Life on the Vine - Goodness

Dr. Gregg Marutzky:

The sermon this morning is about goodness Amen.

You know, uh, preachers are always wanting people to be their best

self, to be good, not to be bad.

And, uh, so one preacher, he was bold one Sunday, and he had seen

a guy at church that hardly ever came, and he decided, "You know,

it's time for me to say something.

I've been holding back.

I, I probably won't see this guy for another several months,

so I just gotta say something."

And he, he, he, he went up to him after church, and he said, "You

know, I really want you to be a strong soldier in the army of God.

I want you to be in the army of God.

I've been praying for you to be in the army of God."

And the man looked around for a minute.

He says, "Keep it down.

I'm in the Secret Service."

Some of you thought that was cute, some of you didn't.

Life on the vine.

Goodness.

Goodness.

Don't you wanna be known as a good person whenever you pass?

Don't you wanna have that reputation?

Don't you wanna go from wherever you're at, wherever you start,

to having a good reputation?

I, I, I think I'm gonna need a little help this morning.

Uh, Satan's alive and well in our technology.

And, uh, so next slide please.

And if you haven't gotten this book, go ahead and, uh, get it

Next slide, please.

Satan's back there, too.

It's up here, and he's back there.

Let's drive him out.

There he is.

All right.

And next slide.

Let's try to memorize this together as we're going through this, this series.

But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness,

goodness, gentleness, self-control.

Amen?

Amen.

And let, let, let's, uh, let's get those on our mind, on our hearts, and

let's constantly be thinking about them.

Today, we're talking about goodness.

The opposite of that, you could say, is badness, but let's, uh, uh, put

it in a little different context.

It could be selfishness.

As you hear the definition this morning, you're gonna see why I'm making the

contrast selfishness because of the, the biblical definition of goodness.

Here's my simple definition of goodness, all right?

Goodness is…

All right.

Yep, Satan's back there.

Goodness is the natural inward transformation produced by the Holy

Spirit as you grow closer to God.

Let me say that again.

There we go.

We've got it on the board.

Goodness is natural.

Amen.

It's inward.

It has to come from somewhere supernatural, from

without, not from within.

Produced by what?

The Holy Spirit.

The Holy Spirit.

It's a byproduct, guys.

You can't manufacture it in your life.

You can't just decide, "I'm gonna be good."

You need help to be good.

That's right.

That's right.

All right?

And the way that you become good, listen to this, this is very

important, by getting closer to God.

Amen.

You become good by getting closer to good.

God is good.

Amen.

And some of us struggle with believing that.

Yeah.

It's not good sometimes.

Oh, I love the songs we sang this morning.

Goodness is running after you.

This morning, this sermon is running after you, 'cause I want everybody

to leave here wanting to be good.

Amen.

To be gooder.

All right?

Doctors can make up words

I want us to be good.

I want us to be closer to God.

I want us to believe in the faithfulness of God.

If you don't believe God is good, then you're not gonna wanna be good.

If you don't believe God is good, you, you won't believe you can become good.

If you don't believe God is good, you don't believe

other people can become good.

You've gotta get solid on God is good

We sing about it.

His faithfulness, the goodness of God, the goodness of God, the goodness of God.

I choked up on that, too.

I'm emotional this morning for some reason.

Something in the water down here, all right?

Come on.

I, I usually drink Smartwater.

That's…

But that keeps me from being emotional.

I guess I need to get off of that and stay soft-hearted, amen?

Goodness is natural by being close to God.

From the Greek, the ancient Greek word for goodness is agathosune,

agathosune, okay?

And it's a noun that describes active benevolence, means you see it, moral

excellence, and a generous desire, listen to this, to bless others.

If you're good, you bless others.

Good people are a blessing to other people.

Yes.

You know, I walked in this morning, I probably ran into 10 good people.

I stopped and hugged five of them, and said, "You're a good man.

You're a good woman.

You're good."

And they just bring…

Good people bring smiles to your face.

Look at these good women right here.

This is a bunch of the prayer women right here.

You need help in your life spiritually, here you go, right here.

Wow.

All right?

Go up afterwards to that, the prayer room, and get good, all right?

Wow.

It rubs off.

Good people rub o- I was a campus minister at MIT.

That's how I got so smart.

I wish it w- was that easy.

I wish it were.

But goodness is a generous desire to bless others.

It comes from the root word agathos, which means inherently

good, virtuous, and beneficial.

But c- you can't just decide, "I'm gonna be good."

You gotta do things to become good.

Yes.

You've got to grow in spirituality so you become good.

I wish it were easier.

It's not easy, but it's worth it.

Come on.

It's worth it.

Goodness is moral integrity that com- compels believers to selflessly

act for the benefit of others.

Why do some people deny themselves so much?

Because they're good people.

Why do some people love to serve?

'Cause they're good.

They have fed that part of their nature.

They've shrunk the evil and the bad, they've flushed out the pollution

that the world has, has infected us all with, and they've become better

and better and gooder and gooder.

Amen.

Amen.

All right?

Wow.

They've changed.

They've changed.

Very few people in high school…

I'm not going to my high school reunion here this year.

It's my 50th.

I'm not going, 'cause I wasn't good, and they don't wanna see me,

and I don't really wanna see them.

Now, I became a Christian, and I wanna be around the reunion

of the, my campus ministry.

Wow.

I wanna be around when I was a good person, and those people wanna see me too.

There's something about being good that's so awesome, isn't it?

Goodness is to selfishly act for the benefit of others.

In action, it is generosity and charity.

You know, there's studies that show that people under 40 are

less generous than people over 40

Probably is in every generation, and probably the older you

get, the more generous you get, 'cause maybe you have more.

But maybe you just get wiser, and you've l- got a little more life experience,

and you realize, "Hey, I don't need all this, and I wanna be a good person."

Sometimes when you're younger, you're focused on success or pleasure

or relationships or other things and not focused on wanting to be

generous or charitable or good.

Goodness is a core attribute of God.

Agathosune is goodness for the benefit of others.

It's not just being good for yourself, that you can feel good about yourself.

And we should feel good about ourselves.

We should affirm ourselves.

We should love ourselves, the Bible says, but we should be good for the

sake of God and for the sake of others.

The Hebrew word for goodness is tov, which means pleasing, excellent, or right.

And many of us have read these books.

Next slide, please.

These books called The Church- A Church Called Tov and Pivot by Scott McKnight

and his daughter, Laura Barringer.

And, uh, I want our church to be a tov church.

Amen.

A church that's full of good people- Yeah

and a good culture.

Amen.

And people walk in, like I walked into the Boulder Church of Christ when I

was 19 years old in, in a God-forsaken place from the University of Colorado.

I tell you, in this, the '70s, Boulder was not a spiritual place.

Okay?

Well, it was spiritual, but it was ugly spirits.

All right?

Coarse spirits and other things.

Uh, you, you may…

I- it's my own opinion, but I think it was true.

All right?

But I want people to walk into this church and say, "Hey, that's a good church.

Those are good people.

There's a good culture there."

And so McKnight tells us a little bit how to be a good church.

He says, next slide please, "Culture socializes us, forming our beliefs,

behaviors, values, and morals."

And so we want to develop a good, a tov culture here in our church.

Amen?

Amen.

We want a goodness to permeate things.

Oh, yes.

And then he and his daughter wrote in the next slide, and listen to this.

It's a little bit of a longer reading, but I, it's important.

"The circle of tov," and I'm gonna share that with you next, "begins when

a church sees people as people- Amen

and treats them as people."

That sounds simple.

I think we can do that, right?

By nurturing them to become what God designed them to be.

People with names and histories and stories.

I believe you, you, you, you hear people's stories, you fall in love with them.

People who are doing well and people who are not doing well.

People who are recovering from church abuse and people

that have never been abused.

People who've had surgeries and sickness.

People who are aging, people who are rich and poor, and everything in between.

People who are wounded and in need of healing, and people who

are unemployed and underemployed.

People who need encouragement or tan- tangible assistance.

The essence of treating people as people can be summed up in the 12 simple

words by Je- by Jesus, "Do to others as you would like them to do to you."

That's what produces a good culture.

Yes.

Sees people as people and treats them as people.

Yes.

Sees people…

Do people see you?

Make eye contact when you're talking When you're fellowshipping, do you see

these kids looking out here so confident?

Yeah.

Standing up straight.

Wow.

So articulate.

Amen.

I didn't even know some of those words when I was their age.

Yeah.

Definitely couldn't say them.

That's right.

That little Logan, man, he's a big, he, he's a big package in a small-

stature.

Right?

He was so…

I mean, all of them, awesome.

What's the circle of tov?

Next slide.

What do we wanna display?

What do we wanna be in our church?

We wanna be empathetic.

Yeah.

This is all good stuff.

Yeah.

Empathy, the ability to understand and share the feelings of other persons.

I don't know how your Passion group has been going, but we've

been developing greater empathy.

We've been listening to each other's stories.

We've been having an incredible group on Thursday night, 'cause

we're growing in empathy.

Grace, the unmerited favor.

We're giving one another forgiveness and love.

People firstness.

See, oh, Scott, he makes up words, too, okay?

First people firstness.

I didn't know this was a word.

Okay, I would've just said relational.

But anyway, that's just me.

Putting the needs of people above the needs of the institution.

Truth-telling or honest.

Speaking the truth even when it is hard.

Justice, uph- upholding what is right, fair, and we could add good.

Service, giving of oneself to help others.

Yeah.

Guys, let's not have trouble getting volunteers.

Let's all look for ways to serve.

Can, can you amen that?

Amen.

I mean, let's not just be into our own own lives.

Let's not be self-centered.

Let's deny ourselves.

Let's be good.

Amen.

Amen.

An invitation to goodness and service.

Christ likeness, reflecting the character of Jesus.

And this is the circle of go- of tov, or good.

Yeah.

Empathy, grace, relational, truthful, justice, service,

and then the Christ likeness.

This just sums up being like Jesus.

We're gonna be a good church.

We're, we are a good church.

We're gonna be a gooder church.

Yeah.

I'm stuck on that this morning.

I apologize.

It was not planned.

It's not in the notes.

It's not on the slides, but I'm having fun with it.

Gooder.

Good.

Greg, be gooder.

Jesus says, "Why do you call me good?

No one is good except God alone."

Next slide, please.

We cannot manufacture goodness.

God is the source of goodness.

Amen.

All right?

And then the next slide.

Spiritual goodness for, means being committed to selflessness.

That's how you get spirit-filled, to be committed to g- to selflessness.

How are you spirit-led to be committed to sacrifice?

How are you spirit-minded to be committed to surrender?

How are you, we spirit-driven to be committed to service?

And we'll have this up on the websla- site.

I apologize for our technical difficulties this morning.

All right?

Satan just doesn't want you to hear this, but you're paying attention.

Look at your eyes.

Look at you guys.

Even in the dark I can see you.

All right?

John 4, you know this story.

Verses 13 and 14 said, "Jesus answered, 'Everyone who drinks

this water will be thirsty again.

But whoever drinks this water I give them will never thirst.

Indeed, the water I give them will become in them a spring of water

welling up to eternal life.'"

I've sort of welled up before and started crying.

I've welled up before 'cause of food poisoning.

Let's not go there very far, all right?

But this is welling up with goodness, welling up with the

Spirit overflowing out of your life.

Good just comes up and overflows.

You well up because you're so spiritual.

Guys, make it a goal, I wanna be spiritual.

I want the fruits of the Spirit to be overflowing out of my life.

I want love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, gentleness,

faithfulness, and self-control to just ooze out of everything that I do.

I want people to see and feel and sense and smile at goodness, not because

I'm good, because God made me good.

Yes.

Because God has transformed me, and it's welling up and overflowing.

Yet its time is coming.

He goes on in verse 23 and says, "Na- but it has now come when the true

worshipers of God will worship the Father in spirit and in truth, for they're the

kind of worshipers the Father seeks.

God is spirit, and His worshipers must worship in spirit and truth."

What he's saying, we've gotta be spiritual.

Amen.

We, we need to be spiritual.

You know what you're, what you are if you aren't spiritual?

Paul called the Corinthians this.

He called them carnal.

He called them worldly

He called them unspiritual

Let's be spiritual.

All right?

I mean, you can be dumb, but if you're spiritual, you're good

You can be unathletic, but if you're spiritual, you're good.

Yeah.

You can be poor.

If you're spiritual, you're good.

Amen.

You can be less than attractive, but if you're spiritual, you're good.

Yeah.

Amen.

'Cause it's inner beauty.

Amen?

Amen.

Let's be as spiritual as we can be.

Amen.

Amen?

Amen.

And then 2 Corinthians 3:6 says, "He has made us competent as

2 Corinthians 3:6

ministers of a new covenant, not of the letter but of the" what?

Spirit.

"For the letter kills, but the spirit gives" what?

Life.

We wanna be spiritual.

Proverbs 11 and verse 27 says, "He who seeks good finds goodwill, but evil

comes to him who searches for it."

So let's seek to be good.

Proverbs 22:1, "A good name is more desirable than great riches."

Proverbs 22:1

Your reputation is more desirable than your bank account.

"To be esteemed is better than silver or gold."

To be respected as spiritual is the key.

Proverbs 12 and verse two, "A good

man obtains favor from the Lord."

God blesses the good person, "But the Lord condemns" who?

The crafty man.

Some people, it's hard to trust.

They're not straightforward.

They're not direct in their speech.

You ask them direct questions, they don't give you direct answers.

Their eyes are even a little shifty.

They won't look you in the eye.

They're looking around.

They're hemming, they're hawing

Don't be crafty.

Don't be crafty.

Be good.

Proverbs 14 and verse 19 says, "Evil men will bow down in the

presence of the good, and the wicked at the gates of the righteous."

We see that in Esther.

We see that in so many of the biblical stories.

Matthew 12 and verse 35 says, "The good man brings good things out

of the good stored up in him."

You store up that good stuff in your quiet times.

You go- store up that good stuff in your Bible reading.

You store up that good stuff when you're just by yourself doing and

thinking about the goodness of God and the good person you wanna be.

And the evil man, though, brings evil out of the evil stored up in him, sadly.

This is one of my favorite verses, Titus 2, verses 11 through 14, "For the grace of

Titus 2:11–14

God that brings salvation has appeared to everybody," but not everybody's responded.

It teaches us, though, as Christians to say no to ungodliness and worldly

passion, to the pollution that could come in and keep us from being good, and to

live self-controlled, upright, or good and godly lives in this present age.

While we wait for the blessed hope, the appearing of the glory of our great God

and Savior, Jesus Christ, who gave Himself for us to redeem us from all pollution,

garbage, wickedness, sin, and to purify for Himself a people that are ver- his

very own, eager to do what is good.

The Greek could also be translated eager to be good.

Eager for goodness.

That's what I wanna inspire us to be today, this morning, folks.

Good And for many of you, you're already really good.

But we can all take it higher, right?

Yeah.

Nobody's competing with Jesus yet, all right?

But we want to follow His example.

In the same way, Matthew 5 and verse 16, "Let your light shine before

men, that they may see" your what?

Good deeds.

"Good deeds, and praise your Father in heaven."

See, when people think about you, they're not gonna think about, what a good person.

They're gonna think, what a good Christian.

I used to know that guy before he was a Christian.

He wasn't good.

Now, he, she, they're good.

Yeah.

Something changed in their life.

I used to know them.

Amen.

Now they're different.

Wow.

Isn't that awesome?

That is.

And Christians, we're growing all the time.

Couple more.

These are all inspiring, good stuff.

Matthew 7:17-20 says, "Likewise, every good tree bears good fruit,

Matthew 7:17–20

but a bad tree bears bad fruit.

A good tree cannot bear bad fruit, and a bad tree cannot bear good fruit.

Every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown in the fire.

Thus, by their fruit you will recognize them."

As he has said.

By people's lives, by who they are, we recognize them.

What are some obstacles to being good?

Pursuing pleasure.

It's always gonna get in the way.

It's good to enjoy life and to have some pleasure in your life

and do pleasurable things, and you need breaks, you need vacations.

You, you, you, you can't just be intense and serious all the time, you know?

But don't just constantly pursue it.

Don't get addicted to happiness 'cause it's so fleeting.

Lack of limits, not having boundaries, and even addicted on just freedom.

"I'm gonna do whatever I wanna do."

No, be responsible.

All right?

'Cause your freedom may infringe upon someone else's freedom.

Don't be addicted to it.

Enjoy it.

Appreciate it.

But extremes always get us in trouble.

Exalting of effort.

See, you can get addicted to success.

It feels good to be successful.

It feels good to accomplish things, but that's not the

main purpose of life ourselves.

The purpose of life is being like God and being good.

And then sometimes just being in denial, addicted to denial,

refusal to really see reality.

We can either be good or bad and not think that we're better than we are.

We've gotta constantly strive.

How do you cultivate goodness, though?

This is good stuff.

Surrender to God.

Seek God.

Get closer to God.

Acknowledge our need for God.

Worship God.

We've been drawing closer.

You're getting gooder by the, by breathing in here, by being here,

by sitting next to good people.

I guess it is contagious, isn't it?

Practicing prayer and fasting.

What is that?

That's seeking God for transformation.

I don't know about you, but I've had to beg God, "God, change my heart.

I'm trying, but I s- I can't control this.

I can't control my speech.

I can't have this kind of goodness that I need," especially as a minister.

"I need you, God."

I've begged God to change me at times, and He does.

That's the encouraging thing.

He does.

You know, I saw myself being an ungrateful person lately,

and I was so ashamed of myself.

I'm like, we moved into this house, and it's an amazing house, and,

and, and, and, and, you know.

But it's about a third the size of the house we had before.

Well, we had too big a house, yes.

I remember when we bought it, my son-in-law said, "Craig, you, you

and Cathy, it's just the two of you.

You don't need this big a…"

"I'm buying it for the s- square footage, buying it for the resale."

And I'm glad I did it.

I, I, I got some good equity out of it by buying a bigger house

than I needed, but it spoiled me.

We had rooms probably for months we didn't even go into.

You know?

I mean, we, we had a big house, uh, uh, up in Antelope Valley, and now we've

had to downsize, and we planned on it.

We knew we'd have to downsize, and then at this time in our

life, we wanted to downsize.

But when you downsize, you're like, "Huh

And one day it hit me, this is wrong

You're telling people publicly, constantly, Greg, to be grateful.

And you're, you're not content.

What more do you need?

What more do you want?

And it, and God changed my heart.

I started praying about it.

He cha- Now I woke this morning, I'm walking around my

house, "Wow, this is so great.

This is so wonderful."

Amen.

And it was such a good feeling, and it, and it didn't come from me, though.

Wow.

I'm not a, a good naturally.

I'm a selfish person naturally.

I want more naturally.

Yeah, yeah.

I'm, I'm, I'm all these things that the world polluted me with.

Yeah.

But I want to be good.

Yeah.

Amen.

And you do too.

And so you've been at it as long as I, many of you, and some of you even longer.

You're older than me, praise God, amen.

A few of you.

We wanna be good.

God bless us.

God bless us, amen.

Amen.

Few more slides, we're gonna wrap up.

Lack of prayer

Lack of silence, lack of gratitude, lack of purpose.

It's not the right heart.

We need to get filled.

We need to get led by the Spirit.

We need to be Spirit-minded.

And then to close out

In expressing goodness, guys, affirm the goodness in others,

especially your family.

I need to affirm my wife, Kathy, much more.

We were in a devotional yesterday with some of the dating couples, and

she was saying some things about, you know, you, you need to be…

women need to be adored and loved and thought, all this stuff.

And I, "Oh, man, I haven't been doing all that."

It's so good to be teaching others 'cause you gotta live up to it.

And Kathy, I was listening, and I'm gonna try harder.

Affirm their goodness.

Oh.

Recognize the good examples.

Tell some people this morning before you leave what a good example they are to you.

Go up to some neighbors and do a good deed for a neighbor, all right?

There, there's, there's, there's a lot of, of, of widows and people

living alone in our neighborhood.

I'm, I'm gonna try to figure out some good deeds to do.

And then for strangers, find something good.

You know, I'm, I'm trying to crack one of the ladies at the pharmacy.

Unfortunately, I have to buy a lot of prescriptions and, and, uh,

they seem to get spread out that I can't all pick them up at once.

I have…

Like once a week I'm picking one up.

And there's w- this one lady, man, she's just

She just seems so mad at the world.

And I say nice things, and I try to lighten her up, but the

more I try to lighten her up, the worse look I get from her.

Like, "Do not talk to me."

You know?

"I'll help you, but don't make it hard on me by being nice."

And I'm gonna break through.

I'm gonna break through this lady.

It … But this has been months.

There's something going on with that poor soul.

Aw.

And I hurt for her.

Here's a few thoughts to close out with.

A couple books if you … Some of you are real readers.

You can get this little book, The Let Them Theory or the Atomic Habits.

You can take a picture of this if you want, guys.

These are some things to try to be good and to be better, all right?

The Let Me core principles are, you know, stop managing others.

Let go.

Let go of them.

Love yourself, embrace personal responsibility, set boundaries,

and then you'll be happier.

Just let it be.

Let it be.

That's a good Beatles song.

And then the Atomic Habits.

You know, these are four laws for changing your behavior.

If you wanna be better, then cue yourself.

Make it obvious.

People put up these Post-it Notes on their car, on their fridge, on their doors,

you know, to remind them of something.

You know, make it attractive.

Want to do it, all right?

Buy some new running shoes if you wanna exercise and walk around.

Just, you just cue yourself.

Develop a craving for it.

And then make it easy.

Don't set these unrealistic goals.

Just start with two minutes, five minutes, that kinda thing, and

then reward yourself, all right?

Sometimes Cathy and I, we go get the two for $6 sundae at, at Dairy

Queen at the end of long days.

Ooh.

You know?

Some days we go home 9:30, 10:00 at night.

We've had long days in the ministry, and we look at each other, and

I know what she's thinking, and she knows what I'm thinking.

I go, "Yes."

And we don't blow the budget, you know?

We get the special, $6.

So I'm carrying six bucks in my wallet almost all the time

Be good.

Be a blessing to others

Be good, Greg.

Be a blessing to others.

Don't be a pain, Greg.

Be good.

Amen?

Amen.

Reflect on goodness.

Every time we take of the Lord's supper, every time we worship,

every time we serve, as we try to change, God's gonna make us good.

Goodness is running after us.

Amen.

God bless.