Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] I feel like theology, at least the way we maybe imagine it, while we're thinking of the word, theology can get a little complicated sometimes. And I think we could boil it down to, and I believe this deeply, that God is love and God is good.
[00:00:25] That's what I know about God. Now. We can get more complicated. If you want to, we can do that. And that's not wrong.
[00:00:34] But you will never be wrong with God is love and God is good.
[00:00:44] Similarly, when I look at the world around me, and I don't mean, you know how sometimes preachers will talk about the world, you know, like that kind of like them out there are worse than wussing here. You know, that kind of. I don't know why I went full wrestling there, but there's like this competitiveness that sometimes churches have with the out there and the animosity that exists. Those are just people who just need Jesus.
[00:01:19] They just need the God of love and the God that is good.
[00:01:23] But if you go into the. I don't mean just them, I mean the world, the brokenness of the world.
[00:01:35] And sometimes brokenness just feels like being broke, whether it's financially or emotionally or you're just struggling to get by day to day, just.
[00:01:51] That can be complicated.
[00:01:56] And you go day to day. And sometimes days are great and then sometimes it's one thing after another.
[00:02:06] We never say that phrase excitedly, do we?
[00:02:12] We never say, well, look at that. One thing after another.
[00:02:19] I don't know why I got some of you looking at me like, well, I was on the riverboats last week and it was one thing, you know, you rascals.
[00:02:29] But no, there's a, like you never, you never say that. As if, like when you see negative things, one thing after another, sometimes it can feel as though the life, the negative side of life, the evil side of life just doesn't quit.
[00:02:51] And I know you've been there and you guys have been with me as my family has been there throughout the past year and a half. It just feels like one thing after another at times.
[00:03:03] And you step back and you go, what in the world? This is like the worst domino falling ever.
[00:03:10] Just one thing after another. And then when you grieve while you're grieving, you're not your best self, stuff happens. Like you're just, you getting, you get in arguments with your in laws and you get, you have difficult family situations. The worst times I've ever seen in families is when someone they love dies and instead of grieving it, they just fight over the jewelry and y'all probably been there too.
[00:03:43] It seems as though the brokenness of the world, the brokenness of this place, at times it just compounds upon itself, it seems.
[00:04:04] And so when I say God is love and God is good, I don't feel like a whole lot of people have trouble with the God is love part.
[00:04:18] But I think sometimes we can go through life, go through situations in our life and just wonder. Just wonder. And God can handle. This is very important. God can handle your wonder and your wandering.
[00:04:36] God can handle when you don't know. And you never ask God a question that makes God upset.
[00:04:48] There's no verklemptness with God. That's a word. Look it up.
[00:04:53] There's none of that. It's just God understands what we're going through. He knows what life is like. He came to earth, lived a life, died a death. God knows what it's like and he knows what it's like to say, in the garden of your darkest night, does this have to happen?
[00:05:21] Is this what's going on? To be confused, to be scared, to be sad?
[00:05:30] So God is love. Yes. But is God good?
[00:05:34] And the question oftentimes is, if God is good and God has a plan for my life, then why do all these bad things happen? And I always hit time out there and I said, you said something in there that I'm not for.
[00:05:50] Because the way we talk about plan at least can be complicated.
[00:05:57] Like I have a plan for the day and then I have a plan for who I want to be. And those are two different plans God has. If you want to say God has a plan for you, it's not step by step mapped out your life, but more of who does God want you to be within the chaos around you?
[00:06:31] Because it can get real dangerous talking about God's plan when God has a plan. Like I'll tell you this, My daughters are 16 and 72.
[00:06:49] Their ages, 16 and 15. Clara and Macy. And they are in high school and they go to. They went to a high school devotional thing that wasn't with our church, but it was just like a bunch of people together.
[00:07:05] And this was after my dad had passed away suddenly and we had eyes on the end of my younger brother's life.
[00:07:15] We knew that was coming pretty quick.
[00:07:20] And my daughters could not Hear about God's good plan for your life one more time and believe it.
[00:07:35] Now, this does not mean that they didn't believe God is good, but they knew that that idea that, like, was it God's idea for my dad to die suddenly Was that somehow God's like God had a map, and he opened up his calendar and said, well, today's Roger Neely's Day, no.
[00:07:57] 100. And this is good theology. Death is awful.
[00:08:04] Death is bad. It wasn't intended. God pulled back from creation when he created it, and he did not create death when he said, that is good.
[00:08:16] He did not create cancer or diabetes or heart problems or. He didn't create that and say, oh, then those things will be good, too. They'll be good.
[00:08:29] They'll teach a character.
[00:08:32] Now, God can use all brokenness with his goodness, but we shouldn't, therefore, then confuse all brokenness as somehow being the effect of God's goodness.
[00:08:50] So if Nolan were to spill milk at our house, which happens. Not now. He's almost 11. He's not gonna. He doesn't do that a lot. But all kids go through that age where they just don't see cups on a table. It's like five, six. They just reach through them to grab something else. Kids will just knock over drinks, and it spills. Now, at 5 or 6, they don't know what to do when they do that. They just hit it, and then they watch it, and they go, ah.
[00:09:25] They freeze.
[00:09:28] And that's understandable.
[00:09:34] So I run and I grab a paper towel. I pull the paper towel off.
[00:09:40] I get too many. That's what men do. I just pull too many out. I'm like, I'm gonna need a lot, you know? And I pull it off, and then I.
[00:09:48] And I show Nolan or show our kids what to do.
[00:09:54] And so when I pull that off and I take that over and I show him, I say, hey, buddy, when you spill something, go get.
[00:10:03] Go get a paper towel. Here, come with me. And we go and we lay the paper towel down, and we work together. Now, that's a small thing for me, but that could end up being a core memory of his where, like, we worked together, and I showed him what to do and how to act when things spill.
[00:10:26] But it would be kind of crazy for him to later then say, you know, I think dad made me spill that milk because he wanted to show me something.
[00:10:40] En contraire.
[00:10:43] Pardon my French.
[00:10:53] I don't want my kids spilling things.
[00:10:57] I would prefer it if there were no spillable cups.
[00:11:01] I would prefer, like, let's. Let's not. I don't want to have to do this. This isn't what we were hoping for when we sat down for dinner. But even God does not get what God is hoping for. Read your Bible.
[00:11:17] God hopes that the whole people of Israel will be a kingdom of priests to all nations. And they made it 32 chapters.
[00:11:26] And he had to get the Levites to figure it out.
[00:11:32] This God is not getting what God wants. So God came as Jesus to get us when we wouldn't show up on our own.
[00:11:45] And what we see in God in creation is not a God who creates bad things, but a God who creates good things. That what we get from God is good and we have done ourselves, I think a disservice sometimes in this theology of Jesus died for your sins and he has a plan for your life. Like throwing that sentence in there willy nilly is I think detrimental to our faith.
[00:12:19] Because as soon as something bad happens, then all of a sudden we're like, well, what was God doing then? As if God had the puppet strings on a world and he's causing all of these awful things to happen.
[00:12:36] When a tsunami hits, a tornado strikes or a hurricane rolls in, God is not in the middle of that. God is in the hands of and the feet of the people who show up to help afterward. The people grabbing the paper towel and mopping up the spill.
[00:12:54] The people who feed those who need food, people who are helping. God's there brokenness of creation is not God.
[00:13:07] And sure God can teach us something in the brokenness. God can be with us and encourage our relationships in the brokenness. But do not get it confused that somehow that equation works backwards and God is making it hurt.
[00:13:25] God is good from the very beginning.
[00:13:32] This first poem in Genesis 1 says in the beginning, when God created the heavens and the earth, the earth was. And let's just sit in this first couple of verses here. The earth was formless and void and darkness covered the face of the deep.
[00:14:05] I don't like this new revised standard. The spirit of God. It should be the spirit of God there. Although wind and breath and spirit in Hebrew are all the same word, word. So it can get confusing at times. The ruach of God was over the earth.
[00:14:24] But let's look at the first little form here.
[00:14:30] Now this is not, I don't think, a science lesson.
[00:14:36] I don't think the Bible here is trying to tell us exactly how, what the world looked like when the world was created. But those who put this poem together are telling us something about God. We take this sometimes to be about creation. And it is, but it's a story about creation to tell us something about God.
[00:15:04] In the beginning, when God created the heavens and the earth, the earth was formless and void. So there's no structure in. It's empty, it's chaotic. There's darkness that's covering. So darkness is a way of talking about evil. And, like, it's dark. Even. That carries all the way into the Gospels. Remember, when Nicodemus comes to Jesus and John says at night, he's very interested. And if you read the Gospel of John, all things that are difficult happen at night, bad happen at night, and all things that are good happen in the day.
[00:15:40] He wants to show us this darkness that still exists in this creation.
[00:15:49] Darkness covered the face of the deep. Now we don't. We think about the ocean, and we think, oh, a getaway. Like, that's our. Like, I'm gonna sit and read, and some of you build sandcastles and run on the beach, which is crazy to me. There's books. Books exist.
[00:16:07] Sit down, shade up, you know, read a book, see people running by at the beach. And I just think, what are they?
[00:16:17] But we think of the ocean, the deep, as something that's fantastic and exciting.
[00:16:24] But when they saw the deep, when they thought of the deepness, they thought of something unknown. Like all of the creatures and evil in the world, in their worldview, existed in the deep. That's why every time Jesus calms a storm, the very next story is him casting out a demon. In the scriptures, in the gospel.
[00:16:48] And so from the jump, all that's bad in the world is there. Darkness, emptiness, void without form, chaotic, the deep. And then God's spirit shows up.
[00:17:11] Then God said, let there be light. The very first thing is to shine a light on the darkness, the void, the sea.
[00:17:22] Sea still exists.
[00:17:24] Everything's still unstructured.
[00:17:27] But God shines a light.
[00:17:30] And God saw that that light was good. And God separated the light from the darkness. Now, notice here, we don't get the sun until day four.
[00:17:44] Sun, moon, and stars are a day four, creation.
[00:17:49] But God calls the light day, and the darkness he called night. And there was evening and morning, the first day.
[00:17:59] And that's how creation goes. And it makes sense if you think about it, because day one, two, and three, God is setting up space like spaces. He's arranging. And then day four, five, and six, he's filling.
[00:18:16] So day one, he separates light from darkness. Day two, he the waters above from the waters below. So the sky and the sea. And day three, he manipulates the sea.
[00:18:29] It's important to notice. He doesn't say, let there be dry land that exists. No, it says, God pulled back the waters and there was dry land.
[00:18:46] God functions like that sometimes. Pull Back the evil and see what is stable.
[00:18:54] So he spends those days, day one, two, and three. Light and dark, waters above, waters below, separating the land from the sea.
[00:19:03] And he spends those days setting up space. And then he what he separated, he then therefore fills in the remaining days. So day one, he separates light from dark. Day four. Or he has sun, moon and stars.
[00:19:18] They govern the day and the night. So he fills the light and the dark.
[00:19:25] Day two, separates the waters above, waters below. Day five, birds, fish, fills.
[00:19:39] Day three, creates land.
[00:19:41] Day six, it's all that is that walks along the land. And even man himself.
[00:19:50] So there's the creating of space. Day one, two, three, the filling of the space. Four, five, and six. Easy peasy.
[00:19:59] And every time separates light from the darkness. He says it is good. He labels it. He calls it something. So God isn't just good, but what God creates is good.
[00:20:12] Separates the water from water above and the water below. It is good. Pulls back the sea to reveal dry land. It is good. He has. He keeps going.
[00:20:23] He says, sun, moon and stars. It is good.
[00:20:27] Fish and fish and the birds of the fish of the sea, birds of the air. It is good. Creates the cattle and all living things that walk along the ground and eat the vegetation. And he says, it is good.
[00:20:41] And then he creates man.
[00:20:45] And what does he say?
[00:20:47] Not it is good.
[00:20:49] Nope, he says, it is yours.
[00:20:57] Then he pulls back later and says, it is very good. But when he creates man, he says, look, verse 29. This is the scripture Megan read.
[00:21:08] God said, see? And he's talking here to his creation.
[00:21:13] Man, male and female. Actually, here in Genesis 1.
[00:21:19] See, I've given you every plant yielding seed that is upon the face of all the Earth. And every tree with seed and its fruit, you shall have them for food. And I've given you every beast of the earth and every bird of the air. To everything that creeps on the earth, everything that has breath of life, I have given every green plant for food.
[00:21:48] He's saying, I created this.
[00:21:54] And here it is.
[00:22:01] When we found out Rachel was pregnant for the first time. This was a long time ago.
[00:22:11] Sixteen years, we've established.
[00:22:14] And we were so young.
[00:22:23] I was 24. Rachel was 22.
[00:22:30] So young.
[00:22:32] We didn't know anything.
[00:22:37] We hadn't read books.
[00:22:42] But thankfully, we worked at a church.
[00:22:48] And everybody has so many opinions.
[00:22:54] So many.
[00:22:57] That's so good.
[00:22:58] Now, they differed from one another on a regular basis, but at least we were getting some opinions even. We read even some baby books.
[00:23:12] We realized later that, like, unless you open A baby book and a baby crawls out. You don't learn a ton until that really weird, really unique little kid shows up.
[00:23:28] And they're their own thing.
[00:23:34] They were all so different and all so good.
[00:23:42] We were so excited to bring them home to this room we had painted for them.
[00:23:52] We love those bright colors for kids and then wonder why they don't sleep well.
[00:24:02] We painted the room pink and purple and we walked in with this little baby and we said, this is yours.
[00:24:14] Do you know she didn't care.
[00:24:18] Completely unacceptable. The lack of appreciation a one day old baby has for the work you've put into their room is unacceptable.
[00:24:33] But I do think somehow this place that God has created for us, he gives it to us and we're almost on the same level.
[00:24:46] Like we will eventually find it all beautiful and good, but maybe we're quite not mature enough yet to appreciate it.
[00:25:00] Now again, hear me well. I'm not saying all the bad stuff is secretly good. That's a good critic. That's a Christian thing we say and it's nonsense. Bad stuff is bad.
[00:25:12] God can use it, but it doesn't make it good.
[00:25:16] Bad stuff is bad.
[00:25:20] But the things that God creates, the gifts that God gives, they are good and they're for you.
[00:25:35] God is good.
[00:25:37] Not just as an idea. God is good in your general direction.
[00:25:47] God has blessed you because God is good and you can't work it backwards and say, well, the people that are really blessed, they must be really good and God gives them more because they have more faith. And that's nonsense.
[00:26:07] God is good and God is love.
[00:26:14] And that doesn't negate the bad in the world, but it allows us to be present and be able to parse out. At least the goodness of God remains true and steady.
[00:26:35] And God steps back and saw everything that he had made.
[00:26:44] And indeed it was very good.
[00:26:49] There was evening and there was morning, the sixth day. And then God rests and a lot of other things happen and evil comes into the world and people get their own ideas and feel like their way is better than God's and so on and so forth. Like we eventually mess up to the point where evil exists in the world.
[00:27:17] But we have got to stop giving God the credit for evil.
[00:27:25] God is good.
[00:27:31] We've got to stop letting God justify hatred.
[00:27:37] God is love.
[00:27:41] And when the darkest of times hit, and they will.
[00:27:46] And unfortunately the dark times don't hit and run, they show up and camp out.
[00:27:57] When the dark times hit, we are not leaning on, well, this is what God wanted. You know what God wants life sacrificed his son and resurrected him to bring life where what God wants in this world is for his goodness to be prevalent even amongst the darkness and the evil.
[00:28:29] And so the goodness of God hold strong in the darkness of the world when we sing about it, when we proclaim is not. We don't declare the goodness of God like it's some sort of sugary drink that we pretend that's all, that's all that's good in the world. Everything's great and everything's happy and everything's fine. I have found that the goodness of God has got me through the darkest of moments because I know those moments aren't from God.
[00:29:19] But God shows up and God conquers death and God is good.
[00:29:30] You may be going through it right now.
[00:29:33] We want to pray with you. You want to come down in front? I'll pray with you. I'll turn my mic off.
[00:29:39] We have people in the back who are willing to pray with you.
[00:29:43] If you don't want to walk, just grab a stranger next to you and say, let's pray.
[00:29:49] Whatever you need.
[00:29:51] This morning, we want to bring you in front of the God who is good and show you the God of good.
[00:30:03] Let's stand and sing together.
