Knowing God: Experience & Love Him

The Goodness of God (Psalm 31:19)

Assured that all our Lord’s requests
and plans are good.

Paul J. Bucknell

Series Introduction| Knowing God | The Revelatory God | Goodness of God | Holiness of God

Goodness of God handout pdf | Video
Life Questions | Genesis 1 & Goodness | Other Scripture & Goodness | Two Worldviews of Self | Difficulties Believing | Satan's Tactics | Handling Evil | Power of Goodness | Psalms 31:9 | Distinctive of God's Goodness | Good, Evil and God | Study Questions & Projects

Difficulties Believing in God’s Goodness

Purpose: God is good, but it just doesn't look like it, at least some of the time. Why? Isaiah 5:20 shows how good has been hijacked and perverted into evil.

Special Discussion Question

Exercise: List four things in this world that you would, if possible, improve. Star the most important one.

Question: List four things in this world that you would, if possible, improve. Star the most important one.

We have provided answers from a class below.

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Challenges to Believing in God’s Goodness

Believing in God’s goodness is not easy. This is because of all the unhappy, difficult and even unjust things happening in our lives and, if we dare to look, around the world.

Think about the things we want to improve: poverty, inequity, racial prejudice, war, etc. The list can and does go on! It is easy to jump into this doubt about what God has done about these things. If God was truly good, then He wouldn’t He solve these problems? Have you ever asked this question?

Terribly Twisting Truth

The problem of evil can be differently answered or left unanswered, but in no case should we accuse God of being an inferior God which produces inferior things, which in turn is no longer good. Be like Job, “Through all this Job did not sin nor did he blame God” (Job 1:22).

When we turn to Genesis 3, we find Satan used the guise of a serpent to twist Eve’s knowledge of goodness. The society is doing that all the time. They say it is good to allow parents murder their children.

Say it enough and people believe it.

These leaders should be put in jail for their crimes of convincing us gaming, immorality, murder, deceit are good when they cause pain, injustice, disease, greed and all sorts of evil.

Meanwhile virtue, justice and contentment are intimated to be evil by all sorts of newscasters, magazine writers and even some daring politicians.

“Woe to those who call evil good, and good evil; Who substitute darkness for light and light for darkness; Who substitute bitter for sweet, and sweet for bitter!” (Isaiah 5:20).

To the degree we associate an inferior good with God, we have begun to carve out our own image. We start looking for our own idol. God is good and in Him there is no partial good and certainly no evil.

A society’s decline is directly measured by how complete this switch of good and evil has taken place. Dare we measure our society?

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Answers from a class.

List four things in this world that you would, if possible, improve. Star the most important one. Here are some answers given in class.

 

1. Righteous leaders

2. Prevent needlessly dying

3. Improve people’s character

4. Peace on earth - national level

5. Education everywhere

6. Equality of wealth

7. Racial understanding

8. Healthy environment

9. Strong families

10. Make justice just

 

Next page => Satan's Tactics

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=> Other reading

Biblical Foundations for Freedom ( BFF )

Rev. Paul J. Bucknell