Woven In The Womb (Psalm 139:13-16)

Turn your Bibles now to Psalm 145. Psalm 145. And before we pray, we'll read together the first 10 verses of this Psalm. Psalm 145. I will exalt you, my God, O King, and I will bless your name forever and ever. Every day I will bless you, and I will praise your name forever and ever. Great is Yahweh and highly to be praised, and his greatness is unsearchable. One generation shall laud your works to another and shall declare your mighty deeds. On the glorious splendor of your majesty and on the words of your wondrous deeds, I will muse. Men shall speak of the strength of your fearsome acts, and I will recount your greatness. They shall pour forth the memory of your abundant goodness and will shout joyfully of your righteousness. Yahweh is gracious and compassionate, slow to anger and great in loving kindness. Yahweh is good to all, and his compassions are over all his works. All your works, O Yahweh, shall give thanks to you, and your holy ones shall bless you. Let's pray together. Our great God, we do bless your name. It is our joy to laud your greatness and your goodness, to sing of your mercies, to sing of your grace, to sing of your greatness and goodness to those who are in your Son, and to laud your goodness and grace and greatness in all of creation. As those who have been redeemed, we thank you and we love you, and we thank you that your word has revealed to us our God, our Savior, our Redeemer, and our rock, that we may know you and that we may love you and that we may worship you. So we pray that you would open our hearts and our minds now to your word so that we may have understanding and that you would, by your word, fill our hearts with affection and love for Christ our King. We pray that you would fill our minds with truth and you would fill our souls with joy and delight in you, our great God. Incline our hearts to your word now and open our eyes that we may behold from your word wonderful things for the glory of Christ in whose name we pray. Amen. Turn your attention again to verse 3. Great is Yahweh and highly to be praised, and his greatness is unsearchable. God is unsearchably great and unfathomably and inexpressibly great. And therefore he is worthy of our praise and lauding of his name. We can speak of his greatness. We should describe his greatness. We can praise his greatness and his goodness. God is in all of his attributes perfect and complete. He is not just holier than you and I are by a measure. In fact, he is infinitely, perfectly, and completely holy. God is not just righteous, but he is perfectly and completely righteous. God is not just loving, but perfectly and infinitely loving. And so it is with all of his attributes. There are no degrees. There are no steps. There are no measures to any of his perfections or his attributes. And his goodness certainly is among those that is perfectly and infinitely so. He is perfectly and infinitely good. There are no measures to his attributes. There are no degrees, as I said, in the sense that we could compare one attribute against another. He is not more holy than he is kind or more loving than he is just. He is not more gracious than he is righteous. He is all that he is in perfection and in completion. And none of his qualities or perfections either increase or decrease. They don't wax or wane. They don't fluctuate in intensity. He's not one day more holy than he is on another day or in one season of the year more loving than he is in another season of the year. God never feels more or less loving or just or righteous or benevolent from day to day or from age to age. He was just as loving in eternity past when he chose you in Christ before the foundation of the world as he was on that day when he laid all of your sins upon Christ. And he will be just as loving in eternity a millennia from now, a hundred millennia from now, as he is toward you this very day. He can never grow or decrease in his love for you or his righteousness or his holiness or his justice. Everything about God is unsearchable. It is infinite. It is without end. His love is unsearchable. His grace is past finding out. His knowledge is beyond our comprehension. His righteousness is without end. His goodness likewise is unsearchable and as perfect as any other quality that God has. Or in the words of our psalm in verse 7, his goodness is abundant.

Abundant goodness. And that is our passage for this morning, verses 7 through 10 of Psalm 145. This psalm is labeled as David's praise. And in verses 1 and 2, he gives us an example of lavish and effusive and aggressive praise. And then in verses 3 through 10, he gives us two general categories of reasons why God is worthy of such praise. Because of his goodness, verses 3 through 6, and we looked at that last time. And there the author heaps up, sorry, his greatness, his greatness in verses 3 through 6. And there the author heaps up descriptors of God's greatness with words like mighty deeds and works and glorious splendor, majesty, wondrous deeds, fearsome acts, and greatness, verse 6. And then in verses 7 through 9, David gives to us a second category of reasons why we should be lavishly praising God, and that is because of his goodness. His goodness. Our king is good. He is good in good times, and he is good in difficult times. He is good when life is easy and convenient and comfortable and enjoyable. And he is good when life is inconvenient, uneasy, uncomfortable, and unpleasant. He never changes in his goodness. So we're picking up in verse 7 is having described his greatness in verses 3 through 6, we're now looking at verses 7 through 9, and we're going to notice there are three aspects or three ways that God's greatness here is goodness here is described. First, in verse 7, his goodness is abundant in measure. In verse 8, it is gracious in character. And in verse 9, it is universal in its scope. Those are the three aspects of his goodness. So let's read verses 7, 8, and 9. I'll highlight those points, and then we'll take a look at our text. Verse 7: Yahweh's goodness is abundant in measure. Look at it. They shall pour forth the memory of your abundant goodness. And they'll shout joyfully of your righteousness. Then in verse 8, Yahweh's goodness is gracious in character. Yahweh is gracious and compassionate, slow to anger and great in loving kindness. And then third, in verse 9, his goodness is universal in scope. Yahweh is good to all and his compassions are over all his works. And then the concluding verse really of that thought is verse 10, which acts as a transition to the second half of the psalm, but we'll get into that later. Verse 10: All your works, O Yahweh, shall give thanks to you, and your holy ones shall bless you. Unsearchable greatness and abundant goodness. And so what is the proper response? It is for all of his works to give him praise and for his holy ones, his saints, to praise and thank and bless his holy name. You'll notice in verses 7 through 9 that goodness kind of brackets that section. Notice in verse 7, he says they shall pour forth the memory of your abundant goodness. And then in verse 9, he says they are good to all. And then in verse 8, he heaps up adjectives that describe God's goodness. He is gracious and compassionate, slow to anger, and great in loving kindness. So just as in the first section describing God's greatness, he heaps up adjectives that describe his greatness. So in verse 8, he just lists these things that describe or reveal God's goodness. Be jump into our three points here for this morning, let us ask ourselves: what does it mean for God to be good? What do we mean by goodness? We use the term good very broadly and in a number of different ways. God is good. Pizza is good. Steak is better. Not better than God, but better than pizza. So God is good and pizza is good. We might even say that was a good football game. In which case, we are describing there the quality of a thing. Or this discount code is still good. And by that, we are describing the validity of a thing. Or it is a good distance or a good crowd gathered. And by that, we're describing the quantity of a thing. It's a good day. That describes the pleasantness or agreeability, desirability of a thing. He is a good man. That describes the morality of a thing. Or exercise is good for me. That describes the benefit of a thing. And that's just a small sampling of the various ways that we use the term good, even in our English language. So when we say God is good, let's clarify what we mean by that so that as we look at the passage, we're all kind of on the same wavelength, what we understand or what we mean by good. The Hebrew term for good in scripture, or sometimes translated goodness, has a similarly broad, though not as expansive meaning as English, but it is a broad semantic range. The word good can describe in scripture a practical or economic benefit.

So for instance, in Genesis chapter 50, verse 20, Joseph says, as for you, you meant evil against me, but God meant it for good in order to bring about what has happened this day and to keep many people alive. And there, good has the idea of a moral quality, but also something that is practical or beneficial or of some sort of a economic was not what he meant, but you mean like a utilitarian good. There was a good thing, a practical, beneficial thing that came out of it. Not that his brothers did what was morally good, but it ended up being something that was practical or beneficial. The word good is sometimes used in scripture in the Hebrew Old Testament to describe that which is desirable, pleasant, or beautiful. Now when evening came, David arose from his bed and walked around on the roof of the king's house, and from the roof he saw a woman bathing, and the woman was very beautiful in appearance. And there is a form of that same word to describe Bathsheba, being desirable, pleasant, or beautiful. Sometimes it's used to describe, to compare two things and to describe one that has superior quality, like in Isaiah chapter 41, verse 7. Sometimes it describes a moral goodness, like in Psalm 34, verse 14. Depart from evil and do good. And there we're having, there's a moral quality to that word. Seek peace and pursue it, the Psalm says. And sometimes that word is used to describe sort of a philosophical goodness or the highest good. And this is how Solomon uses it without any moral quality or beneficial quality in Ecclesiastes 8, verse 15, when he says, So I laud gladness, for there is nothing good for a man under the sun except to eat and to drink and to be merry. For this will join him in his labor throughout the days of his life, which God has given him under the sun. And there the idea is that what is the ultimate or highest aim? This is life under the sun. It's just to eat, drink, and be merry if there is nothing else. This is God's benefit to you. So that's the highest good given that worldview is the idea in Ecclesiastes 8. But what does it mean when we say that God is good? I'm going to quote from the book Biblical Doctrine by MacArthur and Mayhew. And here's how they describe God's goodness. And this, I think, is a helpful definition. I'll have to read this twice because it's a lot of words, one sentence, and I'm going to have to break it up with some explanation. But here's what they say. God's goodness is that he is the perfect sum, source, and standard for himself and his creatures of that which is wholesome, which means conducive to well-being, virtuous, beneficial, and beautiful. God is the perfect sum, source, and standard for all things of what it means to be good. Of that which is wholesome, conducive to our well-being. It is virtuous, beneficial, and beautiful. In other words, he is perfect goodness. There is no standard outside of God to which he conforms. God doesn't look at goodness and say, I need to be like that. Because he is good. It is his nature to be good. He is good in that way. He is the standard of all goodness. Stephen Charnock, in his book, The Existence and Attributes of God, says this, God depends upon no other for his goodness. He is in and of himself good. Man hath no goodness from himself, and God hath no goodness from without himself. His goodness is no more derived from another than his being. In other words, he receives no goodness. Every goodness that you and I model or experience or enjoy or encounter is a goodness that is derived from God who showers his goodness into creation and has created his creation to display his goodness. So that all goodness that we enjoy and all goodness that we do is merely a reflection of him. It is his goodness derived or communicated through his creation and his creatures to us. So we have no goodness in ourselves. God has no goodness outside of himself. In other words, he gets goodness from nothing else. We have no goodness apart from God in his goodness. Charnock says this, God only is infinitely good, a boundless goodness that knows no limits, a goodness as infinite as his essence, and not only good but best, the supreme, inconceivable goodness. A.W. Tozer, in his book, The Knowledge of the Holy, says this. This just kind of makes it practical, and this is very descriptive. The goodness of God is that which disposes him to be kind, cordial, benevolent, and full of goodwill toward men. It's that in the character of God that disposes him to be kind, cordial, and benevolent toward us. Tozer goes on to say, he is tenderhearted and of quick sympathy, and his unfailing attitude toward all mortal beings is open, frank, and frank.

Genesis 50:20 Isaiah 41:7 Psalms 34:14 Ecclesiastes 8:15

Friendly. By his nature, he is inclined to bestow blessedness, and he takes holy pleasure in the happiness of his people. Close quote. I love that last sentence. He takes holy happiness or holy pleasure in the happiness of his people. Now, God is obviously morally good. But moral goodness, again, is not a standard outside of God that he conforms his actions to. Moral goodness is something we know because it is revealed to us not only in creation, but also in conscience and in the word of God because it is part of God's being. God has desirable, pleasant, attractive, and amiable qualities such as kindness, grace, compassion, gentleness, mercy, patience, beauty, splendor. These are the expressions of his abundant goodness. So are you talking about moral quality? Yes, God is infinitely that, good in that way. Talk about beauty, splendor. God is infinitely that. If we are talking about being favorably disposed to mortal creatures like you and I, God is infinitely favorably disposed to mortal creatures like you and I. He is all of those kinds of goodness, and he is all of that summed together. He is that in perfection. He is that infinitely so. So with that in mind, let us look at verse 7 and see how Yahweh's goodness is abundant in measure. Read again verse 7, Psalm 145. They shall pour forth the memory of your abundant goodness and will shout joyfully of your righteousness. The they there at the beginning of that verse harkens us back to two aspects of our previous passage that we looked at last time. The men who speak of God's fearsome acts in verse 6, they shall pour forth the memory of your abundant goodness. So those who speak of God's judgments, those fearsome acts, those acts of God that strike fear into the hearts of people, they also pour forth the memory of God's abundant goodness. There are two ways that we testify to God's unsearchable nature, and that is to describe his fearsome acts, his great acts of judgment, as well as his great acts of benevolence and kindness and goodness. It also harkens us back to verse 4, where David describes one generation lauding God's works to another and declaring to the next generation his mighty deeds. They shall also pour forth his goodness. And I challenge you several weeks ago when we looked at verse 4, do you have this as part of your communication with your children and with your grandchildren to describe God's wonderful works of goodness and grace to them that you personally have experienced? Do your children know of God's goodness to you and all the ways that he has been faithful to you? That should be and can be for us a never-ending source of information about God to simply share with the next generation all of his goodness, not only his fearsome acts. Yes, God is a God who judges sin. Scripture is full of that testimony. But God is also a God who is gracious and benevolent and kind and good to all. And the word in verse 7 that is translated pour forth is an aggressive word. It's a vibrant and descriptive word that describes something that is gushing or bubbling forth. The LSB, the ESV translate it, pour forth, the NASB says they eagerly utter the memory of your abundant goodness. The root of that word describes something that is gushing forth uncontrolled and uncontrollably. To give you an example of how it is used, Proverbs 15, verse 2, the tongue of the wise makes knowledge look good, but the mouth of fools pours forth folly. The mouth of a fool just bubbles forth nothing but foolishness, never-ending, uncontrolled, uncontrollably. It just gushes folly. It's also used in Psalm 19, verses 1 and 2. The heavens are telling of the glory of God, and the expanse is declaring the work of his hands day to day pours forth speech and night to night reveals knowledge. That is, day after day, creation continually utters of the glory of God in all that it says, bearing witness to his unseen characteristics, his power and his grace. Not this last week, but the previous week, which is why I didn't preach last Sunday, our family was in Yellowstone. If you've been to Yellowstone, you've seen or you know of some of the natural geological features there, such as geysers and such. And we saw a number of geysers, and I don't know if geyser is the technical term for this, but it's just the fountains of water that continually bubble up. Not on and off like old faithful. Old faithful comes on every 90 minutes, give or take, 10 or whatever it is. But these were there were sources of water that just water, the sources, water just comes up out of the ground, and it's continually. There was one of them there that had a sign that said, this geyser bubbles forth 150 gallons of water a minute. It was just going and going and going, just bubbling up water that was flowing out onto the landscape. That's the idea here. Uncontrolled and uncontrollable, perpetual and continual bubbling forth. So ought to be the praise.

Proverbs 15:2 Psalms 19:1

Of God's holy ones for all of his goodness. Even on your worst days, the kindness of God toward you is more than you could list or thank him for, even if you were to spend the entirety of the day simply listing his benefits. And every day adds to the list of kindnesses, graces, mercies, pleasantries, compassions, and benevolence that God has poured forth on you and on me. Not only an undeserving, but an ill-deserving people. We don't deserve that goodness. We deserve the opposite of that. I've said before just a couple of times, and I don't mean to be repetitious, so forgive me if you've already heard this. It is true that if God were to leave me naked, cold, afflicted, dying alone in a ditch somewhere, if that were the end of my life, he would have done me no wrong. No wrong. I don't deserve anything more than that. I deserve far more than that in terms of affliction. We are an ill-deserving people and we cannot even count his benefits or his blessings. And every day just adds to the list of reasons to give him praise. Notice the connection in verse 7 to his righteousness, which is the second half of the phrase. And we'll shout joyfully of your righteousness. Remember, we talked about how Hebrew has parallel. Hebrew poetry has parallelisms here. Righteousness is parallel with goodness. They will shout, they will pour forth the memory of your abundant goodness and shout joyfully of your righteousness. David mentions righteousness here as a reminder that God's goodness is never divorced from the moral considerations, the moral elements of it. God's goodness is a righteous goodness, and his righteousness is a good righteousness. Righteousness and goodness, though they are not synonymous, they certainly are related. His goodness is a demonstration of his righteousness, and God will never, ever show goodness in a way that compromises or conflicts with his righteousness. Every expression of his goodness will, in fact, not violate his righteousness at all, but will demonstrate the rightness and the uprightness of his goodness. To give you an example of that, if God were to dismiss sin without requiring a payment or an atonement, in other words, if he were just to sort of ignore it and say, I'm just going to let bygones be bygones, not going to worry about it. You did what you did. We're just going to pass over it. If he were to do that without requiring atonement or payment or justice for the sins committed, that might be benevolent. It might be amiable, but it would not be righteous and it would not be just. God is kind to us believers now because his righteous demands have been satisfied in Christ. And in fact, God has placed his righteousness upon us so that in being good to us, he is good to us in a way that magnifies his righteousness. And God can be kind to the unbeliever, the impenitent, and even those who will spend eternity in hell. He can be kind to them even now because ultimately his righteousness will be satisfied in their eternal damnation. So God's expression of goodness, whether to the believer now and forever or to the unbeliever now, it is always in keeping with his righteousness. And as a believer, you ought to understand and appreciate the way in which God's righteousness is an expression of his goodness. Because God demands righteousness from us, we cannot enter his presence without being righteous, and yet we are unrighteous, and all of our sin makes us unrighteous and unholy. God, by his grace and as a gift of his grace through faith, credits to the believing sinner all of the righteousness that he demands. He demands perfect and unblemished righteousness, and we cannot merit that. We cannot attain that. We cannot create that or manufacture that, and we have none. But God, by his grace, credits the righteousness of another, the Lord Jesus Christ, who lived a perfect life and died in our stead. That perfect righteousness, that record of his unblemished and perfect life is credited to your account and to my account. So for the believer, the righteousness of God is our friend. It is our comfort. For we know for certain that God can never deny his righteousness. He can never contradict his righteousness, nor can he condemn the one who is righteous. He cannot condemn the righteous. And left to ourselves, we have no righteousness. And so one of the expressions of God's goodness is to credit to us that very thing which he can never condemn and to give it to us as a gift. But to the unbeliever, the righteousness of God is a terror. For the unbeliever must know that God will judge the world in righteousness, just as he has promised. And he's given proof to all men by raising the judge from the dead. So his goodness is abundant.

In measure. Second, in verse 8, notice that his goodness is gracious in character. Yahweh is gracious and compassionate, slow to anger and great in loving kindness. And verse 8 is really the central idea of this section on the goodness of God. And just as David heaped up words to describe God's greatness, here he heaps up words to describe God's goodness. And if this passage sounds familiar, it is because it is used. This is almost a word-for-word direct quotation from another passage of scripture that every Jew would have been familiar with. It's Exodus 34, verses 6 and 7. And I'm not going to ask you to turn there. You can if you want. I'm going to read to you a few passages from there. But Exodus 34, to give you the background of that, this takes place after the Exodus from Egypt, after the giving of the Ten Commandments, and after all of the instructions to build the tabernacle and the furniture for the tabernacle. And when Moses came down off of the mountain, he saw that the people were violating every last one of the Ten Commandments that he had listed and a whole bunch of others that were not listed. And God justly was incited to anger against the nation of Israel. Exodus 32, verse 10 says, Now, then let me alone, that my anger may burn against them and then I may consume them, and I will make of you a great nation. You know that Moses interceded with Yahweh and he relented and did not destroy them, but instead punished the people. And then the Lord told Moses to bring the people up, and Moses pleaded that the Lord would go with them. And then the Lord promised to go with them. Exodus 33:17, Yahweh 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. You have found favor in my sight, and I have known you by name. And Moses reckoned that if God was showing him favor and he had found favor, maybe he had found enough favor to see the face of God. So Moses said, Exodus 33, 18, I pray, show me your glory. Show me your glory. I want to see your face. I want to see you unveiled. And here's what the Lord said. Listen carefully. Moses asked to see God's glory. Here is what God said to him. I myself will make all my goodness pass before you. Goodness. Moses asked to see glory. God said, I'll show you my goodness. Because there is a sense in which his goodness and his glory are synonymous. I will make all my goodness pass before you, and I will proclaim the name of Yahweh before you. And I will be gracious to whom I will be gracious, and I will show compassion on whom I will show compassion. But he said, You cannot see my face, for no one can see me and live. So Yahweh put Moses in the cleft of the rock, covered him over so that he would not see the full undiluted glory of God, and passed before him. And when Yahweh's goodness passed before Moses, here's what we read in Exodus 34, 6 and 7. Yahweh passed in front of him and called out, Yahweh, Yahweh, God, compassionate and gracious, slow to anger and abounding in loving kindness and truth, who keeps righteousness for thousands, who forgives iniquity, transgression, and sin, yet he will by no means leave the guilty unpunished, visiting the iniquity of fathers on the children and on the grandchildren to the third and fourth generations. That was God's self-revelation to Moses. And that was what Israel needed to hear right in that moment. Remember, that was right on the heels of him coming down off the mountain and seeing what they were doing at the foot of the mountain in violation of his law. Israel needed to be reminded that God is compassionate and gracious, slow to anger and abounding in loving kindness. And here in Psalm 145, verse 8, that is almost a verbatim direct quotation from Exodus chapter 34, verses 6 and 7. You can see how many of the ideas, not only his greatness, but his glory and his goodness are paralleled here in Psalm 145. It is no stretch of the imagination to say that Psalm 145, or sorry, that Exodus 34 was in the backdrop of David's thinking while he is describing God here. I said several weeks ago when we started our series on the Psalms that the book of Psalms is the most quoted Old Testament book in the New Testament, and the Psalm 110 is the most quoted chapter from the Old Testament in the New Testament. Exodus 34, this description of God, is the most quoted verse in the Old Testament by the Old Testament. In other words, this verse, Psalm 34, verses 6 and 7, describing the nature of God, is referred to over and over and over again in the Old Testament. I'll give you some examples. Jonah, chapter 4, verse 2, Jonah prayed to Yahweh and said, Oh Yahweh, was not this my word to myself while I was still in my own land? Therefore I went ahead to flee to Tarshish. For I know that you are gracious and compassionate God, slow to anger and abundant loving kindness, and one who relents concerning evil. There, Jonah quoted back to God description of his own nature to justify why he was fleeing from God and disobeying. I knew you were compassionate.

Exodus 34:6 Exodus 32:10 Exodus 33:17 Psalms 145:8 Exodus 34:6 Psalms 34:6 Jonah 4:2

And I didn't want you to be compassionate to the Novites. So he took off. Psalm 103, verse 8, which we read earlier, Yahweh is compassionate and gracious, slow to anger and abounding in loving kindness. Psalm 86, 15, but you, O Lord, are a God compassionate and gracious, slow to anger and abundant in loving kindness. Joel chapter 2, verse 13. Now return to Yahweh your God, for he is gracious and compassionate, slow to anger, abounding in loving kindness and relenting concerning evil. This characteristic of God, his mercy, his abundant goodness and grace, is the most astounding thing about him. That he should be mighty, that he should judge the wicked, none of this should surprise us. But that he should be gracious to evildoers, to warn men of the judgment that is to come, to give them time to repent, that he would be patient and kind and gracious and willing to forgive. That is an astounding quality. In fact, God is so gracious and so long-suffering that we often take those things for granted. And then when judgment does fall upon a wicked world, we stand back and we say, whoa, whoa, whoa, wait, where did that come from? What's up with that? Flooding the entire world, destroying Sodom and Gomorrah, wrecking the temple in Jerusalem, destroying nations. Where did that come from? You and I should never confuse God's slowness to anger with his inability or his unwillingness to judge sin. The word slow to anger here is an interesting Hebrew idiom literally rendered, it would mean long-nosed or long in the nostrils. God is long-nosed. Now, that is not intended to be a quirk as to some physical deformity that God has, but it was an idiom that described long-suffering or the length of time that it takes for someone to get angry. The nose was associated with anger so that you can imagine how you snort or your nose gets red because your face gets red and your nose gets red. So if you are long-nosed in the Hebrew idiom, you are long to the point of anger. Somebody who was slow to anger would be described as short-nosed or short in the, sorry, one who is quick-tempered would be described as one who is short in the nostrils or short-nosed. His nose gets red like that, meaning he's quick to anger. Our God is long-nosed. Yet, the day of the Lord will come, like a thief in the night. Judgment eventually will fall. There will be a time when God will destroy the works of evil men, just as we've sung earlier. That will happen. But in the meantime, we should count the patience of God as salvation and remember that because he is gracious and compassionate, those characteristics, they are the reason why God keeps his promises even to us. In fact, in the book of Micah, verse 7, chapter 7, verses 18 to 20, listen to these three verses that describe how God's grace results in him keeping his promises. Micah 7: Who is a God like you who forgives iniquity and passes over the transgressions of the remnant of his people? He does not hold fast to his anger forever because he delights in loving kindness. He will again have compassion on us. He will subdue our iniquities and you will cast all their sins into the depths of the sea. You will give truth to Jacob and loving kindness to Abraham, which you swore to our fathers from the days of old. How can you and I have confidence that God will keep his every word to us? That he will not forsake us on the day of judgment, that he will not condemn us along with the wicked? How can we have that confidence? Because God is gracious and he is good. And because he is so, we can be confident that he will keep his promises. His covenant and his faithfulness are everlasting toward you. His grace and his righteousness have been lavished upon you in Christ, and his loving kindness is never failing. Spurgeon said that God is greatly good to the greatly guilty. I love that. God is greatly good to the greatly guilty. All because he is gracious and compassionate, slow to anger and abounding in loving kindness. So our God's goodness is abundant in its measure. It is gracious in its character. And third, I want you to notice in verse 9 that it is universal in its scope. Yahweh is good to all and his compassions are over all his works. All of creation reveals the goodness of God. In spite of the fact that sin has marred this creation, that it currently exists under a curse, in spite of the fact that there is death and disease and destruction, and that our rebellion has marred this perfect creation, and all creation today groans under that curse. In spite of that, we see the goodness of God revealed in all of creation all around us. It is displayed in God's provision for his creatures, in the delights of life that you and I enjoy, the comforts.

Psalms 103:8 Joel 2:13

And conveniences and ease and the goodness of good food and good drink and good times with friends and with family, fellowship and worship and church, comforts and ease, the pleasures of recreation and family and celebrations, and even the stay of execution that the wicked enjoy at this moment, all of that demonstrates the goodness of God. His goodness truly is over all his works, including the wicked. Look down in this very psalm, Psalm 145. Look at verses 14 to 16 as a description later on of this goodness. Yahweh sustains all who fall down and raises up all who are bowed down. The eyes of all wait on you and you give them their food in due time. You open your hand and satisfy the desire of every living thing. The benevolence of God and the gifts to all of his creatures in all of his creation, showering it with undeserved goodness, even while it groans under the curse of sin, is an evidence of his infinite and unsearchable goodness. But what about the wicked? Does God show goodness to the wicked temporarily and in light of eternity, briefly in this life? Yes, he does. Again, his nature is to be benevolent and gracious and merciful and patient. And the fact that the wicked are not at this moment judged and cast into eternal damnation is a display of God's goodness over all his works. For he is kindly disposed, even to those who hate him. And even those who curse him with their lips get to eat good food, steak and pizza with those same lips. And the fact that they can do that with their lips is evidence of his goodness. Just that alone. Spurgeon said this: he allows his enemies to live. He even supplies them with food and smooths their way with many comforts. For them, the sun shines as brightly as if they were saints, and the rain waters their fields as plentifully as if they were perfect men. Is this not goodness to all? And it is. God does not show the same goodness to the wicked that he shows to those who are righteous through Christ. The impenitent wicked will not inherit the kingdom. They will not escape the wrath that is to come. You and I, believers in Jesus Christ, have been granted every spiritual blessing in heavenly places in him. All of the promises are ours. We will receive all that has been promised. We are co-heirs with Christ. We will ascend his throne with him. We will rule in the new creation, the new heavens and earth with him. We will enjoy the resurrection to life. We will enjoy life and glory in a paradise that is to come forever and ever. God's people, those in Christ, will experience every ultimate good that can be experienced, every infinite and eternal good, while the wicked will not. And though the wicked will not, God still shows them undeserved kindness and amiableness in this life. J.I. Packer said this, and I think it's a key distinction: God is good to all men in some ways and to some men in all ways. Hear it again: God is good to all men in some ways, and he is good to some men in all ways. You and I are the ones to whom God is good in all ways. And what about the judgments that are to come? How does the judgment of God against the wicked relate to his goodness? History is full of his temporal judgments like the flood, the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah, the destruction of Israel and Jerusalem, and even the coming day of the Lord, which is yet to pass. But during those judgments, does God run out of goodness? Does he run out of patience? Is his goodness exhausted? Does he stop being good just long enough to judge the wicked? Will eternal conscious torment of the wicked conflict with his goodness forever and ever? And will his goodness be eclipsed by those judgments? God's judgments are good and they are expressions of his goodness. Even when those judgments fall upon people that we love and that we are close to in this world, they are still expressions of his goodness. God's triumph over sin, over lawlessness and over wickedness, his execution of justice against evil rebels, his vindication of his people and the destruction of the wicked, these are good things. They are good things. And we will praise him for that goodness for all of eternity. As difficult as it is for you and I to understand and appreciate right now, sitting here this morning, we will praise God for his infinite goodness expressed in his judgment of the wicked, even though that judgment will fall upon people whom right now we love dearly. The reason why we can't

Feel that now is because we are not glorified and we do not see sin the way that God sees sin. And we do not understand judgment and goodness the way God understands judgment and goodness. Even justice, when it is executed, will be an expression of God's goodness. For it is good for God to judge and punish lawbreakers, and it is good when evil men and their works are destroyed. It will be good for his kingdom. It will be good for his creation. It will be good for his glory. It will be good for his people. Psalm 145, verse 20 says, Yahweh keeps all who love him, but all the wicked he will destroy. That is a good thing, and we will rejoice in it. Right now, God shows his goodness through his patience with the wicked. And in the future, God will show his goodness through his judgment on the wicked. So let the mouths of all God's chosen ones, all of his people, pour forth praise and thanks to him for his abundant goodness. He is good to those who have trusted him. He is good to forgive our sins and to give us his righteousness. He is good to judge the wicked. He is good to be patient even now, to offer any and all who have never repented the opportunity to do so. Even now, that goodness of God should lead you to repentance if you are not in Christ, and that goodness of God should cause you to trust in him. For those who are in Christ, believer, there is no way for you and I to express the abundant goodness that you have received from God's hand. All eternity will display that goodness, and you and I will enjoy expression after expression of his goodness forever, and we will never plumb the depths of it. We will never reach the edge of it, and we will never be too full of it. His goodness will be lavished upon those who are in his son, for that abundant goodness is laid up, it is stored up for you in Christ. And so we can join the happy chorus that is described in verse 10 of our passage. All your works, O Yahweh, shall give thanks to you, and your holy ones shall bless you. This is the appropriate response of a redeemed people who have tasted a goodness that is abundant in measure, gracious in its character, and universal in its scope. Let's pray together.

Psalms 145:20