I feel somewhat broken within in that I can't go back to Psalm 5 and set before you again the beauty of our Lord. I know we could go back and find more there, but we'll move on, even at my disappointment not being able to continue there. Didn't want to get in it, then I disappointed, I finished up. But I'll ask you to turn with me this morning to Deuteronomy 33, and the third chapter in a moment of Deuteronomy. You know, until we have the Spirit of God again convincing men and women of their sinfulness, then we're not going to have what you sang about. Very few know anything about conviction, guilt. We've just fixed the easy way. I told you Deuteronomy 3, and I meant Exodus 3. Deuteronomy 33 and Exodus 3 If you've got those two places, and later on two more, would you bow with me as we seek our Lord? Holy Father, and blessed Lamb of God, grievous it must be to see folk gather at thy house without an interest in thee, the greatest gift man could ever have. And yet we live at such a distance to Thee. We lose You, Lord Jesus, from time to time. But those that have never known Thee could not know what it is to lose You. And I do not know when I do not know in what situation the church may be, but until we hear again that voice that you've raised up to cry aloud, behold, the bridegroom cometh. For the most part, we will continue as we are. But let it not be said of these, let them find no comfortable place here except with thee. Have no greater desire than knowing, loving, and serving You are a great God that gave Thy darling Son to deliver us from hell. My Father, if we could grasp again a little of eternity and what it would be like to be banished from Thee, and not for just a year or two, but from and throughout all eternity. My Father, have mercy upon these that do not know you, and these that do, draw them nigh, and let them never be content with things here below, with life here. Now we pray for thy spirit to open our eyes, give us an understanding heart, ears to hear. But Lord, what benefit would it be for these to have ears to hear and yet I am not thy voice. May it be so this day. For thy glory, in Christ's name we pray. Amen. Deuteronomy 33, Moses is speaking to the children of Israel, this is his last message to them, and speaking about the blessings upon them and for them. And it comes down to Joseph, and I want us to read together verse number 16, for therein lies our text. and for the precious things of the earth, and fullness thereof, and for the good will of him that dwelt in the bush. That's what I want you to consider with me. The good will of him that dwelt in the bush. Let the blessing come upon the head of Joseph and upon the top of the head of him that was separated from his brethren. Of course, if God does that for one child, he will do it for all. If he had goodwill, When he manifests himself to Moses, he'll have his goodwill towards all the children. You'll find that in Exodus 3 now. One thing's certain, in the appearance of our Lord here to Moses, was not God saying, come here, Moses, and I'll tell you what a wonderful plan I have for your life. You will be the great king over Jeshurun. No, he didn't. have that message. But this is the same Lord that Moses is writing about in Deuteronomy. And you read these verses and you'll see that the Lord did not appear to him in the beginning to make known his goodwill to Moses. Exodus 3 And verse number three, we will begin. And Moses said, I will now turn aside and see this great sight, why the bush is not burnt. And when the Lord saw that he turned aside to see, God called unto him out of the midst of the bush and said, Moses, Moses. He said, here am I. And he said, draw not nigh hither. put off thy shoes from off thy feet, for the place whereon thou standest is holy ground. So here God did not in the beginning make his goodwill known, and yet it is wrapped up in that one that dwelt in the bush. He appeared here as a flame, a fire in that bush that was not consumed. When the Lord struck down Moses' scientific curiosity, and he found out he was talking to the God of Jacob, Abraham, Isaac, he fell on his face. And God said, don't you come nigh me. You put off your shoes. Now, children, that does not sound like a God that intends on manifesting, or even the God in the bush. By the way, it's Christ, here and in other places. It does not appear when God made him know, I'm holy, you're a sinner, Don't draw nigh me, put off your shoes. Nothing to Moses there seemed that it carried any goodwill, and yet there was in the heart of that one in the burning bush only goodwill intended for Moses. Isaiah saw the Lord high and lifted up. Seemed like that if you were in Isaiah's place that day and you fell trembling and said, woe is me, I am a man of unclean lips. I dwell in the midst of a people just like me of unclean lips. Sounded like that there was nothing that day when God made himself known to Isaiah. Yet in that sight, later on you'll find out the goodwill of him that dwelt in the bush. Now the Lord always enters the scene in one's life holy, one of absolute purity, spotless, and no sin. And in that light, when this God reveals himself as the Holy One, our sinfulness is known. know nothing. At that moment, and I don't know how long you had to go if you are a Christian, I don't know, but at that moment you knew nothing of the love of God. You knew nothing of the grace and the mercy of or the fact that the love of God, the grace of God, the mercy of God, and the goodwill of God is as eternal as God is. And if you ever find out that you are a sinner, a spirit convicted wrought sinner, Then you begin in your journey, not at that specific time, because you see hell, and you hanging over it, and even that seems like by a tiny thread, or like a spider's web, as Jonathan Edwards said in that great sermon, centers in the hands of an angry God. God's attributes, not just these few that I named, or as eternal as God himself. There is nothing new. There is nothing beginning in God. It has always been there. And God didn't start loving you that day when you found out that you were a sinner. His mercy did not begin that day when you fell on your face as sinful in the sight of purity. Life here are for you. Now in one sense it began when God birthed you into his family. But you never were out from beneath the goodwill of God. One day you were going through life, going on with life with no thoughts of God. You were just here and you were enjoying life, looking forward to everything that it had for you in the future. Now there, but that day, that day, God, the eternal God, back in eternity had determined that you'd meet Him. And as I've said this morning in that meeting, you didn't know anything about the goodwill of God towards you. But the goodwill of God, the goodwill of him that dwelt in the bush was disguised in that wherein he struck you down as a sinner and guilty. And instead of you being confronted with his goodwill displayed in Calvary, That which hit you was that old schoolmaster Paul talked about and it dealt a harsh blow of your misbehavior, of your lack of attention. And that law said, do and live. And the love of God and the mercy of God and the grace of God didn't come wrapped up in some lovely paper with a nice bow on top. The law said you are condemned, you are going to the eternal like a fire. Oh, sometime later you'd find out that that day You met the one whose goodwill towards you didn't begin then, it always been. But instead of you finding out this God, you were like when Nathan came to David and pointed his finger at his face and said, thou art the man. David didn't have an answer for that. He couldn't because he knew he was right, knew Nathan was right. And he went away weeping. An unconverted man, woman, boy, or girl is confronted not by the love of God or the mercy of God, but by the holiness of God. And that which is so aggravating and which has destroyed millions and sent them to hell is because the preacher concludes the message with God loves you now and God wants to save you. All you've got to do is come down here to the front of this building and pray this little prayer. Nobody's ever been saved until the Spirit of God made them a sinner. You weren't confronted by the love or the mercy of God that day. You were confronted by the holiness of God. And when the Spirit dealt that blow to your heart, when He convinced you of that condition, you found out, I'm alienated from the life of God. having their understanding darkened, Ephesians 4, being alienated from the life of God through the ignorance that is in them. That man or woman, boy or girl, used to be this way. It hasn't been in a long time. He felt his enmity with God. Romans 5, when we were enemies, That's how you fail to God. Caused by the preaching under the anointing and unction of the Holy Ghost. Had the cross set before. And then when we who were the enemies of God were reconciled by the death of His Son. Being reconciled, having returned in favor with God. And verse goes on to say, and we shall be saved by his life. None of you were saved in one event where you met God. Salvation is an ongoing experience throughout life. The little infant will become a toddler and the toddler will become a teenager. And the teenager will become a grown person. And God set it before your eyes to know that day that you got saved. That didn't end it. That was just the beginning. And as with the love of God over time, the goodwill of he that dwelt in the bush, you find out he's always, always had goodwill towards me. That day that I felt such condemnation and a sinner, down the road from there, if God saves you, you find out that was the goodwill of God to me wrapped up in a fiery law. I wouldn't have been saved apart from that. And so his good will is eternal. As the love of God, it's always been toward you, but God never manifested his love to anybody until he saved them. No one. And there was a time from new birth to the cross. I don't know how long Bunyan's pilgrim went when he found out he was a dying man and living in a city of destruction. I don't know how long he traveled from there to where he met that man on the middle cross at Calvary. I don't know. But from birth, and you may not even know when birth took place in the spiritual realm. You just know that you're not who you used to be. But in God's time, from you meeting Christ on the cross, dying there for you, you come to find out something about God didn't start loving me. God didn't one day, when I was at enmity with God, God didn't one day begin in a peaceful attitude toward me. But it's always been like that. Now you know this verse but turn with me Psalm 23 Psalm 23 With verse four we begin, yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil. David's found out the goodwill of God towards him. He knew that was something that was eternal. Thy rod and thy staff, they comfort me all the time that thou art with me. Thou preparest a table before me in the presence of mine enemies. Now you wonder why? God didn't just get rid of your enemies, but he brought you to a table in the very midst of them. So you can't know the peace of God until there's disturbance in your life. You can't know, you can't know that God keeps you in the middle of your enemies in peace until you're sitting there. Thou anointest my head with oil, my cup runneth over. Now listen, surely goodness and mercy Well, Brother Avery Rogers said those was the two sheepdogs of God to keep you in line, the goodness of God and the mercy of God. David said, God's goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life. Everywhere I turn, now there will be days that it will seem to you that God has removed his goodwill from you, but it's not so. Just endear the day and go on if it's another day or two days or three days, just endear going on and you'll run back into the goodness and mercy of God made known to you. David said, I'm going to dwell in the house of the Lord forever. Our old church fathers, Puritans, and Reformers call the grace of God prevenient. That is, before you ever found out you were lost, the grace of God was attending to you so that you would get to that day. And the grace of God, I could say from birth, that's as far back as any of us can go, but the goodness of God and the goodwill of God and the mercy and grace of God didn't begin for you at your birth. It's eternal. You just didn't know anything about it except in time. So the truth of these, the goodness, the mercy, the grace, the love, with every attribute God has, has always been in your favor. And you sure didn't know that when you found out you were a sinner. You felt sure the right thing for God to do to you would be to send you to hell. Folk, do you see we've lost all this as far as eternity? Elect according to the foreknowledge of God. Now don't take sides with the Armenians. that say God saw what you would do in time, therefore that foreknowledge of God caused Him to elect you. It's all you'd choose. It's all you'd find. Don't go there with that. Don't rob God of His glory there. according as we were chosen in Him from the foundation of the world. You say, well that still doesn't make clear that God didn't choose us because He saw our works. Well, let me quote a verse in Romans 9. The children not being yet born, neither having done good or evil, but that the purpose of God according to election might stand, God manifest his love to Jacob. Jacob have I loved, he so have I hated. And we've been raised all our lifetime in a society that thinks that God doesn't hate. God's not angry. God's angry with the wicked every day. I don't know where we came up with this. God is just a God of love. That He is. Thank Him for that. But a sinner is not going to glory unless they meet Christ on the cross. Now all of us came into the world as the children of Adam and Paul said in Adam all die. All. Yet even in our state of spiritual death, in that state when we were at enmity with God, the goodwill of God was toward us. Always has been. lost two sons. He gave up his beloved Benjamin for food. And he said to his boys, all these things are against me. No Jacob The goodwill of God is toward you. Though you've lost now three sons in your mind, you haven't lost any. It's all for the purpose to bring you to a dead son in your mind and in your heart that's now sitting on the throne, reigning. over Egypt. Joseph was a goodly young man, but his world was turned upside down, betrayed by his brothers sold as a slave in prison. Well, you say, but he knew by the dreams that God had given him that he'd be an authority one day. You think that's how he felt? Well, read Psalm 105. His feet they hurt with fetters, and he was laid in iron. Marginal reading is his soul came into iron. All the time he was down there as a prisoner looking after his master's home and goods, and then all the time that he was in prison, It said in that same chapter, Psalm 105, until his word came. He lost the reality of the dream that his brothers would bow down to him. Until his word came, the word of the Lord tried him. His dreams all faded. They were no good when he was in prison. It was impossible for them to come true. That's just the word of God trying him. As his promise fell forevermore, Has God forgotten to be gracious to me in this hour and time? No, in the end He saw God led me my entire life as a slave, as a prisoner, all the way to the throne. Joseph didn't know anything about the goodwill of him that dwelt in the bush down there in prison. But he found out what God said to me when I was a youngster. It's true. It was and it is true. And in the end, he saw that God has led me the right way. David was anointed king by the prophet. He didn't feel like a king, he felt like a bird fleeing from a trap. He hunted, was hunted, He'd go on one side of the mountain and saw where 3,000 men would come on the other side. Every step he took was one of possible danger in ending his life. Do you think that the goodwill of God towards David entered his mind when there was but one step between him and death? No, no. 1 Samuel 27, one, I perish one day. No, David. You might as Asaph think that his mercy is clean gone forever and that his promise doth fail. You might think that. No, David. Don't you remember God had you anointed? You think God stepped off the throne while you were as a potter running around, flying around, trying to escape? No, God did it all for you. For you couldn't be king over my people until you'd been educated in that realm of life. And you, with all God's children. You're going to go through some heartbreaking, often devastating situations. And when you get in them, the devil's going to say, well, so much for your God and his favor and mercy and love. He'll tell you that God has abandoned you. left you all alone and that hope that you had, it's gone. If you were right with God, these things would not have happened to you like Job's three friends, that religious crowd calling him a hypocrite. You've seen judgments caught up with you. Job and David, you just sit still. You endear this and even endear the fiery darts of the wicked one trying to turn you. Your God's still on the throne. He's still reigning and his good will toward you is eternal. If it was for you, until you were born and it was for you from that natural birth to that day you found by the Spirit you were a sinner. And that day or that next week or the next six months when God gave you peace, the goodwill of God was for you. when you were on your face, tears rolling down, because you felt you deserved God's punishment. No, the goodwill of God was towards you there, dear children. Mark 27, and I'll close with this. Won't say shortly, but it might be. When you get to thinking no one knows, there are those who do. Paul writing to the Corinthians, he said, I comfort you. I know about your distress. I comfort you with the comfort I received. So God's got somebody out there that's been through what you're going through. It's to be a comfort for you. I gave you Joseph and David, Jacob, Asap, when the mercy of God seemed clean gone forever. I'll carry you to the head of that fountain, Matthew 27, 40. Our Lord hanging on the cross, body wracked with pain from foot to head. And you got that wicked crowd down below. reviling, wagging their heads. Verse number 40. Thou that destroyest the temple, buildest it in three days, save thyself, if thou be the Son of God. Same temptation in his dying hours as was his first temptation there when Satan met him. If thou be the Son of God, if you are come down from the cross, Likewise also the chief priest walking him with the scribes and elders said, he saved others himself he cannot save. If he be the king of Israel let him now come down from the cross and we will believe him. That's God's only beloved dear son. And his father has placed him here. While he saved others, walking, he can't save himself. And when we, we the children of God, the children of the great King that is over everything, and all works and events and happenings, he's gonna make them all for your good. And he that spared not his only begotten son, how shall he not with him also freely give you all things? So he may put you in the valley, and he may bring you under great distress, but that's part of the all things, so that you will realize the goodwill of him that dwelt in the bush. Not in the trial, but when you come out, you will see the benefits that you receive from that trial. He's over all things in your life. When we get the breath knocked out of us, so to speak, And we finally get enough strength within and help from His Spirit to look again to our Savior. We see God did that for me, and He's got a greater end in mind than my judgment or my destruction. You don't think you're gonna die there, but you come out on the other side by His sustaining grace and goodwill. You come out on the other side and you see the love and the grace and the mercy and the daily provisions, everything's bound up in that little bundle of the goodwill of Him that dwelt in the bush. What if one had met Moses that day when he was taking the sheep down there to the Mount of God, Sinai? Horrible thing. And somebody met him and said, Moses, you're gonna have a good day today. And you'll meet the one that has set about this day in your life to express his goodwill to you. Moses cheerfully takes those sheep on down, kind of excited, and yet he sees such a sight, that bush burning, not being consumed, and the voice of God Almighty in his son, said you just stop in your tracks, you're on holy ground. Take off your shoes and Moses fell trembling. You think that what his friend said would come to mind, you're gonna have a good day? You think Moses with his face in the dust of the earth, you think he thought that was the goodwill of God? No! But oh, no greater, no greater thing can happen than whatever God does, he brings you to himself. And somewhere in life, those trials and heartaches and disappointments, you're gonna see it was the goodwill of my father. One day God's gonna say, there arose no prophet like unto Moses, whom I knew face to face. Now Moses desired to see the face of God, and God said, Moses, I can't let you do that. That'd kill you, it'd destroy you. But I'll do the next best thing for you. I'll put you in the cleft of the rocks, and I'll cover your eyes with my hands until I pass by. There, God passed by after removing his hand, Moses. God proclaimed the goodness passing by Moses there. The mercy, the grace, the long-suffering, the God that is abundant in goodness and truth. Moses, I'll have mercy on whom I'll have mercy. Moses saw the hinder parts of God, the goodwill of God to him. How can one say it is a goodwill of the one that dwelt in the bush when the same one strips you of everything? Abraham gave up his son, but God gave him a far greater sight. He saw the day of Christ. Jacob gave up his son, but he saw one that he knew that was dead, living and ruling. You are given a cross to bring you to the end of life here. I don't mean you dying. I mean your selfishness and pride and greed and wanting things. God will lay a cross on you to bring you to an end of all that. But He didn't do it to destroy you. He did it that Christ might be made known more to you. And as we see and learn the heart of God, We look back at distresses and afflictions and grief. Now looking back, we can name them all as from the goodwill of Him who loved me from eternity, set about to bring everything in my life for my good. He takes your riches, but He shows you riches untold in dying to save. And folks, if there was a power equal with God, then I wouldn't know what power it was, that put me on my face, brought all those nights of sorrow and grief. I wouldn't know, is that God or is that that one that has power equal with God? But since God has no rival, no power, Devil's a powerful being but he come nowhere near the power of the eternal infinite power of God Get through and you see When he dries your weeping eyes with a verse Or takes a soft cloth and rubs all those tears, even that anxiety that has brought so much pressure on you, that there is sweat all over your body, you'll see it's all from the eternal goodwill of God to me. Religion without a cross, and that's all you got out there today. One religion that is produced by telling little boys and girls to accept Jesus, and yet they never meet the true God in the burning bush. They don't meet the one coming down from Mount Sinai, that mountain on fire and smoke, God said, they better not a one of you touch it or you'll die. You better keep your animals away or they'll die. And we've taken that God out of religion. And we've put this God up there that'll never make you guilty of your sins. He'll never ask you to repent. And this God will give you the best of life here. And they say heaven hereafter. No. You know what we've got out there? We've got a group of soft, spoiled, rotten brats that have been taught this God of love and he wants you to have the best. And instead of us walking on that narrow a road that is an incline upward away from the earth. They're all riding, the harlot's religion's got them riding in an air-conditioned, comfortable automobile on an asphalt highway, the asphalt's eight inches, 12 inches thick. And if they ever run across a little bump in the road, they begin crying and squalling. Oh, me. God will bring you down. I'm ready to tell you about Christ all the way to death. Why do we think we can get out of this old world without a cross? You're not going to do it. Everywhere you turn, somewhere you're gonna run into a cross, but you'll just sit quietly and patiently and endear. You'll find out the goodwill of God, the goodwill of him that dwelt in the bush, brought that cross, brought that heavy trial, those great afflictions. You get through them, you'll recognize The good will of him that dwelt in the bush has been towards me all my life. Even before grandma and grandpa were born, even before their parents were born, all the way back to eternity, his good will has been toward me.