The Goodness of God

This is a something I wrote for our denomination last December, published by them today.

Psalm 107:1-3

Oh give thanks to the Lord, for he is good,
    for his steadfast love endures forever!
2 Let the redeemed of the Lord say so,
    whom he has redeemed from trouble
3 and gathered in from the lands,
    from the east and from the west,
    from the north and from the south.

Devotion

The pivot point of all history is in the movement of Jesus between His death and His resurrection.  In His death, the most tragic and cruel of all human acts of injustice, we also see the truest expression of the goodness and steadfast love of God.

The psalmist speaks of the redeemed of the Lord, being redeemed from trouble.  Trouble like the dead car battery of last week?  Or the hip that has bothered me of late?  Or my adult children evacuating from the threat of an advancing wildfire?  Or?  Or?  Fill in your own trouble, as these three of my past week only scratch the surface of human troubles.  And in all truth, my particular troubles are all dealt with fairly easily.  They would hardly seem to require the intervention of the Lord.

The truth of the Gospel is that every human life faces real trouble, one that is much more severe than we can truly comprehend.  Our trouble is rooted in our incessant desire to be our own gods.  And that trouble, eternally speaking, has a very ugly end.

Here is where the goodness of God is truly seen, in that He sends His very Son to be our substitute, someone to redeem us, someone to the pay the price that we cannot, the price that demands His very life.  By faith in this act of the Son we are among those rescued from peril and gathered by the Lord as His very own.

The Lord shows His goodness most clearly in allowing His Son to be our Redeemer, and the results of this act of love, the greatest of all history, truly will endure forever. 

Prayer

Lord God Almighty, Thank you for your goodness and love.  Thank you for redeeming lost sinners through the finished work of your Son.  Give us strength and wisdom to share the hope found only in Jesus wherever we are, as you gather in the lost from all parts of the world. 

Bio

Rev. Brad Kautz lives with his wife, Robin, their youngest daughter and two foster children, in Dulce, NM, on the reservation of the Jicarilla Apache Nation and where he serves as pastor of the Jicarilla Apache Reformed Church.

Scripture quotations are from The Holy Bible, English Standard Version® (ESV®), copyright © 2001 by Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved.