©2001 Larry Huntsperger Peninsula Bible Fellowship
|
5/20/01 |
And He Is Good |
|
5/20/01 And He Is Good
We have been away from our Romans study for two weeks now,
and I have decided to keep us away from it for one more.
Before we move into what I have for us this morning
I want to prepare you a little for where we’ll be going.
As Ted so publicly pointed out last week,
I am well into my 50's now.
That is certainly not old,
but it’s old enough for me to have seen
my perspective on many things change considerably
during the past 30 years.
During the past several months
I have had an idea occurring repeatedly in my thinking,
an idea that is reshaping my outlook
on many of the most foundational beliefs of my life.
Maybe it’s not right to call it an “idea”,
because it is far more than that.
It is more like a truth that is offering itself
as the center around which
all other ideas must readjust and find their position.
Though I know it is too early for me to tell
whether or not I am correct in this,
I have found myself wondering
if perhaps it might be this one truth
that my Lord has been seeking to draw me to
since the first day He and I met
in the fall of 1966.
And from what I have said already
you can tell that what I will be sharing with you this morning
is in some ways far more personal
than most of the teaching I do.
I certainly do not apologize for that,
but I do think it is of value
for you to know that what I say today
is very much a work in progress within me,
and I reserve the right
to revise and restate it repeatedly in the months ahead
if it continues to grow in my thinking.
The truth is,
I have already attempted to share it with you once back on the 4th of February.
In that talk I suggested that
from the very beginning
this whole thing - life, creation -
has never been about us,
it has been about God,
and about His bringing into being
a world in which we could discover who He is and what He is really like.
I want to take us back into that thought again this morning from a little different angle.
And let me start by attempting to state
as simply as I can
the truth I want us to see.
And this right here
is the first great hurtle
that you and I are going to have to clear in our communication this morning.
You see, when I share with you
the truth I want to communicate
I think many of you will be tempted to say to yourself,
“Well, yes of course, I know that!”,
and any further communication between us will come to a screeching halt for the morning.
So, if you find yourself thinking that
when I offer my attempt at stating this truth,
I’d like to offer you an alternative mental response.
I would suggest this:
“Well, yes, I believe I already understand that,
but for some strange reason
Larry seems to think this is a really big deal,
so maybe I’ll hang in there with him mentally a little longer
just to see why it’s taken him so much longer
to discover what the rest of us have known for years.”
So, here it is:
The central purpose of life for every human being who has ever lived or ever will
is the discovery that the God who created us, who brought us into being,
is absolutely and eternally good,
and this absolute and eternal goodness
is expressed toward us
through His absolute and eternal love for each one of us personally.
Let me try again...
Whether you are male or female,
in grade school,
or high school,
or college,
or into your career,
or home with the kids,
whether you are “just a kid”,
or “way over 50",
no matter what your IQ,
or your income potential,
or your gifts and talents,
or your race or nationality,
no matter who you are,
every one of us enter this world
having been given exactly the same calling, the same life pilgrimage -
to discover the absolute goodness and trustworthiness of God
and to discover that goodness
through the discovery of His infinite personal love for you.
There was a Billy Crystal movie that came out a few years back
in which Billy Crystal played a troubled East Coast business man
who worked through a mid-life crisis
by going on a cattle drive out west for several weeks.
In his search for answers
he asked his crusty old trail boss
what he thought the answer to life was.
The old cowboy took his hand,
held up one finger out in front of him,
and said, “This! This is the purpose of life.”
Then in typical Hollywood style
he went on to explain that life makes sense when you find your central purpose.
It could be your family,
or your work,
or whatever else you choose.
But if you keep it at the center,
everything else will fall in line.
When I watched that movie
and saw that old guy hold up his finger
symbolizing the center of life,
I remember thinking, “Why yes, of course... I know what that is - It’s Jesus Christ. The center of life is discovering Jesus Christ.”
But I think I have changed my mind.
You see, I have begun to believe
that our real purpose in life
is not the discovery of Jesus Christ
and the reunion with God that comes to us through Him,
but rather, it is the discovery
of what Jesus Christ says to us
about the true nature of our God.
And when each of us departs from this planet
the true measure of the success of our pilgrimage while we were here
is not found in all those things that make it into our obituary,
it is found in the degree to which we have successfully discovered
the absolute and eternal goodness of our God.
And to help make this more practical
I want to bring this closer to where we live
by doing two more things with it this morning.
First of all,
I just want to offer a few handles
to help us better understand
how little we really do believe
that God is good.
And then second,
I want to talk a little more
about those forces that war against
our discovery of the true nature of our God.
But first we need to begin
by being honest with ourselves
about what we really think about our Creator.
You see,
when I say that God is good,
I think that,
unless we happen to be in the middle of some huge battle with Him right now,
most of us here would respond by saying, “Well, of course He’s good - what a stupid thing to say!”
But the truth is,
a great many of the things we think,
and the words we speak,
and the choices we make
everyday of our lives prove we don’t really believe it.
Every time we grumble about some circumstance in our life
we are confirming our belief
that God is less than good.
We are telling ourselves
and anyone who will listen to us
that God has done a poor job of providing for us what we really need for a good life this day.
Every time we allow some fear to control our choices
we are stating with our lives
that our God is not good enough
to work all things together for good the way He promised.
Every time we sin
we are telling ourselves and our world
that our God is not really good,
that the moral boundaries He has established for us
were not motivated by love,
but rather by some arbitrary impulse to wall us off from the things we really need to be happy.
You see, the truth is that every time we think,
speak,
or act in a way that is not consistent with the character of God
we are affirming our doubts about the absolute goodness of God.
It isn’t just that we are not OBEYING GOD,
it is that we are not obeying
because we are certain He cannot be trusted to be good and do good to us.
And please listen carefully to what I say right here -
I am not saying, “Shame on us for not being more obedient or more trusting people.”
I am simply pointing out
that every person who enters this world
brings with him or her
a total mistrust of the basic goodness of God.
And the pilgrimage handed to every one of us is identical -
to find our way from that root mistrust
into an ever growing heart knowledge
of the true, absolute, and eternal goodness of our Creator.
Our first step in that direction
comes through our acceptance of the grace and forgiveness offered to us by God
through our Lord Jesus Christ.
That is the doorway into the world of truth about our God.
But it is only the doorway.
From there
we then begin the process
of discovering and accepting His goodness
in every area and event in our lives,
one area,
one event at a time.
Do you remember when we were studying
the first half of the 5th chapter of Romans?
That was the section we called “Our Birthday Presents From God”.
In those verses we saw all those gifts
given to us by our Creator
the day we enter His family through faith in Christ.
I want to remind us again of one of those gifts -
ROM 5:5 ...the
love of God has been poured out within our hearts through the Holy Spirit who
was given to us.
From the very first day we enter the family of God
He places within us His Spirit
for the stated purpose of serving as our guide
into an ever-growing discovery
of the goodness of our God -
to pour out within us
the growing knowledge that everything He says,
everything He does is pure, perfect love.
But then why is it so very hard
for us to accept this truth?
Why do we not instantly immerse our spirits in the obvious endless reality of His goodness?
Why do we have to claw and churn our way through this discovery
one step,
one issue,
one day at a time?
Because there is a raging battle going on,
a battle designed by Satan
to blind us to the truth,
a battle in which powerful forces are used by the enemy
to keep us from that truth.
I’ll mention just 4 of them this morning
so that you can get an idea what I’m talking about.
1. First of all, we do not begin our discovery of the goodness of God with an open mind.
The truth is,
we enter this world with a deep distrust of God
that is rooted in our own rebellion against Him.
Having carefully constructed our entire approach to life
on the assumption that this God is the enemy,
bent on depriving us of all the things we most need for a fulfilling life,
rebuilding that approach to life
does not happen either quickly or easily.
And with so many united voices around us
telling us that our God cannot be trusted,
even when we know from experience
that the way we did it in the past didn’t work,
it is hard to stop,
and listen to Him honestly,
and choose to trust Him.
2. We live in a world that drips with evil -
it is everywhere, drenching our world.
How many times have we said,
or thought,
or heard others say, “How could a good God allow this to happen?”
Some of you may have seen the popular TV drama “West Wing” this past week
in which the President was faced
with the death of a close friend,
killed by a drunk driver.
There was a scene following the funeral service
in which the President stands at the front of the church, screaming at God,
“How could You do this?
Haven’t I done enough for You so that you could cut me a little slack?
When have I ever done anything other than treat Your Son with respect,
and this is the way you repay me.”
His life had been touched by just a little bit of the evil in our world,
and with all of the eloquence of Hollywood
he shook his little fist in the face of God
and used that evil as his proof of what he had believed all along - that this God is not to be trusted,
and is certainly not good.
When I heard that actor’s tirade
it hit me once again how we are forever asking the wrong questions
and then wondering why we cannot find the answers.
The question is not and never has been,
“How do we treat God’s Son”.
The answer to that is obvious -
we crucify Him - every one of us in our own way.
The real question,
the correct question is, “How does His Son treat us?”
And then, when we discover the truth of the answer to that question,
will we believe it,
and accept it,
and embrace it?
ROM 5:6 ¶ For while we were still helpless, at the right
time Christ died for the ungodly.
ROM 5:7 For one will hardly die for a righteous man;
though perhaps for the good man someone would dare even to die.
ROM 5:8 But God demonstrates His own love toward us, in
that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.
JOH 10:10
"The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy; I came that
they may have life, and have it abundantly.
JOH 10:11 ¶ "I am the good shepherd; the good
shepherd lays down His life for the sheep.
EPH 2:1 And you were dead in your trespasses and sins,
...
EPH 2:4 But God, being rich in mercy, because of His
great love with which He loved us,
EPH 2:5 even when we were dead in our transgressions,
made us alive together with Christ (by grace you have been saved),
EPH 2:6 and raised us up with Him, and seated us with Him
in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus,
EPH 2:7 so that in the ages to come He might show the
surpassing riches of His grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus.
3. A third major force warring against the truth of the goodness of our God
is the united message forced upon us
by the religious systems of our world.
With one voice they tell us
that God’s kindness and goodness is something that must be earned,
that He is good to those
who are good to Him,
and that He will “love” those
who obey His rules.
The truth is
that no human being ever has
or ever could earn the goodness of God.
God is good to us
for only one reason -
because He is absolutely good.
4. And the fourth enemy of the truth of God’s goodness I would squeeze in here
is the observation that all of us
develop our first God-concepts
through our interactions with our human fathers,
and because no human father
has ever fathered perfectly,
we all enter our God awareness
with twisted and distorted concepts of God based on our earthly fathers.
But my point in all of this
is simply to say
that for each of us there has always been
only one central calling in life -
the growing discovery
that our God is in every way,
absolutely GOOD.
And it doesn’t matter who we are,
or where we are in life,
the calling never changes.
Some of you have just graduated from high school or college.
You have ahead of you
a whole new phase of your life,
filled with all sorts of new, and as yet unanswered questions.
How do I now approach my life on my own?
How do I go about meeting my needs?
Where do I go?
Where do I work?
What do I keep from my past,
and what do I throw away?
But underlying all of those questions
is a much greater one -
Is my God really good to me at this point in my life?
Can I trust both what He says to me
and where He leads me,
or should I back away from Him
and trust my own understanding?
Some of you are farther along in life.
Your time is invested in wrestling with children 30 hours a day,
or pouring yourself into a career
that seems to forever demand from you more than you have to give.
Some of you are wrestling with some major moral question in your life right now,
wondering whether your needs
can ever be met within the context of God’s truth.
Some of you are dealing with a major loss in your life,
and the emotional pain it has created
pressing down on you every morning
the instant you open your eyes
to face another day.
Some of you are dealing with a tremendous amount of fear right now -
fear of failure,
fear of the future,
fear that your deepest needs will not be met.
But in all of these things
there is a greater issue still -
is your God truly GOOD?
Is He good enough to care about you,
good enough to never cheat you in the leadership He offers in your life,
good enough to show you not just the RIGHT way, but the BEST way,
and good enough to give you the strength
one day at a time
to bring you through?
There is only one calling in life -
the discovery of the goodness of our God.
Everything else is simply a means through which we pursue that calling.
And then just one final observation.
As I have been moving toward this truth in my own life,
I have noticed a interesting thing happening
in my relationship to so many of the systems and structures in my life,
systems and structures
that use to hold tremendous power over me.
They held power over me
because I allowed myself to believe
they had the ability to tell me who I was,
and whether I had value,
and whether I was a success
or a failure in life.
But increasingly
as I have come to focus on this one central calling
of the discovery and affirmation of the goodness of my God,
I have come to realize that all systems
and all human structures
have value and significance
only to the degree that they provide me with clear windows
into the true nature of our GOOD God.
If they do not, they simply do not matter,
and it is foolish for me
to allow myself to believe that they do.