Tonight’s sermon continued the series on ‘Everyday Church’ by looking at the topic of God’s benevolence: God is good all the time! Taking Ps 67 as the text, we looked at how the topic of God’s goodness can be hard for us to accept, depending on our temperaments. For the ‘Tiggers’ amongst us, optimists who always see the glass as half-full, this doctrine is perhaps easy to grasp.
But for those of us who are more like Eeyore in temperament, pessimists who struggle to hold onto positive truths about God’s nature, it can be difficult to believe that God is always good and always wanting to do good to His people.
Charlie Cleverly asserts that ‘we have an unassailable future in the benevolent plans of God’ (‘Epiphanies of the Ordinary’ P 130), reflecting Jeremiah’s promise that God’s plan for us are good, giving us hope and a future. (Jer 29:11) God’s goodness is part of who He is (see Ps 119:68, Ps 86:5, Ps 100:5, Ps 106:1, Ps 107:1, Ps 118:29, repeated throughout Ps 136 & Ps 135:3)and results in Him doing good to us (see Ps 84:11, Ps 85:12, Ps 103:5, Ps 104:28, Ps 107:9, Ps 116:7, Ps 145:9, James 1:17, 1 Pet 2:3).
One word in Hebrew which reflects God’s goodness is chesed. It appears over 250 times in the Old Testament and is translated by many different English words (loving-kindness or unfailing love or mercy, for example – see Is 54:10). The prevalence of these references in the Old Testament reflect the fact that God does not change (Mal 3:6) and His loving-kindness and goodness towards mankind are as evident in the Old Testament as they are in the New. God is good and we can build our lives on this fact, even when we face difficult circumstances and trials.