Part 5 of the “God Is” series 6/3/18 Psalm 34:1-10
God is good - all the time. And all the time - God is good.
This, like all proposed declarations of truth is either true or it’s not.
God is either good all of the time, only part of the time, and actually, ‘never’ would be another option. But there are no other choices. So really, he’s either good or He’s not.
God is either still good when our own circumstances are bad, or He is not. In reality, our circumstances don’t determine God’s actual goodness at all. Our circumstances at any given time may not feel good, but that doesn’t change the nature of God. We may have varying perspectives on what goodness should entail, but none of those perspectives change the reality of God’s goodness. We must fight the temptation to judge God's character and ability to act based on our immediate situation.
More light is shed on this later in Psalm 34, when in verses 18 and 19 David reminds us that, “The Lord is near to the brokenhearted, and saves the crushed in spirit. Many are the afflictions of the righteous, but the Lord delivers him out of them all.”
So on this side of heaven, our God, reveals His goodness when He makes Himself present and accessible to the brokenhearted and near to the hurting who seek Him.
Here and now, He also blesses people with fruitful outcomes of plans entrusted to Him, save better long term outcomes unforeseen by us.
No less important, God also provides an ultimate alleviation to all the painful results of sin in this fallen world. In other words, eventually He does make all things good or right. Ironically, His not doing that here and now and allowing any suffering to occur is often a mistakenly seen as a lack of goodness.
We are however, best served when we are able to accept that God is ultimately good and that trusting Him as such, frees us to live with a peace, unconstrained by the nagging doubts of His resolve to be good or make things right.
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