Episode Introduction

SPEAKER_00 0:13

Alrighty, friends, welcome back to Tethered. I'm Joey Morales, your host here on Tethered. Welcome back to the podcast. And so, if you're tuning in for the first time, welcome. We are so glad that you're here. And so, essentially, what this podcast is all about is to help, you know, people remain in Christ and to also stick, you know, look for ways to stay connected day by day. And so we are so glad that you're here. And so if you listened to the previous episode, um, we can go back and you know, click on the link right up here to listen to it. It was such an encouraging episode, but also a serious one too, um, about the wrath of God. And I think it'd be helpful to go back and listen to that just to kind of get more of an idea of who God is. But we also have all these other previous episodes from this season as well. So we're continuing in season four. We're um gonna be talking about today's attribute being God is good. And so, with that, I actually invited a friend of mine who I work with in Collegiate Impact, and

Meet Paul Carby!

SPEAKER_00 1:12

I'm glad to have him on. So his name is Paul Carvey, and so Paul, welcome to Tether. We're glad to have you.

SPEAKER_02 1:18

Yeah, man, I'm glad to be here. It's exciting.

SPEAKER_00 1:21

Awesome. Well, Paul, why don't you go ahead and just share a bit about yourself, and then if you have some three fun facts, we'll love to hear those as well.

SPEAKER_02 1:28

Sure. Yeah, uh my name is Paul Carvey, I live in St. Louis. Uh I'm an adjunct professor at a local university here, as well as a PhD candidate through Southern Seminary. Uh, three fun facts about me, let's see. Uh I shoot speed archery in my free time. Uh I used to be a chef, and uh I'm a major Batman nerd.

SPEAKER_00 1:53

Oh, nice. You say you used to be a chef. That's awesome. What kind of things were you skilled in cooking? Just curious.

SPEAKER_02 1:59

Uh normally I would gravitate more toward like Tex-Mex. That was kind of my thing. I'm from Texas, so.

SPEAKER_00 2:05

Alrighty. No, that's great. Texas is such good food. There's actually we're we're recording this in the time of the World Cup. And I know like a lot of people from Europe are enjoying a Tex-Mex right now. I'm sure you miss it.

SPEAKER_02 2:18

I do, man. Good barbecue's hard to find up here.

SPEAKER_00 2:21

That's right. And then you also mentioned, too, that you like Batman.

SPEAKER_02 2:26

I do. I am a massive Batman nerd. Uh I'm getting a PhD in philosophy, and I tell people I probably know as much about Batman as I do philosophy.

SPEAKER_00 2:37

That's hilarious. Which Batman is your favorite? Like which out of the movies is your favorite?

SPEAKER_02 2:42

Oh man. Uh honestly, I'm gonna have to go with Keaton, the original. Oh, really?

SPEAKER_00 2:46

Oh no.

SPEAKER_02 2:47

Yeah. Absolutely. I I think he did the best job of combining Bruce Wayne and Batman into the same entity.

SPEAKER_00 2:55

I don't know about that. I personally prefer Christian Bales, but that's just my opinion.

unknown 2:59

Oh.

SPEAKER_00 3:01

I think he did the best job of portraying Bruce Wayne, but also just driving out the emotion for his character. And so, plus, I mean, he's ledger played a good joker too. Well, awesome. Well, awesome, Paul. Thank you so much again for taking time out of your day to join us today here on Tethered. And so we're excited to discuss with you about the attribute of God, of his goodness.

Describing God’s goodness

SPEAKER_00 3:22

And so, with that, let me go ahead and begin asking you some questions here. Sure. And so, if you're listening to this, you probably have heard this saying, God is good all the time, he is good. And so, Paul, what would you say it truly means that God is good?

SPEAKER_02 3:43

Yeah, this is a great question. Um, to say that God is good really speaks to one of his most foundational attributes of who he is as God. Uh, you know, throughout history, human beings have worshipped numerous different deities or gods, uh, if you will, but in most cases, those gods were either totally removed from humanity or were completely neutral to humanity. Um, they shared a lot of the human aspects, traits, and emotions, and you know, especially like think about the Greek gods or the Roman gods. They were jealous, they got in fights, they had affairs, they I mean they they engaged in these things that we would, in a lot of cases, think would be morally ambiguous or reprehensible. And so to say what is significant, significant, excuse me, about God being good, not only is to speak to his divine attribute and therefore inherent to his being as God, but it also is to speak about what directs his actions and his motivations and all of the things that God entails would also have to be good. And of course, that leads uh naturally to the culmination of the greatest good, which is reconciliation of humanity back to God through Christ Jesus.

SPEAKER_00 5:05

Hmm, that's this good. Yeah, and I've never even, you know, knew about the numerous deities. Um I knew like there was like Roman gods, Greek gods, and things like that. But, you know, in order to determine that God is good, I mean, he's the one that's exclusive and he has divine power. Um, that's something that is so significant to hear. So I appreciate you sharing that. Let

Why God’s goodness is important to understand

SPEAKER_00 5:30

me ask you this question, Paul. Um, why is this attribute of God important for someone to understand?

SPEAKER_02 5:38

Yeah, this is this is a great question. But it in order to fully understand this question, Joey, I think we need to take a half second and just get a framework of the landscape really quickly. Um first off, God has historically been seen as what we refer to as simple. And be simple means that there are no parts to God. There's no left side, no right side. But more specifically, there's no ending to one attribute and a beginning of another. They are all co-equal, co-eternal, coexistent with God's being. God simply is what we attribute him to be. And this means that to affirm God's goodness ultimately means that his very essence is good, his very nature, who he is, nothing else can be without altering his nature. And and we don't want to do that because one of the attributes we consider for God is immutable, he doesn't change. So to say God is good and to understand this concept ascribes that attribute to everything else. So let's do a thought experiment, if you would. Follow along with me, just kind of in your mind. Since God is, like I said, immutable, and God is equally perfect, which is another one of his attributes, by definition alone, God must be either perfectly good or perfectly evil. He can't be neutral because to be neutral would mean that he would side one way or the other given a situation, which would mean he would change, which would deny his immutability and therefore not be God. So we have to be either perfectly good or perfectly evil. Now, let's imagine for just a second that God was perfectly evil. All right, what would that mean? That would mean that everything he did was to the detriment of humanity, it would mean that there could be no worse world that we could conceive of. There would be that his presence or being in his presence and under his authority would be the worst possible case, and at any time he was showing what we thought was goodness would be a mistake on our behalf because that is not his nature, that would be a misunderstanding for us. But this doesn't seem to be the case, it doesn't seem to correspond to reality. God does good things, genuinely, and there are worse worlds that we can conceive of, right? I could be forced to sit in a chair, tied to a chair, having ground glass rubbed in my eyes while having to watch Adam Sandler movies. I mean, there are worse worlds that we could conceive of.

SPEAKER_00 8:31

That's funny.

SPEAKER_02 8:32

So then if he's not perfectly evil, let's look at the alternative. The only other alternative left, it would have to mean he's perfectly good. Well, let's look at the same criteria. If God is perfectly good, then that would mean that everything God does is for our benefit, for the benefit of humanity, that there could be no better world in which we could conceive of, and that being in his presence and under his authority is the best possible scenario for us. And at any time it seemed like he might be doing something evil to us was a misunderstanding on our behalf, because God's nature entails that he's good. This seems to be the case. In looking at the world, this just seems to be what reality is. God does not work out his will to our detriment. We have a great gift in the Son of Jesus Christ that God, uh sorry, John says in his gospel did not come to condemn the world, but instead to save it. You know, there are there are people, Joey, who would argue that God has done evil things throughout history. You know, that they often bring up the uh Israelite conquest of the promised land and the slaying of the Canaanites, that God orchestrated the death of all these men, women, children, farm animals all along the Canaanite path. But here's the thing we have to remember, by definition alone, God has to be perfect. We've already established he cannot be perfectly evil, so he has to be perfectly good. That means that all of his actions, all of his desires, all of his motivations would be stemming from that attribute of goodness. They could not be evil because he is not evil. So all of his actions, whether we understood them or not, whether we agreed with them or not, whether we from our human perspective thought they were evil or not, they cannot, by definition alone, be evil in any way. Wow.

SPEAKER_00 10:49

That's really deep. It just makes me think like I think what it talks about in James chapter one, where you know God Himself cannot tempt.

SPEAKER_01 10:59

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 11:00

Because he's good, he's without sin. And so because he can't tempt, he's not the person that causes one to fall into temptation. That's not his nature. And so that's what I think of when you just you know describe all this, because everything you're saying is like God is so good, he is perfect, he is righteous, that he can't be evil. He just by his nature just cannot. No. And yeah, and so that's that's really well said how you put that. And so

Why does a good God allow evil to happen?

SPEAKER_00 11:31

let me just ask you more to just expound on that in the sense of like maybe someone is really struggling with believing that God is good. Because I just think about college students or young adults that are just wrestling with this idea, like, well, if God is inherent is inherently good, why does he allow evil to happen? Maybe like speak to that.

SPEAKER_02 11:53

Yeah, so that's actually one of my favorite topics to discuss. And in my master's program, I actually took an entire semester class on what is called the problem of evil, which is exactly what you said. It's basically a logical argument that is levied against Christians that asked the question if God is so good and God is all powerful and God is all-knowing, so those three attributes, all good, all powerful, all-knowing, then his goodness, his knowledge, and his power would allow him to get away with or do away with evil, but yet evil exists. So therefore, either God is not good, he's not powerful, he's not knowing, or he doesn't exist at all. So this is a big argument. It's actually one that it does have teeth from a philosophical standpoint. And so, how do we address this on a practical sense? Well, avoiding all the philosophy behind it, and the most simple way to address it is basically the way Alvin Planaga did, a famous Christian philosopher, when he said that we have free will, and the best possible world that God could create is one in which his creatures, his people, fully embrace loving him of their own free will. So he gave us free will, the Imago Day, the image of God, the ability to tell right from wrong and choose moral truths over one or the other. Because of that world, there's always going to be the chance that someone's going to choose a different path. That's just the nature of it. And so evil exists in this world because of the moral free agency of people like you and me. Because of sin, because of the corruption of sin in our life, the tainting of it on our will and our soul, we're always going to turn to our own desires, our own fleshly nature. And so evil exists not because God's doing, evil exists because God allows it in the sense that it provides through free will the best possible world in which he could have created. And there's going to come a time, as the Bible says, when evil will be defeated. Why? Because the new creation, as we see in Revelation, is going to be fully in the presence of God Himself, bathed in his light and his goodness, there is no possibility for evil. Why? Because God is perfectly good. And so to be in his presence, to be fully in his space, as we will be when the new world comes, when the new creation is instituted, we'll be in a place where there is no possibility for evil.

SPEAKER_00 14:46

That is such an encouragement. One day there is going to be no evil. I mean, I I just think about the scripture revelation, it talks about that there will be no more tears, no more suffering. It's going to be just sitting in the presence of God, and look, he really is good because he's going to bring his people to himself. And even though we might face evil in this day and age here, this is not how it's supposed to be. And so I really appreciate you sharing that, Paul. I'm sure the listener, you know, as he listen he or she listens to that, would hopefully, you know, help him see just how good our God truly is good. Absolutely. And so I'm really encouraged by that. Well,

Scripture references to show that God is good

SPEAKER_00 15:28

let me ask you this question, Paul. Um, I think this is important for you know the listener to know. What are some scriptures that you can point to the viewer listener about the goodness of God? That's that show that God is good.

SPEAKER_02 16:28

Absolutely. Yeah, throughout the Bible, it actually mentions it numerous times and in numerous ways, predominantly in the book of Psalms. The psalmist constantly extolled the goodness of God. Now, there are different words used for goodness, and we don't have to get into those details, but there are throughout the Bible different ways of saying that God is good, God is uh holy. All these things that we would associate that are correlative to goodness, you cannot be holy and not good at the same time. So any place that we see God is holy or holy, holy, holy. Things like that can we we can see as correlative to goodness, but explicitly speaking to goodness, numerous places in the Psalms. Psalm 107, let the redeemed of the Lord say, Oh, give thanks to the Lord, for he is good, his steadfast love endures forever. This psalm and this phrasing is actually quoted numerous times in the Old Testament. Um, several times also different uh psalms speak to the goodness of God, Psalm 145 9, uh 86, 5, 103, 8. Uh the psalmist also talks about the goodness of God in Psalm 119 68 when he's talking about God's personal action, is also good. So there are numerous places, uh, Lamentations 325, a book that you would not expect to find good news, speaks to the goodness of God. Even Jesus himself acknowledges the goodness of God uh when he's speaking in the gospels, uh, Matthew, Mark, and Luke, specific specifically, excuse me, in Luke and Mark, when he's speaking to the rich young ruler, the ruler comes up to Jesus and says, Good teacher, good rabbi. And Jesus addresses him back, says, Why do you call me good? Only God is good. Um, so those are just some places that we clearly see God being referenced as good.

SPEAKER_00 18:32

Yeah, absolutely. No, those are all great passages. I've read a few of these myself, and they are so encouraging. And it does point to just how good our God truly is. And so, with that, Paul, maybe just take some time to explain these verses and share with the listener or viewer why these verses are so important but also so comforting.

Explain why these Scriptures are important

SPEAKER_02 18:56

Absolutely. Well, let me just choose two of them because we could we could kind of take this in a lot of different ways. I'll I'll just choose two. Let's look first off at Psalm 107.1, right? The one that uh I just quoted a second ago. Okay, thanks to the Lord for he is good, his mercy and uh said fast, sorry, his steadfast love endures forever. So, like I said, this phrasing shows up numerous places in the Bible. It's quoted in both 1st and 2nd Chronicles, it's quoted in different Psalms, it's also quoted from the Psalms in the book of Ezra. And this is one of the most foundational truths of God's goodness and an indicator that not just his being is good, but the things that he does are good. The psalmist said that God's steadfast love, right? This steadfastness, this idea of not changing, well, that speaks to the immutability of God, right? This speaks to another one of his attributes. And then the idea that his steadfast love endures forever, established through his goodness. Well, now you have another attribute of God, his timelessness. So both of these things we can associate with who God is in his person, but because we can associate these with his person, we can also associate goodness with his person. This shows us that goodness is a part of his nature and his being, since these other attributes are as well. They all stem from the same place. But more on the practical side, and this is kind of more to the question, this means that God's love never changes, it never waxes, it never wanes, it never uh diminishes. His love is consistent in the ways that he shows love to his people. Paul says in the book of Romans, chapter 8, verse 30 uh 38 and 39, basically he goes to this long list of things, and he says, neither height nor death, nor angels, nor demons, nor anything conceived, created, or designed can ever separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus. God's love stems from his goodness. If God was not good, he would not love us. So to know that God is good, knows that he loves you and that he has his best in mind for you. These should be comforts to us as believers in this crazy world to know that God's goodness doesn't change, just like his love doesn't change. Um the second one we can look at, let's look at the one in the gospels. Let's just kind of switch to the New Testament. So let's look at what Jesus says in the gospels. This is uh primarily found, like I said, Matthew, Mark, and Luke. I'm really looking at Mark chapter nine for this. Um, but this is interesting, right? We in order to understand what Jesus asked, the rich young ruler, we have to kind of take a step back and know a little bit about ancient uh Middle Eastern culture. So in this time, in ancient Jewish culture specifically, they were very hesitant to do anything that could possibly break a commandment. Because in their eyes, they had to adhere to the commandments to be righteous.

SPEAKER_00 22:17

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 22:18

Well, this is one of the ways that they did that, right? To not break the first commandment, you shall have no other gods before me. They were concerned about not speaking anything else to be on the same level as God. So they equated God with being the only thing that's good. Nothing else in their world, they didn't refer to anything else as good except God, because anything else. That was good, if God is good, puts it on the same plane in their eyes, and therefore they might break the first commandment. So when Jesus asks him, he's actually pushing back a little bit. Throughout the book of Mark, we see this. Jesus contrasted starkly against the Jewish culture. And this is another way that Mark reveals this. Jesus is asking this Jewish young ruler, why do you call me good? Only God is good. Now, this is really an interesting ask of this guy. This is a really interesting question. Some people have argued that by Jesus saying this, he's actually saying, Well, I'm not good. Like I'm just like you. Therefore, they're arguing that this is Jesus' acknowledgement that he sinned. So but that's not the case, right? We know through the scripture, Jesus never sinned. He lived a sinless life. So this obviously couldn't be the case. So what is Jesus saying here? Jesus is actually trying to diminish what this young man would hold as good, this kind of flippant idea of goodness, and trying to point him back to the true source of good, the understandable origin of what goodness truly is, the unimovable standard, if you will, of goodness. And he's saying, Don't look at me, look at God, right? Only God is good. And what's cool about this is this is again Jesus, Christ, the Messiah, the Son of God, acknowledging in his essence, God is good. Yeah. And so if we trust the words of Jesus in any way, then we also have to trust Jesus here when he says his Father, God, is the definition of goodness.

SPEAKER_00 24:39

Wow, that's interesting. I've never heard anything like that before. It's a really good intro uh way to understand that verse because I know for me personally I've always understood. I was like, I wonder why he's saying that. Because he is sinless, but it helps having the historical context for that verse in Mark where you know Jesus is saying to the rich young ruler, like, why do you call me good? He's trying to point him back to God, which is so cool how you describe that. And I know that's even comforting, just the fact, like, don't I think we have this tendency as believers, sometimes what we tend to do is we tend to look at like other people like, hey, I want to be good like this person. But it's really God that we should be looking to, that God is the one who we should be looking to in terms of like comparing our standards to, if that makes sense. Absolutely. I mean, even as someone that's not a believer, like, look what God says, look who God is. How do you stand up to God? And in reality, is we can't measure up to God's standards. And so that's really comforting. And then the psalm passage really as well, just this unchanging nature, his love, like that just shows that he truly is good. Amen, brother. Thank you for sharing those things. And so let me go ahead and just ask you this next question. Sure. And so, as you know, dear listener, we call this podcast tethered for

How God’s goodness helps one abide in Jesus

SPEAKER_00 26:05

a reason. And so, meaning abiding in Christ. So, because of that, how does the goodness of God help us understand, Paul, how he abides in us and us in him?

SPEAKER_02 26:17

Yeah, this is another great question, Joey. And you know, there's this idea that all things that are created in some way, shape, or form bear the mark of their creator. There there is a sense in which whenever we create something, even as humans, it's going to be reflective of us. Well, just like that, we also, in some very small way, bear the mark of our creator, God. And the way that we do that, or the way that we bear that, is we are made in his image. So, what does this mean? Well, does that mean that God has two arms, two legs, two eyes, a nose, and awesome hair? No. That means that we speak and think in moral truths. We can understand moral, right, and wrong. We can make decisions based on those things the same way that God can. This is what we call the Imago Dei. I mentioned earlier, which is just Latin for the image of God, this idea that God created in us his image so that we could share in some small way with who he is in his very nature. So, what does that mean to us? That means that our spiritual DNA, in our spiritual DNA, there is a part of us that knows what's good and yearns for that goodness. There's a part of us that cannot deny what is right and what is wrong. And so we ask the question then, like you said earlier, why then is evil in the world, right? If if human beings, if moral free agents, as we call them, are the cause of evil and we know what's right and wrong, why then do we have this disconnect? Why are we not following good? Well, there's because our will is broken because of sin, because of the original sin in the world, our will has been corrupted, it's been cracked irrevocably. We cannot fix our will on our own. Just like God put uh his mark on us, and we bear some of that spiritual nature in the fact that we understand moral truths, we also bear our own human nature, and one of the attributes of human nature is imperfection. So, yeah, in a perfect world with perfect people, we would all be perfectly good. But we're imperfect, and so we all act according to that imperfect, sinful nature, that that way that is deep in our DNA programming that makes us turn aside from God's will whenever we get our own chance, and whenever we get our own way. Our will, like I said, is broken. So we ultimately need to see the truth of the goodness of God, and in doing so, we understand the truth of our actions. This is where the Holy Spirit comes in. When we accept Jesus, when God indwells the Holy Spirit in us, now we have a way of truly knowing right from wrong and to act on that knowledge. You see, up until this point, Augustine actually said this beautifully, up until this point, we were sinful and always able to sin. We we could not get away from that. But once the Holy Spirit comes into us, now we know right from wrong clearly, and we can act on that. We can choose and deny our own sinful natures. This is what the world would say is a conscience. We now have a conscience that is invoked by the Holy Spirit. God dwells in us, and so we have the ability to act on and reflect that goodness in the things that we do and the things that we want. So, because of that, like you asked, how do we then say tethered to Christ? Ultimately, we walk in God's ways, we choose actively to seek after him. If God is good and the source of all goodness, then the only thing that we can do to achieve goodness is to follow after him. And he gave us his word, he gave us the power of the Holy Spirit to point us in the direction of good. It's basically like God gave us the map and the compass. He says, if you want to find me, this is how you find me. And so we can choose, we still have moral free agency, we can choose to follow our sinful nature, or we can listen to the Holy Spirit, follow the map of God's word, follow the compass of the Holy Spirit, and ultimately choose to walk forward in God's plan and walk forward in God's statutes by following Jesus, the trailblazer, the one who's gone ahead of us. We can stay close to God by being close to Him and His Word and His actions.

SPEAKER_00 31:26

Yeah, absolutely. Wow, that's great. No, everything you said is really encouraging and really good. Um, I love how you you know tied in the Imago Dei and that in our sp in our own spiritual DNA, like something in us knows that there's good, but at the same time, like we are so broken, and we you know naturally, apart from a relationship with Jesus, don't have the Holy Spirit in us, which leads me to ask you this next question because one apart from Christ, we don't have the Holy Spirit. So because of that,

The Gospel in God’s goodness

SPEAKER_00 32:06

something has to be done in order for us to receive the Holy Spirit, which leads me to ask you this question because this is where it gets good. So, where do we see the gospel that means the good news because of the goodness of God?

SPEAKER_02 32:22

Man, I I love this question. We see it in God's mercy and his forgiveness. You see, if God is perfectly good, then any action, like I said, that is not perfectly good, that doesn't align with his divine standard, cannot abide in God. He God cannot exist in the same space as this, right? Because of his perfection. Therefore, God must remove and destroy all imperfection. It's just by nature of who he is. Well, that's bad news ultimately for us. Because why? As human beings, our attribute is imperfection. So that sounds terrible, but the good news is, and this is why it's called the good news, because of God being rich in mercy, as Paul says in Ephesians, because of his great love for us, he gave us a way to from the death of our sin to be alive then again in Christ Jesus, to ultimately be reestablished in his good uh paradigm. So, how does this work? Well, we're still imperfect, right? We're still human. Our wills to a degree still bear the imperfection of our humanity. However, because the Holy Spirit to guide us, because of the sanctification of Jesus that happens in us when we get saved, God overlooks our own imperfection in our redemption in Christ. Jesus, who lived a perfectly sinless life, the Bible records this, we know this. Jesus died in our place. The death that we should have had, since God cannot abide in perfection, the death that was meant for us, Jesus died. And when we accept him, we exchange his perfect life for ours. That's where that word redemption comes in. It's actually a banking term to exchange something of lesser value or no value for something of value, and so when we are redeemed in Christ, he has exchanged his perfect life for our imperfect one, and so now we can be in the presence of God, we can be one with God, we can be united with God, because even though we have an imperfect flesh, our souls, our spiritual DNA has now been corrected. And when God looks at us at the time of judgment, as the Bible says is coming, he will not see written in our spiritual DNA imperfection, he sees Christ.

SPEAKER_00 35:16

Amen. Wow, that is such good news. I mean, the gospel, it's just a wonderful, wonderful thing that we get to possess as believers is knowing God in this way that even though we were dead in our trespasses and sins, that he has shown mercy to us, and that is his goodness out of his good pleasure that he does that. Amen, brother. I really appreciate you sharing that. That is such a comfort. Let me ask you, you know, this last, you know, last question here because we're getting close to wrapping up. And so, because of everything you just shared about the goodness of God, what

Practical ways to grow in understanding God’s goodness

SPEAKER_00 35:55

are some practical ways for a person to grow in their understanding of the goodness of God?

SPEAKER_02 35:59

Yeah, I think the first and really most important thing, Joey, is for us to accept and acknowledge God's goodness. The world around us would like us to believe that A, first off, God doesn't exist. But even if he does, the world in times will even say, okay, fine, God exists. But if he does, he's not a good God because of X, Y, and Z, the different things we already talked about. God ordered the death of these people, or God did this, or God gave my grandma cancer, all these things. These are all just a shell game that moves around the truth of the situation and a lot of times leaves people confused. The reality is if God is God, He is perfectly good. And so if we are going to follow God, the first and most important thing we do is accept and embrace God's perfect goodness. By doing so, that makes everything else fall in line, it makes everything else accord to his goodness. So we walk in him, we follow his statutes. Why? Because they are good. We read his word, we we memorize his word, we follow his word. Why? Because a good God gave it to us. Um we bury his word in our hearts, as the psalmist says in 119. We uh, you know, we we do things uh that come out of our uh heart that has been changed, as James says. Show me your your deeds, right? Why? Because God is good and instilled goodness in us. So by acknowledging God's goodness and just saying this is a universal truth that I can accord my life to, not wavering from that, not letting the world dissuade us, acknowledging that, hey, I may not understand what seems to be to me evil actions done in the Old Testament. I mean, yes, God did orchestrate the death of the Canaanites, but who am I to question God? Who am I to say God did not have a divine reason far beyond my understanding with which this needed to happen? And so if we can acknowledge God's goodness first, then we look at passages like that, we look at situations in our life, we look at the whole world in a totally different paradigm, and one that puts the goodness of God as primary, everything else falls into place after that. But I think also we can trust the second thing I'd say, Joey, is we can practically trust what God has given us. The Holy Spirit, his word, um, you know, preaching and teaching of his word. All of these things are ways that God communicates back to us. And if God is perfectly good, then that communication is good. And we can trust what it is telling us, we can trust what it is saying, and we can build our lives, and like I said, accord our lives to this.

SPEAKER_00 39:15

Yeah, absolutely. Thank you so much for sharing all those practical ways. I mean, I love what you said too about accepting God's goodness. I think that's just something that it can be difficult if you're not engaging with scripture on a daily basis. Um, of course, when you're in Christ, your identity is secured and you've having faith in him, but how you grow closer to him is by seeing how good he is. By like I I like this passage here in Psalm 119.68. You are good and you do good, teach me your statutes. And so I just think of that in order to learn God's statutes, you have to be in the word that he is given to us. And in order to do that, you must put a habit into practice it daily because that's how you commune with him. And so I would encourage you, dear listener, really invest time in the word. Um, just take time, open it, and you don't have to like read like a huge amount of you know the Bible, but just you know, just pick it up and read it and you know, hear what he has to say through his word, and from there you can learn to see how good he truly is, and just also like you were saying, Paul really liked it. We said he's given us, you know, all of these things, like the Holy Spirit, preaching, teaching, which you can find that in a local church. And so just hearing a pastor teach from the Bible and teaching who God is and what what God is like and how one can be made right with God, and hearing that on a weekly basis in your local church is always encouraging, and then being in covenant membership, meaning like you're doing life with a local body of believers, and so that's how you grow and you know, understanding who you are in in Christ, and the Holy Spirit can use that to help you grow. And so I really appreciate you sharing those things, Paul. But with that, that pretty much wraps up our episode for today. And so I wanted to ask you, Paul, if you had any final thoughts that you wanted to share with the listener or viewer.

SPEAKER_02 41:27

I think

Final thoughts

SPEAKER_02 41:28

the only thing I would share is that to remember, as our listeners are out there, that the world's gonna do what it can to paint God in a negative light. We have to remember there are absolute truths in this life, and everything is subjective. And just like we said, that the by definition God has to be good, if that is true, then God exists and goodness exists, and a standard for goodness exists. And so we can look at the world and say, no, that's not right. We can absolutely hold to more truth and more um things that are absolute. And so I would just encourage our listeners to just um, like you said, read your Bible every day, trust in the Lord uh with all your ways and lean not in your own understanding. You know, know that there are things that are actually right and good in this world, and try to orient your life toward those. That would be my prayer for our listeners.

SPEAKER_00 42:27

Amen. Well, thank you so much, Paul Paul, for coming up to Tether to share about why God is good. And I just, you know, I'm praying that the Lord would use

Episode Conclusion

SPEAKER_00 42:38

this episode to be an encouragement to you, listener, you know, just to see why God is good and that he is good and that you can go to him because he's good. And so thank you again, Paul, for you know, tuning in with us all the way from St. Louis, Missouri. And so we're really glad to have had you. So, with that, dear listener or person watching, so the next episode will be all about, you know, look up here on the screen if you're watching. If you're listening, stay tuned, because it's gonna be a very good episode. And so, with that, thank you for joining us on tethered. If you're watching, you can watch us on Apple Podcasts, on Spotify, on YouTube. And if you're listening, you can listen to us in places like Amazon Music, Pocketcast, YouTube Music, and more. And so, like and subscribe if you enjoyed this podcast, and please share with your family or friends if you enjoyed this. With that, have a great day and God bless.