Sermons

Getting Fruity – Goodness
Apparently most of us forget 95% of what we hear in 72 hours. So let me start with the 5% to remember. God is good, all the time and all the time, God is good!
Ex 33 Moses asked God “Show me your glory” – what would you have though the glory would be? Power, Might, thunder, lightning, raging sea, smoke and fire.
God says “I will show you my goodness”
Good means excellence in quality, worthy of approval
When we talk about the Goodness of God – His character and His actions – who He is and what He does
Psalm 119:68 – You are good and you do good
1 Chr 16:34 Oh give thanks to the Lord for his good and his steadfast love endures for ever.
Jesus our example – Acts 10:38 – went round doing good and healing all those oppressed of the devil.
How do we receive more of the goodness of God?
Know it – Rom 12:2 tells us to be transformed by the renewal of your mind
Life is hard
Because we live in a broken world – Original everything was good, until people rejected the creator and his goodness for knowing evil, which brought in what we call the fall and the broken world we live in.
Because of you and me – life is hard because we are sinners who make bad decisions accidentally and wilfully, which make life less good and much harder. Some of the bad decisions even bad habits and addictions.
Because of what others do to us – This is the story of Job in the Old Testament, the man the good Samaritan rescued who was left for dead by robbers.
Life is hard because the world is broken, because of you and me and because of others
God is good and has a good plan to sort that out. It's called the Gospel – good news!
In the Old Testament there were all sorts of rules about things that were clean or unclean. In fact if you touched someone or something that was unclean – physically or morally you became unclean yourself. Then God sent Jesus – who is the cleanest, goodest, most pure, most holy. He is irresistibly attracted to those whose life is hard – the broken, the unclean, the sinners. And when he touches someone who is unclean, they become clean. Jesus came to touch our lives with his goodness and make us clean. Ultimately he did that by dying in our place on the cross, taking all our mess and bad and giving us his goodness in exchange.
God has good things planned Eph 2:10; Jer 29:11-14
Turns around bad for good Rom 8:28 -all things work for the good of those that love Him.
Know it – know the good news.
Taste it Psalm 34:8 Taste and see that the Lord is good.
Know it in your head, we need to believe it to taste it.
Faith = Belief + Expectation
Faith to taste God's goodness comes from believing God is good and an expectancy that God has good things for you.
Not just Covid-19 that takes away our taste. Sin stops us tasting the goodness of God as we have just seen. So does disappointment. If life has been hard, disappointment can rise.
Deal with disappointment so expectation comes again – take it to Jesus. ‘Fess up. This and this and this have caused disappointment in my life – I give them to you, take them away.
Go again. Don't let the past disappointment hold you back from God's goodness know. It's a choice. Like the disciples when Jesus said cast the nets out on the right hand side. But Lord we've fished all night and caught nothing. Go again. Boom – 153 large fish!
James 1:17
Pass it on Luke 10:33-35
Jesus told a story about a Good Samaritan to a bunch of people who thought good and Samaritan was an oxymoron. A traveller gets beaten up and left for dead. All the “good” people walk by or cross the road and walk by. A surprising person stops… He gets to be known forever more as the GOOD Samaritan.
Compassion – felt it in his bowels! Gutted! Must help.
Time – overnight at the inn looking after the beaten up man
Extravagant giving – no limit for innkeeper “whatever you spend” I will repay
Christ follower – be like Jesus – who went around doing good and healing all who were oppressed. Be compassionate, give time and be extravagant!
Application
All on a journey – some just starting out checking our Christianity, some been walking with Jesus for years.
God is good and he is good to you – wants to draw you into relationship with Him. Alpha course coming up in a couple of weeks Sunday nights online too.
Deal with disappointment blocking the flow of goodness of God
Deal with sin – take it to the cross.
Do good and heal people – compassion, time and being extravagant!

Questions
1) Testify to a recent experience of “God is good”
2) If Faith=Belief + Expectation – what truths about what God can and will do are you expectant for and which ones are more disappointment?
3) How can we get rid of disappointment
4) How can we put Heb 10:24 into practice “and let us consider how we may spur one another on toward love and good deeds”