Last
Sunday we talked about the "fruits" of goodness and faithfulness.
Remember that these are the fruit of the Spirit. By all means, we should
exhibit goodness and faithfulness to the best of our ability. But we also know
that there is none good but God. What we talked about helped explain why that
is the case.
We
started at Psalm 23 where it says “Surely goodness and love (mercy) shall
follow me all the days of my life, and I will dwell in the house of the Lord
all my life.” Goodness and mercy have to
follow us to clean up our messes and pick us up when we fall. In the Old Testament, there are two Hebrew
words generally that have been translated as goodness. The first is towb and
the second is tuwb. In English, the only difference appears to be one letter.
In fact, they are both very similar in defining goodness. The biggest
difference is that towb defines the good things of this world while tuwb
defines the same things, but in relation to God — or God's goodness. Towb can
come and go, but tuwb is unchangeable. In
both cases, though, good means good.
In
Romans 2: 4 and following, we see the results of goodness in our lives. God
does not have a different definition of good than we do. Pain, loss and
suffering are not good by God's standards. Something good may come in the end,
but that is simply God redeeming the situation when we give it to Him. This is towb, earthly goodness. Sometimes it is consistent, but other times
strange things happen. We looked at Joshua 23:14, where we find Joshua near the
end of his life. Looking back, he is reminded and is reminding the people that
God has ALWAYS been faithful and ALWAYS kept ALL His promises. God's
faithfulness is what makes Him good.
This is the essence of tuwb.
No
man is good because none of us has been 100% faithful. We have all said things
that were not true or failed to do what we have promised. But God is always
faithful to His Word. Faithfulness is not faithfulness if it is randomly
applied. If God was not always faithful to His Word, He would not be faithful
at all. Sometimes we think that some
people seem to have hit the lottery of God's goodness that we never seem to
hit. But God's promises are not a randomly applied thing. Trust in Him and live
by His principles and the promises will come to pass. There are a lot of things
in us that keep us from fully trusting in His Word and many areas where we do
not live by His principles. God’s grace should be continually teaching us to
say no to ungodliness and YES to the His principles, more and more each day. But He is always faithful and He is always
good.
We
also looked at the story in the book of Ruth. There are so many amazing
pictures in this story that help us understand our relationship with God,
through Christ. But what we focused on was that God was faithful to Naomi
despite any mistakes her family had made. Her family left Bethlehem
and traveled EAST to Moab
While
man is, himself, not good, we have the Spirit inside of us who is. If we pull
on what is inside of us and allow Him to work through us, we can do truly good
things. In our own strength we can do what seems good, but in the end can do
more harm than good. The Spirit will always lead us to do what is truly good.
To listen to the entire sermon go to http://ahwatukeechurch.com/ and click on online media. To learn more about Living Word Ahwatukee, visit http://ahwatukeechurch.com/.
To listen to the entire sermon go to http://ahwatukeechurch.com/ and click on online media. To learn more about Living Word Ahwatukee, visit http://ahwatukeechurch.com/.
