preached until he was 88. Paul, I tell you, standing beside him, I didn't have to say a word. The words were just rolling out of him. A lifetime of Scripture was just coming out of him. Just praise about the goodness of God. It was like being in the vestibule of heaven just listening to him speak. And then God displays His goodness. to all his saints individually by completing every one of their full redemption from sin in heaven so that when they enter through the pearly gates there is no more sin there is only new heavens and a new earth all evil is locked out and all good is walled in forever what goodness God displays to His people in eternity future. He conforms them completely to Christ. He gives them a resurrection body like unto Christ's glorious body. He fills them with the exceeding riches of His goodness. And they become, you brother, will become so pure, so godly, so sinless, that even Jesus Christ will look upon you and see no sin in Israel and no transgression in his Jacob. That's His goodness. You will be perfect. You'll be a perfect bride. You'll meet a perfect bridegroom. Who was that character again? I forget his name, but in Pilgrim's Progress, I think Mr. Great Heart, just before he dies, he's walking along and someone asks him if he's afraid to go across the Jordan or some question like that, and he says, oh no, I'm longing, I'm longing to see Him who suffered for me and died for me and rose for me and intercedes for me and is waiting to make me perfect. so that I with unstained spirit may behold him who is goodness. Even so come Lord Jesus. Well, what are some practical applications of this wonderful goodness of God? Let me just give these to you briefly. First, God's people should contemplate His goodness. We should meditate on this a lot more, a lot more. Psalm 107, verse 43. You know that wonderful psalm where people come in trouble and then they see the goodness of God. And it says, Oh, that man would praise the Lord for this goodness He shows to the sons of men. delivering us over and over and over again. We should constantly be thinking about this goodness of God. If we contemplated God's goodness more, we'd murmur a lot less. That's for sure. Secondly, we should enunciate His goodness. We should say to one another, come and hear, all you that fear God, and I will declare what He has done for my soul. Psalm 66, verse 16. Or Psalm 145, verse 7, They shall utter the memory of thy great goodness. And third, we ought to reciprocate God's goodness. Reciprocate it. If God has forgiven us so much, been so good to us, shouldn't we, Luke 7, verse 47, love much For we are forgiven much. Shouldn't we manifest the goodness of God? Shouldn't we be walking epistles of this goodness? Shouldn't we imitate this goodness? And shouldn't we imitate it by loving our enemies? Because He loved us while we were ungodly, while we were enemies. Love your enemies, he says, Matthew 5, 45. Be kind one to another, tenderhearted, forgiving each other, even as God also in Christ forgave you. Ephesians 4, 32. And then, fourthly, we ought to anticipate His goodness. We ought to anticipate it. You know, we get so afraid so many times in our lives. And this is very current for me. I had something come up a few days ago that just caused me a lot of fear. And I mean, last night, the night before last, I slept fairly well, but the night before that, I just didn't sleep well. I was tossing, turning, trying to pray about it. I feared this was gonna be an entire mess. It was bothering me. Eating away. Last night, God took care of the whole thing. I can't go into details, but God took care of the whole thing. Just took it away completely. The problem as well. And I was just amazed. He did exceeding, abundantly above what I thought I could ask. I was just hoping the problem wouldn't do a lot of damage. I didn't realize that God was going to take it completely away. But why didn't I anticipate His goodness? Why didn't I say to myself 72 hours ago, you know, God has promised in His word that all things work together for good to them that love God, so I shouldn't worry really at all because this is all going to work together for good no matter how it goes, because God is good. See, that's how we should respond, instead of with unbelief and fear and worry. And so God designs all these things for our good. It's the same thing with you brothers in seminary here. Once in a while you experience some setbacks here, some disappointments, some challenges. But you know what? It's all part of your learning processes. It's all part of God's goodness helping you along to make you a better preacher or a better pastor. If you knew everything you needed to know before you came here, if you were all set, you had all the credentials, you could just skip over seminary. Why not? Why bother four years of study? No, but God wants to use trials, difficulties, challenges in His goodness to form you, to be who He wants you to be. And therefore, the psalmist says, I had fainted. Unless what? I had believed to see the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living. I love that text. I had fainted, lest I had believed to see the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living. So yes, there are times where we're real mixtures. There's times when problems overwhelm us. We're ready to faint and we don't trust God as we should, and yet deep, deep down, deep, deep down, there is something in us that says, it'll be alright. I'll go on. The Lord will take care of me. It'll be alright." And we cry out with the psalmist, I'd fainted. I'd fainted. Unless I believed to see the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living. Oh, how great is thy goodness that thou hast laid up for them that fear thee, that take refuge in thee, anticipate his goodness, Then appreciate His goodness, appreciate His goodness. Ezra 3, verse 11, when God was good, they sang one to another in praising and giving thanks to Jehovah, saying, For He is good, for His lovingkindness endures forever toward Israel. And what is Old Psalm 100, often called Old 100? What is it but a psalm that just magnifies the goodness of God and appreciates it? God is good. His loving kindness endures forever. His faithfulness to all generations. Psalm 106. begins, Psalm 107 begins, Psalm 118 begins, Psalm 136 begins with the words, O give thanks unto the Lord for he is good. Appreciate it. And finally, we ought to venerate, we ought to venerate God for his goodness. Exodus 34, verse 8, and Moses made haste and bowed his head toward the earth and worshiped. God's goodness ought to move us to worship. It ought not move us to flippancy and presumption and frivolity, but to worship. When we say God's goodness, we have to just bow our head. so good. I worship Thee. I venerate Thee for Thy goodness. All right, any questions about God's goodness? Yes? Well, he's saying that God is supremely good and God alone is supremely good. He's not saying that, of course, he's not God there, but he's challenging their concept of goodness in that context and saying that You know, we call it a communicable attribute, because we have traces that we can exercise. But in terms of the ultimate sense of even the communicable attributes, as I said at the beginning of this whole section on communicable attributes, really, in the ultimate sense of each word, God is in a class by himself. And I think this is true of his goodness as well. What are you doing calling me good? If you think I'm a mere man, why are you calling me good? It's kind of a provocative question. Who am I? Making them think about who He is. Because of course He is God. Other questions? Yes? You don't see the mountains in the snow. Yes. Oh, yes. Yes. Well, of course, the reverse advantage is if you live here and then you go see other places in the mountains, you really appreciate it. Actually, you know, what I've discovered, though, is that every area has its own beauty when you have eyes to see it. And that really came home to me in Israel when we went into the deserts of Beersheba. And, you know, I don't know why, but I just always thought that a desert would be very ugly, just sand everywhere. But when you go in the deserts of Beersheba and there's rolling sand, where Jesus was tempted by the devil, it's just a beautiful area. It's striking, stunning. You see nothing but sand. Sand everywhere. But rolling hills of sand have their own beauty to them. When I first went to Iowa, all I saw was corn. Corn everywhere. Corn, corn, corn, flatland, corn. I first thought it was ugly when I had the audacity to mention it to someone, which was a terrible thing to do in the midst of a bunch of farmers. They said, oh, they just thought it was the most beautiful place in the world. And they thought Michigan, oh, Michigan. Can't see anywhere, you got trees in the way everywhere. You know, you can see five, 10 miles in every direction in Iowa. The sky just looks so much bigger. And they've grown up learning to appreciate that big sky and that flat land. And corn, corn, corn. I love it. I think it's beautiful. And you know, I was there only three years and by the time I left, and I went to New Jersey, I actually missed that big sky and that flat land. So you learn to appreciate whatever God gives you. And that's the beauty, that's the secret. of a really happy person that you learn in every situation to see the goodness of God. Those people have a spiritual cheerfulness that is contagious. That's what you want to aim for. All right, let's look then at the love of God, the love of God. Because God is so holy and righteous, We might stand in fear of Him, and we might think it's impossible to please Him, to have a positive relationship with Him. After all, God is holy. Well, Scripture counterbalances this by saying God is also a God of love. In fact, the love of God is one of the grandest themes in Scripture. In many ways, The whole Bible is a love story, a story of God's love for his creatures. In the Old Testament, the basic Hebrew word for love is Acheb. And though the verb Acheb frequently describes a love of human beings for one another, it's also used in relationship to God. Most commonly, it refers in the Bible to God's special love for his covenant people Israel but it's also used example there would be Deuteronomy 4.37 but it's also used for God's love for such things as the gates of Zion Psalm 87 verse 2 or his holy temple Malachi 2 verse 4 The verb form, Chabab, is translated to love. And it derives from the word bosom. Bosom. Having as its connotation to rest in one's bosom. And even today we understand that a little bit, don't we, that if your wife puts her head on your chest, there's, well, there's an intimacy there, a closeness, a tenderness. But in Bible times, that whole concept of resting on one's bosom was very, very tender. It spoke of inward heart attachment. and this is what God is saying for the object of his love for his love for Israel Deuteronomy 10 verse 15 that he has an inward attachment not because of anything good in Israel but because of his own free will God's Chabad means that God's love is so lovable that he won't let go of the object of his love Now, in New Testament terms, divine love has a special meaning as well. Actually, Greek, as you well know, I'm sure, has three terms for love, each with its own meaning. There's eros, which is the term for sensual love, and phile, or phileo, which refers to the love of friendship. And that, of course, is a very positive love, but it's also a fickle love. Sometimes friends fluctuate in their love for each other. But then there is this love which has the verb form agapao and the noun form agape, which is a kind of love that loves even the unlovable and the unlovely. That is a self-sacrificing love, a self-giving love. That doesn't love because of the dessert of the recipient, but because of the giver's choice. It's a love that seeks the benefit of the recipient, rather than the giver. God loves His people this way. He loves them with agape love. and therefore he gave his only begotten son he so loved the world he gave his only begotten son to pay the penalty demanded by his holy and just law so that recipients of his love could live forever and so in the Old Testament God's love comes forward in two striking ways It comes forward first of all, I'm moving to part B in my outline now, comes forward first of all in what we might call the most striking love story ever written. God's unchanging love for his ancient people Israel. What a love God has for them. What amazing love. And when you were young, when you were a teenager, maybe when you were younger than that, and you read through the Old Testament, I tell you, didn't you get angry at Israel? I mean, how in the world could they keep sinning, and keep going against God, and worshiping idols? I just felt this anger rise up. God was so good to them. And yet, when you get to know your own heart, It's all there. As Calvin said, we're a factory of idols. And yet God loves us. Amazing love. God says of Israel, I didn't love you or choose you because you were more in number. You were the fewest of all people, but because the Lord loved you. And because he would keep the oath which he had sworn unto your fathers, hath the Lord brought you out with a mighty hand, and redeemed you out of the house of bondmen, from the hand of Pharaoh king of Egypt." Deuteronomy 7, 7 and 8. It's all grace, but it's all grace because it's all love. God chose Israel because he is a God of self-giving love, a God who keeps his promises to love. God's love is his motivation behind the exodus from the Egyptian bondage. God says in Hosea 11 verses 1 and 4, When Israel was a child, then I loved him, and called my son out of Egypt. I drew them with cords of a man, with bands of love, and I was to them as they that take off the yoke on their jaws, and I laid meat unto them. I once preached a sermon, actually, in Hosea 11, verse 4, on God's love. It's really a wonderful text to preach. I went to them as they take off the yoke on their jaws. I laid meat into them. The oxen would work and work in the fields. They'd have the yoke on their jaws and they'd plow on and plow on. Then the oxen would become tired and the farmer would give them a rest. He'd take off the yoke and he'd give them food to eat. God says that's the way it was to Israel. I'd relieve them. I'd take the yoke off their jaws and I would give them spiritual food. What a loving God. I've loved you with an everlasting love. Therefore with loving kindness have I drawn you." This love is amazing. And it's doubly amazing because of the repeated unfaithfulness of Israel to her God, to its God. And of course we see this graphically painted for us in the example of the prophet Hosea. Hosea's wife Gomer is an unfaithful wife. She gives herself over to harlotry. I won't debate here whether this is all typical or literal. I've got my own feelings about that. But the point is, God used the situation as an object lesson to Israel about His relation to her. Now, what God was to Israel, that God is to every individual believer today. And that too comes out in Old Testament teaching. God deals individually with his people, shows them love individually. Hezekiah is a wonderful example here. Thou hast in love to my soul delivered it from the pit of corruption. For thou hast cast all my sins behind thy back. Think of the whole book of Song of Solomon, the individuality of the love of the bridegroom to the bride. It's absolutely beautiful, isn't it? He's brought me to his banqueting house. His banner over me is love. And in the New Testament, New Testament moving to C now, we repeatedly see references to the unbounded love of God. The Apostle John here is particularly powerful, don't you think? He states that God is love. He tells his readers that if they do not love one another, if they do not have a personal relationship with God, you can't hate each other and say that you love God. 1 John 4, verse 8. Those who know God as Savior and have tasted His love will evidence that love in their lives. Because God loves us, we should love Him and we should love one another, John says. Now God loves His elect with a special love. He has an amazing love, an internal love, a love that we call ad intra, love to himself. God delights in himself and loves himself because he's worthy of that love. And because he has three persons in his trinity, that love can flow in relationship within his own being. So John 3 verse 35 and John 14 verse 31 John 3.35 and John 14.31 tell us that within the Trinity, the Father loves the Son and the Spirit, of course, and the Son loves the Father and the Spirit, and the Spirit loves the Father and the Son. But the amazing thing is that the New Testament tells us that God not only loves Himself ad intra, but that He also loves outside of Himself ad extra. And He loves outside of Himself, His elect, with the same love with which He loves His only begotten Son. And so election has rightly been defined as God from eternity setting his love upon those whom he's chosen to save. And thus God is love. His free, sovereign, gracious love takes the initiative in loving us. His love is a source of all Christian love. All love is of God. And yet we may make a distinction in the love of God. There is what we call a love, a general... By the way, I've got this wrong on the outline, really. I've got this twisted around. I should have straightened this out. There's a general benevolence of God to his creatures, and there's a specific complacency of love to his people. You see, we often say, or people often say, God hates sin, but he loves the sinner. Some people say that's entirely wrong, because the Bible says very clearly that he hates the wicked. Other people say God loves everyone, and therefore he loves the sinner despite his sin, despite his impenitence. And in a sense, both are right and both are wrong. But what we need to do is we need to make a distinction between benevolence and complacency. There is a benevolent love of God to all his creatures, the love of goodwill, benevolence. Benevolence in Latin means willing well, doing well. God will do well to the sinner. Without loving, however, the reprobate with the kind of love, the other kind of love with which he loves his people, namely a complacent love. In a complacent love, God takes pleasure in the object of his love. He has affection for the object of his love. This is what he has in his relationship to himself. He takes pleasure in himself. He has an admiration for each person of the Trinity. He is well pleased in his son. Matthew 3.17 You see, in terms of complacent love, then God not only hates the sin, but He hates the sinner as well. Because God is perfectly displeased with the sinner who is impenitent. The sinner hates God and disobeys God and is ungrateful to God and would kill God if he could. He's dead in trespasses and sins. And God has no complacent love for the non-elect sinner at all. In fact, the Bible actually says, I have a perfect hatred. I hate them with a perfect hatred. Psalm 139, verse 22. So why does God do so much good for those He perfectly hates? And then sends them to hell as soon as they die. And never shows them one favor forever. Well, God does this to show His willingness to forgive the sinner. If only the sinner will repent. It shows the sincerity of God's willingness to pardon the greatest sinner. And it shows that God still has some kind of heart of compassion, because even that rebellious sinner is still His creature. So He showers this creature with constant daily blessings. So, construing God's love of benevolence as a love of complacency is fatal. Instead, we must say that God loves the sinner, yes, benevolently, but he hates the sinner displacently. If the sinner dies impenitent, Then God removes even the love of benevolence and pours out the full wrath of His displacent love. So the practical consequences of this come down to how we speak about the love of God. And people tend to speak quite carelessly about this. Can you as a preacher say to people in general, God loves you? May we say to all men that God loves them. The historic reformed answer has always been, you can only say that in a very, very limited sense. In the limited and restricted sense that God has a certain kind of love for his whole creation. But we ought never to say this. without due explanation. We ought never to give men the feeling that God loves everyone savingly or complacently. That is actually heresy. So, in our day in which this is so popular to say that God loves you to everyone, I believe this expression should be avoided unless it's really, really explained carefully. Now because of this tremendous love of God, we need to love one another as well. And this too is very, very important and has amazing consequences for us. Paul says it this way in 1 Corinthians 13, that we need to draw from the love of God to love one another. from a spring that can never run dry. We need to drink from the fountain of divine love if we would love one another as God intends. Now all through his epistle John teaches that our likeness to God in loving one another as a fruit of God loving us is the proof, the great proof, Maybe the best proof that we have a real relationship with the Eternal God, that we belong to Him. You can tell that we belong to Him, said John, because we've become like Him. Everyone who loves has been born of God, says John. John is speaking, of course, not of a natural loving character, but of true, true love. John Owen said, Christian love is to be as unconfined as the beams of the sun. It doesn't select on whom it will shine its beams. So we should not shine only on those with our love who we think deserve it. For who is deserving of God's love? Our love is to shine on everyone, because God himself so loved the world that he gave his son to save it. So we are to love other people. As we love other people, we actually can grow in assurance that God loves us because we see the fruit of God's love by grace in our own lives. Well, that leads me then to this conclusion that there are characteristics of God's love that we ought to mention as we wrap things up here. The first is that we ought to be motivated to love God because He is motivated from within His own heart to love from eternity. God's love is amazing. It's uninfluenced. It's self-initiated. It's eternal. God cannot not love His own from eternity. And so this love of God is, yes, it's a free love from God, but it's also something that God feels a compulsion to do, almost, if I may say it so, because of His own nature. He's so full of love within His own Trinity, He wants to pour out that love. It's an ever-flowing love within himself, so he wants it to be an overflowing love outside of himself to his creature, and he manifests that love in a powerful way through the gospel. 2. God's love is sovereign and unchangeable. Sovereign and unchangeable. Since God is sovereign and since he is love, his love must be sovereign. He does as he pleases with his love. He loves whom he pleases. Jacob have I loved, but Esau have I hated. But when he hates, you see, it's always justly. Therefore, his love is always sovereign and gracious. His hatred is always sovereign and just. But being sovereign and being from God is naturally unchangeable. There's no variableness nor shadow of turning in God's love. Jesus having loved His own, loved them to the end. A poet says, His love no end nor measure knows. No change can turn its course. Eternally the same it flows from one eternal source. And then finally, his love is holy and gracious. Holy and gracious. It's not a sentimental love. It's not a love of amiable weakness or effeminate softness. But it's a holy love. It's a love earned by Christ and Calvary. It's a pure love that is full of grace grace that Christ has merited. Calvary is God's supreme manifestation of God's love. And when we doubt God's love because of the overwhelming trials of our lives, we ought to go to Calvary first of all and be reassured of that love. And in conclusion, I find it interesting that Paul closes almost all his letters expressing his love, the love of God and then his love for other people. He says things like this, 2 Corinthians 13, 14, the grace of the love of Jesus Christ and the love of God, the communion of the Holy Spirit be with you all. But also you find in other epistles, the end of Ephesians, the end of 2 John, the end of Jude, keep yourselves in the love of God. Genesis to Revelation, the Bible, is a story of God's love, particularly for His people. And that love must move us to love. All right, those are a few thoughts about the love of God. Do we have any closing questions? Yes? Complacency defined here means to be pleased with, right? To find pleasure in. To find pleasure in, okay. Because it usually has a negative connotation for most people. Yeah, this is theological, technical theological language. It actually was developed in the 17th century. To be pleased in. Yeah, to be pleased in, to find delight in. So, think of it as an extension of the love that God finds within Himself, you see, and that in Christ He extends that love outside of Himself and takes His pleasure. He took pleasure in His Son, so He takes pleasure in His people. Is it Zephaniah 3.17c, I think, that says, that He delights in you and He rejoices over you with singing. That, of course, is in Christ, but that's the complacent love. Yes, Marty? Is John 3.16 benevolent love? I think that there's more to John 3.16 than just that question. And when God says, I think John is saying, God so loved this sinful world, this wretched, wretched world that whosoever believeth. So, if someone really does believe, yes, that person is complacently loved by God. and only those who are complacently loved by God will respond and will believe. So ultimately, it's about complacent love. But, and there are more texts like that, there is an offer there that sounds benevolent because anyone who believes, but who will believe? Only those who are truly loved of God. So the offer Seems to be. To everyone it is. But the essence of the promise is only to those who believe. Yes, but you see, the focus here is on the world and its condition. And so, in this fallen, dreadful condition, God's love is so great that no one is beyond it. So, the purpose isn't here to theologically dissect whether it's complacent or benevolent. The purpose here is to show the most miserable, hell-worthy, needy sinner that that offer is extended to him as well. But only those will actually come who believe. And so ultimately, in actuality, it's complacency. Yes. I can't remember if it was Owen or somebody commenting on Owen said that that verse should be understood not as quantitative love. and that helps to get past the universalism that so many people try to do. Yeah, good point. All right, who's turn to close in prayer?