Goodness | Pastor Adam Peterson

Before we jump in, online family, I know we say it every week, I hope it doesn't sound repetitive, but we love you and we're grateful for you wherever you're tuning in from. Come on, lean in, God's got a word for you today. And then same for the men and women in the correctional facilities. Come on, you are our church family. Let them know. Let's go. So in the book of Galatians, the apostle Paul writes this letter to a church and man, it applies to us still today. And it's this beautiful words and I don't have time to get into it, although we are gonna jump into it one week of this series at least. But in the chapter five, he says, this is what your life was like before Jesus. And it's this laundry list of just sin and debauchery in your life. But he looks on and he goes, but that's not who you are anymore. You've been changed. And it's only by God that you have been changed. And now that you've been changed by God, the Holy Spirit of God, God's presence now lives in you. Now, let me say this upfront. If you're here today

and you don't have a relationship with God, that is your first step. You need God in your life. You need to put your faith in Jesus for the forgiveness of your sins, call upon his forgiveness and grace in your life. And when you do that, when you make that decision, you get the Holy Spirit of God to come live in you. And when the Holy Spirit of God comes to live inside of you, he starts working in you, starts changing you. How many of you know you're still in process? How many of you know you still need a lot of change? Let's go. And if your hand didn't go up, especially you. So Paul says this in Galatians five, you need the Holy Spirit to work in you because when the Holy Spirit works in you, he makes you less like you and he makes you more like Jesus. And so the Holy Spirit produces this kind of beautiful, life-giving fruit in our lives, love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. Nine beautiful fruits that God wants to work in you and through you to make a difference in other people's lives. And if you've been with us in this series, I told you this last week, we're not going in order. Specifically, just to mess with some of you a little bit because you're like, I like to do things order, I don't. So we're gonna mess with you a little bit. And then just to keep you on your toes.

So we're gonna have some fun with it. And today we're gonna look at this fruit, goodness. Goodness. When I started writing this message on goodness, I started writing down a lot of thoughts because I was like, goodness is kind of this broad term. And there's a lot of things that you can kind of approach with goodness. And so I kind of didn't know where to start. And so I felt like, well, if we're gonna start about goodness in anywhere, we should probably start with the goodness of God. How many of you are grateful for that song that we sang? Man, all my life, you've been faithful. All my life, you've been not just so good, you've been so, so good. That was the writer of that song going, man, God's been so good. No, he hasn't just been so good. He's been so, so good. I wonder if God's been good to anybody in here. Say amen. Amen. And so we're gonna talk about the goodness of God first in our lives and then how that goodness is lived out in us. How many of you have ever read anything by the author C.S. Lewis? Yeah, we've got a couple of readers. How many of you have ever read anything at all? Just show it.

Okay, all right, just making sure, just making sure. How many of you know how to read? All right. So C.S. Lewis, famous Christian author, wrote many books. Probably he is most famous for the book, The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe. How many of you have ever read The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe? How many of you saw the movie? How many of you have no idea what I'm talking about? They're like, what is a lion and a witch? What kind of wardrobe? What are we talking about here? So there's this famous book, and let me just nerd out for just a little bit, that C.S. Lewis wrote about some kids that enter into a mysterious, magical wardrobe, and when they get to the other end of it, they enter into this magical land, and in this magical land, there's animals that can talk, there's a witch, and there's a lion, and the lion in this story represents Jesus, and the lion's name is Aslan. Strong name, strong name. And the kids are learning about Narnia, and they're talking to some of the animals, and they're asking about Aslan, and they start telling them all about this lion, and they look at the animals, and the kids go, well, is he safe?

And the animals respond back, of course he's not safe! He's a lion! But then they finish the sentence with this phrase. but he's good. He's not safe, but he is good. And I hope that you understand this idea when it comes to our God in heaven. He is not safe. Matter of fact, you should fear God. Now, here's what I don't mean. I don't mean you should be afraid of him. I lived a lot of my life afraid of God. If I got out of line, God was gonna get me, all right? That's not the God that we serve, but we should fear him in a sense that we live our lives to honor him, knowing that when our life is over here on earth, we will stand before God and give an account for how we live, and we will be judged by that. So there should be this holy fear in us, but at the same time, may we always know that that God we should fear is also very, very good. All right, so let's just unpack the goodness of God for a little bit, sound good? Come on, right here. We've been at Rise Church for about 13 years, celebrating 13 years this August. I don't know if I've ever used a verse from the book of Nahum in the Old Testament. So Nahum, we got you, bro, let's go.

Nahum 1.7, the Lord is good. He's a refuge in times of trouble. That means if you find yourself in trouble right now, like life's not easy, God is your refuge that you can run to. That means he is a safe place for you to hide in, and he will protect you, and he will fight for you. He cares for those who trust in him. Come on, that's good news. Then Psalms 136.1 would say, give thanks to the Lord, for he is good. And I got one, woo, in the back there. Which is wild, because this verse says, give thanks to the Lord. And none of you said, thank you, you didn't do it. All right, that's why I did three verses, because I knew like, all right, first verse, Nahum, it's gonna warm him up a little bit. And then I'm gonna go to Psalm 136, and that's gonna kind of get him going, but they're still not gonna be ready yet, and so I gotta get one more verse. But Psalm 136, one more time, and don't fake it, you don't have to, but it says, give thanks to the Lord, woo, for he is good. And here's the really good news. How is he good? His love for you, your jacked up self, endures forever. Oh, there we go. That means God never stops loving you.

Like, I would have stopped loving me a very long time ago. So grateful for a God whose love endures forever. And then all of that was just a warm up for Psalm 119, verse 68, that says this, you are good, and what you do is good. So here's the beautiful part, you ready? God doesn't just do good, he is good. And because he is good, he does good. It's who he is, and because of who he is, it's what he does. And so what we want in our lives is to say this, God, if you're good, we wanna receive your goodness so that your goodness can then come out of my life. Psalm 34, verse eight says this, taste and see that the Lord is good. Here's what that means. You can't just go off of what somebody else says about God. You gotta taste and see it for yourself. If you ever walked up to me, and I will take this at all times, and you tell me that you went and you ate at a restaurant, and the dish you got at that restaurant was good. If you're like, man, this is one of the best things I've ever had, walk up to me and go, Pastor Adam, have you ever eaten at this restaurant? If you do, you gotta order this. Don't order anything else, order this. Because you've tasted it, and you've seen that it's good. But I can't just take your word for it. Now I've gotta go, and I've gotta taste it for myself.

I've gotta experience it on a personal level to see if it's good in my life. That's God. You can't go off of your parents' faith, your friends' faith, your grandparents' faith, your whatever's faith. It has to be your faith. So there is this moment that every single one of us needs to have with God where he just blows us away. It's like a Revelation light bulb wake up moment where we go, man, I've heard about how good you are, but now I've experienced for myself. I've read about your love, but now it's become real to me. Taste and see that the Lord is good. And when you taste and you see that he's good in your life, guess what? You can't stop talking about it. You have to tell others about it. You gotta try this. because God is good, amen? And so we've established that God's good. Can I get a better amen? All right, now let's take it on the flip side and let me just offend you all in here today and tell you how terrible you are. Sound good? So there was a guy one time that walked up to Jesus and called him good teacher. He said good teacher and then he asked Jesus a question to which Jesus responded, why do you call me good?

Jesus answered, no one is good except God alone. What Jesus is saying here is two things in one statement. God alone is good and no matter how good you think you are, you're not good enough. God alone is good. In the Old Testament book of Isaiah, this is what it says about your goodness. You ready? You're gonna love this. All our righteous acts are like filthy rags. This is Isaiah saying the very best you can do, your very best day that you have, it's like a filthy rag. And this isn't like a kitchen rag that you're wiping down your countertops with. This isn't even like a rag that you're cleaning your baseboards with, mopping the floor with because your kid's brought in dirt from outside. No, no, no, no, no. I don't wanna get too specific, but if you do a Google search, what does it mean for a filthy rag? Here's what it is. Ladies, it's that time of the month. That's your best. Your very best day is that. And if you're like, I'm still not tracking with me, just find your mom afterwards and she'll talk to you about it. That's your best efforts.

Paul then comes along in the book of Philippians, the same Paul that talked about the fruit of the spirit. This guy, Paul, used to kill Christians, radically changed by Jesus, personally experienced God in such a way that he goes on to write most of the New Testament, becomes this great preacher of the message of Jesus. And he writes in Philippians 3 this list of accomplishments that he's done because he's trying to let people know like, hey, I did all this, I did all that, I did all that. Like, look how good I've been. But then he says these words. And matter of fact, all of that, I count it as garbage. Like, all of my accomplishments are garbage in comparison of knowing Jesus. And I love reading different translations. That's one way to read the Bible, by the way. Like, your translation that you prefer, awesome. But go in and read other translations from time to time and just see the language that it uses. And the message translation is kind of like a paraphrase, everyday language kind of thing. Some people hate it, some people don't, whatever, it is what it is. But at the end of the day, this is what Paul's language in Philippians 3 is kind of like. He says, all of these things that I've done here, they're like dog dung.

It's like a pile of dog mess. Now, how many of you have really good neighbors like I have who will walk their dog? And they're so generous. Just so, just this heart of giving, this giving spirit in them that when they walk their dog, they'll let their dog just sit right in my yard and drop a pile. And because they're so giving and generous, they just leave it there in my yard. Anybody got neighbors like that? Yeah. Let me just say this right now. This isn't in the Bible. This is my personal belief. So again, not in the Bible, this is just from me. If you do that, if you are that type of person and you allow your dog to do that, there's a special place in hell for you. I'm just gonna say that right now. You better call on the grace of God. There is still time to repent, but I'm just, I'm convinced of it. Anyways, but here's the reality. Your best efforts are not great. Pile of dog dung. And some of y'all might be thinking, well, you know, but my pile's not as big as their pile.

Or my pile, it doesn't smell as bad as their pile. Like their, you know, theirs, whoo. Well, I put some sprinkles on top of my pile to make it look prettier, you know. I put a collared shirt with some buttons on my pile so that people, listen, at the end of the day, what we don't, we don't need to be good. We don't need to, well, I'm good. I need to be gooder. I need to be my goodest. Like, it's not about you and I being good. You know, at the end of the day, when you die here on earth, you will stand before God. And I want you to hear this very clearly because I talk to people all the time. Matter of fact, there's a guy at my gym just recently trying to, I'm trying to get this guy to see his need for God in his life. And him and I are having a conversation. He knows I'm a pastor. And he's like, you know, I just try to be the best person I can be. And I hope that's enough for God one day. And I've looked at him and I go, it's not. It never will be. Your best is not enough. Let me give you a verse and just kind of break all of this down for you. Ephesians 2 says this, that God saved you by his grace, okay?

Three amens. Okay, so let's just back up a little bit because that's some of y'all going, what does that mean? It means you were broken. It means you were running from God. It means you were rebelling against God and God didn't give up on you. You were lost and you could not save yourself. He came and he rescued you. He saved you by his grace. You do something to get it? No, you just believed in him and you can't take credit for this. Why? It is a gift from God. Salvation is not a reward for the good things that we have done. So none of us can boast about it. Nobody can brag about it. When you get baptized at Rise Church, you get a shirt. We give you a shirt. It's the only way to get the shirt that we give you. You can't buy it. If you give me 100 bucks, I'll sell it to you. But other than that, you can't get it. Like you only get it if you get baptized and the shirt says this, Jesus changes everything. Because when you get baptized, we want you to get in that pool of water and we want you to let everybody know

that the only reason you're getting baptized is because Jesus changed your life, okay? That's why the shirt doesn't say, look what I did. Because it has nothing to do with you. You're a sinner. His grace has saved you. It's a gift that he's given you. It's a free gift. You can't earn it and you don't deserve it. It's a reward that he gives you. So that we're not walking around going, look at me. Look at, check me out. You go, no, no, no. Look what he did. He saved me. He loved me. He rescued me. He never gave up on me. It's all about him. Let me tell you how great Jesus is and how good he has been to me. I hope you have a testimony to share. And your testimony is, I don't deserve his grace, but here I am because he is so, so good. And so when you stand before God one day, if your answer is, well, I've been a good person, it's the wrong answer. When you stand before God one day, all you need to say is, I know how terrible I am, but I called on his goodness.

And here's the good news, you ready? When Jesus comes into your life, he doesn't just like polish up that dog dung. He's in like, I'm gonna make it look good. He removes it. He gets rid of it. Now it's gone. There's no stench anymore. You have been washed clean. You don't need to be made better. You need to be made new. It is, it is always just this like, I don't know what even the word is. Like it scares me is what it is. That in the Bible belt, people can go their entire life, even walk into a church and still think it's about you being good. Has nothing to do with you being good. You going to heaven one day will be, have nothing to do with you being good. It will be because you called on the goodness of God to come into your life for Jesus to be Lord and Savior. So here's the good news, you ready? God is good in your life. And then when you call on him, he does this good work in you. So the following verses right after the grace of God that saves us says this, for we are God's masterpiece, not the pile of dog dung masterpiece, the pile that he got rid of and did something new in you

because of Jesus in you, now you are a masterpiece. And here it is, he has created us a new, brand new, the old is gone in Christ Jesus so we can do the good things that he planned for us long ago. So track with me on this, follow me very closely. You ready? You're not saved because you were good, but you get saved by the goodness of God. Now goodness comes out of your life. So I'm not, I don't get to go to heaven because I was good, but I call on that goodness and now I am called to live where goodness comes out of me. Does that make sense? You're tracking with me, say yeah. Okay. So here's the really, really amazing news of Jesus, that you were a sinner running from God. The moment you call on Jesus, you are now on team Jesus and he says, now go into the world and let my goodness live through you so that you impact others around you. So Romans would say it like this, do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good. How many of you know we live in a dark world? So this is Paul again, same Paul, fruit of the spirit Paul, dog dung Paul, same Paul. We live in an evil world, don't get caught up in it. We live in a dark world, don't follow the pattern of everybody else. Don't be overcome by all the evil

that's going on around you. Matter of fact, you bring your goodness with you everywhere you go and that goodness is gonna overcome the evil that's around you. You are the light of Jesus Christ and you shine in a dark, dark world. Science experiment, everybody, it's your homework for tonight, you ready? When the sun sets and it gets really dark in your house, go to the darkest room in your house, turn the lights off, it's gonna get a little spooky, a little scary and then all of a sudden just flick the light switch on. Do you know what's not gonna happen? The darkness in your room is not gonna go, no, stop it, it's just gonna leave because when light shows up, darkness has to flee. That's the goodness of God. In your darkness, God's light shone on you, pulled you out of your darkness, brought you into the kingdom of light, the Bible says and now that light, that goodness of God now lives in us. Now when I walk into dark and evil places, I walk with the goodness of God in my life to shine into those dark places. How many of you would say that our world desperately needs the goodness of God? You ready, you ready? He's gonna do it through you. But you can't get the goodness of God in your life

if you don't get around the good God. Let me say it like this, goodness grows from a life that's rooted in Jesus. So the reality is this and I hope that you hear this very clearly, if you don't read this book, how do you expect to know the God of this book? If you don't put on music that worships and honors God, how do you expect to grow in your love and your gratitude for God? We gotta get rooted in God so that his goodness can grow more and more in us and then flow through us. A dark, evil world doesn't need you, it needs more of God in you. Pastor Jonathan, join me on the stage. I'm preaching better than you're responding so we're just gonna land this plane and we'll get moving. Last week I told you this, let me end with something on the fun note but then it'll get serious. Last week I told you my love for this Fruit of the Spirit series we're in, my favorite fruit of all time is watermelon. And if you were like, there's better fruit than watermelon, I will fight you in the parking lot because there's not. I love a good watermelon, somebody actually is my new favorite member of Rise Church, they brought me some watermelon this week, it was phenomenal by the way, it was so good.

I actually bought my own watermelon this past week, ate it in a day, it was fantastic. I've got another watermelon at home, I'm gonna eat it today, I just love watermelon. I mean, I can't get enough of it. And what I've learned over the years is that you really gotta do your research to make sure you get the right watermelon. So there's a couple different things you can do and just come on group participation. How many of you, when you're looking for a good watermelon, you do the tap method? Raise your hand, you do the tap method. And you're tapping that watermelon because you're listening for a certain sound. I don't know what sound I'm listening for, honestly, but I know it when I hear it. I'll just walk around, I'm just tapping away. Give it a little tap, tap, tappy. And so I do the tap method. How many of you look for the yellow spot on a watermelon? Yeah, and if you don't know what that is, like, come on, rookies, get it together, all right? The yellow spot means that that watermelon sat on the ground and it sat there for a while and they didn't pull it prematurely, so it had time to ripen and get ripe. How many of you look for the veining in the watermelons? Yeah, and if you're like, what's that? Google it, all right?

I ain't got time to unpack that today. How many of you look for the thickness of the striping in the watermelon and you do a two-finger method like that? Yeah, okay, a couple of you, yeah, yeah, yeah. I do all of those, okay? When you're picking out of watermelon, if you don't have people just watching you going, what is this guy doing? You're not doing it right. You gotta tap, tap. You gotta look for the yellow spot. You gotta pick one up, feel it, put it back down, pick it up again, I don't know. You gotta look for the, you gotta do all of this, people. If you're not doing that, you are doing it wrong. You're gonna get the wrong watermelon, all right? If I run into you at the grocery store, it better be at least a 10-minute decision that you were like, I just don't know. I don't know. I'm gonna put that one down, no? Okay, do all of that, but I'm gonna give you a method right now that is gonna change your watermelon game for the rest of your life. And I stumbled upon this a few years back. Some of y'all got there a little quicker than I did. That's okay. I love cold watermelon. I don't wanna eat it warm.

I want it cold. So I used to cut my watermelon up, put it in a bowl, then put it in the fridge. Well, one day I thought, man, why am I cutting it up, then putting it in the fridge? I'll buy it, put it in the fridge, and then I'll just cut it and it'll be cold, ready to go. And when I did that, that's when everything changed in my life. I stumbled upon something. I'm telling you guys, I don't know what it is, but I used to be like, maybe five out of 10 good watermelons. Now I'm like eight to nine out of 10 every time I'm hitting good watermelon. Something is happening. Refrigerator fairies are coming in to that water, and they're just sprinkling just goodness all over those watermelons. And I'm telling you, it's a game changer. And if some of y'all are like, I've been doing that for years, bro. Come on, that's the first thing. I'm just, it doesn't. Something happens. The 24 hour rule, don't do it longer than 24 hours. Something happens when that watermelon sits in that refrigerator. Same is true for your life. Something happens when you get in the presence of God.

You know what it is? You change. When you get in God's presence and you just sit, telling you, when you get this book and you don't overcomplicate it, and you go, man, this is God's word. I'm gonna read it. I might not understand everything that's in it, but I'm gonna read it. And I'm gonna let it soak into my heart. You will change. And there will be hope that you cling to in this verse. When you turn off other music, I'm not gonna bash music, but I'm telling you, there is nothing that your other music will do that Christian music can do for you. Only godly worship music can stir something in your soul. You put on your country music, and I know you're country music fans, man, I know you are. Your dog's gonna die, and your wife's gonna leave you, and you're gonna be like, oh. You turn on a worship song, God, you never leave me. Jesus died, and he came back to life. Your dog ain't doing that. And when you realize that prayer is this beautiful communion, where you get to just talk to the Lord, well, I don't know how to pray. Here's how you do it, you ready?

Just tell him how grateful you are. Just all you do, all you do in prayer is just thank him. Thank him for every good thing that's in your life. Thank him for loving you. Thank him for not giving up on you. Thank him for blessing you with beautiful people in your life. Thank him for just giving you the best church ever. Just get grateful, and then start asking him for the things that you need, because then you're gonna be like, oh, the same God that I was grateful for over here, that you did it, I know you can do this. I'm just here to tell you, spiritually speaking, nothing's gonna change in your life until you get around God. You're gonna be the same person, and that doesn't help anybody. But more of God in you, I'm telling you, it's gonna change others' lives. God wants to do it, and I know you want it. So let's go. Fruit of the Spirit, Holy Spirit, change me. More of your goodness, more of you, amen?