Goodness Of God

Real life presents the Jack Kibs podcast with intention and boldness to proclaim truth, equip the saints and impact our culture. The Bible says that we're to be thankful in every situation, but my mother died or my son died or my dog died. We understand this. This is life and it hurts. Because God is on the throne and He knows what He's doing. We don't. We learn on Him and we give Him thanks because He knows and He cares. You can get the outlines of this podcast by going to jackkibs.com slash podcast. Today, if this podcast lifts you up and encourages you to live a more fulfilled life in Christ, then make sure you leave us one of those five star ratings. To us, that's like saying amen or yes, then that rating will encourage others to listen. Now open your hearts to what God's word has to say to you. Here is Jack Kibs. And so as we consider this, let's look now at the goodness of God, verse four. So he says in that fourth verse, or do you, you ought to circle those three words or do you, despise the riches of his goodness for parents and long suffering. Those are three attributes of God. And then there's a comma right there. And then there's a strong statement not knowing that the goodness of God leads you to repentance. This is a remarkable statement. Boy, we could have a tremendous time with this. Just on the goodness of God alone, God is good, the Bible says. And because God is good, His goodness demands some things of us. I think you know this, Jesus was ministering. It's in the gospels and as Jesus is ministering, what is known as the rich young ruler? Have you ever heard of Him before, the rich young ruler? Now you have to read all of the gospels to get the understanding that He's rich, He's young, and He has authority. There's not one gospel that says He's a rich young ruler. You got to read them all about the same guy. This guy appears in three of the gospels. He's wealthy, listen girls, He's wealthy, He's young, and He has authority. Oh, if I could just find one of those. Well, this guy had no room in his heart for anyone else except what he wanted and that was his wealth, his youth, and his power. And he comes running to Jesus and he says, good master, good master, what must I do to inherit eternal life? And Jesus gives him elements of the law. Remember that? You need to do this, you need to do this, you need to do this. And Jesus has set him now, set him the guy up completely. As the guy counters Jesus and says, all these things you speak of, I've done since my youth. So clearly ladies, this is not the guy you want to meet. He's an idol in his own mind, he's a legend in his own mind, he's quite impressed with himself. Jesus then turns him and says, and he goes after his idols. But Jesus qualifies and he says, why do you come to me and call me good? Jesus is only one good and that is God. Jesus was actually trying to provoke the man to confession. What would have been awesome is for the young man to say, I called you good master because it's obvious that you alone are God in skin. It's clear who you are. You're the manifest word of God, but he didn't do that. The Bible says he wound up leaving and walking away from Jesus because he loved what he had. The word good is reserved for God alone. Now you and I live in a culture, we can't even relate to that. We say our tacos were good. That's good, the other thing's good. The old English, by the way, remember how the old English used to spell like goodbye, G-O-O-D-B-Y-E, right? Things like that, spelling, old English, listen. And we say good morning, did anybody say good morning to you this morning? Did you say good morning to anybody? You know what you were saying, according to the ancients, God be with you this morning. That's what good morning means. Good afternoon. Good afternoon means God be with or God be in your afternoon. Tonight when you lay down and you say good night to somebody, God be in your night. That's what it means. But we've lost touch with that, right? So when we say good morning, good night, good master, God is good. Technically, God is good because good is the manifestation of God's nature. And the Bible says, just to make it clear, there is none good, no, not one. That's why we need Him. So as we look to this church, mark it down if you would, verse four, we learn this, that we as believers, how are we to be regarding the goodness of God? We're to be the opposite of the world. And that means we are to be thankful believers. Can you write that down? Thinkful believers, Christians, thankful believers. Now the opportunity is increasing every day for you and I to be thankful believers, please hear me. You've been tempted this week, I know, we have been bombarded with people telling us their story and what's happening with their schools, with their employment, in the military, medicine, union. And you're being told, if you don't take the shot, you're going to be fired. And so we're talking to attorneys and we have an exemption form. I don't know if you know that or not, but we have a religious exemption form on our website that you can download and print out and people are doing that. We have two different versions of that and I don't know, call me dumb, but I thought religious exemption, you should be able to get from a church. But some churches don't think that they should issue religious exemptions. So what? It is our First Amendment right as Americans, you should know that. And Paul the Apostle, if he lived today, he would exercise his First Amendment right? How do we know? Because he exercised his Roman rights to advance the gospel. But in this case, your livelihood is at stake. I had somebody to tell me this weekend, two days ago, that 33 years of working for a certain global corporation, they were threatened by that corporation that they were going to lose so much percentage in pay and that their pension was going to be reduced. The retirement was going to be punished if they didn't comply. Now that is against the law on anybody's book. So I reached out to an attorney and I said, hey, this guy I know is being attacked. What do you say about this? And he said, you know where we're at? This is where we're at. He said, in any other world, this would be completely illegal. But now it appears we have no rights any longer as we once enjoyed. You say, how does that relate to this message this way? We need to be thankful believers. The reason, listen, the Bible tells us to be thankful, why? Because there's the temptation to be unthankful. Listen, to be a thankful believer is to look around at the world that's imploding in every direction, which way you look around it doesn't matter. And we need to choose to be thankful. The moment you and I start to grumble and gripe and complain, we are literally grumbling and gripping and complaining against God. And you're not going to want to do that. You'll see in a while in a moment, thankful, thankful to be thankful as a choice. You have to choose to do that. God is good, when is God good, all the time. Then when should I be thankful, always? The Bible says that we're to be thankful in every situation. But my mother died or my son died or my dog died. We understand this. Life, and it hurts. But because God is on his throne and he knows what he's doing, we don't. We lean on him and we give him thanks because he knows and he cares. He's the one that is unpacking all of this in life. And let me tell you something. You're not going to get this on media, you're not going to get this on Wikipedia, and you're not going to get this on a snowsurf. Fact checkers. There's people, I watched it, I watched it. There's people, the Christians are being exterminated in Afghanistan. And they're going to their death, the reporter. I believe the reporter was from India reading the subtitles, video going. These Christians this week in Afghanistan, these are not Americans. These are Afghan-born-again believers who are quietly with grandma, grandpa, child, mom and dad, quietly walking to their slaughter. No, they're not screaming, freaking out and running around. And the woman reporter in the subtitles and she says, and they're singing songs to their death. And you look, and you look up in American media, this is not true, it's not true, of course it's not true. It makes certain political leaders in power and not look good. My point is this, if they can be singing songs as families marching to their death like it's Auschwitz, 21st century, then the loudest praise and worship ought to be coming from a free people who sit in comfort in Southern California. We have no excuse, God is so good to us. All that's going on in this state and all the things that are happening and the incredible homelessness and all the filth and the ugliness, we should be thankful, because I'll tell you what, be thankful. Heaven doesn't look like the 405 freeway. Heaven doesn't look like South Central. Heaven doesn't look like downtown LA or San Francisco, you got to be thankful for that. And God, this world is not our home, but we're here for now, and we need to be a thankful people. The world might sit up and ask us, what's with you, you're thankful, you just, you bowed your head there and you guys prayed over your meal, what do you like thankful about, thankful for our meal, thankful for our ability to eat it. Yeah, but you wear what's going on in the world? Of course I am, that's why we're thankful. Right, think about that. If they can be thankful, marching into heaven, we can be thankful, sitting down and comfort. But we need to be a thankful group of believers. And he warns us here, look at verse four, you circle the word despise. It says in verse four, or do you despise the riches of his goodness? The word despise means to think little of or lightly of. This is a tough one for us to swallow everybody, listen carefully, this hurts. It means to dismiss or to be disrespectful regarding something that has been bestowed upon us as good. It means to take things for granted. How many of you have children hang on? Let me think now, how many of us have children over 13, over 12, over 13, raise your hand? I think that's fair, over 12 or 13, maybe, over 12 or 12, by the way, Mark Twain said, when you have teenagers, when they reach the age of 13, he said, put your teenager into 55 gallon barrel and put a lid on it, but there's a hole in the barrel and he said, feed your teenager through the hole. And then he said, when that teenager reaches the age of 21, seal up the hole. That's Mark Twain's parental book 101. But a kid reaches a certain age when they begin to think that money falls from the sky. And they think there's this machine, just pull out that piece of plastic and stick it in the machine and the money comes out, why can't I have more money? And then when you try to tell them about life, they don't like you anymore. And there's a lot that you can do, but there's one thing you cannot do anything about. And that is when your child becomes unthinkful for what you've poured into them. It's the number one pain to a parent. It's when that child can no longer not even think about saying thank you. It doesn't even enter their mind. What happens? They expect it. They didn't think about it. It's automatic. And for the Christian, when we have that kind of an attitude toward God, when we are not thankful by actual verb action, to go through the movement of thankfulness. Then what happens is we are actually despising the goodness of God. And there's not one of us in this house that would say, I don't despise his goodness. Let me ask you this, how thankful are you? Are you profusely thankful of his goodness? I think if we were, we'd look like a bunch of crazies. For service, before service, one of the security detail guys, it was so sweet. He's just so turned on for Jesus and he said, you know what, you know what, it's all fired up. You know what, I've noticed lately, the birds are singing louder. They're louder. So I wake up. They're louder at my house. And he said, it seems to me everything's greener. You know what's happening to him? What's happening to him is what's happening to him. The trees aren't greener. Those birds didn't say, hey, can you guys, let's turn it up. This guy needs a little boost. His heart's changing. Listen, that's walking with Christ. You get closer, the sky's bluer. You get closer, the trees are greener. The things about God are more wonderful. And the things about this world from man against us, it doesn't all matter that much. It's remarkable, thankful believers. We need to be careful, we do not despise. Listen to Isaiah 51, this is an awesome passage and I'm wondering, you know what, are those Christians in Afghanistan reading this today or tonight? God says, I even I am He who comforts you. Wow, who are you that you are afraid of man who dies? Is somebody bullying you? Somebody intimidating you? Is somebody saying, we're going to cut your head off? Remember this, God says, what are you afraid of? It's only a man talking, man, think of the days and we'll know, that's pretty serious stuff. The day that God begins to move his pinky finger on earth, the tyrants of this world will fall down. And look what Elsi says, end of the son of man who is made like grass, people, what are you afraid of? Verse 13, that you have forgotten the Lord your maker who stretched out the heavens and laid the foundations of the earth that you fear continually all day long because of the theory of the oppressor, God is saying, not it off. I'm God, you belong to me and you don't need to fear people. You and I have been, listen, the world out there is trying to get you under its thumb. The world wants to snap its finger and you crumble in fear. Facebook says you say something, we're going to yank you off. Listen, I can't believe we're still on. Listen, what are you saying, if you don't act like us, we're pulling you, well I don't want to act like you, think about it. The Bible says the fear of man is a snare. You know where to be thankful. The apostles were arrested and thrown in jail and in the middle of the night they were singing praises and thanks to God and it drove the Roman jailers, the Philippian jailers crazy. The world needs to see some thankfulness. Whatever you're going to do today after service, you're going to go to lunch or whatever you're going to go do, whatever you go do, be thankful about it and bow your head, if we go to the restaurant bow our head, people are going to see us. You're catching on, you're catching on, you want to freak them out, sit your Bible right there, watch them look at it, I tell you what, you put your Bible on your table, they'll take your order, they'll get you served and they'll get you out of there like that record by it. Being thankful, you cannot fathom the goodness of God. That should make you confident, excited, the goodness of God. 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