Encounter the Truth

Jonathan Griffiths: Whatever it may seem, however it may feel, if we belong to Jesus, the good God is at work in every situation we may face to do us everlasting good, good that will stretch beyond this life and that will prepare us even for the life to come.

Steve Hiller: You’re listening to Encounter the Truth with Jonathan Griffiths, and Jonathan, I think many of us would say, "I know that God is good. I read that in His Word and I believe that," but I struggle sometimes to really feel the goodness of God, to really deeply be able to articulate that well because there is so much evil in this world, there is so much struggle in my life. It’s hard sometimes for me to believe in the goodness of God.

Jonathan Griffiths: It can be very, very hard to understand and accept that, especially in times of suffering and as we look out on a world of suffering. I would suggest if that’s a particular struggle that someone’s having, the place to look first and foremost is actually to the cross of Christ, where we see God enter into this world of suffering in the person of His Son.

The Word became flesh, God became man. We see Him enter into the messiness and brokenness of this world and die that we might be redeemed from it. At the cross, we see something which is profoundly bad, the murder of the Son of God, used for tremendous good for the salvation of many people. It is at the cross where we begin to make sense of the goodness of God in the midst of a pain-filled world with so much evil around us.

Steve Hiller: Well, we’re going to continue to look at our good God as we continue our message. Here is Jonathan.

Jonathan Griffiths: You might say of a kind employer, or of a thoughtful landlord, or of a generous teacher, or a gracious parent, "She’s been good to me. He’s been good to me. He’s given me a chance. He’s cut me a deal. She’s been patient and kind beyond my deserving. This person has been good to me."

But the Lord’s goodness to us in sending Jesus, that we might be saved from the judgment we deserve, doing so despite our rebellion, despite our rejection of Him, this is goodness of a kind that we’ve never seen or experienced anywhere else. God’s goodness to us at the cross of Christ is almost unimaginable, it is incomprehensible, but this goodness that begins at the cross continues as we walk with Him as His people. Sometimes we have to say it comes to us in very surprising ways.

The Bible makes it clear that if we belong to Jesus, God is at work in every situation we face, and He’s at work for our good. He is organizing the history of the world, the circumstances of our lives, and He’s doing so in order to do His people good. He’s at work doing that even in the very difficult things that come our way. Perhaps one of the most familiar verses in the New Testament to believers—and it’s familiar for very good reason—is Romans chapter 8 and verse 28: "And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love Him, who have been called according to His purpose."

In all things. In the good, the bad, the tragic, the painful, the surprising, the downright ugly. In all things, God is at work. He is at work for our good and He is at work for our good because He is good and He always does what is good. Whatever it may seem, however it may feel, if we belong to Jesus, the good God is at work in every situation we face to do us everlasting good, good that will stretch beyond this life and that will prepare us even for the life to come.

God is good in all that He is. He’s good in all that He does. Third, He’s good in all that He says. In 1897, Adolph S. Ochs, the owner of the New York Times, adopted for his paper this motto: "All the news that’s fit to print." It was a declaration of his intention to maintain high standards of journalism, as well as to hold to good taste and integrity in the advertising he would allow in his paper. Of course, the motto still appears on the newspaper’s masthead if you see it.

It was a very noble intention, but it’s hard to feel that any newspaper today can live up to it too well. So often, the messy realities of this world, as they’re reported in the media, even if they are related to us without bias or embellishment, we can often wonder if the news is indeed fit to print. The world is such a mess, isn’t it? Sin is so pervasive. The realities on the ground are so often so grimy and so unpleasant to think about. That is, of course, just the world in which we live. That’s the reality on the ground.

Sometimes in the morning, I’ll check the news. Sometimes while I’m just making that first cup of coffee before I’m really awake enough to do anything particularly useful, like sit down and read my Bible, I’ll have a quick scan through what’s going on in the world. But then when I am awake and I do sit down to read my Bible, I do feel—and I wonder if you share something of the sentiment—I do feel, by contrast to the things that I read in the media, all that’s going on in the world today, by sheer contrast, I do feel struck by the wholesomeness of the Word of God.

It’s a kind of detox to the mind, do you ever feel that? A medicine to the soul. Yes, it’s chaos out there. It’s messy. It’s ugly. But here is truth. Here is God’s wholesome Word. Here is what’s good and righteous and truthful and lovely and excellent and pure. It’s one of the great themes of Psalm 119, the great psalm that celebrates the goodness of the Word of God in a particular way.

Just listen to a few of these verses from Psalm 119. "I know, O Lord, that Your laws are righteous" (verse 75). "All Your commands are trustworthy" (verse 86). "To all perfection I see a limit, but Your commands are boundless" (verse 96). Here's verse 103: "How sweet are Your words to my taste, sweeter than honey to my mouth." Verse 111: "Your statutes are my heritage forever; they are the joy of my heart." And then verse 137: "Righteous are You, O Lord, and Your laws are right. The statutes You have laid down are righteous; they are fully trustworthy."

We could go on and on, but here is the point: God’s law, His Word, like God Himself, is trustworthy and good and true and pure. It is entirely wholesome. And in a world where so much of what we see and so much of what we encounter, so much of what we hear and read and consume, where so much is so full of the rotten effects of the fall, God’s Word comes to us as though from another world. It is so refreshingly good. God is good. He’s good in all that He is. He’s good in all that He does. He is good in all that He says.

How do we respond to this truth? What do we do with these things? There are many things we could say, but I just want to highlight one response, a simple response, what I think is the central response to these things. If God is truly good, entirely good, perfectly good, then here’s the thing we need to do: we need to trust Him. We must trust Him. Nahum chapter 1 and verse 7: "The Lord is good, a refuge in times of trouble. He cares for those who trust in Him."

One of the biggest questions we must face as we consider the faith and one of the biggest questions we must face as we walk in the faith, one of the biggest questions we must ever face is whether God means us good or harm. It’s a live question, I think, for the unbeliever because this world is full of pain and suffering. We all know that. In many ways, it’s a dark world. And if God is God, if God is powerful, if God is in control, then how do we reconcile the idea of a good God and a very broken world that is so full of pain?

If God is in charge, then why all the pain? If God is in charge, then why am I suffering? Does He mean me good or harm? Can I actually trust this God? Now, that is a big old discussion in its own right. And to have any answer for it, any plausible answer, we need to have a pretty big and a pretty robust understanding of sin, of the fact that our rebellion against God and against His world and His way, it's led to sheer devastation in His world. He made a good world that was free of suffering, but the Bible tells us that the reason we went from that world to this world, the reason for it all, it boils down to human sin.

Now, as I say, that’s a big discussion in its own right and we can’t work all the way through it today. But if we are to trust the Lord and walk with the Lord, we need to see and we need to believe that He really means good for us and not ill. We need to be convinced, 100% convinced in our heart of hearts, of the goodness of God.

Our kids recently had an opportunity to try tubing just recently for the first time. You know, being towed behind a speedboat on an inflatable ring, it’s a fun thing to do, but there’s a certain fear factor to it as well. And when you get on that tube, you need to have some real confidence that the driver of the boat means you good and not harm. I remember when I first tried that out as a kid, there were three drivers who might have given us a ride at any particular time at this particular cottage.

One of my uncles, he could drive us and he was pretty reliable, actually. You knew he’d make it fun, but he’d also go easy. Another uncle, he was maybe a little bit more gung-ho, but it would still be fun and you’d be pretty confident that you’d walk away in one piece at the end of the experience. Then there was my older cousin. Now, that was kind of a different ball game when he got behind the wheel. You pretty much knew that if he took the wheel, you were probably toast.

You would not be staying on that tube for the duration of the outing. It would be circles through the wake at what felt like full speed behind a pretty quick boat. You might survive it, but you knew that there would be some serious airtime coming your way. If we’re to trust in God to lead us through life, if we are to put our hand in His hand, if we are to entrust our very selves to Him in life and in death, we need to believe that He is navigating the waves of life for us in such a way to keep us and to preserve us, even to bless us, not in such a way as to harm us.

I mean, we will be going through some deep waters and we will be encountering some mighty waves. That’s just the reality of living in this fallen world. We will go through those things. But we need to know that He is trustworthy as He leads us through. One of Fanny Crosby’s best hymns, I think, reflects on the trustworthiness of Jesus as He leads us through life. It’s not sung too often, but maybe you know it, maybe remember it:

All the way my Savior leads me;

What have I to ask beside?

Can I doubt His tender mercy,

Who through life has been my guide?

Heavenly peace, divinest comfort,

Here by faith in Him to dwell!

For I know, whate’er befall me,

Jesus doeth all things well.

It’s fine, it’s perhaps easy enough to say and to believe that we trust the Lord in the easy times. That’s easy to say. But the much greater challenge is to learn to trust Him, really trust Him, in the hard times. But in a sense, it’s during those times of trial that we come to see His goodness in a deeper way, in a more profound way. One of the greatest times of trial on record for the people of God was during the time of the exile in Babylon, when many were removed from the Land of Promise and forced to move to the heart of the great pagan empire, even while the city of Jerusalem was sacked and destroyed.

The book of Lamentations chronicles something of the cry of the heart of the people of God at that time. And there is a particularly beautiful passage in Lamentations 3 I alluded to it and quoted it briefly. It captures something of this dynamic of learning to trust the Lord through dark times. You might like to turn in there with me for a moment. This is Lamentations 3, from verse 22. It says this:

Because of the Lord’s great love we are not consumed, for His compassions never fail. They are new every morning; great is Your faithfulness. I say to myself, "The Lord is my portion; therefore I will wait for Him." The Lord is good to those whose hope is in Him, to the one who seeks Him. It is good to wait quietly for the salvation of the Lord. It is good for a man to bear the yoke while he is young.

Let him sit alone in silence, for the Lord has laid it on him. Let him bury his face in the dust—there may yet be hope. Let him offer his cheek to the one who would strike him, and let him be filled with disgrace. For men are not cast off by the Lord forever. Though He brings grief, He will show compassion, so great is His unfailing love. For He does not willingly bring affliction or grief to the children of men.

Oh, yeah, the Lord may bring us through times of grief. He may navigate us through some very deep waters and some very high waves, but the truth is this, the truth we need to know and believe and treasure and hold on to, the truth that God’s people have proved over and over again, the truth is simply this: the Lord is good to those whose hope is in Him. He doesn’t willingly bring affliction. That’s not His joy, that’s not His delight, but He intends it for our good.

He is ordering all things in our experience, not to make them easy for us, but in order to do us the most good. He is the God who works through all things, as we remembered earlier, through all things for the good of those who love Him, who are called in accordance with His purpose. We can’t always see or understand what God is up to, what He’s doing with us. You know, when you’re down on the tube behind the boat, you can only really see the wake and the engine in the back of the boat up ahead.

You can’t see the big picture of the traffic on the lake and the water ahead, the waves. You can’t see the storm gathering on the horizon. And you and I, we don’t see the big picture. We don’t see a fraction of it, not at all. But God sees all of it. He has the bigger view. And He is good. He does good. He plans and intends good for us. And so here’s what we do: we trust Him.

It can be hard to trust Him when the way isn’t clear, when the winds roar, when the waves rise. It can be hard to trust Him when His Word is calling us to a costly obedience, when we feel as though we might be missing out by obeying the Word of God and going His way when the way of the world looks so appealing and so much easier. I wonder where you and I need to learn to trust Him afresh even this week. I wonder where your trust in Him is being tested and being tried in a particular way even now. I wonder where He’s calling you to trust Him again, to trust Him afresh, to trust Him in a new way, in a deeper way, in a harder way.

Maybe, of course, that you’ve never actually trusted Him at all. Perhaps you’re still on the fence and you’re asking the question, "Well, can I trust Him? Is He trustworthy?" If that’s the case, let me invite you, as the Psalmist says, to taste and see that the Lord is good. And if you do, here’s what you’ll discover: that He is good. He’s good to His people. He’s good in all His ways, good in all He says, good in all He does. He’s good.

It may be that you’re actually someone who’s running away from the Lord at the present time. Maybe you’re a believer, but truth be told, you’re running away from the Lord right now because you want to go your own way and you know that the Lord won’t approve of what you’re doing. Maybe you’ve never come to Him and you’re refraining from coming to Him, you’re keeping Him at a polite distance because you would rather, frankly, do your own thing at the present time. You’d rather maintain your freedom and your independence without the constraints of God in your life.

Well, again, if that’s you, what you need to see this morning is the sheer goodness of God. Jesus tells the story in Luke 15 of a son who runs away from a good father and who learns this lesson the hard way. You might like to turn there with me, Luke 15. I’d like to read a portion of this just as we draw to a close and as we look at it, I’d love for you to consider what it shows us of the heart of God, the sheer goodness of the Father. Luke 15, and I’m going to read from verse 11:

Jesus continued: "There was a man who had two sons. The younger one said to his father, 'Father, give me my share of the estate.' So he divided his property between them. Not long after that, the younger son got together all he had and he set off for a distant country and there squandered his wealth in wild living. After he had spent everything, there was a severe famine in that whole country, and he began to be in need.

So he went and hired himself out to a citizen of that country who sent him to his fields to feed pigs. He longed to fill his stomach with the pods that the pigs were eating, but no one gave him anything. When he came to his senses, he said, 'How many of my father’s hired men have food to spare, and here I am starving to death! I will set out and I will go back to my father and say to him: Father, I have sinned against heaven and against you. I am no longer worthy to be called your son; make me like one of your hired men.'

So he got up and he went to his father. But while he was still a long way off, his father saw him and was filled with compassion for him; he ran to his son, threw his arms around him and kissed him. The son said to him, 'Father, I have sinned against heaven and against you. I am no longer worthy to be called your son.' But the father said to his servants, 'Quick! Bring the best robe and put it on him, put a ring on his finger and sandals on his feet.

Bring a fattened calf and kill it. Let’s have a feast and celebrate. For this son of mine was dead and is alive again; he was lost and is found.' So they began to celebrate." If you’re wondering today, "Can I trust the Lord?" If you are wandering from Him, if you are on the run from the Lord, either as a believer in rebellion or an unbeliever keeping God at that polite distance, if that’s you, what you need to see today is that the loss is yours.

You need to see that life in rebellion against God, life away from home, life on the run, it is measly and poor in comparison with life at home with the Father, with the Father who is so very, very good. And friends, each one of us here, each one, we need to see that there is a welcome at home for the sinner who repents, for the lost child who returns. The good Father, the gracious and kind and patient Father, He will meet you with open arms if you will but come. I wonder, would you do that? Would you do that even today? Come home to the Father who’s waiting for you.

For those who will, for those who come, you’ll discover that God is very, very good, so good. You’ll discover that true delight is found in God and in Him alone, nowhere else. That’s what true believers know. That’s what believers have always known and always experienced. Again, the Psalmists, they know this. Psalm 16 and verse 2: "I said to the Lord, 'You are my Lord; apart from You I have no good thing.'" Psalm 73 verse 25: "Whom have I in heaven but You? And earth has nothing I desire besides You."

Psalm 84 and verse 10: "Better is one day in Your courts than a thousand elsewhere; I would rather be a doorkeeper in the house of my God than dwell in the tents of the wicked. For the Lord God is a sun and a shield; for the Lord bestows favor and honor; no good thing does He withhold from those whose walk is blameless." Friends, our God is so very, very good. He is good to sinners who repent. He is good to lost children who come home. He is good to those who find their delight, their everything, in Him. Will you trust Him? Will you trust Him afresh? Will you trust that His way is best? That His welcome will be kind? That His care will be perfect? Whatever is going on in your heart and your life, will you trust Him even today?

Steve Hiller: Jonathan Griffiths wrapping up our message, The Good God. It is part of our series, Who Is Like Our God? and maybe you want to go back and listen to today’s broadcast or any previous broadcast in the series. You can always do that when you come to our website. Stop by encounterthetruth.org. You can stream the program or download an MP3 for free. Again, that’s at encounterthetruth.org.

Encounter the Truth is able to be on this station, we're able to make the podcast, the app, and all the ministry tools available because of your financial generosity. And as you give a gift of any amount this month, we want to send you a copy of Jonathan’s new book called Wisdom and Knowledge. It’s really a look or a study of Solomon, and Jonathan, there are a lot of books about a lot of different Bible characters. What makes this one kind of unique?

Jonathan Griffiths: Well, I think it’s special on a number of different levels. I’ve written it both to feed the heart of the believer, but also to inform the mind of the Bible teacher, for those who might want to be equipped to teach this portion of the Scriptures. But one of the things I love about studying the life of Solomon is that he points us to the Lord Jesus Christ.

Because Solomon was a very wonderful king in the Old Testament, but he was an imperfect king. And in his strengths, he points us to the greater King who is yet to come, and in his weaknesses, he highlighted the fact that we need the greater King, the Lord Jesus Christ. And so this is a book full of gospel, even though it comes from an early age in the Old Testament and we might not expect to find gospel there, but we’re pointed to the Lord Jesus Christ, and I find that thrilling.

Steve Hiller: Well, we would love to send you a copy of this book, Wisdom and Knowledge, as our way of saying thank you for supporting Encounter the Truth this month. You can give online at encounterthetruth.org or when you call 1-833-99-TRUTH. Again, that’s encounterthetruth.org or 1-833-998-7884. For Jonathan Griffiths and our producer Mark Breathet, I’m Steve Hiller. Thanks for listening, and I hope you’ll join us next time.