God's Word Tells Us God Is Good
Have you ever been presented with a food that looked strange?, very strange? There is only one way to know if it is good or not. You have to taste it! We try to teach our children this truth with vegetables every day. You don't know if you like it or not until you taste and see.
God is like that. He invites you to taste (test) and see for yourself what he is like. Psalms 34:8 (NIV) "Taste and see that the LORD is good; blessed is the man who takes refuge in him."
This little verse, in its context, tells us three things about God. God is Approachable, God is Good, God wants to bless you
I God is approachable
Does that sound strange to you? The distance between God and us is as great as the gulf, between infinity and zero, between light and darkness, between everything and nothing. Before time began God dwelt in eternity. Before any created thing was, God inhabited a place but we dimly understood, a place we simply label as "heaven."
God is above and beyond our world, our knowledge, and our experience.
God is also above our world but he is also in our world.
God is not distant. Psalms 139:7-12 (NIV) "Where can I go from your Spirit? Where can I flee from your presence? {8} If I go up to the heavens, you are there; if I make my bed in the depths, you are there. {9} If I rise on the wings of the dawn, if I settle on the far side of the sea, {10} even there your hand will guide me, your right hand will hold me fast. {11} If I say, "Surely the darkness will hide me and the light become night around me," {12} even the darkness will not be dark to you; the night will shine like the day, for darkness is as light to you."
God is not impersonal. God wants us to approach
Acts 17:24-28 (NIV) "The God who made the world and everything in it is the Lord of heaven and earth and does not live in temples built by hands. {25} And he is not served by human hands, as if he needed anything, because he himself gives all men life and breath and everything else. {26} From one man he made every nation of men, that they should inhabit the whole earth; and he determined the times set for them and the exact places where they should live. {27} God did this so that men would seek him and perhaps reach out for him and find him, though he is not far from each one of us. {28} 'For in him we live and move and have our being.' As some of your own poets have said, 'We are his offspring.'"
Hebrews tells us we can come into His presence "Boldly"
II God is good.
God is a loving Creator. Psalms 145:8-10 (NIV) "The LORD is gracious and compassionate, slow to anger and rich in love. {9} The LORD is good to all; he has compassion on all he has made. {10} All you have made will praise you, O LORD; your saints will extol you."
We live in a world that has been corrupted. God is good, and that is why God redeemed us. The Bible portrays a world that is far from good! Taste and see that the Lord is good.
When we look into the Bible things seem far from good. The book contains many horrors. There is tyranny, cruelty, mutilation, deceit, licentiousness and war. Not only war, but God-sent war. Assyria, one of the cruelest nations of history, is called the rod of God's anger.
At times God is angry and wreaks vengeance. One man is struck blind, another dumb, another covered with leprosy, one falls dead and that one gods mad. Whole populations are destroyed by plague, famine, flood or fire-and-brimstone from heaven.
Satan and his minions are free to reign to stalk the earth: to tempt, to torment to deprive men of health and family. There are terrible pictures of hell, in which a man craves water to cool the tip of his tongue, in which the smoke of torment rises forever and ever from a lake of fire.
Experience proves that the world is evil. Indeed, taste and see that the Lord is good. When we look into the world in which we live, things don't look good. History is the long tale of man's inhumanity to man.
Every age has known oppression and torture: Rome had its Coliseum, Spain had its Inquisition, Germany its gas chambers
How can God look down upon this world and do nothing? But he has done something. God is good because he has provided our redemption from this world and from our own sins. Psalm 34 extols God's virtue because he had redeemed the Psalmist from some terrible plight.
Look at the context of Psalms 34:15-20 (NIV) "The eyes of the LORD are on the righteous and his ears are attentive to their cry; {16} the face of the LORD is against those who do evil, to cut off the memory of them from the earth. {17} The righteous cry out, and the LORD hears them; he delivers them from all their troubles. {18} The LORD is close to the brokenhearted and saves those who are crushed in spirit. {19} A righteous man may have many troubles, but the LORD delivers him from them all; {20} he protects all his bones, not one of them will be broken."
1 Chronicles 16:34-35 (NIV) "Give thanks to the LORD, for he is good; his love endures forever. {35} Cry out, "Save us, O God our Savior; gather us and deliver us from the nations, that we may give thanks to your holy name, that we may glory in your praise."
III God wants to bless you.
God wants to bless you in this life. God has provided us with commandments that tell us where life's potholes are so we can avoid them. God wants to bless your Family. God wants your home to be a haven, not a hell! God's blessing will come as we obey His commandments.
Let me encourage you to "taste and see" that the commandments of the Lord are good. The reason for the commandments is to improve our life. All of our relationships will be improved when we obey His mandates. We tend to think the commandments are restrictive. The opposite is true!!
Name a relationship and I will tell you that as we obey God, it will improve. God wants to bless your work. There may be persecution because we are believers. But as we listen to His word, we will be blessed on the job.
God wants our Marriage relationship
God wants to bless you in the next life.
God only asks that you believe his word.
Do YOU KNOW the goodness of God?
Pray so you can KNOW God in His goodness.