Chapter 7
Chapter 7
THE LORD IS GOOD
"O taste and see that the Lord is good: blessed is the man that trusteth in him"—Psalm 34:8.
Have you ever asked yourself what you honestly think of God? Do you believe Him to be a good
God or a bad God? Perhaps this question shocks you. You may be horrified at the suggestion that you could possibly think that God is a bad God.
But before you have finished this chapter, some of you will acknowledge that unconsciously perhaps, but nonetheless truly, you have by your doubts and complaints attributed to Him a character that you would not want to have attributed to yourself.
I will never forget the hour when I first discovered that God was good.
I had of course always known that the Bible said He was good, but I thought it only meant He was religiously good.
It never dawned on me that it meant He was actually and practically good, with the same kind of goodness He commanded us to have. The expression
"the goodness of God" seemed to me nothing
more than a sort of heavenly statement, which I could not be expected to understand.
Then one day while reading the Bible, I came across the words, **0 taste and see that the Lord is good." Suddenly, they meant something. The Lord is good, I repeated to myself. What does it mean to be good? To be good is exactly the opposite of being bad. To be bad is to know the right and not do it, but to be good is to do the best we know.
Since God is omniscient. He must know what is the best and highest good of all; therefore His goodness must necessarily be beyond question.
I can never express what this meant to me.
I had a view of the goodness of God that I felt nothing could possibly go wrong under His care. It seemed to me that no one could ever be anxious again.
Ever since that time, when I have been tempted to question whether He had been unkind, neglectful, or indifferent, I have been brought up short by the words, *The Lord is good." It is unthinkable that a God who is good could have done the bad things I imagined.
Your Image Of God You may cringe at the suggestion that you could, under any circumstances, attribute something bad to God.
Yet, you do not hesitate to accuse Him of doing things which you would consider to be most dishonorable and unkind if a friend did the same things.
For instance.
Christians get into trouble; all
looks dark, and they have no sense of the Lord's presence. They begin to wonder whether the Lord has forsaken them. Sometimes they even accuse
Him of indiflference and neglect. They never realize that these accusations are tantamount to saying that the Lord does not keep His promises. They are declaring that He does not treat them as kindly and honorably as they expect their human friends to treat them.
If one of our human friends left us because we were in trouble, we would not consider him to be a very good friend. How is it that we can, even for one moment, accuse our Lord of such actions?
If the Lord is good, not omnipotent only, but good, it must be because He always, under every circumstance, acts up to the highest ideal of goodness. Goodness in Him must mean, just as it does with us, the living up to the best and highest He knows.
Practically then, it means that He will not neglect anyof His duties toward us. He will always treat us in the best possible way. This may sound like a platitude, and you may exclaim, **Why tell us this, for it is what we all believe?" But do you?
If you did, would it be possible for you ever to think He was neglectful or indiiSerent or unkind or self-absorbed or inconsiderate?
Do not put on a righteous attitude and say, **Oh, but I never do accuse Him of any such things.
I would not dare to." Don't you? Have you ever
blamed Him for things you would scorn to do yourself?
How was it when that last grievous disappointment came your way? Did you feel as if the Lord had been unkind in permitting such a thing to come upon you when you were trying so hard to serve Him? Do you ever look upon His will as a tyrannical and arbitrary will that must be submitted to, but that could not possibly be loved? Does it ever seem to you a hard thing to say, *Thy will be done"? Would it seem so hard if you really believed that the Lord is good, and that He always does that which is good?
It is important to drag out our secret thoughts and feelings about the Lord into the full light of the Holy Spirit. Then we may see what our attitude about Him truly is.
It is fatally easy to get into a habit of thinking wrong thoughts about God. Such thoughts will separate us from Him by a wide gulf of doubt and unbelief. More than anything else, more even than sin, wrong thoughts about God weaken the foundations of our spiritual life and grieve His heart of love.
We can understand this from our own experience. Nothing grieves us so much as to have our friends misjudge and misunderstand us and attribute to us motives we scorn. And nothing so grieves the Lord.
It is in fact idolatry. For what is idolatry but creating and worshipping a false god.
We are doing this very thing when we allow ourselves to misjudge Him and attribute to Him
actions and feelings that are unkind and untrustworthy.
In the Bible it is called speaking against God.
**Yea, they spake against God; they said, Can God furnish a table in the wilderness?" (Psalm 78:19).
This seemed a very innocent question to ask. But God promised to supply all their needs in the wilderness. To ask this question implied a lack of confidence in His ability to do as He promised; it was therefore, in spite of its innocent appearance,
* 'speaking against" Him. A good God could not have led His people into the wilderness, and then have failed to provide for them. To question whether He was able to do it was to imply that He was not good. a We are sometimes sorely tempted to ask a similar question. Circumstances often make it seem impossible for God to supply our needs, and we find ourselves tempted to speak against Him by asking if He is able. Though He has blessed us many times before, we seem unable to believe He can do it again.
In our hearts we limit Him because we do not believe His Word or trust in His goodness.
If our faith was what it should be, no circumstances could make us limit the power of God to supply our needs. The God who can make circumstances can surely control circumstances. Even in the wilderness. He can furnish a table for all who trust in Him.
God's Answers To Our Doubts There are many questions to be found in the Bible which cast doubts upon the goodness of God. Each one is a duplicate of questions asked by God's children today.
Let us consider a few of these questions and see whether we can find any counterparts to them in our own hearts.
'Is the Lord among us, or not?" (Exodus 17:7). God has declared to us in unmistakable terms, as He did to the children of Israel, that He is always with us. He will never leave or forsake us.
Yet when trouble comes, we begin, as they did, to doubt His Word and question whether He really can be there. Wlien the Israelites did this, Moses called it ''tempting the Lord." (See Exodus 17.7.)
It deserves the same condemnation when we do it.
No one can ask such a question without casting a doubt upon the truthfulness and trustworthiness of the Lord. To even ask it is to insult Him and to slander His character.
It is, unfortunately, a common question even among God's own children.
Many of them think it is only true humility to ask it. Such unworthy creatures, as they feel themselves to be, would be at the height of presumption to be confident of His presence with them.
But what about His own Word in the matter? He declared to us that He is with us, and He will never leave us or forsake us. Dare we make Him a liar by questioning the truth of His Word? A good
God cannot lie. We must give up forever asking such a question as this. The Lord is with us as truly as we are with ourselves. We simply have to believe that He is, no matter what the appearances may be.
'75 his mercy clean gone for ever? doth his promise failfor evermore?" (Psalm 77:8). To ask these two questions of a good God is to insult Him. It would be just as impossible for His mercy to leave us forever, as it would be for the tender mercies of a mother to come to an end. The psalmist said, *The Lord is good to all: and his tender mercies are over all his works" (Psalm 145:9). No matter how circumstances may look, we may be sure of this: God is good, and no promise of His has ever failed or can ever fail. Heaven and earth may pass away, but His Word will never pass away.
(See Mark 13:31) "Hath God forgotten to be gracious?" (Psalm 77:9). To ask this question is to speak of Him as grievously as it would be to ask a good mother if she had forgotten her child. The Lord Himself says, *Xan a woman forget her sucking child?.
. .yea, they may forget, yet will I not forget thee"
(Isaiah 49:15). A mother knows how grieved and insulted she would feel if anyone suggested the possibility of her forgetting her children. A mother at least should be able to understand how such questioning must grieve the Lord.
"Why hast thou made me thus?" (Romans 9:20). There is hardly one of us who has not been
tempted to speak against God in reference to our own personal make-up. We do not like our peculiar temperaments or characteristics. We long to be like someone else who has, we think, greater gifts of appearance or talent. We are discontented with our make-up, both inward and outward. We feel sure that all our failures are because of our unfortunate temperaments. Then we blame our
Creator for having made us this way.
Learning Self-Acceptance I remember a time in my life when I was tempted to be very rebellious about my own personality.
I was a plain-spoken, energetic sort of an individual, trying to be a good Christian, but with no special air of spirituality about me.
I had a sister who was so saintly in her looks and so reverent in her manner, that she seemed to be the embodiment of a true Christian.
I was sure I could be a better Christian if only I could get her saintly looks and manner. But all my struggles were useless. My natural temperament was far too energetic and outspoken for any appearance of saintliness. Many times I said reproachfully in my heart to God, **Why hast Thou made me thus?"
Then one day I came across a sentence in an old book that opened my eyes.
It was as follows: *'Be content to be what thy God has made thee."
It flashed on me that God had made me and that He must know the sort of creature He wanted me to
be.
If He had made me a potato vine, I must be satisfied and grow potatoes and must not want to be a rose busli to grow roses. If He had fashioned me for humble tasks, I must be content to let others do the grander work. **For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus unto good works, which God hath before ordained that we should walk in them"
(Ephesians 2:10). God is good; therefore.
His workmanship must be good also.
We may securely trust that He will make out of us something that will be to His glory, no matter how unlikely this may seem to us.
The psalmist seemed to delight in repeating this blessed refrain, **For the Lord is good." He exhorted everybody to join him in saying it.
**Let the redeemed of the Lord say so*' was his earnest cry. (Psalm 107:2).
We must join our voices with his—*The Lord is good!" But we must not say it with our lips only, and then by our actions deny our words. We must say it with our whole being, with thought, word, and action. Then people will see we mean it and will be convinced that it is a tremendous truth.
A great many things in God's divine providence do not look like goodness to the physical eye. In reading the Psalms, we wonder how the psalmist could say, after some of the things he records, *Tor his mercy endureth forever" (Psalm 136:1).
But faith sits down in the face of mysteries such as these and says, 'The Lord is ^ood; therefore all
that He does must be good, no matter how it looks.
I can wait for His explanations."
God's Housekeeping A housekeeping illustration has often helped me here.
I have a friend whom I know to be a good housekeeper.
I do not become disturbed when at house-cleaning time things in her house are out of order.
Carpets are rolled up and furniture shrouded in coverings.
Painting and decorating make some rooms temporarily uninhabitable.
I say to myself, '*My friend is a good housekeeper. Although things look so uncomfortable now, all this mess is here only because she plans to make it far more comfortable than it ever was before."
Similarly, this world is God's housekeeping.
Although things look grievously upset, we know that He is good, and therefore must be a good Housekeeper. We may be perfectly sure that all this present upset will finally bring about a far better state of things. We have all felt at times as though we could have done God's housekeeping better than He does it Himself; but when we realize that God is good, we can feel this way no longer.
It comforts me enormously that, when the world seems to be going all wrong, I can just say to myself, ''It is not my housekeeping, but it is the
Lord's. The Lord is good; therefore, His housekeeping must be good, too.
It is foolish for me to be troubled."
A Christian who had learned to let God do the housekeeping was asked by a despairing child of God, **Does the world look like a wreck to you?"
**Yes," was the reply, in a tone of cheerful confidence. **Yes, like the wreck of a bursting seed."
Any of us who have watched the first sproutings of an oak tree from the heart of a decaying acorn will understand what this means. Before the acorn can bring forth the oak, it must be broken. No plant ever came from anything but a wrecked seed.
Our Lord uses this illustration to teach us the meaning of His dealings with us.
'*Verily, verily, I say unto you. Except a corn of wheat fall into the ground and die, it abideth alone: but if it die, it bringeth forth much fruit" 0ohn 12:24).
The whole explanation of the apparent wreckage of the world or of our personal lives is set forth here. We can understand how our good God can permit the existence of sorrow and wrong in the world He has created and in the lives of the human beings He loves.
It is His goodness that compels Him to permit it. For He knows that only through such apparent wreckage can the fruition of His glorious purpose for us come to pass. And we whose hearts also long for that fruition will, if we understand His ways, be able to praise Him for
all His goodness, even when things seem hardest and most mysterious.
Paul tells us that the will of God is good and acceptable and perfect.
(See Romans 12:2.) The will of a good God cannot help being good—in fact, it must be perfect. When we come to know this, we always find it acceptable; that is, we come to love it.
I am convinced that all trouble about submitting to the will of God would disappear if we could see clearly that His will is good. We struggle in vain to submit to a will that we do not believe to be good; but when we see that it is genuinely good, we submit to it with delight. We want it to be accomplished. Our hearts spring out to meet it.
Time fails me to tell all of the infinite goodness of the Lord. Each person must taste and see for themselves.
If you will do it honestly and faithfully, the words of the psalmist will become true of you: 'They shall abundantly utter the memory of thy great goodness, and shall sing of thy righteousness" (Psalm 145:7).