Good

Luke 18:19 NIV

"Why do you call me good?" Jesus answered. "No one is good — except God alone.”

What Is Really Good?

Can I be blamed for thinking that California is one of the best places on Earth to live?  Of course there is much that is wrong with the state but nearly all of its problems can be pinned on the values and actions of those who live there.  There is something to be said though of a region that has both Yosemite and Muir Woods, the beaches of San Diego and the San Francisco Bay.  California certainly isn’t perfect but there are some aspects of it that approach perfection.  I was driving with a friend through Mississippi and he introduced me to the woods there, pointing out how lovely the forests were.  It was about like when I went with a classmate to visit his family living in Southwest Missouri and he commented on the beauty of the Ozark Mountains.  Now I am not one to denigrate another person’s “pride and joy”  but I had difficulty complimenting the skinny pine trees of Mississippi after hiking through redwood groves in the Sierra Nevada Mountains.  And I must say that there are mountains and then there are MOUNTAINS.  Who am I to tell someone what to like and not like.  Perhaps New York pizza really is better than Chicago style and Japanese cars are better than Russian ones.  Yet am I correct in telling you that you would be happier living in the San Francisco Bay Area than you would be  staying in Amsterdam or Beijing, or Branson, Missouri?  We have a right to our opinions…and every one of us has them!

Goodness has the feeling of being just another aspect of opinion.  If you say you’re good, does that mean you are?  Serial killers and pedophiles and vandals who tag sidewalks may say they are good and really believe they are but is it true?  Probably even Stalin’s mom saw something good in him and Hitler was respected and honored by quite a few people.  It is funny though how easy it is for us to see the good in ourselves and not see it in others.  We use a sort of sliding scale when we evaluate people…whether it is ourselves or others.  Part of the reason we can see good in “bad” people is that there still is in each of us the hint of the good God put in us when he made us.  It may not be developed goodness or disciplined goodness we see, it might only be strand of what was left in us when the Lord put us together but it is there and we fool ourselves into thinking that is who we are rather than the hint of the good of God Himself. 

The account of James and John thinking they were good because they wanted fire to come down from heaven and burn up a poor Samaritan village because the people had the audacity to not want to pay to feed and house Jesus and His disciples is too true to human nature ever to have been fabricated.  As the time approached for him to be taken up to heaven, Jesus resolutely set out for Jerusalem.  And he sent messengers on ahead, who went into a Samaritan village to get things ready for him; but the people there did not welcome him, because he was heading for Jerusalem.  When the disciples James and John saw this, they asked, "Lord, do you want us to call fire down from heaven to destroy them?"   But Jesus turned and rebuked them,  and they went to another village. (Luke 9:51-55 NIV)  I am sure, and probably you are too, that James and John thought they meant well, thought their hearts were in the right place but clearly Jesus saw things differently.  It was not good that fueled their anger at the Samaritans although if you had asked them before Jesus rebuked them, they probably would have seen themselves as good people.  You and I can’t judge them.  We might just as well have said exactly what James and John did if we were there.  This though is the problem with the strand of good we all have and make much of.  All too many of us think we are so good that we don’t need God…don’t need Him to significantly change us, don’t need Him to remake us.

I can’t imagine Jesus was very happy with one of the discussions the disciples had when He was gone.  If it were not for the fact that it was so very telling of the human condition, we might get a good laugh at it.  Also a dispute arose among them as to which of them was considered to be greatest.  Jesus said to them, "The kings of the Gentiles lord it over them; and those who exercise authority over them call themselves Benefactors.  But you are not to be like that. Instead, the greatest among you should be like the youngest, and the one who rules like the one who serves. (Luke 22:24-26 NIV)  Now if we just think a bit about this whole argument, there is a critical observation we must make.  At no point do the disciples consider what part God must play in their lives for them to be good!  It is all about them and their abilities, their morality, their skills, their religion.  God is not even needed.  Did they have to be saved?  Was there any hint in them that salvation was required?  It is fascinating, this strange reluctance to see ourselves, to really look at who we are without God.  We have that strand of good in us to keep us content but the truth of who we are eventually hits us.  We need a Savior.

Consider the sad case of Joseph and his brothers.  Joseph’s brothers were fed up with Joseph.  They had enough of Joseph being the favorite of their father, enough of his proud strutting about with his fancy coat and enough of the dreams he claimed to have had that according to Joseph foretold that they all, even their mothers and father would bow before Joseph one day as if he were some sort of king.  The boys decided to fix Joseph and with their dad not around, sold him into slavery.  So when Joseph came to his brothers, they stripped him of his robe — the richly ornamented robe he was wearing — and they took him and threw him into the cistern. Now the cistern was empty; there was no water in it.  As they sat down to eat their meal, they looked up and saw a caravan of Ishmaelites coming from Gilead. Their camels were loaded with spices, balm and myrrh, and they were on their way to take them down to Egypt.  Judah said to his brothers, "What will we gain if we kill our brother and cover up his blood?  Come, let's sell him to the Ishmaelites and not lay our hands on him; after all, he is our brother, our own flesh and blood." His brothers agreed.  So when the Midianite merchants came by, his brothers pulled Joseph up out of the cistern and sold him for twenty shekels of silver to the Ishmaelites, who took him to Egypt. (Genesis 37:23-28 NIV)

Evil like that is tough to comprehend.  How could anyone do such a thing and yet it was done.  Each one of those brothers thought he was a better person than Joseph.  Each believed Joseph was arrogant, selfish and self-righteous.  You don’t sell your brother into slavery if you haven’t decided he is pretty bad.  Here is the irony of this.  Each brother felt like he was good, a decent soul because that strand of good was in him, and yet…At least two of them became murderers, one slept with his father’s common-law wife and one sought out prostitutes after his wife died.  We don’t know about the rest…they were at least bad enough to sell their own brother into slavery.  Here is what we see in all of us.  Each brother thought he was the good one…at least better than his brother was and each brother thought his brother was worse than he was, more evil and needing to be fixed.

There is a passage in Isaiah that does not receive the attention it deserves.  It has a profound message describing what God is going to do with us.  He will save us, that is true…or we should say He does save us.  The prophecy was made eight hundred years before Jesus brought us our salvation though and it says something quite important about what that salvation will do for us.  A voice of one calling: "In the desert prepare the way for the Lord; make straight in the wilderness a highway for our God.  Every valley shall be raised up, every mountain and hill made low; the rough ground shall become level, the rugged places a plain.  And the glory of the Lord will be revealed, and all mankind together will see it.  For the mouth of the Lord has spoken." (Isaiah 40:3-5 NIV)  You and I are that desert.  You are the one God will Himself make right so that you are a fit place for Him to live.  The good you think is good will be made perfect.  No strand of self-righteousness will be left to it for God Himself in Christ will make it truly good.  The evil in you will be leveled, and torn out and the glory of the LORD will be revealed in you.  Everyone will see it…that you are perfect, lovely in every way.  God will walk in you and make His home in you and nothing, not the worst of your sins, not the ugliest of evil that could ever be found in you will be there anymore.  There will be no corrupted goodness, no pretend morality or broken love or fractured peace.  Only goodness, real goodness that perfect God can make of you.  He has spoken.  And once again God will say of you.  “You are very good.”

The Worthiness of Jesus: Will

Psalm 143:10 NIV

Teach me to do your will, for you are my God; may your good Spirit lead me on level ground.

How Are You Aligned?

In England, it used to be called an “electric torch”, in the US it is known as a flashlight.  The elderly woman who owns the home we are renting was taken to live in a nursing home and among the thousands of items she left behind that we have had to clear out of the house were half a dozen flashlights.  She had them all stacked in the front room which would have been convenient I guess if someone were breaking into the home at night and wanted to know what to steal without turning on the lights.  However, the only problem was that only one of the six flashlights worked.  The batteries had all corroded and so I took them out, wiped down the battery compartments and bought new batteries for the three flashlights not ruined.  Here was the catch.  You have to align the batteries properly for the flashlights to work.  No joke, the positive end of each battery must touch the correct terminal for it to work.  Because these flashlights required two batteries, every battery had to be aligned correctly for them to each work.

Of course it is silly to waste time on this but what is important is how you are aligned.  How are you aligned with regard to your internet browsing, your relationship with your husband or wife, the way you respond to difficult people?  How are you aligned in your use of money, your expression of anger or the types of words you choose in conversations?  How are you aligned with the people at work or school, with the movies you choose or the TV shows you watch?  How are you aligned with the troubles you face and the trials you are encountering?  How are you aligned in regard to what you say about others when they aren’t with you?  What is your alignment with the Bible, with the Church, with God?

Alignment is always a matter of the will.  Each of us has a will, it is what determines how we decide and what we decide.  The Bible makes two assumptions with regard to the will.  Human beings all have a will.  Each of us is free to make choices…important choices and trivial choices and we are accountable for the choices we make.  The second assumption with regard to the will is that our will is either aligned with God or with Satan at any given moment.  This is made clear throughout the Bible.  The will mostly operates in micro decisions that seem trivial and inconsequential.  But if your will is aligned with God, even the micro decisions are done through Him.  If though your will is aligned with Satan, what may seem to be insignificant decisions might have macro ramifications depending where your will was aligned.  For example, the micro decision to argue with your husband about his work schedule may be reasonable but was your will aligned with God in it?  If not, how could it affect each of you?  You might make the micro decision to go out with your friends and not study for your test but was that decision aligned with God or Satan?   It is your will that makes these decisions and if your will is aligned with God, every decision you make will turn out for your good but if your will is aligned with Satan, then it is never for your good even if the decision seems to work out for you at the moment!  Whatever decision you make that is aligned with the will of Satan is sin and the wages of sin is always death.

When King David made the decision to count all the fighting men in Israel, it seemed reasonable to him.  We find in 1 Chronicles 21 that David had aligned his will with Satan not realizing perhaps that was the case.  Satan rose up against Israel and incited David to take a census of Israel.  So David said to Joab and the commanders of the troops, "Go and count the Israelites from Beersheba to Dan. Then report back to me so that I may know how many there are." (1 Chronicles 21:1-2 NIV)  David was not a puppet of Satan.  He made the choice freely to call for the census but his will was aligned with that of Satan which explains his decision.  Even the deceitful and murderous Joab, his general, could see that David was acting badly in this but David could not be dissuaded.  But Joab replied, "May the Lord multiply his troops a hundred times over. My lord the king, are they not all my lord's subjects? Why does my lord want to do this? Why should he bring guilt on Israel?"  The king's word, however, overruled Joab… (1 Chronicles 21:3-4 NIV)  Of course, to David, this was a wise and proper decision to count the fighting men.  It was reasonable to him to know just how many soldiers he could count on having if he went to war. He probably was not even aware that he had aligned his will with that of Satan’s and you would have had a very tough time making him see it.  It was only later that he realized the ramifications of what he had done in siding with Satan.  This command was also evil in the sight of God; so he punished Israel.  Then David said to God, "I have sinned greatly by doing this. Now, I beg you, take away the guilt of your servant. I have done a very foolish thing." (1 Chronicles 21:7-8 NIV)

A second example should be considered; that of the king before David, Saul, who went against the will of God and offered a sacrifice to the Lord anyway.  The Lord through the prophet Samuel gave Saul clear instructions in his fight with the Amalekites.  “This is what the Lord Almighty says: 'I will punish the Amalekites for what they did to Israel when they waylaid them as they came up from Egypt.  Now go, attack the Amalekites and totally destroy everything that belongs to them. Do not spare them; put to death men and women, children and infants, cattle and sheep, camels and donkeys.'" (1 Samuel 15:2-3 NIV)  Saul though was afraid of what his soldiers would think if he did this; they wanted the best of the cattle and sheep spared.  Saul also, in a piece of convoluted logic, believed that if he sacrificed some of the cattle and sheep to God, the Lord would be proud of his piety.  Saul was greatly mistaken.  God’s response to Saul through the prophet Samuel was fierce.  “Because you have rejected the word of the Lord, he has rejected you as king." (1 Samuel 15:23 NIV)

Perhaps Saul really believed that he was doing what was best when he decided to save the choice cattle and sheep from slaughter but in making this choice, he was aligning his will with the will of Satan.  Logical choices can be Satanic choices and decisions aligned with the will of God do not always make sense.   Just consider the decision of King Jehoshaphat to send his small band of soldiers up against the vast army of the Ammonites, Moabites and Edomites.  Rather than sue for peace, he aligned himself with the will of God.  The Lord told him through the prophet Jahziel, “You will not have to fight this battle. Take up your positions; stand firm and see the deliverance the Lord will give you, O Judah and Jerusalem. Do not be afraid; do not be discouraged. Go out to face them tomorrow, and the Lord will be with you." (2 Chronicles 20:17 NIV)  It was not logical for Jehoshaphat’s little army to go to battle with the invading foreign hosts but they did because Jehoshaphat and the rest of the people of Judah aligned themselves with the will of God and trusted Him with the outcome.

When Jesus Christ faced the terrors of the Cross, He made a solemn commitment to the Father while praying in the Garden of Gethsemane.  "Father, if you are willing, take this cup from me; yet not my will, but yours be done." (Luke 22:42 NIV)  It was the Father’s will for Christ to die on the Cross so that He might destroy the Sin of the world.  To follow that will of the Father, Jesus had to be beaten, His flesh torn by whips and then take the Cross as His way of death.  Nothing could argue for such a choice except only this.  He believed the will of the Father to be good.  Satan argued otherwise.  Satan’s will was that Jesus could take another way to bring the world to Him…an easier way, a more comfortable way.  Satan seemed wise and sensible but in the end our Lord’s decision was clear and certain.  The Father’s will was good and it would be the Father’s will that would be done.  Jesus’ alignment to the very end was with the Father.  Do you believe the will of Christ to be good?  Have you made that decision, that regardless of how things seem, the will of Christ is good?  Are you clear in this that the will of Satan is wicked regardless of how good it seems?

Suppose you had been put in a Nazi Concentration Camp and one of the guards was more brutal than all the others.  He made you and others strip down just so he could stare at you, he beat prisoners out of cruelty, he insulted and ridiculed you and was rumored to have raped several women in the camp.  He was particularly cruel to your sister who died while there.  After the war, you come face to face with this guard.  He has just become a Christian and stretches out his hand to greet you.  You look long and hard into the eyes of this man.  You must at this moment decide where your loyalty lies.  Whose will shall you choose?  Will it be that of Satan or of God?  The scripture has come to your mind and you cannot just discard the memory of it.  "You have heard that it was said, 'Love your neighbor and hate your enemy.' But I tell you: Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, that you may be sons of your Father in heaven… (Matthew 5: 43-45 NIV) The temptation of Satan is to renounce your absolute loyalty to the Father and walk away from this man without touching him.  But the will of Christ is clear.  How do you respond?  Whose will shall rule over you as you fix your eyes upon the guard who wants to shake your hand?

How is your will aligned right now?  Is it aligned with the easy and comfortable will of Satan who smiles warmly as you and I decide what to do?  Is it aligned with the sometimes difficult and perhaps even painful will of Jesus who waits silently for you to decide?  How will you align yourself as you choose the kingdom that has your supreme loyalty?  How will your will be aligned this week?  Align it one way and it brings light to the world.  The other way only offers darkness.  How will you align yourself today?