This is Larry Jones. You are listening to the Grace and Glory Hour of the Dyer Baptist Church with our co-pastors David M. Atkinson and Dr. Lee Atkinson. We are coming to you from Dyer, Indiana. Our prayer is that you will be strengthened by the Word today. Now, here is our pastor. The message this morning will be on God's goodness and grace. Sometimes a word as common as good ends up being meaningless to us. So we may not think that we need to define a term like good or grace. that is where we must start this morning. What does it mean when we say God is good? Well, if you look at dictionaries and Hebrew lexicons and Greek things, they'll tell you that goodness in the Bible means that which is wholesome, it's pleasant, right, it's suitable, kind, it's fair, and gentle. And that's all well and good, but sometimes don't we get our best understanding of words by seeing how we use them in context? by thinking about a word and how we use it and say, okay, what does it mean in that sense? What does it mean when we say that that tastes good? What does that mean? Well, it brings us pleasure, doesn't it? It sends off a signal in your brain that says thumbs up. That's what it means when we say that tastes good. On the other hand, what does it mean when we say that's good for you? Well, that's a totally different set of signals, isn't it? I'll leave that alone. But it means that it benefits us, doesn't it? Whether it's food that's healthy or whether it's an experience that's good for us. If it's something that's good for us, it is for our benefit, for our personal development and growth. What does it mean when we say, oh, he's a good man? When you're maybe talking about a potential mechanic that you might use or a neighbor that somebody else already knew and say, oh, he's a good man. What does that mean? I think usually it means that that is a person whose character can be trusted. That person is trustworthy, they have integrity. What do we mean when we say that's a good story? Oh, I love that one, that's a good story. A good story is, it's satisfying. All the pieces come together and they're complete. It's just as it should be when you think about a good story. What does it mean when we say, oh, maybe you're talking about a proprietor of a shop or something. You say, she's always been so good to me. She's always been good to me. That means she treats you fairly. She doesn't rip anybody off. She's kind and gracious. Or maybe, again, talking about these stories, you say, oh, he's the good guy in this story. What does the word good mean there? The good guy is kind of the hero, the one who always does what's right. and the one who rescues people. And when we say that God is good, he is all those things and so much more. He is satisfying. He is delightful. He is the hero who always does what's right. He's kind and he's generous. He's trustworthy and he helps us. God is so good. And he's so full of grace. Many wonderful songs and sermons have been written on the grace of God. We'll only begin to scratch the surface of God's goodness and grace this morning, but I hope that you'll enjoy Him a little bit more after our meditation this morning. I'd like to point out to us three ways that we see God's goodness and grace. three different arenas in our everyday life where we can see that God is good, that God is gracious. And the first one is in the created world. We see the goodness and the graciousness of God in this whole created world and universe around us. Would you please turn to Psalm 104? Turn to Psalm 104. I would love to read the entire thing, but I will try to restrain myself to highlights because there's other passages for us yet this morning. Psalm 104. We're talking about the fact that God is good. That's his attribute. When we talk about three ways we can see this attribute of his goodness, then we'll talk about how we can respond, what our attitude should be because of his goodness and his graciousness. Look at Psalm 104. Look for the goodness of God in the created world. Bless the Lord, O my soul. O Lord, my God, thou art very great. Now, the word great is kind of impressive and majestic, isn't it? But great is really just kind of like a higher degree of good. We will say, oh, this is good, but that's great. So great is just a higher form of good. So when we read here, Lord, thou art very great, we could say, Lord, thou art very, very good. Thou art clothed with honor and majesty, who covers thyself with light as with a garment. And it talks about some splendorous descriptions of God. But come now down, please, to verse 10. Verse 10. He sendeth the springs into the valleys which run among the hills. Have you ever been among the hills or the mountains and you've seen a cool mountain stream just kind of cutting its way as it gurgles and babbles and there's cool, clear water there gushing over the stones and it's created green vegetation all around? God did that. That's an indicator of God's goodness. There's something about the sound of running water. There's something about the sparkling of the sun on that flowing stream. And that is the goodness of God. He sendeth the springs into the valleys which run among the hills. They give drink to every beast of the field. The wild asses quench their thirst. By them shall the fowls of the heaven have their habitation, which sing among the branches. Have you ever been out in the real wilderness and just listened to the birds? And it's like, they won't stop. And the wonderful things about birds, God is so good to us that even in subdivisions, you can hear birds. I don't know what it is about my father-in-law's subdivision. He's in a subdivision, house, house, house, house, house. But there in Pensacola, Florida, the birds are so loud, it is like impossible to sleep in there. Because the birds just sing their hearts out, praising our God. That's the goodness of God in the songs of the birds. Look at verse 14. He causeth the grass to grow for the cattle. Do you have any idea how many beasts or cattle there are on the face of the planet today? I couldn't begin to count them. Not all the cattle in Indiana, or Florida, or Texas. Brother Lambert, that was your cue. Or Texas. I thought for sure I'd get at least one amen this morning. Think about all the cattle there. And remember, that's just this country. There's a lot of cattle in Canada, too. Thank you very much. I thought I'd get another amen. There's a lot of cattle in Mexico. There's a lot of cattle in South America. There's beasts of the field all over this planet. And who feeds them? God grows grass for them. Look at verse 16. It talks about the trees of the Lord are full of sap. The cedars of Lebanon, which He has planted. Who planted all those trees? You ever been to a forest and think, man, that's an awful lot of trees. Bible says God planted those trees. Look at verse 18. The high hills are a refuge for the wild goats, and the rocks for the conies. God made the mountains. He made the Rocky Mountains. He made the Appalachian Mountains. He made the Andes Mountains. And He made them with all their various structures. And He made them for their own beauty. And He also made them so that the goats, who love to climb in dangerous places, would have a place to play. And he made all these rocky crags and holes so the little conies could run and hide and be safe from the hawks that might try to pick them off. Verse 19, he appointed the moon for seasons. Think about how we can tell a month has passed because of the changing of the moon. That was God's idea. That was a good idea. I like it. On it goes, and an exclamation bursts out of the psalmist's mouth in verse 24, where he says, oh Lord, how manifold, or how obvious, or how diverse are thy works. In wisdom hast thou made them all. The earth is full of thy riches. He goes on to talk about things in the water, Leviathan, and the ships that are there, and how God feeds even the largest of the sea creatures. Look at verse 28. that thou givest them, they gather. Thou openest thine hand, they are filled with good. Have you ever watched documentaries about how much blue whales have to eat on a constant basis? They wait for their food from God. God just opens his hand and says, here you go. I have food to feed this enormous mammal swimming the depths of the oceans. God is good. And if you will take a minute to look around at the world that God has put us in, you'll see that God's good. Because the incredible thing is not only did God make all this beauty, He gave mankind the capacity to appreciate it. God didn't just make beautiful flowers and beautiful bird songs and impressive mountains. He gave us the eyes to process that. He gave us the mind to ponder it and to measure it and to try to figure it out. He gave us the tongue to taste the peaches and the cherries and the grapes and the blueberries. He gave us the ears to hear the songs. He gave us the capacity and matched that with the beauty of His goodness. God's a good God. I'm glad God's not some cold, mechanical, machinistic type God that just made a functioning world. God is so good that he made a beautiful world. We also see the goodness and grace of God in the life of Jesus Christ. Turn to John chapter one. John chapter one. God created the world and it's a display for His goodness and grace. And then in a more full revelation, God wanted us to learn about how good He is, so God became Himself a man and showed us how good He is. John chapter 1 verse 14, and the word that's talking about Jesus Christ, the second person of the Trinity, God the Son was made flesh and dwelt among us, John speaking as one of his disciples said. We beheld his glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father. And what was that glory like? It was full of grace and truth. When Jesus came as the personification of God in flesh, it was full of grace. It was full of sweet kindness and goodness. Again, verse 17. The law was given by Moses, but grace and truth came by Jesus Christ. Now that's not to say there wasn't grace in the Old Testament. That's not to say that people in the Old Testament weren't saved by grace. It's not saying that. But the fullest revelation of God's grace came in the person of Jesus Christ. Turn again to Luke chapter 4. Luke chapter 4. While you're there, I want to share with you a little account from scripture recorded in Acts chapter 10. In this occasion, Jesus by now has died for our sins and been raised again for our justification. He's gone back to heaven. He sent out disciples. And they were sharing the gospel there in Jerusalem, but the Holy Spirit said, there's more for you to do. And he sent this vision to Peter, where he showed Peter that you shouldn't call anything common or unclean that I have cleansed. And just at the time that he woke up, some people came and said, listen, we were supposed to look for a guy at this house named Peter, and he's supposed to come with us. And Peter says, wow, this must be what God wants me to do. So Peter went down to the house of Cornelius, and he began to preach. Gentile to that that centurion. He said let me tell you a story about a man named Jesus and in Acts chapter 10 verse 38 Peter preaching to Cornelius says God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Ghost and with power Who went about? Doing good. What a phrase. What did Jesus do when he walked this earth? He went about doing good. That was Peter's kind of summary description of what it was like to watch Jesus for three years. What did Jesus do? He just went everywhere doing good. God is good. He's full of grace and truth, and that's manifested in his son, Jesus, who went about doing good. Luke described it for us this way, in Luke chapter 4 we find Jesus, this is back when he was still on this earth, Luke 4.16, he came to Nazareth which was his hometown, imagine he's kind of gone away and come back and he goes to the home place church. It's always interesting to return to a place from your past and go to church there, isn't it? How many of you have done that recently? You went somewhere and you went back to the old church. So Jesus went back to Nazareth and he went to the synagogue. On the Sabbath day he stood up for to read verse 17 and there was delivered unto him the book of the prophet Isaiah And when he had opened his book, he found a place where it was written So Jesus deliberately found the place in Isaiah that says this and he specifically stood up and read this in front of them the Spirit of the Lord is upon me because he hath anointed me to preach the gospel to the poor and He has sent me to heal the brokenhearted, to preach deliverance to the captives, and recovery of sight to the blind, and to set at liberty them that are bruised, to preach the acceptable year of the Lord. Peter said later that Jesus went about doing good. Jesus himself said that this prophetic scripture was about him because he says in verse 20, he closed the book and gave it to the minister and sat down. And the eyes of all them that were in the synagogue were fastened on him. Jesus came back and he read that. And he began to say unto them, this day is this scripture fulfilled in your ears. I am here to preach the gospel to the brokenhearted and the captives and to set at liberty them that are bruised. And everybody was a little bit confused by that. In verse 22, all bear him witness and wondered at the gracious words which proceeded out of his mouth. And they said, is not this Joseph's son? In other words, this kid, you know, he's a carpenter's son. I mean, he's not like a scribe. He's not, you know, a Levite. He's just a carpenter. He's just a kid in shop class. And now he's reading from Isaiah and saying that this prophecy about doing good to all these hurting people, that's fulfilled in me. Wow, what kind of gracious words are these coming out of his mouth? And as I thought about that phrase, these gracious words which proceeded out of his mouth, I began to think about some of the things that Jesus said. You know, and he not only went about doing good, but he said a lot of gracious things. God showed us how good he was by creating this world, and then when Jesus came and he walked this planet, and he said things like, I will be thou clean. He at other times said, fear not, only believe. He also said, I will not send them away fasting, lest they faint in the way. Oh, woman, great is thy faith. Be it unto thee, even as thou wilt. Receive thy sight. Thy faith hath saved thee. Take up thy bed. Walk. Woman, thou art loosed from thine infirmity. Weep not. She is not dead, but sleepeth. Thy brother shall rise again. Jesus went about doing good. Gracious words proceeded from his mouth because God is good. Jesus didn't have to put it on, you know what I mean? You know what it means to be on your best behavior, right? It means to pretend to be something better than you are. It means to fake it. It means to act really nice, even though you don't always. Jesus didn't have to be on his best behavior. Because through and through, core to core, Jesus is full of grace. He's full of goodness. And you're sitting there, and I'm not saying anything shocking this morning. Maybe you got a little too used to the idea of God being good. Can I tell you, there's a lot of people today worshiping a God that is not good, even in their own eyes. They are afraid of their God. They serve and worship Him. They don't think He's good. It would never cross their minds at all. Our God is good. They might say He's powerful. They might say He's awesome or fearful. They might say He's jealous, but they wouldn't say He's good. But we... serve the one true living God and He is good. How would you like to be in bondage, slavery, and blindness this morning? Worshipping some un-good God. We know that God is full of goodness and grace because He created this world and it's full of beauty. I urge you in the busyness of your life In the rush and tumble of to-dos and bills to pay, take some time to enjoy what God has made. It's so, so worth it. The third way we see God's goodness and grace, and perhaps the most complete and perfect way, is in God's plan for salvation. Isn't it? Think again about what salvation means. Think about your redemption. Think about what it means to be lost, to be a sinner, to not be good enough, to be deserving of God's wrath. And to know that God would not stand for that. He had a plan from eternity past to save us, hear this, from ourselves. We are the sheep that went astray. We are the ones who rebelled. We were the created beings that shook our fist. And God says, I know what they're gonna do. I know how rebellious they are. I know the stiffness of their necks. But my love is so great. I am so full of grace and goodness that I am going to make a way for them to be restored. You remember why Jesus said that he was going away to prepare mansions? so that we could be with Him where He was. He wants us to be with Him. And so He has this plan of salvation that's been unfolding through the millennia. Think about that. Think of all the pictures of salvation in the Old Testament, from the Exodus out of Egypt to the flood even before that, and all of the way that God worked with Israel and the prophets and the many, many things that he did to show his love and grace and goodness and his ultimate redemption for man. And then he sent Jesus to actually pay for our sins, who in his own body took on the evilness of every wicked thought that you've ever had. And Jesus bore that punishment so that she could go free. That's a window into the fullness of God's grace and goodness. Paul put it this way in Romans chapter five. Moreover, the law entered that the offense might abound, but where sin abounded, grace did much more abound. that as sin hath reigned unto death, even so might grace reign through righteousness unto eternal life by Jesus Christ our Lord. I want us to think for a moment about that phrase, where sin did abound, grace did much more abound. A topic very dear to my heart that we can't fully develop this morning. is how the people who are struggling to believe, maybe they're skeptic, maybe they're sincere, they often stumble at the concept of the biblical God by saying, if there's a good God who's all-powerful, how come there's so much evil in the world? Have you ever heard that line of thought before? Okay. Without taking time to fully answer that this morning, I would say this. If there's not a God who's all-powerful and all-good, Why is there so much good in the world? Whether you're thinking back to the created order and the beauty of the earth, or whether you think about the triumphs over evil, people along this line who are questioning might say, well, if God is so good, then why did he stop Hitler? He did. Hitler lost the war, didn't he? If God is so good, then why are there diseases? Why wouldn't God stop those? Many of them have been stopped, only by God's grace. But more specific to the message this morning, think about the most cruel or wicked deeds that you can. The most highly concentrated batch of poison and sin and darkness that there's ever been. And pretty quickly, if you are familiar with history at all, you know that history is the story of man's cruelty to man, isn't it? There's one group oppressing another from the time of Cain and Abel up to this very moment. People are mean to people. Evil is a reality in this present world. And there is sin everywhere, and there's lots of it. And the Bible says that where sin did abound, grace did more abound. That means if you could begin to comprehend the total magnitude of all the wickedness of all the people of all time, God's grace is bigger than all of that. That's a lot of grace. We wouldn't even really have to look that far, would we? If we'd look just at our own lives. I mean, how many times a day am I proud? It'd be much easier to try to figure out how many times I'm not. How often do I make the selfish choice and speak the unkind word? How often do I shortchange others and kind of pad my own pocket? How many times am I jealous and covetous, full of lust and envy? Start counting those up. You'll get discouraged pretty fast. until you remember where sin did abound. Grace did more. Grace did more abound. No matter how many times you fail, no matter how many times you're wrong, God's grace is bigger than that. I have to share with you a poem by John Donne. It's called A Hymn to God the Father. I've shared it before. I plan to share it again. Just get used to it, because it's a good poem. It's called the Hymn to God the Father. It's pretty deep. We'll just get some highlights. He says, he's praying to God, and he says, wilt thou forgive that sin where I begun, which was my sin, though it were done before? He's talking there about the inherited original sin that we have, because Adam sinned. We were born in sin. And John Dunn says, are you gonna forgive the sin that I inherited, the sin nature that I have? And then he says, will thou forgive that sin through which I run, and do run still, those still I do deplore? Think about Romans chapter 7, and the things that I would, I do not, and the things that I would not, that do I. He says, the things that I know I shouldn't do, but I do anyways, will you forgive those? And then here's the refrain. He says, when thou hast done forgiving me, thou hast not done. If I have more. Picture the penitent John Donne grieving over his sin and saying, God, I have this sin, this besetting sin that I can't seem to shake. Can you forgive that sin? Well, when you're finished, Lord, you're not finished, because I still have more sin. He continues, without forgive that sin, which I have won others to sin and made my sin their door. It's not bad enough that you're blind and falling into the ditch, you're leading others into the ditch. It's not enough that you're doing wrong, you're causing others to stumble and do wrong. Are you gonna forgive that sin, God? Wilt thou forgive that sin, which I did shun a year or two, but wallowed in a score? When thou hast done, thou hast not done, for I have more. And you feel the despair welling up in him that he says, ah, my sin is over my head. In the last stanza, he says, I have a sin of fear that when I have spun my last thread, I shall perish on the shore. But swear by thyself that at my death, thy son shall shine as he shines now and heretofore. In other words, I'm afraid that at the end of my life, I'm going to fall short. I'm not going to make it. But if you will promise to me, swear by yourself, as God says he does in Hebrews. Swear by thyself that your son, S-O-N, the son Jesus Christ, is going to shine in all his greatness and his goodness and his grace when I die. He says, promise me that. And having done that, thou hast done. I fear no more. When I recognize that God's grace is that great, I can see the goodness of God. So Barth Millard put it this way, marvelous grace of our loving Lord. Grace that exceeds our sin and our guilt. yonder on Mount Calvary's love outpoured, there where the blood of the Lamb was spilled. Grace that will pardon and cleanse within, grace that's greater than all our sin. If your estimation of God's goodness and grace is a little low, look at creation. Look at Jesus' life. and look at the evil in your own heart, the evil of mankind, and know that God's grace is so much more. So then what should our response, what should our attitude be because of God's attribute of goodness and grace? How should we live this afternoon because God is so good? Let's find our way back to Psalm 104. We were there a little earlier looking at God's goodness in the created order. Towards the end of the psalm, we see our first response or attitude that we should have because of God's goodness. Psalm 104, verse 34. My meditation of Him shall be sweet. I will be glad in the Lord. Let the sinners be consumed out of the earth and let the wicked be no more. Bless thou the Lord, O my soul. Praise ye the Lord. Because of God's goodness, we should reflect on his perfection and the wonders of his works. He said in verse 34, my meditation of him shall be sweet. My meditation of him shall be sweet. If I were to, this morning, play the game where we say, okay, how many of you have been saved for five years? Stand. How many of you have been saved for 10? Remain standing. How many of you have been saved for 20? Remain standing. I think in this congregation, we have a lot of people who've been saved for a long time. But have you recently had sweet meditation about God? Have you considered how good he is? If someone were to ask you, brother, are you walking with the Lord this morning? What would be the criteria in your mind for whether you answer yes or no? Okay, I want you to think about that. If someone walked up to you today and said, sister, how is it with you and God? I think a lot of us will tend to think this way. I'm good with God because A, I haven't robbed a bank. B, I don't beat my wife anymore. C, I'm in church this morning, aren't I? And D, I read my Bible several times this week. Therefore, I am a good Christian. I am walking with God. Now, all of those measuring sticks I just gave you are good. It's good to not beat your wife. Let me make sure that application is clear. It's good to not rob banks. It's important to be in church. It's important to read your Bible. All of those things are important. But I think there's more to being a Christian and walking with God than that. I think there's more to worship and then pleasing the Lord than that. It's not sufficient to have an orthodox doctrinal statement and to be able to list the attributes of God. As if God is some kind of specimen, and I'm going to put him in a little Petri dish in the lab, and I'm going to look at him, and I'm going to poke him, and test him, and make a diagnostic journal of what he's like, and so now I'm a good Christian. That's not what makes you holy. That's not what pleases the Lord. For some of us, especially if we've been saved a long time or brought up in church, it's pretty easy for us to say the right words and to avoid the wrong places. Right? I haven't been to a lot of bad places in a long time. Praise God for his grace and the upbringing I had, I just, I haven't. But does that mean that I'm seeing God's grace and goodness as I should? It could mean that I'm drawing near to him with my lips But my heart is far from Him. If I'm not doing as the psalmist was doing, having sweet meditations of Him, that make me glad in the Lord, I'm missing something. God is not... God didn't save you just so that you'd be a good little boy. God didn't save you just so that you'd be a girl that kept the rules. God saved you to worship Him and to think about Him and to praise Him and to love Him. But you have to deliberately think about Him to get that in your heart. How do married couples drift apart? They stop thinking about each other, they stop loving each other, they stop praising each other's strong points. They just don't pay attention to each other. And how does a believer, someone who's been ransomed and bought by the blood of Jesus, how do they kind of go down in their worship life? I'm just not thinking about God. David, or the psalmist here, said, my meditation of him shall be sweet. I will be glad in the Lord. And if you're not glad in the Lord, maybe it's because you haven't been meditating on him. We love that hymn, O Lord, My God. How great thou art. But in more than one place, the text tells us the key. It says, O Lord, my God, when I in awesome wonder, what? Consider all the worlds thy hands have made. And then he lists these specific things. In the next verse, or another verse, he says, and when I think that God, his son not sparing, sent him to die, I scarce can take it in. I can't process that. But he had to consider and he had to think before his soul would get all overwhelmed. And there's probably a lot of conservative Christians that haven't been there in a long time. That's just my guess. Our attitude towards God's goodness and grace should be to reflect on, to ponder his perfection and the works of his hands. And then that will very naturally lead us to the next step, the step of praise. When we consider the works of his hands and when we think that he sent his son to die, then sings our soul. How great thou art! We can praise Him and worship Him once we've pondered His goodness. And if you've not been praising, maybe you haven't been pondering. Look at Psalm 107. Psalm 107. The scripture makes it clear that praising God, worshiping Him, praising Him for His goodness is something that we ought to do. It's not enough to refrain from four-letter words, my friends. If you think you're a good Christian just because you don't use certain vocabulary that your co-workers use, your concept is anemic. There's a lot more to pleasing God than refraining from four-letter words. And I hope you do. I hope you don't look at the magazines that your buddy co-workers look at. I hope you don't tell those kind of jokes. I hope, ladies, that you don't constantly criticize your husband when you're talking to your girlfriends on Facebook or whatever. But there's more to it than that. Psalm 107 says four times, verse 8, verse 15, verse 21, and verse 31. You can read all four of them at the same time. Are you ready? Oh, that men would praise the Lord for His goodness, for His wonderful works to the children of men. The psalmist is saying, oh, I wish people would praise God for how good He is. Wake up, people. Have you forgotten? Have you been lulled to sleep? Think, ponder on His goodness and grace, and then praise Him. Praise Him. Praise Him. Finally this morning, our response or our attitude towards God's goodness and grace should be to trust him. I mentioned the kind of conversational definition of goodness, they use that phrase, oh, he's a good man. I was talking to a cousin recently about somebody else and I mentioned the guy's name and my cousin said, oh yeah, he's a good man. And what he meant was he was trustworthy in business relationships. Because he's good. His character is such that he's reliable. You don't have to be afraid that he's gonna trick you or cheat you. You don't have to, you know, double check everything all the time because he's just good. He's gonna do what's right. Because our God is good. Because he's gracious. You can trust Him. You don't have to be scared all the time that, oh, what if this happens to me? Or what if that happens to me? Or what if I get cheated? Or what if I get a raw deal in life? Or what if, you know, something unfair happens to me? Listen. God is gracious. He's good. Trust Him. Psalm 27 verse 13 puts it beautifully. Psalm 27 verse 13. I'd ask you to mark this if you can. Highlight it on your phone or underline it in your Bible. You can even write it on your hand for all I care. But don't forget this verse. Psalm 27 verse 13. Oh, it's a beautiful psalm, but I can't give you the whole thing. But it kind of climaxes this way. I had fainted unless I had believed to see the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living. I would have given up. I would have quit. I would have passed out. I would have been overwhelmed, thrown up my hand, and gone home. I couldn't make it unless I believed, believed to see the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living. Now, His goodness is always there, but if you're like me, sometimes I don't believe to see it. Oh, everything's wrong, everything's bad, oh no, what are we gonna do? I need to believe to see the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living or I'm gonna faint. If you're discouraged by problems or plagued by uncertainty, if you're worried or tired or lonely or overwhelmed, have I missed anybody? I'd get everybody with that list. If you're struggling with some kind of problem, remember the goodness of God. It's gonna be okay. It's gonna be okay. Bethany and I had the opportunity to talk to one of our church members yesterday. She told us a great story. We were talking about trusting God. his timing, his provision, when things just are overwhelming. And she said, I'm learning to trust God, because his timing's always perfect. He always does it just right. Do you have time for a story, she said. She said, a while back, we redid our deck. And like within a year, it was all flaking and peeling off, and it looked terrible. So I looked on the can of the material and it said it had a guarantee, a warranty. So I wrote them a letter and said, send pictures, this is what happened. And they wrote back and said, okay, well, if that happened, then here's the process you need to go through. And if you do that, then you'll have some options. We can replace the product or we can pay to have it repaired or whatever. There was three options. But you have to get these estimates and do this paperwork and blah, blah, blah, this big long process. So she went to all the trouble, did all the steps, finally got it sent in. They wrote back and said, oh, well, we're sorry. There's been so many customers with problems that now it's gone to litigation. And so we're not handling it ourselves anymore. It's all being handled through the court order. You're going to have to fill out this paper and go through this process to try to get, you know, at this point. And I'm sure if it was court paperwork, it wasn't easy. So she got all the forms for that, and she put it off, and it had to be done by a certain date. And then the due date was coming. The due date was like tomorrow. She's like, I've got to get this done. She filled out all the paperwork, got through all the process, and then she looked again, and the due date wasn't tomorrow. It was yesterday. She missed it. And she said, I was so mad at myself. How come I put it off and I failed? I was like, you're more spiritual than I am. I would not have been mad at myself. I would have been mad at them evil people. But in any case, she was frustrated. Here, I've got a bad deck. I've gone through all this trouble, and I've still got a bad deck. And so discouraged. And some time later, she went to her mailbox, opened up her mail, and there was a check because of her messed up deck for $1,300. And she said, that reminded me. God's going to take care of me. This time it's perfect. I suggested that she got a cross stitch or like calligraphy or something and put that in the living room. Remember the deck. No one else will have any idea what that means. But she will. And I hope now you will too. And when your heart is overwhelmed, go to the rock and remember the deck. God's good. He's not brought you this far to abandon you now. It's gonna be okay, because He's gracious. He gives you good things when you don't deserve them. His grace is greater than your sin. His goodness is displayed in His creation and illustrated in the life of Christ. Let's go out of here praising God, all worshipful and tickled to death, that God is so good. I'd fainted. unless I believe to see the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living. His goodness is there. Believe it. See it. Heavenly Father, forgive me for the many times, many, many times when I don't believe to see your goodness. Holy Spirit, please remind us a lot about how good you are. Help us to remind each other. I thank you how in staff meeting Thursday, one of our brothers was praying and just praising you for a whole slew of things and how that blessed my heart. Help us to talk of all your wondrous works. Father, if there's someone here today or watching that hasn't experienced the full depths of your grace and forgiveness of sin, I pray that you will woo them and draw them, convict them and convince them of your love. Help them to seek out someone who can carefully explain to them how they too can be saved by trusting in you. Bless us now, I ask in Jesus' name. As you stand and we prepare to sing, I'm just gonna ask you to think and be honest. Have you praised God for his goodness? Or have your eyes been only for the waves and the wind? If we come face to face with God's word on this, And we don't go out any different than we came in. I believe that's a sin problem. Thank you for joining us today. We'd love to hear from you. Our email address is GraceGlory7 at Juno.com. GraceGlory, the number 7 at Juno.com. Pastor David M. Atkinson also has a ministry on Facebook and invites you to connect with him there. Now, until the next time, remember to walk softly with the Lord.