Download Transcript - Downey Seventh

God Is Good
Well, praise God we're here. We survived Thanksgiving. We survived Black Friday. It's
good Saturday, good Sabbath.
Let us pray:
Father, Lord, thank you so much for the great blessings that we experienced
already, today and throughout our lives. Help us as we enter into the word of this
moment, of this worship that you help us sense how amazing you are, how good
you are. And Father, may that impact the way that we look at you and the way we
look at life. There's so much to be grateful for. So may your Holy Spirit lead us
now. We pray these things in the precious name of Jesus. Amen.
The title is: God is Good. What do we say next? All the time … God is good. I know
you guys are gonna do that, especially Von. God is good. He's worthy of our worship. We
come here, we're praising God, he is worthy of our worship. That is really the barometer of a
God that we serve. Is he worthy for us to serve him? We believe that and we believe we have
this great, amazing God. Sometimes we look around in the world and we see the chaos and the
crisis that are going on. We have our own personal dilemmas and issues and we see all these
things, but we can hold on to the fact that we have a God who is good and he's ultimately in
charge and he's gonna pull us through whatever hardships we're going through.
This is a Thanksgiving message today. We read Psalm 7:17, it says: I will give thanks to
the Lord because of his righteousness. I will sing the praises of the name of the Lord most high.
If God hasn't been good to you, maybe you have a distorted view of who God is. Did you hear
that? If God hasn't been good to you, we may have a distorted view of who God is. That
happens. I've shared this many times. A lot of times we perceive who God is by the relationship
with our father. If we didn't have a great relationship with our father, we might have a skewed
version of who God is. But the truth is the truth. We have a perception of who God is. He is
good. He is righteousness.
I don't know if it's our job or whatever, it is our way for us to focus on how good God is.
And when we see how good our God is, we look at life in the context of how good our God is.
And when we see the negatives and the bad things that happen in our lives, we can understand
that those things didn't come from God, they came from our own choices, our own freewill, if
you will. We have a great God who wants to give us the best. He wants us to have the most
amount of peace, the most amount of love, the most amount of joy that we could possibly gain
and if that's missing in your life, maybe your picture of God isn't good enough, because God is
good.
We look at Psalm 103 and we see how God is good. It says: Praise the Lord Oh my soul.
My inmost being praise his holy name. Praise the Lord my soul and forget not all his benefits.
And these are his benefits. Who forgives all your sins and heals all your diseases. So how is
God good? 1) We are thankful that God forgives. How many of you have made a mistake in
your life? Keep your hands up. How many of you have made a mistake in the last decade?
How many of you have a made a mistake in the last year? How many of you have made a
mistake in the last month? How about last week? How about the last day? How about the last
hour, the last minute; the last second?
We are humans and therefore we are flawed. We make mistakes, but we are thankful that
God forgives. He doesn't hold us to those mistakes, he forgives. That means we don't have to
live in this constant guilt from the things of our past. We are grateful. God is good, because he
forgives us of our mistakes. That's good to know. Some of us still live in guilt. Some of us
reflect on our past mistakes and they weigh us down. Or maybe other people constantly remind
us of the mistakes that we make. But if we're not set free, if we're not released from that guilt,
our version of God is not good enough.
The next thing is that we're thankful that God heals. God made us wonderfully and
beautifully, that if we get a cut, our bodies will heal itself. Praise God for that. If we get sick our
immune system starts working in and we recover from those sicknesses. But not just that he
heals the things that are going on inside our body or around our skin, but he heals the
circumstances that are around us. He heals relationships; the events that are happening. Praise
God, God is good, that no matter what circumstances or situations you're in, you know that God
can make things better, because he's good.
While he's in control of everything you see the nature of God. What is the nature of
God? God is love, God is good, God wants to restore your life. That's who God is. Some
people's nature is if they see someone suffering, they smirk, or when they see someone hurting,
they don't lend a helping hand. But that's not who God is. God heals, he restores, he makes
better. God is good. If things aren't better in the circumstances in your life, maybe it's time to
think about what God's will is in our lives, because he's good and he leads us in the direction of
restoration, of healing. It might not happen all at once. It might conflict at first, or pain, or
discomfort at first, but ultimately if we're following the ways of the Lord, he will bring us in the
pathway of healing, because God is good.
The other thing is: He redeems your life, because this is who God is. We praise him
because these are his benefits. It says: He redeems our lives from the pit and crowns you with
love and compassion. So the other part of God is that he redeems. Last week, Gustavo was up
here and he was talking about how he wanted to win the lottery, remember that - $66 million.
That was a lot of money. He was willing to give 90% of that money to God. What great
intentions he had. We should all have won it. But what redeem means? If he had won that
lottery ticket, redeeming it is him taking it to the 7-Eleven that he bought it from and they give
you – I don't know it works, but they give you a big, giant check so you can take it to the bank
saying that you've won whatever millions of dollars.
Not only does 7-Eleven redeem lottery tickets but God redeems. And what does this
mean and what does he redeem? He takes you and me and the messed up, mangled people that
we are and we turn ourselves in like a crumpled up, messed up coupon, and he redeems us and
he makes us whole again. God is good…. All the time …. I should have changed the title of
my sermon. Yes, God is great, he's awesome. There's so many reasons why we should be
thankful. Not because we have food on our plates and our football team won on Thursday,
praise God, but because we have this amazing great God. And not because we say it, but we
have reason here that we're bringing up that he redeems us.
The other one is: We are thankful for God's love and compassion. While we all agree
that we have made mistakes in the last second, the last minute, the last hour, he's not a God that
points fingers at you, saying I told you so and you deserve condemnation. He's a God that has
complete love and compassion for whatever you're going through.
I wrestled, sitting in Montano staring at the skies and I'm like, God who are you, you
don't understand? You don't know the way I live my life. You don't understand how hard it is. I
keep messing up but it's just my nature. But Jesus came on this earth to be our high priest and he
came on this earth and experienced sin and death. He understands what we're going through. He
has compassion and mercy in the sense that he knows what you're going through. He knows my
mind and he still loves me. Praise God for that. He knows my selfishness and he still loves me.
He knows your pain, he knows my pain and he has compassion for that pain. We all experience
it, so we are grateful. God is great, amen. I should have aimed higher for how great God is.
Psalm 103:5 - It says: Who satisfies your desires with good things so that your youth is
renewed like the eagles. We're thankful that God is satisfied. God is all that we need. We have
the marketing campaigns of stores our there, telling you that you need this for happiness. You
need this for you to have the latest and you need this. Or someone needs love from this or
companionship from here or whatever it is, we are humans constantly in need of something.
Striving for the next thing that we need. We need that next fix, that fulfillment from somewhere.
Somehow we're going to get it. We keep searching and we find all kinds of dangerous places to
try to fulfill that need that we have. But we are thankful that God satisfies. He's all that we
need. Everything on this earth cannot give you what you truly need, only God can.
While God has programed in us for us to keep him, we kind of changed it and searched
for things outside of him and of ourselves to think that that will fulfill us, but satisfies. We could
be sitting there in sheer poverty and having Thanksgiving dinner with a can of beets and believe
we have everything that need if we have the Lord. I like beets by the way, so that's alright, I'll be
happy with it. We're thankful for who God is and for so many reasons to be grateful for who
God is, but you may have other reasons. What are you thankful for? This is an open-mike
worship service here (without the mike). If you have something that you're thankful for, I want
you to shout it out. What are you thankful for?
Congregation:
Forgiveness
Pastor:
Forgiveness
Congregation:
Health
Pastor:
Health
Congregation:
Family
Pastor:
Family
Congregation:
People of this church
Pastor:
People of this church, what else.
Congregation:
Friendship
Pastor:
Friendship
Congregation:
Freedom
Pastor:
Freedom
Congregation:
Second chances
Pastor:
for that yet. I should be.
Second chances. What's that? Retirement. I'm not quite thankful
Congregation:
Running water
Pastor:
Running water
Congregation:
Jobs
Pastor:
Jobs. God providing. Anything else. For Jesus. For hard times.
Pastor:
I look back at my hard times. These are the moments where I have
grown, so that's absolutely so. Anything else? For life. Downey-Florence church. Amen.
Salvation, music, love. What a bright boy back there. Anything else? You look around and you
start having this attitude of thankfulness and it's infectious. You start to look around and you see
so many reasons why we are blessed and we're grateful. And God provides all these things. God
is good. God is great. God is awesome. All the times.
That's what Thanksgiving is all about. We have our meals and we have our family and
we have friends that come along, but it's truly about our focus on God and how good he is. You
hear stories of the Pilgrims and their celebrating their first Thanksgiving and you hear the
hardships that they went through. I think 66 percent died during that first winter. Just horrific
hardship that they went through and they were still thankful that God was providing for them.
Our last, closing verse here – Psalm 95:2-4: Let us come before him with thanksgiving
and extol him with music and song for the Lord is the great God, the great king above all gods.
In his hands are the depths of the earth and the mountain peaks belong to him. We have a great
God. We are blessed to know him. There's a world out there who doesn't know that, but for
some reason God puts it in front of us to know who God is. And we as Christians recognize how
amazing God is. And all he asks for us is his praise. To be thankful, to worship, to sing to him,
to recognize how amazing, how wonderful our God is. And with our daily walk we look at our
lives and you know who you are. Do you live a life that is truly thankful for who God is. Are
we living a life that really doesn't recognize how good, how great, how awesome our God is.
Let us pray.