Fruit of Goodness

A few Sundays ago my father, elder Gary Duff, in his series of the fruit of the Spirit gave this message as a preparation for the communion supper. Enjoy!

Last week we looked at the fruit of kindness and that we are commanded and able to be kind because we are becoming more like our Father in Heaven who is kind even to those who don't acknowledge Him.

This week, to prepare for the communion meal, we will look at the fruit of goodness. The word used here is the quality in a man who is ruled by and aims at what is good, namely the quality of moral worth, what is morally honorable, that is, moral excellence.

The original Saxon meaning of "God" is "the Good", and Websters 1828 dictionary defines it using words like virtue and righteousness, and finally says that goodness means "actions which are in conformity to the moral law".

As I began studying the goodness of God, I was overwhelmed by the scope of it, and how every attribute of God is good. Goodness is the essence of God's nature. In Ex 33, after Moses asked God boldly to reveal himself, "Please show me your glory" God said, "I will make all my goodness pass before you, and I will proclaim the name of the Lord before you." God's goodness is here associated with His name and His character. By the indwelling Holy Spirit, we now have the possibility of seeing His glory, in a way even Moses couldn't, and growing in His character and in Christ likeness, and in goodness.

Greg Bahnsen, By This Standard, said "God's will is communicated by His commandments, telling us what his holiness means on a creaturely level". How could we possibly understand holiness and goodness, and live it, without His commandments, His law, and the power of the Holy Spirit?!

His goodness is revealed in all His providential activity. Everything He is and does is good. Ps 119.68 "You are good, and do good." Ps 31.19 "Oh how great is Your goodness which You have laid up for those who fear You, which You have prepared for those Who trust in You." Eph 2.10 "For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand that we should walk in them."

His goodness is most clearly reveled in the person of Christ and the character of His goodness in His law. The supreme example or expression of God's goodness is the saving grace of God through the atoning work of Jesus Christ.

If you were asked to describe what the goodness of God looks like in practice, in just a few minutes, or even if you had a long time, what would you say? Where are God's standards for goodness found summarized in the Word?

God's standard for goodness is in His law, as summarized in the 10 commandments. The revelation of God and His righteous character is in the Law, the Decalogue.

The law reflects God's holy character and His purposes. The law shows what pleases Him and what displeases and offends Him. It reveals His moral will. The summaries of the moral law in the New Testament such as the fruit of the Spirit or the Golden rule (Mt 7) derive their importance and binding character from the law of God which they express. The presupposition of the New Testament authors is continually and consistently that the Old Testament (moral) law is valid today."

Lev. 20.8 says "You shall keep my statutes and practice them; I am the Lord who sanctifies you". Here God connects obeying the law and sanctification. First, they condemn us and show us how far short we fall of God's goodness and righteousness, and then in the elect, after regeneration, they help us grow in sanctification.

Thomas Bolton, one of those commissioned to participate in writing the Westminster Confession wrote, "The law sends us to the Gospel that we may be justified, and the Gospel sends us to the law again to inquire what is our duty as those who are justified".

The Westminster Confession states in 16.2 that "good works, done in obedience to God's commandments, are the fruits and evidence of a true and lively faith." Thats what we pray for in this church. A congregation of saints with a true and lively faith, growing in the goodness of God and acting out that goodness by obedience to His law.

Obedience to His law can now be a delight! Ps 1 The godly man or woman delights in the law of God, and on His law meditates day and night. Ps 145.7 says that the godly "shall utter (bubble forth) the memory of Your great goodness, and shall sing of your righteousness." Phil 4.8 says we should meditate constantly on what is good and honorable, God's holy Word! When we delight in the law of God, we also take His commission seriously, that is, to teach others to observe all He has commanded us. 1 Jn 5.3 "His commandments are not burdensome" They are the delight of the person growing in love for the law of God.

So I would like to conclude by briefly observing how God's goodness is seen in the 10 commandments:

1.You shall have no other gods before Me.
He is a jealous God, alone worthy of our praise. He is good to reveal Himself, the only true, living God, our only hope and our joy!
2. If we love God and are growing in righteousness and goodness, we will abhor the idols of our hearts. We can worship the living God, who sees and hears and communes with us! God is good in removing the idols which enslave us.
3. We can reverence God's name and His character and His goodness because He has been good to reveal Himself, he is good to show us Himself! Praise God. Hallowed be Your name!
4. God is good to give us blessed relief on the Lord's day. He is good to give us rest, especially now in Jesus, a day where we can delight in Him together. He gave us this day in His goodness to remember His goodness, as we will in just a few minutes.
5. We will prosper and know the goodness of God if we respect and honor our parents, and our societies know His goodness if parents are respected and obeyed. He is so good to establish the institution of the family!
6. God showed us the sanctity of human life, and He is good to make us in His image. He removes the murder in our hearts , the anger. He is good to individuals and societies who recognize the sanctity of human life.
7. God is good to free us from the adultery of our hearts and from the destruction which it causes. He is good to help us develop right and holy relationships.
8. God is good in allowing personal property, good in giving to us and providing for us, supplying our needs so we don't steal
He is good to make us content and that we don't have to give our lives for things, for possessions. We can be free of the love of things and love Him the most!
9. God is good in showing us what is true, right, and honest. he keeps us from deceit, helps us understand and practice truthfulness and honesty. He is good to show us Absolute truth, a sure foundation.
10. God is good in helping us be content and thankful for what we have, to be happy for others and not covetous, not controlled by greed; and we can know what true wealth is!

Isn't God good to us!!??

Life as a vessel

Imagine your mind as being a big jar. Whatever you think you are putting into the jar. Whatever you forget you are taking out of that jar. If one thought dominates all other thoughts, than that thought, maybe it is tomorrow, maybe something else, whatever it is, it is filling up your jar. For a lot of us this jar is going to be lined with goo and steeping in sin, but thankfully God offers us a way to clean it out. Philippians 4:8 says: “Finally brethren, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is just, whatever is lovely, whatever is pure, whatever is of good repute, let your mind dwell on these things.”

Glen Durham, a pastor, said once: “Picture in your mind a pink elephant. Picture the elephant's pink trunk and it's pink wrinkly legs, and the big pink floppy ears, and even picture the pink tusks, just close your eyes and think hard about a pink elephant drinking water. Now stop thinking about the pink elephant. It's impossible, isn't it? That's because to take something out of your mind you have to start thinking about something else and fill your mind with that. Some people take pleasure in scooping massive amounts of sinful thinking into their minds, but we as Christians are called to be set apart from the world, in it but not of it, and keep our lives full of what is right. (Colo. 3:8) But to do this we first have to reach in and pull out the sin. A sixteen-ounce jar cant hold sixteen ounces of good and sixteen ounces of bad at the same time. You've got do do a hard thing and scrub out the jar. (Heb. 12:1)

There is a vacuum in your jar that only Jesus can fill. You can try to put other stuff in there but they just won't satisfy that empty space. Think about food. Humans need food to survive. At the end of the day, after working hard, you need to eat something, but not just anything. Junk food tastes good for a while, but leaves you hungry soon after. Good food on the other hand, will strengthen you in the long run and keep you healthy. The people in John chapter six saw Jesus feed five thousand of them without lack. When they followed Him to the other side of the sea He told them:
“Most assuredly, I say to you, you seek Me, not because you saw the signs, but because you ate of the loaves and were filled. Do not labor for the food which perishes, but for the food which endures to everlasting life, which the Son of Man will give you, because God the Father has set His seal on Him.”
Let us do the same, and fill our lives with that which endures to everlasting life!

But now, let's ask a few questions:

1. What do you find yourself thinking about most of the time?
2. How much scripture have you memorized?
3. Of all the books you read, how many of them are Christian?
4. Out of all the time you spend reading, how much of that time do you spend reading the bible?
5. What would you do with a thousand dollars? No really.
6. What thought worrys you the most?
7. Again, what do you think about most?

Forest fires are destructive. Right?

Some people (the greenies) are obsessed with protecting Earth at all costs. Even if it means killing themselves off. And one of their enemies in “protecting the world” is a forest fire. When you ask them why a forest fire, they will tell you that when a fire comes it destroys all those trees that are putting oxygen into the air, thereby allowing more CO2 and other waste to take over the atmosphere! Oh horrors! Which sounds logical to me, so what's wrong?

To answer that question we need to know what good a forest fire does. First, a forest fire helps to remove the brush and clutter and leaves and stuff that tend to build up and choke out and prohibit the new plants from growing. But when a fire comes along, it removes all those hindrances to new growth, and provides a clean floor that the seeds can push through as they were designed to do.
Another thing we need to consider is the pine cone. These cones will sit on a tree, unopenable. You can hit them with a hammer, or jump on them, but they just will not open! Until a fire comes along. For some reason unknown to me, when a fire comes, it will cause these cones to open their jaws, and after the fire leaves the seeds will come rolling on out and replace the seeds that were all burnt. Wow! Talk about a testimony to God's plan! When destruction comes in the form of a fire, God uses it and not only does the brush get removed, but new seeds just appear out of nowhere. To me, that is one more reason to look at creation and know that God created it.

Why Adhere? - (Part 4) Because of the people who have adhered

Another reason, although slightly lesser than because the Bible is God's word, to believe in the Bible is because of all the examples of the people who have been converted to Christianity and all the people who were Christians all their life – for whatever reason. Some Christians might include the following:

Johann Sebastian Bach was a musical genius and believed that every note he wrote should be good enough to be dedicated to God. For every song he wrote, at the top he would write J. J., which stood for Jesu Juva, Jesus help me. At the end of every song he would write S. D. G., Soli Deo Gloria, to God alone the glory. He was such a great musician that he could have easily made his fortune playing for princes, but he decided to play and write music for the church instead.

Lord Kelvin, whom the Kelvin scale is named after, also a mathematical physicist and engineer, said: “The atheistic idea is so nonsensical that I cannot put it into words.”

Woodrow T. Wilson, a devout Presbyterian and United States President said: “When you have read the Bible, you will know it is the word of God, because you have found in it the key to your own heart, your own happiness and your own duty.”

Some other scientists might include:

Louis Agassiz, Francis Bacon, Robert Boyle, George Cuvier, Henri Fabre, Michael Faraday, John Ambrose Flemming, William Herschel, James Joule, Lord Kelvin, Johann Kepler, Carolus Linnaeus, Joseph Lister, James Mazwell, Gregor Mendel, Samuel F.B. Morse, Issac Newton, Leonardo Da Vinci, Blaise Pascal, Louis Pasteur, Lord Raleigh.

Professors and doctors might have:

Alexander Balmain Bruce, Alfred Edersheim, Ernst Wlhem Hengstenberg, Fenton Hort, C.S. Lewis, Benjamin Warfield, Brooke Foss Westcott, Aage Bentzen, Edgar Sheffield Brightman, Umberto Cassuto, Thomas Kelly Cheyne, Martin Diberlius, Samuel Rolles Driver, Burton Scott Easton, William H. Green, Abraham Keunen, Melvin Grove Kyle, T.W. Manson, Rev. Alan Hugh M'Neile, Rev. Cuthbert Simpson, Julius Wllhausen.

Historical figures could include:

Franklin Roosevelt, Woodrow Wilson, John Winthrop, Alex de Tocqueville, David Brewer, George Sutherland, William Douglas, Benjamin Rush, George Ashington, Benjamin Banneker, Haym Salomon, John and Abigal Adams, Noah Webster, Victor Hugo, Daniel Defoe, Johann S. Bach, Ludwig Van Beethoven, George Frederick Handel, Alexander Solzhenitsyn, John Knox, Martin Luther.

Some contemporaries would include:

J. Duncan, Randy Stinson, John Piper, Wayne Grudem, Raymond Ortlund Jr., James Borland, Thomas Schreiner, D. A. Carson, S. Johnson Jr., George Knight the third, Douglas Moo, John Frame, Vern Poythress, William Weinrich Gregg Johnson, George Rekers, Donald Balasa, H. House, Dorothy Patterson, Weldon Hardenbrook, Dee Jepson Elisabeth Elliot, Dr. David Menton, Dr. A. Charles Ware, Dr. Terry Mortenson, Dr. Andy McIntosh, Timothy Ball, Calvin Beisner, Den Chilton, Jonh Christie, Richard Land, Jason Lisle, Michael J. Oard, Roy Spencer, George Taylor, Larry Vardiman, Jay Wile, J.N.D. Anderson, Gleason Archer, F. F. Bruce, Ralph Earl, Joseph Free, Norman Geisler, Canon Green, Harold Greenlee, Ernest Kevan, Paul Little, Bruce Metsger, John Montgomery, Henry Morris, William Nix, W. J. Sparrow-Simpson, Peter Stoner, John Stott, Merrill Tenney, Merrill Unger, Howard Vos, Donald Wiseman, E. J. Young, James Perloff.