God’s Goodness in a Bad World
Five times in the book of Psalms we read these exact same words, “Oh, give thanks to the Lord for He is good; for His mercy endures forever.” (Psalm 118:1) God only has to say something once for it to be true but when He says it five times I think we would have to say that it is of upmost importance. The verse gives us a divine directive: we are to give thanks to the Lord. Then, it gives us two simple but powerful reasons why we are to be thankful to Him: He is good and His mercy endures forever.
As I ponder these words I first realize how foundational this truth is. God is good. When Moses asked to see the glory of God the Lord accommodated Moses’ request. When the Lord revealed His glory to Moses the Bible says, “The Lord descended in the cloud and stood with him there and proclaimed the name of the Lord. And the Lord passed before him and proclaimed, ‘The Lord, the Lord God, merciful and gracious, longsuffering, and abounding in goodness and truth…’” (Exodus 34:5-6). The Lord proclaimed Himself to be good.
As I ponder this I ask, “Is part of the reason for the five-fold expressions of God’s goodness because of the horrendous amount of evil in the world?” After all, one question often expressed by people trying to fit a good God into the framework of a bad world is, “How could a good God allow so much suffering?” I’m sure you’ve heard someone say something like that. Perhaps you’ve said it yourself. So God becomes redundant with the expression of His goodness for the purpose of countering our tendency to doubt that He is good.
It’s not like God didn’t warn man about the awful results of sin. God said to Adam, “In the day you eat thereof (disobey Me) you will surely die.” And sure enough, when man sinned—man died and with this death and spiritual separation from God came untold evil thoughts, actions and desires. The flood of evil unleashed because of the fall was a spiritual tsunami slamming into the hearts and minds of all of Adam’s race and All because of Adam’s horrific choice to act independently of God. In the wake of this evil tsunami lies destruction of monumental magnitude. We live in a fallen world and we are fallen people. This is why the world is so bad.
It is the goodness of God that reached out to sinful mankind. God would have been perfectly justified to leave us in our sin and put us away from His presence forever. But in His goodness He chose to provide a remedy for our death and destruction. That remedy cost Him the life of His only Son. And it is the goodness of God that leads sinners to repentance. It is the goodness and grace and mercy of God that led all of us who know Christ in the pardon and forgiveness of sin to turn from our sin and trust in the work of our Savior for us on the cross.
When I read about a father who purposely blows himself up with his two children or about a man who had stalked a woman for years who then shot her to death in a parking lot or about the violence and death that continues to plague our communities my heart aches, genuinely aches. I have a choice to make every time I observe the awful affects of sin. I can choose to blame God or I can choose to blame sin. I choose to blame sin. And in that choice I reflect on the power of God’s love that is able to change the vilest heart just as He changed mine. This good and perfect love of God is the hope of our fallen world. I identify with David who said, “I would have lost heart, unless I had believed that I would see the goodness of the LORD In the land of the living” (Psalm 27:13).
One day, God will right every wrong and vindicate all His saints. Until then, I take heart and I remember to “give thanks to the Lord, for He is good; for His mercy endures forever.”
Pastor Dan
|