Ex. 33:17-23 The LORD said to Moses, “I will also do this thing of which you have spoken; for you have found favor in My sight and I have known you by name.” Then Moses said, “I pray You, show me Your glory!” And He said, “I Myself will make all My goodness pass before you, and will proclaim the name of the LORD before you; and I will be gracious to whom I will be gracious, and will show compassion on whom I will show compassion.” But He said, “You cannot see My face, for no man can see Me and live!” Then the LORD said, “Behold, there is a place by Me, and you shall stand there on the rock; and it will come about, while My glory is passing by, that I will put you in the cleft of the rock and cover you with My hand until I have passed by. Then I will take My hand away and you shall see My back, but My face shall not be seen.”
We’re looking at the truths that support and secure our faith. There is a God, and He is infinite, eternal, and breathtakingly good. The Bible is the Word of God - every bit of it is true. Last week we saw that the God is the Creator of all things. Out of nothing. None of this is an accident…
Today we want to look at the nexus of our Creator God being breathtakingly good. We sort of flew past God’s goodness the first time. And it’s always unfortunate when we do that. Because if there’s one thing the Bible is really serious about, it’s the goodness of God. From the first chapter of Genesis to the final prophecies of Revelation - the message is, God is good. God is so good. We sing about it - cuz it’s true, and this pillar is a real game-changer.
Right out of the gate [Genesis 1] God’s Word tells us about His goodness. Everything He made was good. The light was good, the sun and [moon and stars] were good, the plants and trees were good, all the creatures He made were good, and it was all SO good, we read, “Then God looked over all that He had made, and He saw that it was very good!” Genesis 1:31. Psalm 119:68 You are good and what You do is good. And I would flip that verse: God does good, He makes things good, because He IS good. Take-your-breath-away good. Good begins with Him, and flows from Him, oozes out of every pore and fiber of His being, permeates everything He does.
This Hebrew word for good means, that which is pleasing. Think about the things that are pleasing to you. Let’s get to that place in our hearts right now - what do you find pleasing? Things that are pleasing to the eyes, to touch, to smell, to taste, to your heart. How about this fall weather? Or, the smell of [cinnamon]. Things that are pleasing. How about a job well done? Acing that test? Nailing that shot? Starting the guy who goes off in fantasy football this week? Or, how bout a beautiful [sunset]? Thanksgiving dinner. Time with friends. Even in a world full of chaos and brokenness, there is so much that is pleasing. We can still see God’s unbelievable goodness in so much of what He's made - Psalm 19:1 The heavens are telling of the glory of God; and their expanse is declaring the work of His hands. And one way to think of glory is God’s incredibly pleasing indescribably great goodness. Things that take your breath away. And Just how good is the Lord? Exceedingly great. Mind-blowing, goodness on steroids. And the better good it is, the harder it is to describe. Pick any of your favorite experiences. Your favorite foods. And try to describe that to someone. What was it like, they ask? And you’re like, it was so good - I can’t even begin to describe it. One of my favorite experiences is [downhill skiing]. When the snow is just right, and the slope is just right, not too steep but not a bunny hill, and you’re cruising down that hill, carving and cutting and hitting the bumps, spraying snow and maybe even catching a little bit of air here and there, a little spread eagle maybe - and if you’ve never experienced it, I really can’t begin to describe it to you. Goodness is like that. The better it is, the harder it is to describe. I like the word, breathtaking. The best things really do take your breath away. And the Lord is better still. SOOO good. Infinitely indescribable. And when He makes something, He makes it indescribably good [waaaaay better than Zaxby's, who use that slogan to describe their chicken].
Now, from the beginning, not only did the Lord make every thing very good, He then blessed His creatures, He repeatedly showered extra heaping helpings of goodness on them so that they could be fruitful and multiply. And fill the earth. God does this throughout the Bible. Even after the people He makes and the people He chooses rebel against Him, He STILL shows them His goodness [the Hebrew word is chesed, for grace and undeserved love and favor]. God delights to show His goodness to His people.
So, back to our passage: Moses asks God, show me Your glory. And what’s God’s answer? I WILL make all My goodness pass in front of you. He adds, you can’t see My face, for no one can see My face and live, so I will put you in this crevice and cover you up till I pass by, and then you can see My back, the backside of My glory. All God’s goodness. How much IS that? Even just that backside glimpse was enough to bring Moses to his knees [Exodus 34.8 - Moses made haste to bow down and worship].
Glory is that which is weighty, heavy, impressive. Makes people bow down under/before it. And God Himself is saying, what is most impressive about Him is His goodness. He wants the whole world to see His glory, His impressive breathtaking goodness. Numbers 14:21 Indeed, as I live, all the earth will be filled with the glory of the LORD. 1Chronicles 16:24,29 Tell of His glory among the nations, His wonderful deeds among all the peoples. Ascribe to the LORD the glory due His name; bring an offering, and come before Him; worship the LORD in holy array. That’s sort of the opposite of what we do tho, isn’t it? We’re hard-pressed sometimes to see His goodness in our everyday lives. We don’t hasten, we’re more slow to bow down and worship Him. Lord, give us eyes to see, to recognize goodness. Your goodness. Give us knees that hasten to bow down.
Here’s a thought - the first time we see goodness, is when God creates light. This light is inextricably tied to all of life. John 1:4 In Him was life, and the life was the Light of men. The only thing God tells us was NOT good from the beginning was aloneness. Living in a place of separation. Genesis 2:18 Then the LORD God said, “It is not good for the man to be alone; I will make him a helper suitable for him.” Fast forward to Genesis 3, man rebels against the glorious God Who made him and showered goodness on him. What sets in is this Ultimate Separation. Disconnected from this oh-so-good God - and the light begins to dim. Life - and now death. Good - and now evil. Rebellion. And in this state of disconnection and darkness we struggle to bow down AND to see God’s goodness. We fail to see God’s good hand. The two are related.
See, the LIE comes in and says, God is not good. The lie goes, because this doesn’t look good - or feel good - then God must not be good. Or maybe He doesn’t see or doesn’t care, cuz this is not good, not at all pleasing, this current reality. We blame God. Yes, sometimes God allows things that don’t feel good. That certainly extends to many parts of creation which are broken as a result of the fall. We looked at this last time - that there is this brokenness about the world. Things break down. Good things get broken. But failure to see God’s goodness is debilitating… Psalm 27:13 I would have despaired unless I had believed that I would see the goodness of the LORD in the land of the living. Despair means, down from hope. “Diseases of despair”: depression, substance abuse, suicide - are epidemic in our society. Loss of hope. Brokenness, and busy-ness obscure God’s goodness like a solar eclipse. But my circumstances, my feelings, don’t diminish one ounce of God’s goodness. The key is having eyes of faith that see the unseen. That’s what got Joseph thru those long years, languishing in prison in Egypt. Trafficked by his own brothers. Genesis 50:20 “You meant evil against me, but God meant it for good in order to bring about this present result, to preserve many people alive.” Do we believe this is true? Romans 8:28 And we know that God causes all things to work together for good to those who love God, to those who are called according to His purpose. Psalm 23:6 Surely goodness and lovingkindness will follow me all the days of my life, and I will dwell in the house of the LORD forever. Psalm 34:8 O taste and see that the LORD is good; how blessed is the man who takes refuge in Him! Psalm 118:1 Give thanks to the LORD, for He is good; for His lovingkindness is everlasting.
That’s the starting point. Give thanks. Guess what? This very week we have an entire holiday devoted to that! Thanking God reminds us that God IS good, SO good, and it reinforces the truth that He does good. That’s why the Lord tells us, In everything give thanks; for this is God’s will for you in Christ Jesus. (1Thessalonians 5:18).
"Truth is the only safe ground to stand upon." |
- Elizabeth Cady Stanton |
And we talked about the importance of humility as we handle the truth. About the danger of knowledge puffing us up, tempting us to think that we are better that the person who doesn’t know what we know (or think we know). About the need for Christians to handle the truth with gentleness and compassion. And love.
Because the world is sending us a message. A world which increasingly insists on deconstructing the truth. Insisting that truth is relative. That there is no one truth, no absolute truth. There are many truths. There are even truths that contradict each other. Here’s where things have really gotten off the tracks. Some people today want to reject either/or thinking. They want to reject the law of non-contradiction, which says p ≠ not p. If you reject that, then you think you can say, the Bible is true AND the Bible is not true. Well, which is it? Postmoderns want to say, well, it’s not an either/or. That’s just Western thinking, they insist. They say it’s a both/and - which more of an Eastern mindset. And so they try to reject to either/or, literally by saying, it’s either the both/and, or nothing. In order to reject the either/or, they need the either/or to be true. But postmoderns also are fully vesting themselves in the illogic of contradiction. Sadly, a person who keeps contradicting themself is someone who can’t be trusted. Confusion. Feeling lost. Embracing contradiction means life becomes full of uncertainty. No wonder so many more people today are wrestling with depression and anxiety and suicide.
But why would someone want to embrace the both/and, the illogic that two things which contradict each other can both be true? I think the world is sending a message. Well, two actually. The first message is an ancient one, that some people, many people just don’t want to believe the truth about God, because they want to run their own life. That’s nothing new. But I think there’s another message, and it’s partly in response to how the church has tended to handle the truth. Many Christians over the years have come across as NOT humble, NOT compassionate, NOT gentle in how we handle the truth. And I wonder if the world is saying, you know what, we’ve seen that, and we don’t like that. We don’t want to be like that. So if you disagree with me, if you believe something that contradicts what I believe, well, let’s just say we’re both right. That’s certainly the easier/lower conflict way out. What it really does is build the house of your life on the sands of illogic. The "bedrock" people are seeking in relativism is nothing more than a sandy beach. Feels good for a season maybe, but chances for surviving the storms of life are slim-to-none. And in the end there’s no way to do it without appealing to logic. You can't insist that there are no absolute truths without having that very statement be absolutely true.
There is a God, and He is SO good. He showed it foremost by sending His Son to die for us so that we could experience His goodness forever, and He proved it by raising His Son from the dead. Let's start with that truth...
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