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Well. Hello friends, and welcome back to another great show on insight with Pastor James Ward. I'm so delighted to be with you, especially because of this new series that we're beginning on today's program. You know, we live in a world that seems to be saturated and inundated with bad news, negative reports everywhere we hear. We're friends. I want to remind you that the God that we serve is a good God.

Jesus himself is our good shepherd and high priest of good things to come. And God tells us in His Word in Psalms 23 that goodness and mercy will follow us all the days of our life, including right now. Friends, this new series is new for part series on how to have a good year. It's just for you. I believe, as always, it's going to be a life changing, mind renewing faith, building time in God's Word.

Open your heart to receive the good seed of God's Word. I know that you are going to be blessed.

Well, we're going to talk on how to have a good year. This sound like a good message, how to have a good year. And, I think I said something a few weeks ago about just a, the year of God's God's goodness, but how to have a good year? And, I believe this this message will, change your life and change your year every year of your life for the rest of your life, that there is no there is no duration.

There is no limit on, the efficacy of God's Word and its ability to perform in our in our lives, you know, and, the reason I say that this is something that will change our life, any life, every year for the rest of our lives is because this, this idea of goodness that we've been talking about for a few months, and we're going to continue for some time.

Goodness is rooted in the eternal nature of God Himself. Goodness is rooted in the eternal nature of God Himself. That's a big deal because that means that God can and will never be anything other than good. Yeah, and circumstances don't change and can't change his nature. People can't change his nature. I don't I don't care what happens. As the word says, God is our refuge.

God is our strength. A very present help. In a time of trouble, though the earth be removed and the mountains be carried into the midst of the sea. I won't be afraid. I won't fear because God is my is my refuge. And that that literally saying that that when, when and if the world starts to fall apart or your life seems to be falling apart, God is still good, man is still good.

His goodness and his nature cannot be quantified or qualified. I should say, based upon the extent of your experience of his goodness. He is good, independent of what it seems like, what we're going through. And I believe that this is probably the place that that we we fight the good fight of faith in that arena of how to not give up our revelation and our whole hearted belief and trust in the fact that God is good, even when life seems like he's not, even when life seems like he's not.

I believe that is where we fight the good fight of faith. That's where we that's where we wrestle out the things of God. And subsequently, I believe it is. Satan's goal, at least, is to always get us to question the goodness of God. And as I said before, we'll come back to it all. Sin originates from us believing that anything or anyone is good other than the goodness of God.

All sin originates from esteeming value or goodness to something greater than God, so that we choose it instead of him. We're going to see that from the Word of God with this, with this teaching, and this so doesn't set us up to have a have a good year every year, all year for the rest of our life. Can you say amen?

We'll get there. All right, I don't I don't tend to give and it isn't. There's no no harm. You have to understand these things. I don't tend to give, prophetic words in the sense that, you know, January 1st, this is the year of dot, dot, dot. And you hear that many times and ministries and that's, that's really for those ministries to help people focus.

That's that's not for God to say, this is the year of blank God. God is a God of eternity. So whatever he has been, he always will be. And so I if you're not careful, you will think then 2024 was a year of, let's say, breakthrough within 2025 is the year of victory. Well, did the breakthrough stop last year and did God just start, you know, wanting to bring us in the victory?

No. He's eternally the God of breakthrough, victory, healing. So to say. This is the year something he's he's the God of goodness. And that covers everything. That covers everything. So there's no year to there's no way to kind of get distracted. God is just he's just good. And all of those things are, are are good all the time.

Jesus settles it and he just says, this is this is the year of Jubilee. And he wasn't talking about the calendar. He was talking about the dispensation that came because he fulfilled the law. And so from that moment, Jesus declared an eternal or perpetual year of jubilee or the acceptable year of the Lord. And so you really don't have to get stuck saying, this is the year of this is the year of Jubilee, just.

And next year would be the year of Jubilee, and the year after that would be the year of Jubilee. Somebody say Amen. It's very important for us to notice those things. So that's it. It just helps sometimes people to focus when you when you say those things, there's there's no biblical indication that God stops doing anything based upon the calendar.

And then he's got a change. He's he's the Lord and I change, not he's the God of all. He he never changes. He never changes. Somebody say amen. All right. So God is eternally good. I'll say every year. All year, all the time. That's because he's a God of covenant. He's a God who keeps covenant and shows mercy and his covenant.

He never, ever breaks his covenant. Somebody say Amen. All right, so take a look at this. I want to give you a just a statement here. We're going to unpack this in this teaching, in 2025. Let's just say what are we going to do? Well, we'll keep going forward by faith into God's favor, by way of God's goodness and for God's glory.

That's just kind of our our coordinates. Let's just say as a, as a church community that, we're just going to keep going forward by faith and we're going to keep going forward into God's favor by way of his goodness. And as I shared before, that'll lead us, to, God's glory. We go. We go forward because backward is not an option.

So that's, that's an announcement for anybody and everybody. I'm just telling you backward is not an option. So we have to go forward and we don't stay where we are. And so is God's plan. It's always God's plan for us to move forward. We are not of those who draw back to perdition. Hebrews 1038 3738 around there says, we're not those who draw back into perdition.

Says, God has no pleasure in those, but we are those who believe and move forward to the saving of the soul. Somebody say amen. All right, so we go forward because we can't go backward. The next the next term there is. We do it by. We have to go forward by faith. Yes, we have to go forward by faith.

And so it's it's something that you don't always necessarily see your way forward. You might not have all the, the answers and the, all the direction that you need to move forward. But we move forward by faith because we live by faith and we walk by faith. And so you have to make a determination by faith. I'm moving forward.

I'm not staying here. Things are going to progress for me. Things are going to, advance with me. This is going to be a time for me to grow. I'm going to go from glory to glory, from faith to faith, because God will always move us forward. And we have to do that by faith. Somebody say Amen. So we move forward by faith, by way of God's goodness.

We've been talking about that. So the more we see God's goodness in our life and, we're going to talk about faith for goodness, which is very important. We're going to start that today. But it's God's desire to express again his eternal nature, which is his goodness toward us. And we're going to go through the scriptures in so many occasions.

The Bible lists the characteristics of God. And then it says toward us, toward us, toward us, we just we just received communion a little while ago from Luke 22. And Jesus said, this is my body which was shed for you. This is this is the cup. This is my my blood that was shed for you. This is my body which was broken for you.

You'll be amazed throughout scriptures how many times God says for you, for you, toward you, for you, toward you, not himself. And when you and when you begin to understand that God, out of his loving, kind, and good nature, is wanting to empty heaven and pour out all of his grace in heaven, that it God wants to bankrupt heaven, so to speak, for there to be a visitation of his goodness in the earth, to give him glory.

And that means for us to relate to God, who is the ultimate giver. We have to become the ultimate receivers, not greed. But Hebrews 11 six, as we quoted before by faith, tells that he is a rewarder. Without God it is impossible. Without faith it is impossible to please God. Those who come to God must believe that he is big deal and that he is a rewarder.

He is a rewarder. He is in the business of looking for people to reward. That's what the word says. He's in the business of looking for people to reward. We're not in the business of looking to get stuff. We're just we're just looking in the business of being humble enough to pastor ourselves the right way to say, God, we, we receive your Word, be it unto us according to your word.

So he's in the business of rewarding him, sharing his goodness, and expressing his goodness. Not only he's got good, but he desires to do good. Can you say Amen? Very important. So moving forward by faith, by way of God's God's favor, in God's favor, by way of God's goodness. And I said before, that's going to bring us into his glory, his goodness stacked up.

Everybody say stacked up. I know it's country. I know it's ghetto. I know it's kind of hood. But that's the only way I can think to say it. God's goodness stacked up. And some of you, we've been walking around church. Some of you even say a pastor stacked up, stacked up is stacking up. And we'll we'll see. That comes from Scripture theologically when Moses says, Lord, show me your glory, and I want to see your glory.

And God responds to Moses and says, this is how I'm going to show you my glory. I will make all my goodness pass before you. And that's that's how God brings glory. Matthew 516 and so let your light so shine before men. Jesus said that they would see your good works and give glory to your father in heaven.

So whenever God's goodness and waves waves of his goodness starts to stack up another expression of God's goodness, it begins to give him glory in the earth when goodness is stacked up in the lives of his people, can you say Amen? Amen. Everybody say I'm a receiver, all right. That pleases the heart of God. So we're going to come back to that.

All right, let's dig in here. I want to lay some foundation. I share five of these with you on New Year's Eve. We're only going to get to. I'm going to try to get to the first one today, and then we'll come back to the other four for the next few, next few weeks. Let's let's start here.

I say here that information fields and individuals had impartation fields and individuals heart information can fill your head, but impartation fills your heart. I often say, you hear me say all the time. Some things are taught, some things are caught. My goal is not just information. My goal is impartation. There's something you gotta catch it. There's a grace.

It's the grace of God. The anointing of God is is there's a dispensation, a tangible dispensation within the body of Christ that that there's an impartation. Don't forget the, the elementary principles, even of the laying on of hands. There's an impartation that comes. And the reason I make this distinction as we going, we're going into this teaching about God's goodness is that I my prayer and the goal is that this is not just a, a teaching about information about God's goodness, because information about God's goodness, it just goes to the head.

But there is an impartation concerning God's goodness to the heart that causes that goodness to become a tangible reality in our lives, that we would see the goodness of the Lord. The psalmist writes about that I would have lost heart had I not believe that I would see the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living.

Wait, therefore I say, wait on the Lord, and be of good courage, and he will strengthen your heart. I would have lost heart, which means I would have become depressed, hopeless, discouraged, and all of that. Unless I believed by faith that I would see it. That means I'm going to experience it. That means there's there's, what I what I can say, the tangibility ness of the goodness of God that it becomes tangible.

And I believe that I will see it. I'm going to see the goodness of God. So that's that's impartation. That's not just information. Very important. And that's important I that that idea, impartation versus versus information of a frustrating religious experience is having your is having your heart your head engaged, but your heart is not fulfilled. That that creates a frustrating religious experience when your head is being engaged, but your heart is not being feel and just gaining more information without an impartation.

That's frustrating. That's frustrating, and that's why it's so important for us to understand this. This the importance is why I that's why I say declare your heart to be good soil for the seed of God's Word. I. I could rattle off this why I I don't teach fast, I don't teach fast. And why it takes me 57.5 weeks to try to get to three points.

You know why? Because I'm. I'm not. It is not my goal to give a bunch of information. I can click through through slides all day and just run this stuff. I'm not interested in it. You know what I'm interested in? I'm interested in in digging up the soil of our hearts.

Yeah. You got you gotta you gotta turn up the soil and get and get rid of the familiarity, the disappointment, the hurt. You know, all the cultural voices, the sociopolitical voices. What your mama did, your dad did, what they didn't do and what your ex-husband did and your boyfriend did and what the Democrats did. We have to. You got to turn that soil up and keep on digging that soil up so that your heart opens up.

So that the seed can even be planted. Come on. Jesus talked about that and says that when you don't do that, he says, your heart is like the wayside soil and you hear the word, and the seed just sits on the top, and the vultures and the birds come to take the seed away. And so it takes it takes time for an impartation to take place so that we can bear fruit so that we can bear fruit.

Somebody say Amen. So I want to encourage you to continue to allow your your heart to be to be stirred, to continue to allow the, the, the fallow ground to be broken up as a word, as the prophet said, break up your fallow ground so that the seed of God's Word can be planted on the good soil of your heart.

Somebody say, Amen. Impartation is so. It's so important. Otherwise I'm telling you can you can you can go to church and, and live in the church and hang out in the church and sleep in the church, but not experience that transformation and not see, see change that becomes because of information and not just not impartation. And we're seeing information with churches like you have like never before, just this information.

There's no shortage of information we need. We need impartation. Somebody say amen. Amen. You know, Romans ten says that with a heart we believe unto righteousness, not the mind. With the heart we believe unto righteousness. And with the mouth confession is made unto salvation. Guard your heart, for out of your heart flow the issues of life, not your mind.

The issues of mind don't flow out of here. The issues of life flow out of our heart and in many situations we can concentrate on religious information and never experience spiritual transformation. Transformation. And that's where time and energy and effort, sacrifice, you know, sowing. You got it. You gotta you gotta put time and effort into transformation. It has to be cultivate somebody say amen.

All right. Let me move on here. You know, that's this. My heart is this man fathering? I just have to have a heart that fathering is growing in my heart. Now to the to say we got it. We gotta get it. We going to catch it and we're going to see fruit. We're going to see change. Somebody say amen.

All right, praise the Lord. Glory to God. Let's go to First Peter, chapter five, verse one. Try to move this along here. First Peter five one from the Amplified Bible. Let's start here. Peter writes here. He says, I warn and counsel the elders among you speaking the church leaders, the pastors and spiritual guides of the church. Everybody say spiritual guides of the church.

All right, so this is the conversation he's talking about spiritual guide, spiritual guidance and the church. Another reason why I said that, that families, it is God's plan for every family to plug into the local church, for there to be guys, for there to be elders and pastors and leaders that can help guide the church and and be a blessing to your family.

You know, when you when you rise up and realize you don't know everything, you know and and you, you will only as a dad, let me just say I'll come back to some of this as a father, as a dad, you will only abuse your wife and your children if you continue to try to lead in your own ignorance.

The harder you try as a man and I can. I can speak to this. The harder you try to lead your family. Genesis 18 God says, I know Abraham. He will command his family, lead his family in the ways of God. Genesis 1819 is so I have known Abraham. He would command his family the ways of God. Well, the only way for you to know the ways of God is you got to you got to spend time with him and then lead your family in the ways of God.

And so the more a man tries to lead in his home, apart from a revelation of who God is, and without receiving from God, you'll only abuse your your wife and your children to some degree, to some degree. And so we have to we need a place that we can we can be guided, we can be shepherded, we can be students.

And the church has a lot to do with that. The church has a lot to do with that. You know, this is this is one place, ladies. I don't know. I'm just kind of meddling now with this is this is one place that at least is an environment where the Holy Spirit, through the pastor, can tell you something, tell your husband something that you keep trying to tell him that, that his ears.

I struck a nerve right there. Listen, his his ears, let's just say are not are not attuned to even hear it from your voice. And the more you try to say it, you just keep nagging, you know? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, there are some signs. It is like what Pastor James said you like. I've been trying to say that for 15 years.

It happens. But. But the Bible is. The Bible says the church of the faith is the spiritual guys here. Sometimes the Lord just gives us coordinates and trajectory, and the Holy Spirit can speak into some things we need. We need that, we need that. And I don't think that we can sufficiently raise a godly family and have a godly, godly marriage without being plugged into the church to have that guidance, to have that guide somebody, to say Amen, Amen.

Praise the name of the Lord. We we've been in church a while, and man, all it takes is a is a is a tic tac and a now and later to get people out of church. Man, don't guard your heart against a fence. And don't let the enemy, draw you out of a place where what guidance is needed, what guidance is needed?

Satan's first trick is to always isolate you. Always isolate you. A classic trick. All right, well, all right, man, let's keep going. All right. First Peter five one. Where was that? I warn you and counsel the elders among you, the pastors and the spiritual guys of the of the church. Pray for us. Because if if you ever want to disorient the flock, you try to smite the shepherd.

And so we need we need your prayers all the, all the time. Concerning the guidance that that we're, we're called to, to serve to the body. He says here as a fellow elder and as an eye witness call to testify of the sufferings of Christ, as well as a sharer in the glory, we'll come back to that, the honor and the splendor that is to be revealed, this close, unfolded verse two says, tend, nurture, guard, guide and follow the flock of God.

That is your responsibility. Speaking to the spiritual leaders of the church. That's your responsibility, not by coercion or constraint, but willingly not dishonorably motivated by the advantages and prophets belonging to the office, but eagerly and cheerfully. Verse three from the New King James Version says, nor as being lords over those entrusted to you, it's a sacred and a holy responsibility.

But being examples to the flock being examples to the flock. Verse three from the Amplified Bible says not domineering as arrogant, dictatorial or overbearing persons over those in your charge, but again, but being examples, listen at this patterns and models of Christian living to the flock, which is the congregation examples, patterns and models of Christian living. That's part of our responsibility.

And so this teaching of how to have a good year, I'm going to I'm going to share with you five things that that we, we, we strive to to be examples and to pattern that we, we strive to to model these things in terms of how to live in the in the goodness of God. I, I probably, get a question, get the question most often.

Sometimes people ask me just, you know, Pastor James, in your own personal life, how do you how do you do it? How do you live out your devotion to the Lord? How do you how do you pastor yourself before the Lord? And so in this, this series, I'm going to go through those those things in terms of this is this is the example, this is the model.

And this is what has been working exceptionally well to build your life around these, these, these idea that these principles from the from the word of God, you know, you know, friends, I'm really excited about this new series on how to have a good year. As I said before, it seems that every area of life is defined by negativity.

There are so many challenges, so many difficulties, and I want to remind us that our God is a good God in all circumstances of life. God is eternally good. I'm often reminded of Romans chapter two, verse four, which asks a question do you not know that it is the goodness of God that leads you to repentance? Friends, it is not God's wrath.

It is not God's anger, or his judgment, or our fear of God that leads us to the place of repentance. It is God's goodness that leads us to repentance. Friends, each and every time we experience the goodness of God, it should soft in our heart knowing that we are not worthy. We're not deserve ring of God's goodness, friends, and each expression of his goodness, even when we are not.

And we're so far from being good friends. His goodness leads us to repentance and a deeper place of intimacy with him. If this teaching phrase takes root in your heart, which I believe it will, it will empower you. Equip you friends, and encourage you to have a good year this year, in every year of your life. I want to invite you to come out and join us in person for our Sunday morning services.

If you are near Chicago, in the south suburb of Tinley Park, where our main campus is, join us on Sunday mornings at 10:00 Am or our Skokie campus on the North Side of Chicago. Please visit my website to find out more about all the great things that are happening through James Ward ministries, and it is on my website as well.

Friends, that I want to invite you and ask you to give your best gift to become a monthly partner with me and my team France, to reach millions more people with the truth of God's Word. We need your help and together I believe we can change our nation and change our world. That's all for today, friends. Be well.

Be encouraged. I look forward to seeing you next time on insight with Pastor James Ward.

Father in heaven. Lord, we love you so much. Oh, how we love you, Lord. It is our meditation all the day. And you through your commandments you make us wiser than our enemies. We ask you for the spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ. Thank you that the entrance of your word gives light and gives understanding to the simple.

We ask you to open the eyes of our understanding. Lord God, give us eyes to see that we may see your revelation and understand your heart in your mind for the times in which we live. Holy spirit, you are our teacher, our helper, our comforter, the one who is faithfully called alongside us in this life and gives us the advantage in this life because you are the spirit of truth, whom the world cannot see and does not know.

But we see you, and we know you because you are not only with us, but you are in us. And we ask you this morning that you would increasingly form within each one of us the character of our Lord Jesus Christ make us to become more and more and more like him, and that you would bring about the reality of his Kingdom in our lives, through the world, through us, to the world around us, in the name of Jesus we pray.

Everybody said whole heartedly and agreed, okay, all right, let's get to it. This morning we're teaching on how to have a good year. I'd have a good year. And, I'll just warn you, I might be teaching on on this the whole year. I just I just might, it might, we might be over into 2026 sometime talking about the the goodness of God.

And if I taught for a year, I wouldn't even scratch the surface on what that even means. It could take multiple lifetimes for eons to talk about the goodness of God. Everybody say paradigm. They're so, so important. It could take it could take all of eternity to talk about the goodness of God. And we never exhaust. So even began to discover how good he really is.

And an amazing. So don't don't get tired of this message too quickly. We just we're hanging out here and I'm being changed. And I'm going to I'm going to do my best to unpack that with this series that it's it's a it's a reintroduction to the person of God and who he is and the motive behind him doing what he did and what it is that he desires heirs, to do and who he desire to be in our lives.

Get this. As we move closer to the perfection of the bride to welcome the bridegroom. So this is an end time message, an end time initiative to understand the goodness of God. We're we're we're discovering or rediscovering or discovering in greater message measures with this teaching on goodness, we're we're discovering the nature of the one that we're about to marry.

Don't you, don't you think prior to the time that a husband and wife, husband and wife is about to marry, that's a critical phase, that they're they're learning each other. You're getting to know each other. So just consider this message as premarital counseling. This message on God's goodness is getting us ready to meet our bridegroom. So by the time he shows up and the word says, and we will be like him, you won't be, you won't be foreign.

You won't feel that it's foreign. A strange when you encounter the fullness of his goodness. We are you with me. So this is this is pre marriage counseling. I like that we're getting ready. We're getting ready. Yes, ma'am. Thank you. Mother. Come on. We're getting we're getting ready. We're getting ready to meet, bridegroom. And so that's the that's the time that the that the bride is in the wedding chamber getting herself ready, preparing.

You know. You know, it took Queen Esther years a long time to get ready before she went in front of, you know, that jive turkey where it's. You know, it took her a long time to prepare to meet him. You know, the right perfumes. She's working with the eunuch. You know she wants to find the right dress. They watch for weeks and weeks and weeks to prepare themselves to some wicked guy who wasn't even right.

How much more should we prepare ourselves? Listen, the washing of the water by the Holy Spirit is like us, welcoming our Lord Jesus Christ. The perfection of the bride. No spot, no wrinkle. Not having any such thing because we're getting ready to meet the Holy One. Amen. That's why we have to get sin and and wrong thinking and all of those things out of our lives.

We got to be transformed so that we don't mix. Mary with the Son of God. And I keep saying, Jesus is not coming back for a try from a woman.

That you think you think God is going to let his son marry some lazy, slothful, shiftless wife? No, no, no, by his spirit, he's going to keep perfecting the bride till we get to that tipping point that we're united in corporately like him enough that God is going to say, now the wedding can be consummated, now the wedding can be consummated.

So this whole teaching on goodness is just, is just getting us ready for the nature of the one that we're going to be with for all of eternity. We got to get ready for heaven. Yes, we got to get ready for heaven. Come on. We we ain't ready yet.

We ain't. We ain't ready. We we are some. We need some mindset change. We gotta have some philosophy, some ideology change. Got to get God to get all the. The stinking thinking. The hurt, the offense, the bitterness, the resentment, the opinions. He's got to purge all of that stuff and get all that kind of stuff out of us to get us ready for him.

So this is the this is the process. This is what we come to. We come to church. This is why we gather to study the word, to study the scriptures. Because we're being we're being changed and transform, as I pray, Holy Spirit make us to be more and more and more and more like him, like him. Somebody say amen.

All right, that was all for free.

So the goodness of God, a year of God's goodness. We've been talking about that. And again, not just a theme for the year that changes every year. We're talking about, a timeless message because this is this is rooted in God's eternal nature. And I'm under I'm clearly under a divine mandate to teach this and to continue to labor in the word I for God.

The Lord is telling me to continue to help my people understand that I'm good and I'm a good God, and I do, I do good. So we're going to we're going to stay right here when the when the pillar of fire and the clouds start moving and God tells the people, you stop moving with the cloud and you stay right there until the clouds move.

So the clouds stop right here on the goodness. And so we're just going to stay here until the cloud moves. And when the cloud moves, and we'll pick up and pack up our stuff and we'll, we'll move on to the next thing. Somebody say Amen. All right. God is good. The Bible tells us the Lord is good. And we'll see that the Bible also tells us that God is God is love.

And those are those are synonymous. God is God is good. God is love. Those are those are both synonymous. And I guess at our very best, as humans, we have to we have to try to be good, and we have to try to be loving as much as we can. God doesn't have to try to be good or try to be loving.

He is good. Amen. He is loving. You know, I think even with our very best effort, let's just say for for parents, which is an intimate kind of love. I think that's the story. Gay kind of love, if I'm not not familiar, if not mistaken. Then you have the, the love between husbands and wives. Then you have the God kind of love, the the agape kind of love.

We have to do our very best by the Holy Spirit to try to be good and to try to be loving to each other. And we miss that even as husbands and wives, we fail to live up to first Corinthians 13, verse four five and six. That tells us how love is patient. Love is kind. It goes through a list of things.

Love does not behave rudely. Love is not puffed up. Love does not envy. Love does not seek its own love. Thanks. No evil. I mean, come on, we fail at that as husband and wife. We we fail. But we we can only try to be loving and grow in that. Or try to be good. Well, God does not have to try to be good.

He doesn't have to try to be loving. He is good. He is loving, and he never misses. Yes, it's his nature. It's his nature, and he can never, ever be anything other than who he is than to be a good God and a loving God, a loving God. So we're talking about his nature. Somebody say Amen. He doesn't try to be good or try to be loving.

He is. I am.

He is. I am eternally good and loving. He is, I am. That's why now faith is because he is, I am. He always has been, is and always will be good and loving. And he can never, ever, under any circumstances, change to be anything other than who he is. Because I am good, loving and what that means in terms of that creating a new paradigm.

Everybody say paradigm, but reason I talk about that so much because in relationship to the eternal, unchangeable nature of God who is good and loving, that gives us now the opportunity. Here is the term to recalibrate all of our lives in relationship to the greater revelation of his goodness and his love. Amen. So now, once you establish that as an eternal constant, you begin to look at your life and circumstances through a fresh set of lenses or a paradigm to now see your circumstances and your life differently.

And in every circumstance, no matter what it seems like, when you look intently with the eyes of faith by revelation, you will see his goodness. You will see his love. Nothing moves and heaven, earth or hell outside of Jesus's authority. Peter tells us that angels and authorities and powers, having been made subject to him. Let me just say it this way.

If it seems to be unfortunate, if it came to you, Jesus allowed it. And as some kind of an outcome of an expression of his goodness that he wants for his glory. There is a way of escape. Yes, there is an outcome. There is an expiration date. There is a breakthrough. There is a visitation from God. There is some kind of a of an outcome for his glory that will be an expression of his goodness if he allowed it to even come to you, because he's good and he's loving, then that doesn't that help you just kind of re evaluate and just recalibrate life.

Let's just let's just minimize the problems and the challenges of life in relationship to the the awesomeness of the goodness of God. And it has to happen by faith, has to happen by faith. I'm not talking about what you feel like. Your emotions will tell you something different than what I'm telling you right now. Yes, your mind, your experiences, your human logic will tell you something completely different than what I'm communicating right now, which is why we need to be transformed.

We have to be changed. We need a new mind. But the reality of our circumstances doesn't change. The eternal nature of I am one bit doesn't change its nature. He's good. He's a good God. Somebody say Amen. That excites me, man. Listen, I'll see how far I get, man. I. God's goodness. I'm just going to. We're going to dig in here.

Listen, I say here a few notes that God's goodness, I say, is the epicenter of time and all creation. His goodness is the epicenter of the time of time in all creation. Listen to this. What? What? The sun is in our solar system as a life giving source of life. God's goodness is to us. So what our sun is to our solar system is to the epicenter of our solar system.

Is is the sun life, life giving heat, warmth, light, radiation, all of those things that sustains life on Earth. Our sun is the as epicenter skin. And so what the sun is to earth and our solar system. That's what the goodness of God is to you and I. It's life giving. Yeah, it sustains our life. The the, the, the light, the warmth, the radiation that is vital to life on earth.

The magnetism, all those things as vital to life on earth. The goodness of God functions that way. And our lives we. I'm kind of a nerd for some of this stuff. We live in something called the the Goldilocks zone. The Goldilocks zone. The reason they call it the Goldilocks zone is the miracle of planet Earth. That we want right now is precisely in the exact spot that it has to be to sustain life on Earth, and that has not been identified anywhere else in the universe.

And so they call it the Goldilocks zone, because the Earth is not too hot, it's not too cold. It's just right to sustain life. The scientists will tell you if the Earth was just a few miles closer to the sun, life on Earth would be inhabitable. It'd be too hot. We all burn up. But if the sun was just.

If the earth was just a few miles further away from the sun. Life would be too cold. We'd all freeze. Life would be eliminated. On Earth, we're in the right spot. Where God put us perpetually until he comes to get us to sustain life on earth. And there's nowhere else to be found in the universe. And not only that, our our, our universe, our our galaxy is in the Goldilocks zone, in the universe that if our galaxy was a little bit closer to the center of the universe, a little bit further away, it would tear our galaxy apart.

God put us in the right space and he sustaining us, he's sustaining us. And so what I'm saying is that that what what the sun is and how God has set things up. That's how the that's how the goodness of God is in our life. It sustains us as the epicenter of our life. Somebody say Amen. So important God is calling us to holistically recalibrate our complete existence in relationship to his goodness.

So we're we're recalibrating our existence wholly, holistically in relationship to his goodness. When I say holistically, I mean that, every area of our life, I mean our relationships, our attitude, our mindset, your marriage, your health, your business, your company holistically means every aspect of our life being recalibrated in relationship to the goodness of God. So the question is to ask, what does the manifest goodness of God look like in all these areas of my life?

What happens in all these areas of my life when God shows up, when God manifests himself by his goodness, there's a recalibration that's taking place and we'll get to it. That's all going to continue to lead us to the place that he gets the glory. The glory. Can you say Amen? Are you with me? All right. You know, they say some times in life people ask the question, is this is this as good as it gets?

No, buddy.

Here's here's the truth. This is as worse as it gets.

Where we're headed. Getting ready for our bridegroom. This is. This is as worse as it. Get in. What is this is the worse. This is. This is the low level for us. This is a low level. God has so much more in store for his people. And we'll spend eternity with him in the goodness of God and the goodness of God.

Somebody say Amen. All right. Okay, you guys slow me down, man. I don't I don't move, move as fast. All right. Take a look at this. Goodness is rooted I've been sharing this in the eternal nature of God himself. That means I alluded to this. He can't intentional double, double negative. He can't not be good. So goodness is his nature.

He can't not be good. And I, the people, no circumstances nor the devil can ever change the goodness of God. Never, ever change. This is nature. He can't not be good. And I the circumstances. No people, no the enemy himself can never change that. The only thing that changes the only variable in the equation is our qualification or disqualification.

Based upon our obedience or our disobedience, our belief or our unbelief. He's the constant that never changes. The only thing that changes the only variable variable is our qualification or our disqualification based upon our obedience or our disobedience based upon our faith or our unbelief. It's the only variable that changes, not his goodness. It's just our relationship to his goodness.

So we're going to keep building our faith so that we can keep moving closer and we can keep going, drawing nearer. We can keep going a little bit deeper that James for a draw near to me. God says, and I will draw near to you. Keep drawing near to me. God says, keep on coming. Keep on drawing near to me.

And so this is a teaching that's helping us to continue to draw near more and more to the goodness of God and His person. We're drawing closer to his person. Can you say amen? All right, so I talked about qualifying and disqualifying ourselves based upon our obedience and our disobedience. Very quickly. Deuteronomy chapter 28, very important verse one in verse two and in verse 15, look at this qualification and the disqualification.

It tells us here Deuteronomy 28, verse one. Now it shall come to pass. Everybody say if, if means two things, if means contingent and conditional, contingent and conditional. So when I say contingent, mean, if means contingent in the sense that an action must be taken. So if you take the appropriate action, that's what if means that's contingent. But if also means conditional is not only taking the action is taking the action the right way.

So contingency means you act. You got act to make this happen. Conditional means we have to ask. We have to act the right way according to the Word of God. And so when God says if contingent and conditional, you diligently, what? Obey the voice of the Lord your God to observe carefully all his commandments, which I command you today, that the Lord your God will set you high above the nations of the earth.

Verse two. And it says here, and oh, everybody say, all O these. What are these? Good things. Yes, the blessings are good things. And so God says, all these blessings are all these good things, not some of them. He is not interested in withholding any of the good things or the blessings. I said before, he wants to empty or bankrupt heaven.

His objective is to empty heaven and to get it all out. Yes, but he need some worthy recipients on earth for the poor. Somebody has got to catch it. Somebody has got to believe for somebody got early release. Release faith. Right. When the pitcher pitches, you need a catcher there. Come on. Somebody has got to be ready to say, Lord, I'm ready.

I'm ready to catch it. Come on, come on. Use. Come on. Get your pitchers and come on. You get down in position to anticipate what's coming your way. He wants all these blessings to come down, to get this, to overtake his pitch his people over overtake you. These blessings will come on you and overtake you. Here's the condition contingent and condition.

If or because you obey the voice of the Lord your God, somebody say Amen. All these blessings, all these good things, is God's intent. But the converse is true as well. Verse 15. Deuteronomy 2815. Read that chapter. Sometimes it gives a contrast between a blessing and a curse. We talked about that. But coming back to point one in terms of Christ has redeemed us from the curse of the law.

Starting at verse 15 to the end of the chapter, it names all the things that we've been redeemed from Galatians chapter three, verse 13. But verse 15, here's the, here's the disqualification, but it shall come to pass if you do not obey the voice of the Lord your God, to observe carefully all his commandments and his statutes, which I command you today, that all these curses will come upon you and overtake you.

So there you have the qualification and disqualification, blessing and cursing, obedience, disobedience, simply based upon our faith and how we respond to what it is that God has and that unlocks his nature, that enables his nature concerning him being, goodness and all these blessings, all his goodness, him being able to express his person to his children, somebody to say Amen.

Very important. So I just encourage you to make make a an intentional decision, a strategic, even a multi-generational decision. Make an intentional, strategic, multi-generational. Everybody say multi-generational, make a multi-generational decision about obeying God to receive the blessings. Yes. Show you the blessings. As part of our mission statement is to make a choice and followers of Jesus Christ and build strong families and build strong families.

And so there are times where, I'll tell Jonathan, for example, bro, if you can catch what was on your granddad's, your two grand dads, and what's on your dad if you can catch it, watch out. What? It don't stop there. Then I say, listen, if you teach your children to catch what was on their great granddad and their granddad and what's on you, watch out.

And if you teach them to teach their children to take what was on their great great granddad and on their great granddad and on their granddad and on their dad, if they catch it, and then if they teach their children and they teach their grandchildren, they teach their grandchildren, but thousand generations will see the goodness of God. But you have to be intentional about communicating the multi-generational blessing of God.

We have to be intentional about that. And because if we don't guess what works the same way, the curse and the curse. So we got to be intentional about that. And teaching, teaching our family and our children. If we obey the voice of the Lord and we do what God says, all these blessings will come on you and will overtake you.

Jesus, all of these blessings as God's plan, as God's desire, as his heart, as it is for Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, 12 patriarchs still going today because he's the God of multiple, multiple generations. You know, I don't want to sound carnal, but you get to a point that let me something practical that your your family, it can be strange for your children, your grandchildren to ever know what a mortgage is.

As you use this as an example, it's possible for them for somebody to say you need a mortgage, a mortgage. What's that?

It's possible for some, you know, they need to get these things in the mail. These for you, for your children, your grandchildren. Be like a car loan. Why would I want any of that? I need a car loan. That's dumb.

I'm not being carnal. Him. I'm just showing you what happens from generation to generation as we walk in. The blessing that is just like you don't have to live that way. You don't have to have to do that. Amen. It's possible for for your children. I mean, I'm I'm just kind of. It's possible for your children and grandchildren to, you know, it's like fornication.

What's that? Come on, come on, come on, come on, come on. Okay. How do you get.

Alcoholism. What's what's been told. And you never heard of it?

Because God did something in my grandparents and my parents, did I? I just I just never saw it. They lived in such a degree of victory. I never saw the curse. You know, folks, I just. Arguing we. What's what's that? How do you fight as a husband and wife? Never saw it.

Never saw dad sleep on the couch. Never saw him get put out of the house. It's just. It's just some things. I never saw that because something is being passed down. Now. The goodness of God has been passed down from generation to generation. And it works the other way. It works the other way to man. I'm way off.

I'm trying to listen. It works the other way to for your grandchildren potentially can say, you know what? Is is easy to slay giants.

That is possible for our children. Grandchildren say amen. Giant killing is a piece of cake. Yeah. No, not enemy is. You see it with David's. The guys that were around David. It seemed like a big deal for David to kill Goliath. You read the Bible? Not too long after that, everybody was slaying giants because David broke the mold.

Come on, come on. He stepped out by faith to do something that hadn't been done, something that was impossible. And get this, it became normal that giant killing was a culture after David slaying Goliath. It was just it was just normal. So now you got any old body? Just. It's like who? You haven't killed any giants.

You haven't? You haven't? What's wrong with you? You haven't killed any giants. Are you hear me? Yes, but this is how the goodness of God and how the blessing of God's work. God works when it comes on us and overtakes us. And we we continue to walk in the multi-generational blessing of God. Somebody say Amen. Isn't that good?

Isn't that good, man? That's that's our father is high is why. It's why we teach our our men, you know, and men's ministry identity, character calling, destiny, legacy. Dynasty. Dynasty. Yes. And we're not just teaching our men to start with our legacy that that we leave in the earth. That's that's number four on the list. That's number five on the list.

But there's something even greater than me leaving my legacy in my own lifetime, which is important. That multi-generational blessing that I talked, talked about creates a dynasty that multiple generations consistently are operating in the blessing of the Lord. And so we're raising our faith to get beyond just destiny in terms of where I, in my life or even legacy in terms of the impact that I leave when I go to be with the Lord.

But I want to see a dynasty now that multiple generations are walking in the cumulative blessing and goodness of God. Well, we got to be intentional about that. Amen. Is that good? Praise the name of the Lord. Come on man, that's that's big thinking right there. That's that's kingdom thinking. That's kingdom thinking as kingdom thinking. And it's not too late when we agree, when we touch hands and we touch and we agree like we did earlier.

Come on, don't give up calling your children and your grandchildren back into the house of God. You keep lighting a fire under them in Jesus mighty name. Come on, God will answer your prayer. Even if he has to skip over your children. He'll get it to your grandchildren. So don't give up. Don't get discouraged. Keep on believing in the Lord.

That's going on, are you? Amen. All right. That's all our program. I told you I'll be teaching on this all year. So was like, all right, let's see here. Okay, all of that. I'll give you a couple more. The good, the good fight of faith. We're going to take a look at this. The goodness. We're talking about the goodness of the Lord.

And we'll see here briefly why the Bible talks about the good fight of faith for us to experience the goodness, the goodness of God. Let's first go to Matthew chapter nine, verse 28, Matthew 928. We've seen this a number of times here in this teaching Jesus dealing with these, these two blind men. Right. And verse 28, and when he when Jesus that come into the house, the blind man came to him.

And Jesus said to them, so important do you what? You say that again, similar to Deuteronomy 28 one, when I say conditional and contingent, if you believe Jesus is basically saying here, if or do you same thing, do you believe? If you believe contingent and conditional, we have to make a determination. So he asked these guys, do you believe or if you believe, do you believe that I am able to do this, that I am able?

And I have to point out the fact that he did not ask them, do you believe you can do it? Do you believe you can make it? Do you believe that you can turn things around? Do you believe you can work real hard to patch it up and to repair it and make it better? No no no no, I just need to know.

Do you believe that I am able to do it? Amen. Amen. That's that's that's where we got to be careful. We're talking about fighting the good fight of faith. Because if we don't identify what the fight of faith is, it won't be good. Amen. So we are not in a fight to believe, which I believe the enemy would love to lure us into, into thinking that.

That we're fighting to believe that we are able. Yes. Yeah. And that's where guilt and condemnation and things being impossible. That's where hopelessness sets in. When we when we think, do do I believe that I'm able to straighten this out or to fix this or to turn this around? No, no, no, no. Jesus says, do you believe that I am able, not you.

Come on, everybody shout. He's able!

I don't care, I don't care, I don't care what I don't care, I don't care what the obstacle. I don't care what the issue is. Yes, I care, I don't care, I don't care what the issue is I don't care, I don't care. So you have to not care that Lazarus, his body is already decomposing. You have to not care about that.

Are you hearing me? Yes, Lord. By now his body stinks. Yes. And in fact, Jesus says, I don't care.

I don't care why? Because he's able to.

Not me. And there's something liberating and joyful and praise worthy and celebratory when it hits you that you don't have to have the ability. What?

It just kind of sets you free, man. Burdens lifted, burden rolls away. Yes. Jesus. It was there. By faith I receive my sight. And now I am happy. All the day.

At the cross.

When you. When you just. It's like I don't have to have the ability. He has the ability. I find it so amazing and such an expression of the good nature of God that again, he's made the threshold so achievable. All you need to do is to believe that I am able. And if you really, really, really get that in your heart that I am able, let's continue verse 28.

Do you believe that I'm able to do this? He said, they said to him, what? Yes, yes, yes, they answered in the affirmative. If you believe all these blessings are going to come on, come on, you conditional contingent. If you believe, do you believe? They said to him, yes, Lord. Verse 29. Then he touched their eyes, saying, big deal.

According to your faith. Yes. Let it. What? Everybody say that one word. Let it be, let it be. Do you believe that I'm able to do this? Yes, Lord. Then according to your faith or your be leaving, let it be. Amen. What will be is determined by what you believe. Yes. Thank you. If you believe it, it will be.

Yeah. And if it's going to be, you have to believe it according to your faith. That's how faith works.

As our faith works. Yeah, that's. That's why we have to keep meditating and going deeper and deeper and deeper and deeper and deeper concerning the goodness of God. Because the more you b leave that God is able and that God is good and he only does good, the more you b leave, that it will be in your life as you believe.

This. No matter what your circumstances are, yes, right. Okay. Bland guys didn't come dragging up to Jesus. Well, you know, I got cataracts. Yeah. You know, you know, you know, the nerve has been dead vision. This retina.

You know, the that. No, no, no. Irrelevant. One question. Do you believe?

Then according to your faith, not somebody else's. Yes, according to your faith. As you believe. Jesus himself said, it will be unto you if you want it to be, to manifest. Want to see it? Yes, I want to experience it. We want to do it. If it's going to be. We got to believe. We got to believe. Amen.

We got to believe.

That's that's what the Bible calls the good. The good fight of faith. That's the good part of fighting the faith. Not just the fight of faith, the good fight of faith. That's the good part. I'm about to say. Amen.

It's it's our belief is is to the to the degree that our faith, let's just say over overrules, overrides and overturns circumstances. That's what determines what will be. Amen. To the extent that our faith overrules, overrides and overturns anything that seems to be contrary to the will of God, that's what determines what will be the faith that overrules.

Yeah, that's what it looks like in the natural. But you know what? By faith, I overrule that. I override that it is there. I'm not denying that it is. I just override it with my faith and then my faith will overturn it. Because the Lord said as I believe that's how it's going to be, and I'm not budging from God's word.

Yes. I'm not budging from God's Word, all concerning the goodness of the one who is coming to receive his bride. We're looking forward to his appearing. We're looking forward to the fact that he is coming. And I'm telling you folks, he's only good man. He's only good, and his bride is going to keep being perfected in spite of what's happening in the world, in spite of what's going on in the culture.

We're not going to get there today. Jesus says, my kingdom is not of this world. But but then there's a little more truth to that. He says, my kingdom is not of this world. But then he comes back and says, the kingdom doesn't come by observation here or there, but he says, the kingdom is within you. Yes. So the kingdom is not of the world, but the kingdom is in the world in his people who believe.

Romans 1417 the kingdom of God is not meat and drink, but as righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Ghost that's in you. So his kingdom is not in the world. It's not of this world, but his kingdom is in the world, and his people and in his kingdom. It's all good. It's all good, all good. Read revelation 2122 I saw the New Jerusalem, the New Kingdom.

There was no weeping. There was no sickness. There was no disease. There was there was not even there was no sun because the sun was its light. And that's the kingdom that the Lord is talking about is in his people. So as we believe that it will be according to what we believe. Somebody say Amen. I'll give you one more verses.

Scripture. We'll we'll go. We didn't get too far today. First Timothy 612 Amplified Bible. Talk about this fighting the good fight of faith. This has everything to do with experiencing the goodness of the Lord. It's learning to fight the good fight of faith that correspond. So I'll introduce this and we'll pick it up next time. So much here.

Chapter six, verse 12 Paul writes here, fight everybody say fight, fight, fight the good fight of what is so very important. Doesn't say fight the fight of faith, fight the good fight of faith. And we're going to see what the good part is. I'll share it some of with you are already. So fight the good fight of faith.

Lay hold of the what is the eternal life to which you were. Big deal. Summoned. Summon lay hold of the eternal life to which you've been summoned. Now that's summon is a that's a legal term. It's a legal term. Because if you've ever been summoned from a from a judge or summoned in a legal sense, it is an order and a commandment for you to show up.

Folks. Hear me?

It is. It is a legal expression of an authority and a demand that you show up when you get summoned. And the Word of God says, by faith, when you fight the good fight of faith and lay hold, you can lay hold on the eternal life that you've been summoned to. It has been summoned to it.

Answer the summons.

Say yes to the summons. You've been. You've been summoned. He. He's summoned us to this. And for which you confessed the good confession of faith before many witnesses. Very important part of fighting the good. Good fight. And and accepting the summons for eternal life. Your words and our mouth has a lot to do with whether or not we receive eternal life.

There's a good confession that comes along with experiencing God's goodness. You can't have a bad confession or a negative confession and experience to and experience the goodness of God. So there's a good confession that goes along with that of faith before many witnesses. Verse 13 I just give you this says here in the presence of God, who preserves all alive, all living things, and of Christ Jesus so important here, and who in his testimony before Pontius Pilate made a good confession, we're going to look at that, doesn't there's a nugget right there.

Oh, it's so good because I don't rush through the scripture. There is a nugget right there of Jesus making his testimony before Pilate. When Jesus made a good confession.

We going to come back to see what it is he. Jesus made a good confession and found a pilot.

He made a good confession. Saying, I solemnly charge you with any device there a solid charge. You do anything else? That's the end of verse 13, the next. And in verse 13, we'll come back to it. So he he made it. He made a good confession. And we're going to see what that good confession is. And I'll just I'll give you a little bit of a cliffhanger.

Some of y'all come to me with a little attitude because it's like, pastor, we have four other points, and you didn't give us the other four points up, and I need to know what they are. So hold your horses. I'll give them to you in 2027 and stick around. Be present.

So I'll just say this, that that Jesus made a good confession before Pilate and I leave you a cliffhanger. Here's a good confession before Pilate, in the context of Paul telling us to fight the good fight of faith. The fight is good because of the confession that Jesus made before Pilate. It explains why the fight is good. Yes, I'm going to give you a nugget you guys like, don't send us home like this.

I'll give you a I'll give you just the the CliffsNotes version. I'll just give you this is why the fight is good. When Jesus confession before Pilate, let's just say that Jesus declared before Pilate. If it was really about a fight, he could. Yeah. I'm excited. You got it. It's all right. This is what Jesus said before a pilot, and we'll unpack it is this is why it's a good fight of faith for us and why that's a good confession.

Jesus said before Pilate, pilot, if it was about a fight, it's you've already lost.

Christ. In other words, he was declaring to, to to Pilate. I have already fought. And why? And that was the good confession that Jesus made before Pilate that positions us to fight the good fight of faith. Why is the good fight? Because the fight has already been. You get anything out of the Word of God this morning. You know, we're living in a time when we need believers to be cultural revolutionaries, not insurrectionist or disregarding law and order, but cultural revolutionaries in the sense that we are pushing back against the cultural idolatry of our day, friends.

But pushing back against the kingdom of darkness to advance the kingdom of God like those in acts chapter 17, when the Word of God says, these are they who have turned the world upside down. That's where we are right now. I believe that America is upside down spiritually and morally. It needs to be made right side up. Friends, let's just say that America is going in reverse and needs to move forward, and it's up to those of us as ambassadors for Christ to be what Isaiah prophesied.

God raising up from among you, those from among you, to rebuild the ways places, to restore the foundations of many generations, to be repairs of the bridge, and restores of the streets to dwell. And, friends, I believe that God's grace is upon us, that he is indicated to us that we have a window of time, based upon God's grace, things to advance the gospel of the kingdom of God.

And it is our prayer that the remnant would rise and that God's people would be courageous, courageous, and strong. Right now and preaching the gospel of the Kingdom of God. Friends, thank you for being part of Insight Church. That is exactly what we're doing. God continue to expand our reach. We're reaching literally millions of people around the world because of your prayers and your financial support.

So please do engage, friends. Let's, go ahead and build, continue to build. We co laborers together with God to invest in the mission and the vision of Insight Church. If you missed the opportunity to do so earlier, you can just scan the QR code that you see there, or visit our website or give with your church app.

Thank you for being all. And before we go, I want to speak the blessing of the Lord over you and over your family by saying to you, the Lord bless you and keep you. The Lord make his face shine upon you and be gracious unto you. The Lord lift up his countenance upon you and give you his peace in Jesus name.

Always remember, friends, that Jesus loves you, Pastor Sharon, and I love you. Be well. Be encouraged. I'll see you next time. But inside church, online.

Hey everybody, James Ward here. And I am so excited to extend a personal invitation to you to join us for our new mid-week Bible study starting on January 22nd at 7:15 p.m.. You know, the thing that Jesus warned us about most in the last days was to see to it that you are not deceived. And in second Timothy chapter four, verse three, Paul writes, in the last days people would not endure sound doctrine.

The only way to avoid deception is with sound biblical doctrine. Our mission here at Insite Church is to make and train followers of Jesus Christ by understanding, embracing, and doing God's Word. And I know that as we gather to study God's Word intently, friends, verse by verse, going through the scriptures, I know that you are going to be blessed.

Children's ministry will be available. I hope to see you on Wednesday, January 22nd at 7:15 p.m..

Father, we thank you so much for your word. Oh, how we love your law. It is our meditation all the day. And you through your commandments, you make us wiser than our enemies. We ask you for the spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ. Thank you that the entrance of your word gives light and gives understanding to the simple.

We ask you to open the eyes of our understanding that we may comprehend the scriptures and the times in which we live. Holy spirit, we honor you as our helper, our teacher, our Paraclete, us, our comforter, the one who gives us the advantage in this life. You are the spirit of truth and the world cannot see and does not know.

But we see you, and we know you because you are not only with us, but you are in us. And we ask you to increasingly form within each one of us the character and the nature of our Lord Jesus Christ, that we will become more and more like him, and that you will bring about the reality of his Kingdom and his dominion in our lives and our homes to the world around us.

In Jesus name, we pray. Everybody to whole heartedly said agree and shout it. Okay, well, we're going to continue to teach on the goodness of God. And I told you, I'll probably be teaching on this all year long. And, could be two years, could be five years. And until Jesus comes. Because it's a timely, timeless message.

We've been talking about a few things here. Number one, a good year of God's goodness. Somebody say amen. A good year of God's goodness. We've been talking about how to have a good year. So I'm giving some practical, aspects of how we cultivate faith. And an environment to experience the goodness of God this year. And then we started over over last week.

And we're going to continue today. Talk a little bit about fighting the the good fight of faith. And we went, a little bit deeper last week to understand the, the basis of fighting the good, good, good fight of faith is not just a, a hoping and a wishing and praying. There was a there's a basis there's a transactional basis concerning the goodness of God that is trying to transpire that creates the the launching pad, so to speak, for us to live in the goodness of God and to walk in the goodness of God.

And we need to know what that is. And so, again, I, I believe I'm under an absolute divine mandate to, to share this, this teaching and to really disclose the heart of God toward his people. I feel the Lord is stirring my heart that Jesus is stirring my heart. He wants his people to know how good he is, to really, really know how good he is and out of his goodness.

It provisions every other area of life. Every need is provisioned by the goodness of God, every, every desire, every wish. Anything that, we carry in our heart concerning the scriptures is all provision by by the goodness of God, you know. And and when I, when I teach this way, it's something that I, I get to drink from the same fountain when I encourage you to open your heart to catch it.

Some things are caught and not just taught. There's an impartation and not just information. That's something that, as a believer, not just not even in a in just in a pastoral office, it's something as as a believer in my own life, I'm being provisioned by the goodness of God. In particular, we'll come back to Romans chapter two, verse four, which ends by telling us that it's the goodness of God that leads us to repentance.

I, I'm in a perpetual state and this is just me sharing my heart again in terms of how we interact with the Word of God and His teaching. I feel like I'm in a perpetual state of repentance because I'm understanding his goodness more. And that's that's the end result. When you encounter the goodness of God, it triggers a perpetual process and a state of repentance in your life.

And a part of that repentance is you growing more and more and more in your revelation of who God is and who you're not, how faithful he is, his desires, his wishes. And and it begins to, address every area of need, sickness and disease, healings, those those signs and wonders and miracles that we're believing for according to Hebrews chapter two, verse four.

They all flow from God's goodness. They all flow from the goodness, the goodness of God. And so encountering his goodness alone keeps leading you to a deeper and a deeper, deeper place of repentance. And you keep growing and you keep drawing nearer to the heart of God. And so we're going to talk about that some, some this morning.

Let's start here at John chapter three, verse 30. String a few of these together to create some foundation here. John, chapter three, verse 30 says here he must do what he prays, but I must increase. All right. So let's start there. I just talked about the goodness of God leading us to repentance. This is another. Another.

Let's just call this more commentary on that same idea. He must. Speaking of Jesus, increase and I must decrease. I love, I love the admonition must not optional, not suggestive. He must increase. I must decrease that. That is not a static, reality. I should say that's not a static reality is dynamic, meaning it is changing all the time, at any moment to say he must increase and I must decrease.

That is a that is an ongoing work of God's grace, moment by moment. As long as you're on this side of the dirt, there must be an increase concerning the person of Jesus Christ in your life and a decrease concerning who you are. That's that's on going surrender. What what Romans two four calls the goodness of God, encountering God and keeps leading me to repentance.

And that process of him increase, him increasing and me decreasing. That's that's different than feeling that you've plateaued. And the things of God that's different. And looking back and recounting the goodness of God ten years ago, 20 years ago, the glory days, the good old days, I remember when thank God for what was. But there, there is, there is infinite potential in God before us that we have not begun to scratch the surface concerning the grace of God, the goodness of God, the fullness of his love, and him endorsing himself and showing his approval with signs and wonders and various miracles.

But the key to that kind of interaction with God is a constant state of him increasing in us, decreasing him constantly, increasing in us, us decreasing. So this is this is so important. It's a progressive. It's a, it's a progressive shift of what I call him increasing and me decreasing. I call it a progressive shift of of my my value versus his price.

Let's talk about that. Let's, let's it's going to lead us to repentance. We're going to unpack that. There's a difference between my value and his price. And so I want to I want to take a look at what what I mean, there we I think you you quoted this morning, elder Mark quoted this morning about the lamb alone who was worthy to to to loose the seals and to open the books.

When I talk about his, his value, his price versus my value, it is only the blood of Jesus that gives us any value. It is only his price that gives us value. That's so important for us to understand because our conclusion of our value, apart from his price, we'll see. It leads us to what the Bible calls self-righteousness.

Me having my own, my own righteousness. Now come on, we're talking about him increasing and me decreasing all the time, a constant process, which means that we're moving away from self-righteousness. And we must have a growing revelation of his value, of my value based upon his price, not my value in and of ended up myself. We're going to take a take a look at that.

Somebody say Amen, right, Peter, first Peter 118 talks about that knowing he says, knowing that you are not redeemed with corruptible things like silver and gold, but you are redeemed. Peter says, verse 18, verse 19, but you were redeemed with the precious blood of Christ. That's his price determining my value, knowing that you were not redeemed with anything corruptible, but you obtained your value only because of his price.

So very important. And that's all. That's all regarding the goodness of God. Somebody say amen. Yeah. A lamb without spot and without blemish and perfect lamb of God. His price determining my value. So the reason I say that is because as long as, as long as we see and believe that we are good people inherently and as long as we, let's just say embrace and entertain your thoughts of self-righteousness, it keeps us in a place that we are where declaring our independence from God.

So self righteousness me assigning value to myself without acknowledging the price. That mindset and that state of self righteousness is a declaration of independence from God, which which hinders the flow of God's goodness in our lives. It hinders the flow of God's goodness in our lives. And so we're going to deal with deal with that here, here today.

Let's start with Mark chapter ten, verse 17. Mark 1017. I think we're going to come back to this in a in a different light. But I want to I want to take a look at this. Says here, this is Jesus encountering the what we call the rich young ruler. Listen to what the conversation says. And as he was setting out on his journey, a man ran, ran up and knelt before him and asked him.

Teacher amplified translation says, you are. You are essentially and perfectly morally good. What must I do to enter into inherit eternal life? That is, to partake of eternal salvation in the Messiah's kingdom? Verse 18 And Jesus said to him, why do you call me essentially and perfectly morally good? There is no one essentially and perfectly morally good except God alone, except God alone.

Now Jesus was not denying the reality of his own person, but he's engaging with this young man to contrast his life to God. He was. He's known as a self-righteous young man. You know, he you look at the conversation, he can easily roll off all the things that he did. He kept the commandments. And he's done all of those things.

He was he was it was Jesus was dealing with self righteousness here. And so he responds by telling this guy that there is no one essentially and perfectly morally good except God alone and no one is good. So as we're dealing with the goodness of God, and if we're going to walk in the goodness of God, it starts with, denying ourselves, him increasing, us decreasing, stepping away from self-righteousness.

We'll see that some more in a moment. But acknowledging there's only one source of good, there's only one source of goodness. And it's God alone and Scot alone. And it's so important for us to understand that and not and not to get that, you know, confused with the goodness of God expressed to us and good things. We're going to see God.

God says, you've been evil. You give good things. Your children. He wants to. How much more does he want to give good things to his children? But the distinction of of celebrating and thanking God for his goodness and receiving his goodness without acknowledging that he alone is good, and then living in a perpetual state of him, increasing and decreasing, and that goodness leading me progressively to repentance.

Every day I'm taking a step lower. I'm going down and deeper levels of brokenness and contrition and a deeper place of humility. His goodness will keep on cause and me to be broken toward the Lord. And I said before I get to it, why? Why this teaching on goodness is so vitally important? I framed it this way before this.

This message on goodness is pre-marriage counseling for the bride to get ready for the bridegroom. Yes, because if you if you're going to if you're going to get ready to marry, you need to know who are you going to marry. And we're growing in our knowledge of the bridegroom to know he is good. We're the Lord is getting us ready for Christ and getting to know him better, to know that he's good.

He's good. We're preparing to know him better, to get ready for his return. This is an end time message to prepare us for the day of the Lord. If you say Amen. Outstanding. All right, so there's no one. Essentially, I'm perfectly morally good except God alone. Now let's look at the contrast. We said in John 330, he must.

What? And I must okay, let's talk about that for a moment. Let's go to Romans chapter seven, verse 18. And I tend to hang out here a lot as well. So Jesus tells the young man, there's no one good except God alone. Verse 18, chapter seven, verse 18, Paul writes here. He says, for I know everybody to say, I know.

I know that in me that is in my flesh nothing good dwells, nothing good dwells. He must increase, I must decrease. No one is good except God alone. Paul writes here knowing. Then I know that in me that in my flesh nothing good dwells. Now that's that's not some some gloomy or, you know, dystopian kind of idea that Paul had about himself, but he explains his own nature.

Remember I said his price, my value. Paul is speaking to that idea that my value is only determined by his price. Yes. So when he's when he's saying here that there's nothing good that dwells in me, he's saying, in and of myself, I have no value apart from his price, the only value, the only goodness that could ever be associated with me and to me is through the price that has been that has paid for me.

And so he says here, I have to know that is in me and my flesh nothing good dwells. For to will is present with me. But how to perform what is good? He says, I do not find. Let's skip down. In verse 21 he says this. I find then a law that evil is present within me, the one who wills to do good.

Now this is the same guy who who later writes to us, if any man is in Christ, he is a new creature, and it talks about how old things are passed away and all things have become brand new. And so Paul, in one hand, he's saying here that there's nothing good in me. And then at the same time he's saying, but if any man is in Christ, he's a new creature.

So again, you see that relationship, his price, my value, his price, my value. And that's why he he could say what I call make a statement that's theologically balanced, that yes, in me there is no good thing. But in Christ I'm a new creature and I can I can do all things. And so there's this duality. As long as we're we're on the earth and this, this process I've shared before, salvation happens in an instant.

Sanctification is a lifelong process. So yes, we're saved. Salvation happens instantly. You can come to the altar, give your life, pray, repent wherever you are, and give your life to the Lord. Salvation happens in an instant, but sanctification him. Increasing and us decreasing. Sanctification lifelong process. And then that same process. I live in a state of knowing there's nothing good in me.

There's nothing good in my flesh. There is one alone who is good, and that's God, that's God. So he's speaking to that idea, that idea here, that evil is present within me, the one who wills to do good. Verse 24, listen to this. Oh, wretched man that I am. He. And I'm just kind of. I'm unpacking now where I, I feel like I live in my own life.

I am understanding my wretchedness more and more in the. Because as I discover his goodness is leading me to repentance and that process of repentance, I'm seeing my wretchedness in ways I've never seen it before. And. Nothing good dwells in me. Now you hear what I'm saying? I'm not saying I'm a bad person, that I'm saying we got a bunch of secret sins and all that kind of stuff.

Come on. We're. We're talking about the holiness of Jesus our Lord. The one that we sang about before in relationship to his holiness and his goodness. No one is good alone except God. I'm talking about in relation to the perfection of his beauty, the perfection of his beauty. Shine forth. You're talking about the holiness and the purity and the goodness of God, untainted, uncorrupted in ways that we cannot even imagine.

The closer you get to him, the more you understand your wretchedness. So this became the I'm telling you, every God. I embrace your goodness. His goodness is leading me to repentance, and I take a step closer every time I take a step closer, more wretched. But I see his goodness more, and his goodness is leading me to repentance.

So I take a closer step to God and whoa! I see more wretchedness. I see more, I see more wretchedness. And as he's increasing, I'm decreasing. As I move closer and closer toward him. This this is the perfection of the bride getting herself ready for the bridegroom.

Wretchedness in contrast to his righteousness. Yes. His price. My value, his righteousness, my wretchedness, my wretchedness. And I'm telling you, it's it's a place of deep communion and fellowship with the Lord. And we'll see it knowing him intimately, knowing him intimately, and being changed and transformed, all because of the goodness of God, all because of the goodness of God.

Anybody heart you longing. You're longing for that. I believe the church is. God is calling the church into a revival in ways that we haven't seen before, haven't seen before. And it's a perfection of the of the church. Man. This is this is the contrast that that we preach in light of all the political stuff that's going on.

We know we don't care about that. Don't, don't, don't, don't, don't bring Jesus into that stuff. And so if for no other reason, we stand and try to hold a line between political activism and the work of the Spirit of God and our nation and God, really bringing America to a place of revival? Are you with me? Yes.

So very important. So I, I, I ponder this all the time. The more you understand this goodness, the more you understand your wretchedness. And Paul, Paul says here, O wretched man, that I am! He didn't say, wretched man that I was before I got saved. Right? We say, if any man is in Christ, he is a new creature.

He says, O wretched man that I am not! I was released and this is, this is a guy caught up in the third heaven has messages that is not lawful for him to communicate this. This is the guy that that shared intimacy with the Lord in a way that he couldn't even describe, but because he understood the righteousness of God and his purity.

He says, I am. I am a wretched man. Remember Isaiah said that he had an encounter with the Lord, woe is me, I am undone. Yeah, I'm a man of unclean lips, man. We need that kind of reaction when we interact with the presence of the Lord today. So does somebody say, Amen, O wretched man, that I, that I am, I feel like I'm understanding more and more on a daily basis.

My own righteousness, my own righteousness in relationship to Jehovah, sick and new, the Lord our righteousness, Jesus Christ the holy, the righteous. And the closer we get to him, more and more we understand our own, our own righteousness, wretchedness. You know, as as long as I'm going somewhere with this, because as long as we think we're good. Remember Jesus says, no one is good except God alone.

Alone. As long as we think we're good, the goodness of God is incapable of leading us to repentance. There's just there's really no where to go. There's no where to be led to. As long as I think I'm good. But out of my wretchedness, then the goodness of God is able to lead me into repentance. And I'm changing the nature of God, the power of God, the Spirit of God, the authority of God, the character of God.

All of those things began to increase in my life as I'm decreasing. But as long as I think I'm a good person and I think I'm okay, the goodness of God can't leave me anywhere. And we live there, don't we? I'm a good person. Jesus says no one is good except God. No one. He says, a good person, no he's not.

Not into some twisted dystopian way. We're talking about righteousness and wretchedness in relationship to in relationship to him. I, I am not a good person who I'm not. I try with all my heart to be able to be obedient to the word. We're. We're endeavoring by the Spirit of God to surrender and to to live as as living sacrifices.

We endeavor by the Spirit of God to stay in the posture of surrender, to keep our hearts soft before the Lord. We strive. We endeavor by God's grace to be obedient. But I am not a good person yet. I'm not. I'm not. Oh wretched man. Yeah, that I am a man that puts you in a posture of a right relationship to the Holy God.

So you puts us in a posture of right relationship in order for us to experience more and more and more of his goodness and we have to enter into that place of of surrender. Are you with me this morning? I it's it's a light and I'm trying to I'm trying to navigate my way through it to make it as plain as I can, because we got plenty of time to talk about God's goodness.

God. God wants to be more good in ways. He's going to blow our mind. But there's a there's a heart disposition in relationship to him that that permits him to express his goodness and our lives the way that he he desires. I'll say it this way. I believe in some ways the lack of repentance and humility and the, the, the self-righteousness in our own life.

I think it frustrates the hand of God not being able to do what he desires to do, to the extent that he desires to do it. Because we don't we don't champion repentance, and we don't champion repentance, not too many repentance conferences anymore. Your ticket sales will be will be low. They will be dismal. And yet that's the key.

Yeah, that's the secret. That's the secret. Living in that posture of him increasing and decreasing and knowing that we're wretched, that's Christianity. So that's that's what I'm talking about. Sound doctrine. In the last days, we got to come back to the Scripture that Christianity is not. This is not defined by my value. True Christianity is defined by his price.

Amen. By his precious blood and the price that was paid for me. There is nothing good that dwells in my flesh. There's nothing good in me. Oh, wretched man that I am. It's only his price. It's only the blood that purchased my redemption that gives me any value. Gives me any value. Are you with me? All right. My goodness.

So he says here. Oh, wretched man that I am. Look at this question. But it doesn't, it doesn't it doesn't end there. The next part he says here, who will deliver me? Everybody say, deliver me. That's the only way out of our wretchedness. We got to have a deliverer. There's no other way to get out of our wretchedness.

You can't educate your way out of it. You can't curate a great enough resumé to get yourself out of your righteousness. Wretchedness. Okay, where we live, what we drive. I don't care if you become a slum lord. Magna magna cum laude. You got d d d t t t h d what? Whatever. You put all the alphabets after your name.

Thank you. Sir. Ma'am, our wretched, your wretched. I don't care what government appointment you said sit in. I don't care if you sit in the Oval Office. I don't care if you sit in Congress. I don't care what you do. You. Sir. Ma'am, are wretched. Yes. And he asked the question. Who can deliver me from this body of death?

Somebody. Somebody has to deliver me from this wretchedness. I can't I can't get out of it. Somebody has to deliver me. Thank you, Lord. And he answers the question in verse 25. I thank God through Jesus Christ our Lord. That's the answer right there. I thank God through Jesus Christ our Lord. No one is good except God. Nothing good in my flesh.

There's no good thing in me. Oh, wretched man that I am. And it's through the deliverance that comes through faith in Jesus Christ, the righteous, that his righteousness is exchanged for my wretchedness, because his vow, his price determines my value. Okay. Are you with me? Yes, it it's only is only his price that determines my value, that causes my wretchedness to be exchanged and replaced with his righteousness.

And that's my deliverance from this body of death. And that's my. That is the entryway and the portal to opening up the goodness of God in ways that are unimaginable and ways that are indescribable. And the Lord is calling us to that place. Can you say Amen? So very important for us is the essence of God's goodness is surrender.

I call this surrender. We're going to come back to those things that I talk about, five things, one of which is how to surrender and yield to the person of the Holy Spirit to experience the goodness of God. More and more. We'll come back to that. So this is this is again what I call premarital counseling for the for the bride to get to know the bridegroom.

We're getting we're getting ready. He's preparing our hearts for the coming of the of the bridegroom. So if we're going to be married to him, we have to progressively know him better and how good he is. Can you say amen? Amen. All right. Go to Philippians chapter three, verse nine. Take a deeper here. The same Saint Paul is talking that told us, O wretched man that I am!

I love this man, I love, I love, I love clear, sound doctrine and the essence of biblical Christianity so that we're not confused and we're not deceived about about who we are and the God that we serve and our convictions to to live, live lives that are surrendered to him. Philippians chapter three, verse nine. He goes further and says, and be found in him.

And he makes it plain what I've been sharing here, not having my own righteousness, not having my own righteousness. I think those are three of the most dangerous words in the Bible. My own righteousness. In other words, I'm a good person. That means that means I have my own righteousness instead of Paul tells us here, the righteousness that comes from God through faith in Jesus Christ is says, not not having my own righteousness, not going around thinking and saying, I'm a good person and you've got your own righteousness.

You've got your own righteousness, when in fact you really only have your own wretchedness. That's that's what you really have. You really have your own righteousness. But he says here, not having my not having my own, my own righteousness, which is from the law, but the righteousness he's saying here, that is through faith in Christ, the righteousness which is from God by faith that that blood that will shed his price, that determine our value, our value that determines the righteousness which is through faith in Christ, the righteousness which is from God by faith.

Verse ten. Why that I may know him. That's that's the key. When I say we're preparing for the bridegroom, that I may know him. I'm constantly in a state where he is increasing. I'm decreasing. The closer I get to him, his goodness keeps leading me more and more and more into a place of repentance and I understand that I am more and more wretched.

I'm getting greater revelations of my wretchedness in contrast to his righteousness. My prayer is not having my own righteousness, not concluding that I'm okay, not concluding that I'm a good person. I'm not having my own righteousness, but the righteousness that comes from God through faith in Jesus Christ. My value based upon the price that he paid for me.

And here's why that I may know him, bless him. It's the only way for me to get to know him, not to know about him. I'm not to know of him. I want to know him in. I want to I want to know him. Yes. Amen. I want to know him. And the only way for me to know him is giving up my self-righteousness.

All right? And to stop telling me that I'm a good person. But to say there's no one good but God. I want the righteousness that comes through faith in Jesus Christ that only comes because of the price that was paid for me, that determines my worth and my value that I that I may that I may. Knowing he's calling us, he's calling us deeper folks.

He's calling us deeper to know him. Can you say Amen? That I may know him and his goodness is always leading us to repentance and more and more when you get to know him, you know you're going to discover He's God. Yes, yes. The more you get to know him, it is there that you experience greater revelations and expressions of his goodness.

And I'm telling you by the Spirit of God, God wants to blow you away with his goodness. God. God has he has goodness for us. We're going to come back to it. Moses saying, Lord, show me your glory. I want to see your glory real deep. I want to see your glory. God says, okay, this I'm going to show you my glory.

I'm going to make all my goodness pass before you. Yeah, that I'm what you want. I'm going to show you my glory. I'm going to make. Not some I want to make. All of my goodness. Amen. Fast before you. But the only way to do that you got to know it. Yeah. But the only way to know him is not have your own self righteousness, but the righteousness that comes from God through faith in Jesus Christ, him increasing while we're constantly then decreasing and recognizing, oh wretched man that I am, who's going to deliver me from this body of death?

I thank God through Jesus Christ, my Lord, because I want to know what are you tracking with me this morning? This is this. This is the entryway, I believe, into the supernatural goodness of God in a way that brings him glory. It's this place of us, us emptying ourselves and not having our own righteousness that that I may know him and the power of his resurrection.

Here's another nugget I won't go too far with this one. The fellowship of his sufferings, the fellowship of his suffering. Worker I always say, we'll come back to this, don't I?

I got we got a whole lot to come back to. We will we'll get there. But we'll come back to this here's listen that I may know him this this phrase here, the fellowship of his sufferings. There, there is healing, supernatural healing in that verse. Amen. And knowing the fellowship of his sufferings, why? Because out of God's good nature.

Because he is so good and desire to be good to us. Listen to me. He experienced all the suffering that was necessary so that we don't have to.

Spend. I'm. I'm telling you, the heart of God. I'm telling you the heart of Jesus as far as he can. He is concerned as the as the lamb, as the sacrificial Lamb of God to fulfill atonement. He he took on all the suffering. Yes, Jesus, because he wanted to be good to his people so that we didn't we didn't have to.

That's why James, later on, we could we could build this case throughout the scriptures. What James, later on in verse five, he asked the general question in the church. James says, is anybody suffering? Come on, come on. Yeah. James says, and is any among you suffering? Right. Anybody, anybody stuff everybody anyway, are you hearing me? Is any among you suffering in the body then he says, is anyone sick?

Anybody suffering? Anyone sick? James says, hear the remedy. Pray the prayer of faith that call for the health of the church. Anointing with oil. Pray the prayer of faith. Why? To heal the sickness and to undo the suffering. Yes, sir. Why? Because Jesus took all the suffering that was necessary. He did it all. He was. And I'm telling you, I'm telling me.

This cycle of repentance, him increasing, we decreasing, and us continually being changed. When I talk about faith and paradigm, the more you draw near to God, I'm telling his heart is unfolding more and more and more. God has zero desire whatsoever to see people suffer more. Don't ever let anybody tell you that God use sickness to teach you a lesson.

He has no use for sickness and suffering, so that would negate the sacrifice of His son on the cross and God would declare it wasn't finished. Amen. And so why, why, why do I go through? Watch this. Let's go back to Philippians fifth. Philippians two was verse ten that I may know him verse chapter three, verse ten, that I may know him.

So as that, as I'm getting to know him right, I'm drawing closer to him my righteousness, his righteousness, his righteous. The more I get closer to him, I'm discovering how good he is. I'm good. I'm discerning how good he is. And here's the deal I want to know and fellowship around his sufferings. Because the more I know that he suffered, the more I understand in his God and God's goodness that it is not his will for me to suffer.

He's too good for that. He's too good for that. Short version. I think about the fact that the Word of God says, and by his stripes. We are healed. Yeah. Why? Why not? By his stripes one, but by his stripes, plural. We are healed, you know. You know what that means. I don't know too many people. I'm just.

I'm going to wrap this up because I don't want to go too much deeper. I don't know too many people. Can't even imagine what it's like to be scourged with the Cat of nine tails. Whatever that experience was like, you know, maybe, you know, Mel, Mel Gibson did a a good job of even letting us. If you saw The Passion of the Christ movie, maybe, maybe he gave us just a little visual to even help us understand how gruesome it was.

Yeah, I think the movie was rated R about Christ because, yeah, I think he just did a good job to even to even help us get our imagination around what it was like for Jesus to be scourged and, and and by his stripes, his suffering for us to be healed. You know what I think about in my mind, whatever the extent of the suffering that was necessary, we're going to come back to Galatians chapter three, verse 13.

Christ has redeemed us from the curse of the law, having become a curse for us, which brought on that suffering, the thing that blows my mind and something that I think about, however, however much suffering had to be had to be dealt with, had to be addressed. And he said, Lord, that this cup would pass for me. However much was in the cup of God's judgment, whatever however much that was, it meant that one stripe was not enough.

So you have a picture of Jesus being scourged, one stripe, and Jesus saying, I have not yet suffered enough for them. Two stripes. And Jesus said, bring it. That's not enough. And he kept going on and on and on. Some say up to 39, who knows however many stripes it took on Jesus. He stood there and said, keep bringing the stripes and keep bringing keep making me.

And causing me to suffer so that they don't have to. But they don't have to.

And that's why Peter says, knowing that you were not redeemed, you were not redeemed with corruptible things such as silver and gold, the precious blood of the lamb. His is the fellowship of his sufferings, hanging around and immersing yourself to get to know the extent to which Jesus suffered, so that out of his goodness we don't have to.

And we got to receive that goodness by faith. Amen. We got to receive that by faith. Are you with me this morning that we may know him? I'm going to leave it right there. But, friends, I hope you are allowing the Word of God to go deeper and deeper and deeper as the Psalms tell us. Deep calls us into deep.

The deeper we go with God, the deeper he calls us. And so I want to encourage you to continue to pursue the revelation that God gives us from His Word concerning his goodness. Friends, we often pray here for the spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ. Beyond hidden knowledge and beyond our limited understanding, we are praying and posturing ourselves for God to take us deeper by faith, for the Holy Spirit to manifest the gift of faith, special faith to take us deeper into a revelation of God, consciousness, friends, and who God is.

I think that life has a way of making us problem consciousness. We become, hardship conscious. You could say friends instead of heaven conscious. So allow the paradigms to be broken in your life, and to know that there is nothing too hard for the Lord. If you missed the opportunity to give earlier, don't miss the opportunity to sow, to invest.

Every farmer knows if you want to harvest, you have to get seed in the ground and the more kg you, so the greater your harvest will be. Friends. And so thank you so much for giving with any of the ways you see on your screen right now and being a partner with us and spreading the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ before we go, we never leave without speaking a blessing over God's people.

So I want to say to you, the Lord bless you and keep you. The Lord make his face shine upon you and be gracious unto you. The Lord lift up his countenance upon you, friends, and give you his peace. Always remember that Jesus loves you, Pastor Sharon, and I love you. Be well. Be encouraged. We'll see you next time on Insight Online.

Father, we thank you so much for your word. Oh, how we love your law. It is our meditation all the day. And you through your commandments you make us wiser than our enemies. We ask you for the spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ. Thank you that the entrance of your word gives light and gives understanding to the simple.

We ask that you would open the eyes of our understanding that we may comprehend the scriptures in the time in which we live. Lord, give us, teach us to number our days, that we may gain a heart of wisdom. We ask you, Holy Spirit, you are the spirit of truth, a comforter, a helper, the one who is called alongside us.

The spirit of Truth in the world cannot see and does not know. But we see you and we know you because you're not only with us, but you're in us. And we ask you to increasingly form within each one of us the character of our Lord Jesus Christ, and that you would bring about the reality of his Kingdom.

In Jesus name we pray. Everybody wholeheartedly said in a great.

Speaker 2

Okay, so we're continuing to teach on.

The goodness of God. A year of God's goodness and eternity of God's goodness because he'll never change. And, practically how to have a a good year. That's God's plan for every, every one of us. Anyone who's here and, even after this first, you know, 26 days or so, almost a month into this new year, just know that it's God's God's desire for you to have a good year for him to express his goodness to you and to to bless you.

We're going to talk about that. God has more and er facets of his, of his goodness that we haven't even seen yet. And you qualify through faith in Jesus Christ for the Lord's goodness. He's our good Shepherd and he's high priest of good things to come. Not bad things to come, but Jesus is office is high priest of good things to come, which means that God's agenda for your life is to experience the goodness of God.

And we'll see. The Word of God says, these things have already been laid up for you. And so what? Cultivating faith with this, series and creating expectancy to walk in the goodness of God. As I said before, I'm just under a under a divine mandate to teach this message and to really disclose what I know to be the heart of God and the heart of our father.

We serve at least have an incredibly good God is an incredibly good God. And, his faithfulness to us and his goodness is not subject to circumstances or or people or ministrations. He's good by nature, and he does good for his people. Let's dig in. We're going to pick up where we left off. I really encourage you to listen to the message, from last last week.

We really dealt with with our heart and how we will revisit some of that in terms of how do we really posture our hearts to receive more of God's goodness? We'll revisit some of that in a in a moment. We we left off from Romans chapter two, verse four. If you want to go ahead and get there, we're going to review and pick up from Romans chapter two, verse four.

And in my own, my own life, I'm encouraged because this passage is leading me into a an ongoing state of repentance, an ongoing state of repentance that's enriching my own personal, communion. In my own fellowship, my own relationship with the Lord is being enriched by this verse. And, you know, sometimes you read the word and you get you get fascinated and fixated on one verse, and the Lord just begins to recalibrate your life.

And I believe as a church, we need to we need to focus on this. And so let's get going here, Romans chapter two, verse four from the new King James, from the new King James Version. It says here. Or do you despise the riches of his goodness? Pay attention to every word, if you would. Do you despise the riches of his goodness, forbearance, and longsuffering, not knowing that the goodness of God leads you to repentance?

The goodness of God leads us to repentance. Now for a moment, remember, Jesus came, from the regions of Zebulun and Naphtali. The people who sat in darkness have seen a great light, and upon those who sat in the regions of the shadow of death upon them light is dawn. And from that time he began to preach, repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.

That was the message. So remember the the. Let's just call it the inauguration of the Kingdom of God. When Jesus began his ministry, he began to preach first, repent for the kingdom of heaven is at hand. In other words, the the, the precursor, the entryway to the Kingdom of God progressively is a state of repentance. There's a state of repentance.

If you can imagine God's kingdom as having, doors or levels, the way that you progressively move forward and God's kingdom, it always starts with deeper repentance. That's the value of repentance. Repentance is not just, it could be, but it's not just, you know, I, I did this saying and I did that saying, and I slipped up and I messed up again.

And and Lord, I repent. That's that happens. We need to do that. But more importantly, even when you're, let's just say, walking in a state of intimate fellowship with the Lord, it is still appropriate to repent, to go deeper. So the point is this repentance is not just for doing something wrong. You repent because you're doing something right.

Because because you hunger for more. Because you desire more. If you if you want to go deeper in intimacy and fellowship and communion with God to access greater grace. Repentance is not just for doing wrong. And I want to make that disassociation, because sometimes, if we're not necessarily practicing any extraordinary thing, then we don't think that repentance is timely.

And I'm telling you that repentance is something that takes us deeper. And to our, a level, deeper level of communion with the Lord and even Christ's likeness to transformation. As we pray before we teach the word to make us to become more like him. Repentance does that. That's the that's the first step is a heart of repentance.

And if we go back to that verse of Scripture, it says here that the goodness of God leads us to repentance. And we'll unpack that some. But it's amazing that God, through his goodness, not his judgment, not his wrath, not his disfavor, but by being good to us. Our response to God's goodness is repentance. Our response to God's goodness, his repentance, his goodness keeps leading us to deeper and deeper places.

And as we encounter the goodness of God and His love toward towards us, it breaks our heart to respond with a deeper level of repentance. And I'm gonna show you in a moment there's a cycle and a rhythm that gets get started in your life of the kingdom of God, beginning to operate in our lives in a in a deeper level.

So again, Romans chapter two, verse four ends by telling us that the goodness of God leads you to repentance, the Amplified Bible. Let's look at that as a little more. It's a little more abrasive. It kind of kind of comes at it a little bit differently. So remember two, four, five and Amplified Bible says, or are you so blind as two as to trifle with and presume upon and despise and underestimate the wealth of its kindness or its goodness?

Do you underestimate it? And his forbearance and longsuffering and patience? Are you unkind for or actually ignorant of the fact that God's kindness is intended to lead you to repent? And it gives some clarity there to change your mind and your inner man to accept God's will. So God's goodness is intended. That last phrase there, God's kindness. Whenever God is good to us, he wants to be good to us.

He wants to be kind to us.

Speaker 2

The intent or the purpose.

Of his kindness is to lead us to repent, to change our mind, and to also change our inner man, to accept his will. In other words, to know and to accept the perfect will of God, the fullness of God's will, we first have to encounter his goodness. We have to know his nature as a God who is good.

We have to allow him to be ready to receive his kindness. And then out of receiving his kindness and experiencing his goodness. The intent is to lead us to a place of repentance. And in that place of repentance it changes our mind, changes our thinking, but also changes our inner man. There's a transformation associated with repentance that allows us to accept God's will at a greater level.

Are you saying that this is not something you can get out of a book? It's not something we can get out of study. It's not even something we just get from reading and acquiring more revelation, more scripture. Yes, or a response to the kindness and the goodness of God that breaks our heart to a place of repentance in the process, a transformation of our mind and our inner man begins to change, and we step in to the will of God at a greater level.

And it's progressing. Jesus says, repent. Why? Because the kingdom of heaven is at hand. Because the kingdom of heaven is at hand. Are you.

Speaker 2

With me? Very important. So we're going to go deeper now when I when I look at this.

There's, there's a, there's a rhythm and there's a cycle that I, that I see here. So I'm going I'm going to try to explain this.

Speaker 2

Watch this. If you're taking notes right, right.

These terms down. And then I'm gonna come back to kind of explain the sequence right. These terms. Now, faith number one is faith number two is goodness. Number three is repentance. Number four is humility. Number five is grace. Number six is salvation. And then we're going to we're going to stop there. Let me explain these. And I want to put them all together.

So again faith goodness repentance humility grace salvation. Once again faith goodness repentance. Number four is humility. Number five is grace. Number six is salvation. So what? Here's a cycle. The more we build faith, faith comes by what? So faith comes by hearing.

Speaker 2

That's the reason I'm.

Preaching on the goodness of God. And so that we can build faith when that's that, it starts there. Faith comes by hearing. And so when we teach and we labor in a word concerning the goodness of God's nature, faith is being built. Faith is developing, faith is growing. So number one is faith. So get this. The more faith number one I have for God's goodness, the more I will experience God's goodness, right?

We got to build our faith, number one, the more faith we have, the more we strengthen our faith for goodness, the more we will experience God's goodness, which is number two. But watch the progression the more I experience his goodness. According to Romans chapter two, verse four, the more I will repent, because his goodness leads the way, so the more faith I have as I strengthen my faith, it will lead me to experience more of God's goodness.

But then the more of that I experience God's goodness, it will lead me to repentance. It continues.

Speaker 2

But the more I repent.

The more I humble myself before God. And according to James chapter four, verse six, the more I humble myself before God, the more I will receive grace from God, because he gives grace to the humble. So faith for goodness causes me to experience God's goodness. The more I experience his goodness, it leads me to greater repentance. The more I repent.

It leads me to deeper places of humility, and the more I am humbled myself before God gives grace to the humble. Now his grace is starting to flow, but it doesn't stop. There.

Speaker 2

The more grace I.

Receive, the stronger I get.

Speaker 2

Second Corinthians chapter 12, verse nine tells us that God's grace is sufficient and his strength.

Is made perfect. In my weakness. So now I'm receiving more of God's grace because I humble myself and the strength of God. The power of God is functioning, functioning in my life. Therefore we boast of our infirmities, that the power of Christ, the Anointed One, will rest upon me. So as where as we're pushing into humility, we're experiencing more grace.

And as we're experiencing more grace, we're getting stronger. We're experiencing more of God's power. And yet this the more we experience God's grace, the more we see his salvation, right? Ephesians two eight for by grace you are saved. Through faith. His grace includes not only eternal salvation, but it also includes healing, deliverance, and the blessing. By grace we are saved through faith, which includes eternal salvation, healing from sickness and disease, deliverance from all forms of bondage and the blessing.

And get this as we experience God's grace, that means we're experiencing more of his goodness. But the more you experience his goodness, it sends you back to repentance, and the more you repent. You humble yourself, and when you humble yourself, he gives more grace. And when he gives more grace, you get stronger and you experience more of his power and as you experience more grace, grace, there's more expressions of salvation, healing, deliverance, and blessing, which is his goodness.

And that goodness drives you back to repentance on the next level, on the next level. And you will find yourself now in a rhythm of God's glory, a rhythm of God's glory. Are you saying, are you saying the sequence there's there's there is no stagnation in the kingdom of God. But I'm talking about unprecedented growth all throughout eternity in terms of us continuing to move forward in the kingdom of God.

But there's a there's a process, and repentance is a vital part of that process. And you say, Amen. Are you with me? Come on. This is this is how I believe you. You live in personal revival. You live in a state of personal revival building faith and more and more and more of the goodness of God. This is this is the point, is, we're not talking about God being good to us because we're we're interested in stuff.

Yes, allowing him to be who he is. And when we encounter him and his goodness, it's just going to lead us to deeper places of repentance, deeper places of repentance. And he's bringing us into him, into a much, much more intimate relationship with the Lord Jesus Christ. As I said before, this message is pre-marital counseling for us to get ready to meet Jesus.

Where we're getting is he's our Savior. The bridegroom is extraordinarily good. And to get ready to welcome him and to prepare for the bride to make herself.

Speaker 2

Ready for the bridegroom. But he's come.

We're learning more and more and more about who he is and how good he is. And not only that.

Speaker 2

The word says when we see him, we.

Will be like him. You're talking about the the goodness of God and operation in our lives is a transformation of the bride preparing for her bridegroom.

Speaker 2

Can you say amen? All right.

Thank you, Lord Jesus. We said this last time that this this we're going to we're going to dig into this a little bit more that I, I said last time that this this has to bring a shift in our perspective to understand that, that our, our value is only determined by his price, only determined by his by his price.

And what I what I mean by that the more we understand that my value is determined by his price only, it helps me understand that I have no value on my own. And we left off last time. We're going to revisit this. The more we press into this, I begin to understand that I am not a good person.

Yeah, I'm not a good person. Well, I see the only goodness comes from God. The only goodness comes from God. He has the key. We're talking about getting rid of self-righteousness so that we can embrace his righteousness. Because to the degree that we practice self righteousness and we think we are good, we won't experience his goodness. We want experience his goodness.

And that's that's not a message of condemnation at all, but it's understanding that my value is determined by his price. That's my that's my value. The only the only, the only good associated with my life is because God is good. It's only because God is good. And we're going to see how we deal with self-righteousness in our own life.

Are you following me? Okay, I know this is this is this is heavy. And I'm doing my best to make it, to make it, to make it plain because it's so it's so transformational. Listen, as long as long as we believe, as long as you and I believe that we are good people, we will. We will declare independence from God.

That statement, I'm a good person is a declaration of independence from God. It's a declaration of independence. Instead of us knowing that, as I said last time, we're both wretched and righteous at the same time. But the wretchedness is something that we carry. We'll take a look at that. Let's go to mark chapter. Chapter ten, beginning at verse 17.

Mark chapter ten, verse 17. This is this is the story of the rich young ruler. And,

Speaker 2

I've been seeing.

Myself in this guy. I've been seeing myself in him.

Speaker 2

And maybe, maybe.

You'll identify with it sometimes. You know, we read the Bible and we look at all the the blunders and the mistakes that people made, like, like they're the bad guy in the scripture, and and we don't realize that's you. We can't we kind of look like, when we. Adam Adam blew it. And we say, look at old Peter.

He got out there and he stopped. He stopped believing and started doubting. And we look at we look at Jonah, you know, going in the opposite direction, and.

Speaker 2

We look at the rich young ruler.

We look at Zacchaeus, we look at all of them like they're the bad guy in Scripture. You know, that's you.

Speaker 2

That's you. That's that's so when you read the Bible, that's that's what you do. That's what I do.

So we all just look like they're the bad guy in the narrative?

Speaker 2

No. Is to reveal something to you, about you and where you need to change and how you need to repent. That's a that's the purpose of the scriptures. So let's take a look at this guy, the rich young ruler. Hey, I used to look at him. And thank you for the baguette.

No. Nah, I don't feel I don't feel bad about the guy. I want to encourage him because I see me, I see me watch this. The more, the more you repent and go to humility, your eyes begin to open and you begin to encounter the truth of God's Word. And now the power of God begins to accompany the revelation.

When you when you really allow the Scripture to read you and to change you, and you live in a state of repentance, then you start to change. Then you begin to apprehend, apprehend more of the grace, the authority and the power that God has for you because of your own integrity concerning the scriptures. So it's important to read the scriptures where the heart of humility, to see where we need to change and where we need to be led to a state of repentance.

So let's look at this guy's life, man. This is fascinating, Matt. Chapter ten, verse 17 I'm reading from Amplified Bible. You know the story verse 17.

Speaker 2

And as he was setting.

Out on his journey, this is Jesus. He was about to take off.

Speaker 2

As he was setting.

Off, setting out on his journey, a man ran up first thing and knelt before him. Now let me deal with that for a moment, because we.

Speaker 2

We're going to see that's that's a that's a religious posture. It it looks I'm going to I'm going to show you the nuance.

Of when I'm a good person. I'm going to show you the nuance of this. This guy runs up to Jesus, falls down to his knees, and a religious posture before Jesus.

Speaker 2

Does not look good. And if you are standing by, you say, oh, hey guys, just going for it. And look at him. He's he's kneeling before the Lord. He must be a worshiper. Look at him kneeling before Jesus.

Come on.

Speaker 2

We're going to see is what the Bible.

Calls the form of godliness.

Speaker 2

He was a form. He has him kneeling.

We're going to see it. It was a form of godliness.

Speaker 2

Come on. Say, stay with me here. Listen, we have to. We have to guard. We have to guard this in our own hearts. Okay?

I'm a good person.

Speaker 2

I go to church, I serve, I help the poor, I tired. It is so easy for us to rattle off our goodness.

And this guy's took on this posture of kneeling before the Lord. It looks.

Speaker 2

So religious. Watch, watch what happens.

Knowing of course man. Yes, looks at the outward appearance, but God looks at the heart.

Speaker 2

And right there we're.

Going to see in.

Speaker 2

That state of kneeling.

Before the Son of God and what appear.

Speaker 2

To be righteous.

His heart was far from God and his his heart was far from God.

Speaker 2

So let's continue. He knelt before Jesus and asked him, listen to this teacher.

You are essentially and perfectly morally good.

Speaker 2

What must I do to inherit eternal life, that is, to partake of eternal salvation in the Messiah's kingdom? And Jesus said.

To him in verse 18.

Speaker 2

Why do you call me.

Essentially and perfectly morally good? Jesus makes this statement there is no one.

Speaker 2

Essentially and morally, perfectly.

Morally good except God alone. Jesus makes it clear no one is good except God. That's why I have to say I'm not a good person of the moment. I say I'm a good person. That's a cultural thing. Sounds good, feels good. I'm going to show you is self righteous. But guess what? Completely antithetical. Antithetical to the Kingdom of God, to the kingdom of God.

And this is why we have to we have to put on a different mindset because these cultural ideologies like, yeah, I feel like I'm a good person, comparatively speaking, is the very thing that excludes us and keeps us out of the kingdom, keeps us out of the kingdom. So he says here that no one is good except God alone.

Romans 724. We looked at that last time. Paul says, oh, wretched man that I am not. I was not before I was born again, but through Christ I can do all things. Any man, the Christ, he's.

Speaker 2

A new creature. No, no, no no, no, I still am wretched, O wretched man that I am! Come on, somebody say, O wretched man, or wretched woman that I am! Come on, because I'm wretched. That's not a negative confession, I get it. If we're not careful in our faith circles, it's a negative confession. It's never negative. When you speak the word and declare the truth of what God says.

Speaker 2

I'm wretched and I'm righteous at the same time. And how can I be wretched and righteous at the same time? Because my value is only determined by his price. I'm wretched, but the price he paid for me makes me righteous. And so I'm wretched and I'm righteous.

At the same time. Wretched and righteous, not wretched.

Speaker 2

That's different. Not ratchet, that's different. But. But wretched and righteous. Now come on, I say stay with me. Because even in that it's a revelation of that wretched.

State that allows God expressing his goodness to you when you don't deserve it. That leads you to your knees in a place of repentance.

Speaker 2

As long as you think you good, you can't. You can't adequately appreciate.

The goodness of God knowing that we don't deserve it. Oh man. If anything, we deserve hell and damnation for all eternity. But when you when you recognize in my wretched condition what Christ.

Speaker 2

That while.

I was a sinner, while they were sinners, Christ died for the ungodly.

Speaker 2

In that same.

Wretched condition. God is being good to us in that wretched condition, and only because of the price that we become righteous. We've got rights. So there is no room for self righteousness, no room for self righteousness. I am.

Speaker 2

So.

He says here only God is good. Let's go back to the rich young ruler. Verse 19.

Speaker 2

Now he's in. He's on his knees before Jesus.

Asking for eternal life, which appears to be just a great Christian thing to do. Lord.

Speaker 2

How could I be saved? I really, really want to be saved. Lord, how could how could I inherit eternal life?

Jesus said, there's nobody good but God. Watch what happens in verse 19, Jesus tells him here, you know the commandments do not kill, do not commit adultery, do not steal, do not bear false witness, do not defraud. Honor your father and your mother. Listen to this. Verse 20 and he replied to Jesus, teacher, I have carefully guarded and observe all of these, and taking care to not violate them.

From my boyhood, this guy responds to Jesus and I'm like, let me interpret this for you.

Speaker 2

Jesus says is good, but God Jesus tells them what to do, and a guy.

Comes back to Jesus and says, you know what? I've been good my whole life.

Speaker 2

Is Jesus. Jesus, just tell them nobody is good except the Father and Jesus. List the commandments the guy responds to. Jesus says, I've.

Been good my whole life. I'm a good guy.

Speaker 2

Are you saying this? I've kept all of these commandments. If he wasn't guilty of anything else, he was. He was lying at that moment. So he. Is. Are you guys telling Jesus I have kept all.

Of the commandments since I was a child. And Jesus, I've been good my whole life. I'm a good. I'm a good person. I'm good.

Speaker 2

Are you hearing me? On his knees, as religious and deep.

As he wants to be declared. I'm a good person. I've done this my whole whole life. You know? I help the poor, I go to church, I die, I give.

Speaker 2

I do, I do all.

The good stuff.

Speaker 2

I do that this is this is him.

Let me let me go a step further. Watch this. I I'm I'm married as a virgin.

Speaker 2

And you should. Well, the the point that I'm making is you. You label as much perfection as you can possibly come up with yourself in a still.

Not good enough.

Speaker 2

Yeah. What you done the moment. The moment we become prideful about our goodness that I. I never kissed a guy. I never did this. I never smoked a cigaret. I never had a drink. Doesn't matter. You can label all that stuff. You still wretched man. You still wretched. I'm a virgin. I never watch pornography, I never, I never, I never I kept all of that since I was a child.

Speaker 2

I'm a good person. No. You're wretched. Yes.

And that's us. And here's this guy telling Jesus how good he is, how good he is. I think that attitude is the very thing that keeps us from deeper intimacy with God and putting on his nature. It's called self righteousness. Watch this. Verse 21. He tells Jesus, I'm good. I've been good my whole life. Verse 21 And Jesus looking upon him, loved him and said to him, okay, you lack one thing.

Now let me just kind of give you give me the notes here. The one thing that the guy lacked was a revelation of God's goodness. That's the that's the thing that he lacked. He lacked a revelation of God's goodness. He was so good in his own eyes, he couldn't see how good God was and how good God had been to him.

Are you hear me?

Speaker 2

He was so good.

In his own eyes. He was blind from seeing how good God was and just how good God had been to him. So Jesus says, okay, here's the remedy. You lack one thing. Here's the remedy. Go and sell all that you have and give the money to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven, and come and accompany me walking the same roll that I walk.

That was an invitation from Jesus.

Speaker 2

Just like he found the fishermen and Peter and Andrew. He told them two words come, follow me. Jesus was inviting.

This guy, come and be my disciple. But but you need a reset because you can't see the goodness of God. And how God, how good God has been for you. So the remedy for you, you need to give up all of that stuff so that you can really discover the goodness of God, so you can really discover the goodness of God.

And watch this. Verse 22 and at that saying, the man's countenance fell, and he was gloomy, and he went away grieved and sorrowing, for he was holding great possessions, great possessions.

Speaker 2

He could not.

See the goodness of God. Now I'll show it to you in a moment. It's not necessary for us to divest ourselves from all of our stuff. If we choose to allow the goodness of God to lead us to repentance, we can choose by faith to see God's goodness and to allow his goodness to lead us to a place of repentance.

We're going to see it.

Speaker 2

That's what God is looking for. That's the right attitude of heart.

That Jesus was, was, was calling us to stand, is calling us to stand into.

Speaker 2

It's it's amazing.

When you read, for example, when when Nathan confronted David, you remember when David, you know, slept with Uriah's wife, Bathsheba. And Nathan comes to tell him a story about this guy. Had one little lamb and you took it.

Speaker 2

David. Nathan tells David something interesting.

He says, the Lord has made you king of Judah and Israel.

Speaker 2

He's blessed you and given you a master's house. And then. And then Nathan tells him this, and God says, and if that was not enough, I would have.

Given you more.

Speaker 2

Offer. He said, listen, if if what you had wasn't enough, God, God was ready to give you more. So so what we're saying here, in terms of Jesus telling this guy to say, oh, you're poor, so what? You haven't done this yourself. That's that's not the answer. It was the answer for him because he he couldn't he couldn't grasp the goodness of God.

Speaker 2

And he was so self-righteous and he was so good, and he was a self-made guy. That's the American dream. Now I'm a self-made man. I'm a boss. Boss, babe, this guy was so impressed with his own goodness in his own success. Jesus says, the only way to remedy that you need to go bankrupt and give it all to come.

Speaker 2

Follow me.

Speaker 2

But my point is this when we choose to repent.

And humble ourselves before God.

Speaker 2

There's no need for God to decrease us. He only wants to increase us because he's good. But the posture of our heart has to be right. The posture of our heart has to be right, right? Can you say amen? So very important. You know, this is the time we're.

Believing that God is going to continue.

Speaker 2

To increase and.

Upscale our lives and our businesses. Then we're going to see God do more in our church because of his goodness. Pastor John and I, we're always declaring we're walking around the house all the time. He'll tell you, we're always confessing God is good. God's been so good to us. He's been so good to us.

Speaker 2

The only that's.

All he wants is for our hearts to be in right relationship to him, to constantly acknowledge his goodness and allow that goodness to lead us to a place of repentance. God is so good. He's been so good to us.

Speaker 2

And then we repent from there. Can you say Amen? So Jesus said, this man's countenance fell. He was gloomy.

He went away grieved inspiringly he was holding great possessions. And Jesus looked around and said to his disciples, with what difficulty will those who possess wealth? Here's the deal, and keep on holding it. Enter into the kingdom of God. Remember I said.

Speaker 2

Before.

Anything that we esteemed to be greater than the goodness of God, it will always lead to sin. And this guy was so into his own goodness and his own success that it caused his heart to not being a right relationship to the Lord.

Speaker 2

Let's look at the contrast here.

Let's go to Philippians chapter three, verse seven. So keep that in mind. Well, I just got miss, Miss God because of self righteousness.

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Philippians chapter three, verse seven Paul writes here, but what things were.

Gain to me? Look at.

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The difference in.

Attitude.

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Paul says, but what things were given.

To me, I have counted for loss.

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You see the contrast with the rich young ruler. I've kept all the commandments all of my life. The Bible says.

He had great possessions and he went away sorrowful and grieved because he had such great possessions. And in contrast, Paul says, whatever I have which is accounted for loss.

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He he didn't say, I lost it. I counted.

For loss. In other words, I esteem it to be nothing in comparison to Christ.

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I stain it to be nothing in comparison to Christ. This is this is the thing. Not I.

Lost them, but I count them as lost.

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Are you saying here, looking at our lives.

And all the things that God has done for us in that place of counting it as nothing, because we're beholding the goodness of God and how faithful he is, and we ascribing that goodness to him that leads us to a deeper and deeper place, a rebellion. Paul said, I count these things last. He was saying, as far as I'm concerned, what I what I have and what I've achieved is nothing is not mine.

It doesn't belong to me. I count I counted as lost. The value for me is Christ and the goodness, the goodness of God. Somebody say Amen.

Speaker 2

Verse eight, chapter three, verse eight, he says, yes. Furthermore, I count everything as loss.

Compare it to the possession.

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Of the priceless.

Privilege, the overwhelming preciousness, the surpassing worth and supreme advantage of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord.

Speaker 2

And progressively becoming more deeply and intimately acquainted with him, of perceiving and recognizing and.

Understanding him more fully, more fully and more clearly. Paul is making making a statement here. Unlike the rich young ruler. Say, you know what? Everything I have I counted is as nothing to me in comparison to the reality of knowing Jesus Christ, who is good. I'm a steaming his goodness, his greatness, and his grander, more valuable than anything I could ever achieve in his life.

He's communicating that here to us in his in his word.

Speaker 2

For for his.

Sake. He goes on to say, for his sake I have lost everything, and consider it all to be mere rubbish. Refuse dregs in order that I may win or gain Christ the Anointed One, verse nine.

Speaker 2

And that I may actually be found and known as in him not having any self achieved righteousness.

So Paul is making it clear here, I count it all lost, and I have no sense of self achievement or righteousness in my own life. This is the same God as communicating to us. I'm wretched. There's nothing good in me, the only treasure, the only value is in the one who is good, who is God. And this is why the cycle of God's goodness.

The reaction is for God's goodness to lead us to a deeper place of humility. Wherever however God has been good to you in your life and in my life, it must lead us to progressively deeper places of repentance where we can say, you know what? I count everything around me and everything I have has nothing. I count it all as dung for the excellency of Christ.

Now you don't have to worry about God everyday greeting you. Jesus told the disciples. He said that no man has left. How is as a mother the last for my sake, that I will not restore and give to you 30,100 fold in this lifetime. In this lifetime, what's the difference between that and a rich young ruler? The high.

Amen, Amen. Not it was. It was self-righteousness that became a stumbling block for the rich young ruler that that the Lord was, was speaking to. This is so very important for us. He said that I don't have any any self-esteem or self-righteousness that will wrap this up for the day. That can be called my own, based upon my own obedience to the law as the.

Speaker 2

Man ritualistic uprightness and supposed right.

Standing with God. That's all just religious posture.

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He's saying there's no religious posture, but possessing that genuine.

Righteousness.

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Which comes through faith in Christ, the Anointed One, the truly right standing with God.

Which comes.

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From God.

By saving faith.

Speaker 2

So he's talking about no self righteousness.

Of my own, but possessing the genuine righteousness which only comes through faith in Christ, the Anointed One, the truly right standing with God which comes from God by saving faith. Verse ten. For my determined purpose is that I may know him, that I may progressively become more deeply and intimately acquainted with him, perceiving and recognizing and understanding the wonders of his person more strongly, more clearly, that I may, in that same way, big, big, big deal, come to know the power outflowing from his resurrection.

That's the goal. All of that is necessary, Paul says, so that the.

Speaker 2

Power.

That raised Jesus from the dead. He says, I want that power that he. I want the resurrection power, the power outside from his resurrection, which it exerts, which.

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Is for the believers.

Paul says, What I'm really after, I'm after that resurrection power. And in order for me to get that resurrection power, I've got to discard self achievement and self self righteousness and my own goodness. And I'm such a good person.

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I have to count that all.

Loss for the excellency of knowing Christ, because he's saying, I'm pursuing the resurrection power of God. No wonder handkerchiefs from his body could heal the sick.

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No wonder he could get bit by a viper and shake the snake off in the fire and say that that can't kill me.

Why is the resurrection power that was working in his life?

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No wonder he could be stoned, shipwrecked. Come on. 39 stripes, 40 stripes minus one. Now. No wonder he could experience the miracles. No wonder he could be caught up in the third heaven. To see things that I speak about. Why? Because he says.

There's no self righteousness in me. There's no self righteousness in me. And folks, that is what God desires for each and every one of us. That kind of intimacy that we may know him, that we may know him. You get anything out of Word of God as my friends, I want to encourage you to go back and listen to this rhythm concerning God's goodness, God's goodness leading us to repentance, that repentance leading us to a deeper place of humility.

And once we discover that deeper place of humility, we're experiencing the grace of God. God gives grace to the humble. But then the Word of God tells us that God's grace is sufficient for us, and through the sufficiency of his grace, we experience his strength in place of our weakness. But that grace also brings us to the place that we can experience the fullness of God's salvation, which includes not only eternal salvation, but God's healing power, deliverance from all forms of bondage, and also God's blessing and God's holistic prosperity for us and our family.

And you know what? That cycle starts all over again with the goodness of God that we experience leading us to repentance. I want to encourage you to pray into this teaching, to spend some time fasting, seeking the Lord, to know him more deeply. As Paul says, that I may know him and the power of his resurrection, the fellowship of his sufferings that you would draw into a deeper place of intimacy with the Lord and experience his goodness for your life.

If you missed the opportunity to give before and to invest, and the mission and the vision of Nancy Jo to make sure you scan the QR code and download our church app or text again, but visit our website to support the vision of Insight Church. Thank you so much. Thank you for standing with us and praying with us friends.

So many more great things are coming and the weeks to come that we'll have some updates to share with you. Until then, I want to speak the Lord's blessing over you by saying, the Lord bless you and keep you. The Lord make his face shine upon you and be gracious unto you. The Lord lift up his countenance upon you and give you his peace in Jesus name.

Always remember that Jesus loves you, Pastor Sharon, and I love you. Be well. Be encouraged. See you next time on Insight Online. The only way to avoid seducing spirits and deception is sound doctrine is to know the doctrine of God's Word. There's no other way to avoid being seduced by ungodly spirits. It's only through the truth of God's Word, the doctrine of Scripture.

Father, we thank you so much for your word. Oh, how we love your Lord as our meditation all the day, and you throughout you through your commandments. You make us wiser than our enemies. We ask you for the spirit of wisdom and revelation and the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ. Thank you that the entrance of your Word gives light and gives understanding to the simple.

We ask you to open the eyes of our understanding that we may comprehend the scriptures and the times in which we live. Holy spirit, we honor you as our teacher, our helper, our comforter, the one who has called alongside us and gives us the advantage in this life. The spirit of truth, whom the world cannot see and does not know.

But we see you, and we know you, because you are not only with us, but you're in us, and we ask you to increasingly form within each one of us the character of our Lord Jesus Christ. And that you would bring about the reality of his Kingdom and his dominion in our lives and through our lives to the world around us.

In Jesus name we pray. We wholeheartedly sang and agreed and shouted, okay, so we're continuing. We're here talking about the goodness of God. And we've been talking about how to have a good year and I could say a good decade, a good century, a good life, whatever you want to call it. Because the Lord is the Lord is good.

And, this is something that he's been stirring my heart, to teach in depth on the goodness of God. God wants to be known for who he is. And God above all, is a good God. He wants to be known that way. Not only is he good, he wants to be good to you. Everybody say God wants to be good to me.

That's a that's a biblical confession and something good for you to rehearse that God wants to be good to me. God wants to be good to me. It's good to remind yourself. It's good to hear you confessing that God wants to be good to you, to know that he has plans, that he has thoughts, and plans for you to do you good.

He said in the word of God. That was a famous saying from, you know, doctor Oral Roberts that something good is going to happen. Something good is going to happen to me today. He would confess it all the time. And that's absolutely true concerning the God that we we serve. We're going to continue here. I've been talking about ratchet and righteous, ratchet and righteous, and we're going to see the connection between our wretchedness and God's righteousness, and how it positions us to experience the goodness of God and greater ways.

And, even as I, you know, share the Word of God. You know, I'm really I'm really grateful, for the passion and the the honor for the word of God that we have we have as a church. You know, I'm thankful I don't I don't mean to, mean I don't mean any harm when I, when I say this and I'm not saying this to be critical of any ministry, but I'm I'm thankful personally that I don't I don't have to utilize the musicians to help me preach.

I'm great. I'm grateful for that. I'm grateful for the the opportunity that I can can stand and declare, I don't have to be demonstrative in any, way that I can stand and declare the truth of God's Word with clarity and power. Because there's power in the Word of God as power in the word of God. And as the scriptures.

Tell us, this is a time to get understanding. And every and all of our getting to get under it, to get understanding. And so I don't I don't ever feel like I have to work up to a climax at the end of the service. The climax happened 2000 years ago. The climax happened when Jesus said, it is finished, it is finished.

And I always remind you that the the speaking, the Word of God and faith is so powerful. I always remind you that the greatest engagement of spiritual warfare in the Bible happened in the wilderness, when Jesus face to face engaged the devil and he simply said, it is written. It is written Satan is not moved by emotionalism. You can you can dance holes in the carpet.

You can shout until you lose your voice. You can. You can run until you're tired and you exhausted. It means nothing to the enemy. The only thing that he responds to the authority of what God has said. When you say it is written, it is written, it is written. And so we're teaching. We're teaching how to how to be skilled in the word of righteousness.

As I often say, the Word of God, of course, is the sword of the spirit, the sword of the spirit, which is the Word of God. But what good is the sharp sword if we don't know how to use it? And so we need to be skilled in the Word of God and skilled in the word of righteousness, so that we can, stand against the enemy and, declare God's God's Word.

That is has made it so that, every work of the devil has been destroy. Every work of the devil has been destroyed. Can you say Amen? All right, so let's get going here and, see what the Lord has for us today. We're going to start in Nahum chapter one, verse seven from the Amplified Bible, Nahum chapter one, verse seven, talking about the goodness of God.

And again we'll see wretched and righteous. So Nahum chapter one, verse seven, we saw this before reading from the Amplified Bible here it says, the Lord is what the Lord is good. And now we're going to see Nahum. Let's just say qualify the goodness of God in two ways. So the Lord is good, and then he qualifies the goodness of God in two ways.

Here. Number one, he says a strength. Everybody say strength. And then he says, stronghold. Everybody say stronghold. God is good. The Lord is good. Qualified in two ways strength and stronghold. Now when when the Word of God tells us that the Lord is good, God is strength. I say here, strength or power? You could say authority, but let's just call it strength or might to do some things that you can't do, but also strength to undo some things that you can't do.

Strength is needed both ways. There are some things that you just you just can't do on your own. You can hang it up. You can hang it up. Just just there. There are some battles. There are some circus circumstances that we're facing right now. We're helpless if we're honest, we need strength to do some things that need to be done that we can't do.

But there are also some things that have been done in our life that need to be reversed, overturn and undone, that it's going to take strength to undo what has been done. And both of them are products of the goodness of God we want. We won't go there. But remember Jesus telling us, you know, that a strong man, you first got to bind the strong man until someone stronger than him comes to spoil his good.

But Jesus says this if I cast out Satan, watch this with the finger of God. Then you're going to know that the kingdom of God is at hand.

Speaker 2

And,

Jesus made it clear God doesn't have to flex. He doesn't have to make a muscle. He doesn't have to get up off of his throne, any of that. He said, if I cast out Satan with the finger and finger of God, then you're going to know that the kingdom of heaven is at hand. Our God has strength. He's a God of might.

He's a God of power to do what needs to be done. What we can't do, but to also undo anything that the enemy, anything that the devil has done in your life. I'm announcing you today. It is reversible that Jesus has already died. There's a turnaround that comes with that. By the strength of God. Now you may say, why?

How I can't see it. I don't understand that. Don't say that's impossible. Don't make that confession. With God, all things are possible. All things are possible because he's a God who's good and he's a God of strength. Now the second way that he communicates here says that God is also a stronghold, old. He's a stronghold. That means, generally speaking, to, let's just say protect and preserve from danger or your enemy.

That's what a stronghold is. Not only is he strength, but he is a stronghold. The Lord is our is our refuge. He's our dwelling place. David talks about that in Psalm 88. Psalm 18 the Lord is our fortress, our fortress. He is our dwelling place. He is our stronghold. A stronghold is intended to protect or preserve from danger or from our enemies.

And that's also a product of God's goodness. Amen. Part of God's goodness. Somebody say Amen, Amen. He continues here the Lord is good, a strength and stronghold in the day of trouble. That's that's the world we live in right now. It's every day is the day of trouble. We need strength and we need a stronghold. I was just talking about us flying in to Washington DC, you know, with everything that's happening, you know, just wherever you go, you cross the street when you get in your car, when you get on your airplane, you got to know that God is your strength, your stronghold.

We just we need to know that because we're living in the day of trouble. And Satan goes about as a roaring what? Seeking to do what to devour. So that's the day of trouble. We need strength. We need God's strength, and we need him as our stronghold in the day of trouble. Big deal. He knows, recognizes, has knowledge of, and understands those who take refuge and trust in him.

He knows intimate acquaintance. He recognizes God has. Let's just say, all knowledge, complete knowledge of and understand. You don't have to say, well, nobody understand me. Got God, understand?

My husband don't understand me. Give him a break. God understand.

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God understands.

My wife don't understand me. Give her a break. God that God understands you. He knows you. He recognizes you. He understands you. Come on. And all of this, all of this goodness. God's intent is to express that goodness toward you. He understands you. Jesus tells us in Matthew chapter chapter six, he says, the father knows the things you have need of before you pray.

So by the time you can utter a prayer and even figure out what you even need to pray about, which Romans chapter eight tells us, sometimes we don't even know what to pray for, even when we know what to pray by the time we pray, we don't know what to pray. God already knows the things that you need before you even pray.

It's because he understand and he recognizes he already has plans to be good, and to show you good and to do good to you before you can even recognize the problem. He's a good God, somebody to say Amen. And for those who are to take refuge and trust in him, let's go to Psalm 103. My goodness, look at this one.

Verse 13, that same God stronghold his strength. Psalms 103 verse 13 says, as a father pities his children, everybody say, that's us. As though as a father pities his children, we're going to talk about that. So the Lord pities those who fear him. That's a great thing. We're going to talk about what that means in a moment. It's a great thing to know that not only God does God understand, recognize, you know, pays attention to whatever's going on in your life.

Your father in heaven pities you. Now, that's not some sad sob story. Woe is me kind of pity. We're going to find out. That's the goodness of God operating in your life. So he he pities his children. Verse 14. For he knows again our frame. He remembers that we are what he remembers, that we are dust. So we're going to come back to that.

He he remembers how how helpless we are. He remembers how weak, how frail, how feckless. The mess ups, the blunders, our humanity, the temptations, the challenges, the struggles, the addictions. He already knows and understands that stuff. And he pities us. And he remembers our frame. He knows there just dust. But he did something about that dust. Oh my goodness, somebody say Amen.

The wife says the Bible says he pities his children. He pities those that fear him. Look at this. Look at this quick definition of pity. Pity is sympathetic or kindly sorrow that seeks to everybody say alleviate. It seeks to alleviate the suffering, distress or misfortune of another, leading one to give relief or aid or to show mercy. So keep that definition in mind when the Word of God says that God cares, is children, and he pities those that fear him.

As a father pities his child. This is God's goodness and what God is thinking about and how he pities you and me right now. God right now has sympathetic or kindly sorrow. It's a heartbreak for him to see his children suffer. It bothers him. It makes him sorry when he sees his redeemed suffering. He doesn't want that. And so he has pity for his children, for those that fear him, those that put him first, those that honor him.

It's a heartbreak to God to see his children suffer. And he's kind. He has kindly sorrow, and out of that kind sorrow, he's seeking to alleviate the suffering. He wants to intervene and intercept the suffering so that the suffering is turned around, so that your mourning is turned into joy. That's that's his desire. Yeah. To give us the garment of praise for the spirit of heaviness, to give us the oil of joy for mourning.

That's it's his desire. He's pitying his people to alleviate the suffering, distress or the misfortune of us. And it leads him to say, how can I give relief? How can I give aid? How can I show mercy? How can I alleviate that suffering? I'm telling you, the heart of our father who is good. And I'm telling you, I don't care.

On the authority of God's Word. I don't care what you're dealing with. I don't care what the doctor's report says. I don't care what the circumstances look like. I'm telling you, the heart of El should die. God, our father, who is good. He wants to alleviate that. He wants to alleviate it because he pities his children. Because somebody say Amen.

I if you got a toothache, God doesn't want you to have a toothache. Come. I'm talking. I'm talking about conditioning our mind. I'm serious. If you have a toothache, he does not want you to have a toothache. And it's so easy to say, oh, it's just a toothache. It's just a headache. It's just. It's so easy for us and our humanity to.

To coexist with the suffering and. And to coexist with things that God wants to alleviate. Which is why we must live and operate by faith and God's Word. To know that God doesn't want me to have a toothache. Are you hear me? Come on, I'm talking faith. I'm talking faith. I'm talking about the heart of God who has who is good.

And that's suffering from relationship discouragement, anxiety, depression, fear, you name it. Somebody hurt you. Somebody broke your heart, whatever. But God wants to alleviate that issue. He pities us. What an amazing God it tells us here. He knows he says he knows. And he he remembers. He knows and he remembers this, this, this ministers to me, every time I think about the fact that it says here at the end of verse 14, he remembers that we are we are dust, we are dust.

Let's deal with that for a moment. He pities us, but he remembers that we are we are dust. Let's let's go back to Genesis chapter two, verse seven, and see the reference to, dust. We first find dust in Genesis chapter two, verse seven. He remembers that we were dust. Genesis two seven says, and the Lord God formed man from the what rose from the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of what?

And man became a all right, big deal here. Okay? He remembers that we are dust. The word tells us that he formed us from the dust of the ground. So, in other words, behind God's pity and behind his kindly sorrow and his desire to alleviate us from suffering, he remembers where he got us from and what he made us from, and what it was like and what it was supposed to be.

When he made us. He remembers that they are dust. He's he's he's always in the interest of you and I. Come on. When God looks at you and I, he's always thinking about what he did and what he intended when he made us from the dust of the ground. So that's that's the basis of his redemptive purposes. It's to get us back to the point that he made us from dust.

He breathe. And this is why you have to be filled with the Holy Spirit. He breathed into us the breath of life. Man became a living soul, and God bless them. And God said to them, be fruitful and multiply. God remembers, I got. I got him from the dust. Yes. Come on. We're just we're just dust. But he remembers where he got us from and where he made us.

And it's all about the breath of life, of Jesus. And he's looking to restore that life and that life more abundantly to those of us who are just dust. So he pities us. You. I'm saying this to encourage you because. I, I I'm a repentance guy. But but but don't don't don't give up when you mess up. Come on.

Let me say it that way. Yeah. No, I'm encourage you don't give up when you mess up. Not if you mess up. When you mess up. Don't let the enemy saddle you with guilt and condemnation and hopelessness to the point that you say, well, I just need to give up. And it doesn't matter. Don't. Don't let the enemy give you there get you to that place that you give up when you mess up because God, your father remembers you're just dust.

And he and he, he knows that. That's why. That's why my son died. That's why Jesus said it is expedient is to your advantage that I go away so the Holy Spirit can come. The breath of life operating in your life again. We're just dust. We're just dust. And without the help of the Holy Spirit. Yes, it is hopeless.

But he sent us another helper.

That's why we never give up when we mess up. Because our helper.

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Never leaves us.

He never leaves us. Okay. How bad you mess up? I mean, just when your heart's right, you go back to God and say, Lord. Well, I'm so sorry. Come on. This is why I'm talking about wretched and righteous. Why we got to be ready to come on. You know, when you go back to the Lord's glory, you know.

You know my heart, Lord. I'm. I really. I really don't want to be this way. I really wish I could stop doing this. And what? I'm just asking you to help me have mercy on me. I thank you that you pity me. And I thank you that you sent me another helper. And I'm telling you, God will meet you right there.

And he knows we're just dust. Yes. You know, just dust. Are you. Are you with me? And it's all his goodness, his pity to alleviate the suffering and the, you know, out of his kindly sorrow to give, to give aid, to give, to give help, to give support. He he's right there. He's right there with us. You know, I'm always reminded the word says that, you know, he gives seed to the he gives aid to the seed of Abraham, that when we become covenant citizens of God's kingdom, and because we are Christ, we're Abraham's seed.

The word says, I believe in Hebrews chapter six that he gives aid to the seed of Abraham. God wants to help you out of his goodness.

Speaker 2

He wants to help us.

Somebody to say Amen. So he remembers here, he says that we're just dust. And, he created us from the dust of the ground and the only value in that dust is the breath of life that he breathed into the dust. That's it. So I've been talking about what it means to be wretched. I, I enjoy the fact that the Bible says God made us from dust.

It doesn't even say that he made us from dirt. Dirt or good soil has some value. So it doesn't even tell us God made you from the dirt. Good, good dirt has value. You can grow stuff. Dust. You can't do nothing with dusted dust. The next time you clean your bookshelf, that's you. That's you. The next time you clean your ceiling fan, that's that's you.

Listen. It will remind you that God, I'm just dust, Lord, without the Holy Spirit, without the blood of Jesus, I told you before, my value is only determined by his price. By his price. We're getting there as we understand the goodness of God. There is nothing good in any of us. We're just dust. And get this, he said.

His judgment to the serpent says that the serpent will eat dust all the days of his life. He says to the serpent, you're going to eat dust. You know what that means? The devil feeds on your humanity. We're made of dust, he tells the serpent in Genesis chapter two. Genesis chapter three, that you want to eat dust.

Satan feeds on the flesh. He feeds on dust. He feeds on the carnality which is minus the breath of life. Now he can't do anything with the breath of life. But if you just dust without the infilling of the Holy Spirit, you have been redeemed. I mean, the devil is going to eat. He's just going to eat you up.

Your flesh will wear, flesh will destroy you. I'm telling you. I'm telling you why there's so many is substance abuse and addictions. I'm telling you why. Why folks get caught in alcoholism. Why people get into sexual bondage. People get into pornography, why people get into self-mutilation, why people get into all of those things. The devil is eating their flesh.

He's eating their flesh. And it's not until the breath of life has come into the life of a person that we have any hope of breaking the bondages of the enemy. So are you with me? He pities us and he remembers. We just. We're just dust, man. This is. This is such good news. This is such good news, which is dust.

So you can have ten PhDs.

Which you're up in itself.

We go around bragging on our resumé. I went to Stanford. I went to Yale. So what? Listen, you can have ten PhDs. I don't care if your net worth is $50 million. I don't care if you on the cover of every magazine. I don't care if you win all the Grammy Awards and all the Oscar awards, all the Academy Awards, I don't care.

You are dust.

You dust. There's nothing good in you. There is no value to your life. You're just dust. Somebody say amen.

All right, I'm just messing. Listen, you know, you guys know I talk zero victim. Get this. I think that.

I like I get a lot of people frazzled. Listen, I don't care. I turn. God, I'm just getting scared of nobody. Listen, one of the greatest heists that the devil has ever pulled on humanity. Watch. This is racism. It's a heist. Why? Because. Because we devolve at such a base level that we start arguing about the white. Does being superior to the black dust.

And we're trying to figure out if the Hispanic does is better than the Asian dust. Well, I'm Indian dust. We're all we're all dust.

You're out of your mind. If you think I'm going to get offended at dust. Listen, what does that say about me? If I allow that to dictate my peace of mind and the condition of my heart? Come on. You're talking about white dust. Black dust. Oh, dust. Young dust, female dust. We're all dust. No value. Everybody needs Jesus.

Everybody needs the breath of life. Everybody needs a breath of life. Somebody say amen.

Well, we're all dust. And the enemy is divided the church over this. The strategy to keep the church impotent and weak and powerless. So that he could advance his kingdom in the life and continue to eat the dust of people.

Millions and billions of people being consumed by the devil while the church is arguing over dust.

May God forgive us and may God help us. Somebody to say Amen. All right, let's continue here. Where was I before y'all got me off track there? All right, so we saw Genesis two seven. Let's keep going here. Romans 718. We're going to look at this again from the New Living Translation. Everybody say wretched and righteous. Come on.

I say, every one of us. And this is this is it's important for us to understand this so that we can apprehend the goodness of God. So Romans chapter seven, verse 18 from the New Living Translation. Paul writes here, he says, and I know that nothing good lives in me. That is in my sinful nature. He says, I want to do right, but I can.

So Paul says here, I know that nothing good dwells in me. And this is the same guy that gave us, gave us tremendous gives us tremendous revelation. All throughout the epistles, you read, in Christ through Christ, for Christ by Christ, every time Paul talks about the nature of God and the kingdom of God and his reality, he always says, For Christ in Christ through Christ, or by Christ, because without Christ no hope we're nothing.

So all of the work of God's grace is always in Christ through Christ, for Christ by Christ. So Paul here, same guy who tells us that we're now, then we are ambassadors for Christ, you know, as though God is pleading, you know, with us for man to be reconciled unto God. The same guy that told us all the amazing things that we know about the church concerning our identity and who we are in Christ, is the same guy that says, I also know something that in me there's nothing good, there's nothing good.

And one of the one of the things that is vitally important for us to understand the goodness of God is the first recognize there's no goodness in me. There's no goodness in me. That's not being self-deprecating or any of those kinds of things. We're just calling balls and strikes. We're just calling it as it is. We're calling it according to the Word of God.

So he says that that I know that nothing good lives in me. You got to get that nothing good lives in me. He continues. In verse 19 he says, I want to do what is good, but I don't. I don't want to do what is wrong, but I do it anyway. God pities us and remembers we're just dust.

We're just dust, we're just dust. There's nothing good in me. All the way back in Genesis six, during the time of Noah, it was it was all the way back then in Genesis chapter six, verse five of or six or so that God said, I see that the intent of man's heart is only evil man continually. So all the way back then God said, man is no good.

I see that the only intent, a man's heart is to do evil continually. That's the state of humanity without Christ. And without the the breath of God. That's just a state of dust. He said our hearts was only evil. And so Paul is talking about some of that Romans chapter seven, verse 24. This is part of our text.

He says here, O wretched man, that I am. And again, not I was not. I used to be, but I'm born again, and I can do all things through Christ. And if any man is in Christ, he's a new creature. Yes, you're a new creature, but you're still wretched. So he says, wretched man, that I am not. I used to be.

Short version. It's so important to understand there's nothing good in me, and that I am wretched. Wretched. Because that's the very thing that keeps me in need of a savior. That. That is the point at which I desperately continue on a moment by moment basis. Need a Savior? I need a Savior because I'm a wretched man, a wretched man that I am.

And he asks the question, who? Somebody has to deliver me from this body of death. I can't deliver myself. I need a savior because I'm wretched man. Who is going to deliver me from this wretched condition, from this body of death? Not not life. Pastor James, are you trying to make us feel bad? Yes. I'm trying to make you feel horrible.

I'm trying to make you feel really, really, really bad. Because at that point, you recognize you need a savior. You need a savior.

And to the degree that we don't know and don't believe and don't understand that we're wretched is to the degree that we declare our independence from God, the more you understand how wretched you are, it puts you in a position that your heart is continually drawing more and more and more to cling to the cross of Jesus Christ, to cling to the cross of Jesus Christ, and know that we need a Savior, somebody to say Amen.

Thank you Lord. This is where we live. These these men, some of these old, old hymns, when I was sinking deep in sin, far from the peaceful shore. Very deeply stained within. Sinking to rise no more. But the master of the sea heard my despairing cry. And from the waters he lifted me. Now safe am I. Love lifted me.

Love lifted me is the love. It was only the love of God that lifted me. It's why we sing amazing grace. That saved a what? Come on, wretch like me. That's good. Saved a wretch like me. And I'm telling you contemporary church theology that tells you you're so wonderful. You're so great. You are the best. Come on. That.

That's heretical. Apostate teaching to tell you that you're something different than what the word says. You are wretched. You are wretched. We're wretched, and we'll never be able to encounter. Embrace the goodness of God the way that he intends. Until we acknowledge that we're wretched. Somebody say amen. Somebody say thank you, Jesus. Come on and give him a hand clap.

Hand clap of praise, man. It's.

Man, we thank the Lord for his salvation. Who's going to deliver me? He says, from this body of death. Verse 25, he says, here it is. Gratitude. I thank God, I thank God only one way through Jesus Christ our Lord. The only way for me to get delivered from this wretched condition is through Jesus Christ our Lord. Somebody say Amen.

Look with me at, second Corinthians chapter four, verse ten. It gives us some more, some more clarity at this. With this it says, verse ten, second Corinthians, chapter four, always carrying about in the body the dying of our Lord Jesus Christ. That's that's a posture of surrender. You remember Jesus said, if you're going to come after me, you know you gotta die to yourself.

Take up your cross and follow me. He's always calling us to that place of surrender. Surrender? You gotta die to yourself. Jesus says you lose your life for my sake. Then you're going to find it. If you try to keep your life, then you're going to lose your life, he said. You gotta die to yourself. If you lose your life for my sake, you're going to find it.

So we're always carrying about in our body. We're always conscious of the dying of the Lord Jesus Christ, so that the life of Christ, the life of Jesus, also may be manifest it in our body. The life of Jesus, that same breath of life that God breathed into the dust. That's the life of Jesus. And Paul says here, we're always carrying about in our bodies the death, the dying of our Lord Jesus Christ, death, the life of Christ, the life of Jesus Christ, that breath of life can also be manifested in our mortal bodies, always manifest in our mortal bodies.

Verse verse six, verse verse 11. There for we who live are always delivered again to death for Jesus sake, again that the life of Jesus may be manifest in our mortal flesh, that the life of Jesus again Jesus in John 14 six I am the way, I am the truth, the life, I am the life. We need. The life of Christ.

Amen. Somebody say Amen. Look at this. God is good. I am not good. But by the goodness and the mercies of God, I am the righteous. That should be the righteousness of God. Through faith in Jesus Christ. God is good, but I am not good, but by his goodness and his mercy I am the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ.

That's a picture of us being wretched and righteous at the same time. At the same time somebody say, Amen. Second Corinthians 521. That's the basis for this, for he who made him God, who made him Jesus. Let me read it this way, for he made him the righteous one who knew no sin to be sin for us, the wretched ones that we, the wretched ones, might become the righteousness of God in him.

The righteous one. Are you hear me? Come on. For he, God, made him the righteous one who knew no sin to be sin for us. The wretched ones that we, the wretched ones, might become the righteousness of God in him. The righteous one. That's God's goodness in him, pitying us.

Speaker 2

Are y'all here this morning?

Here, man, I am enjoying this man. I'm this. Oh, man, the love of God.

Speaker 2

The love of God. He cares, man. He cares for love. He loves all. He loves us. He loves us. He loves. He loves us.

He cares for us and has made provision for us to be in right standing with him even though we're dust, the God of all creation humbled himself. Philippians two emptied himself. Kenosis the doctrine of kenosis, the the self-emptying of God. Jesus humbled himself, became a man, came down to this broke, God forsaken world, to live as a miserly human and to even subject himself to being spat on, being crucified, being ridiculed, a crown of thorns on his head, a spear in his side, nails in his hand, nails in his feet.

The glorious God, the King of the universe, subjected himself to futility, simply so that you can be made righteous in the eyes of God. Because he pities us, and he cares that much, he cares that much. Somebody say Amen. He came to die for wretched people like Miss Gilder, so that we could be made righteous.

Unknown

Thank you so. Oh.

Speaker 2

Not. Not just so that you could be made righteous. It was your sin and my sin that put him to death. That's right. And he died anyway. Just because he pities us when he had no reason to.

Because he wanted to be with us and wanted us to be with him. The wretched.

Speaker 2

Ones. The wretched ones. Are you with me? Yes. Thank you. Lord. Thank you Lord.

It's it's it's I share with you before it's out. Salvation happens in a moment. Salvation happens in an instant. But it's but it's is it's the sanctification process.

Speaker 2

That is ongoing. Yeah.

And a sanctification process is God's faithfulness. His his ongoing continued tity, his continued kind sorrow to alleviate, to help relieve, to help support us from dealing with the sins that sin nature that Paul talks about is God's ongoing love and the process of sanctification. Is God always working to help us continue to become more and more righteous and practice because we are the righteousness of God in Christ Jesus, and he never gives up on that.

Speaker 2

He will never.

Give up on you. I don't know, I don't.

Speaker 2

Know who I'm. I know what I can do. This morning. Jesus will never give up on you. You never give up on you.

Unknown

You never give up on you.

Speaker 2

You feel that.

You aren't you. You're unloved.

Speaker 2

You feel despised. And I'm telling you that, Lord, the Lord pities you. And he cares for you. And ways that you cannot imagine. Thank. He loves you. Hallelujah. He loves you. He loves you. Let's pray. If I'm talking to you, just come to the altar. I know I'm talking to a.

I don't know, it's. Just you. You need the love of God.

Speaker 2

Okay? If you saved. I don't care who you are.

God wants you to know that he wants to touch your life today.

Speaker 2

To know that he loves you. And he cares if I'm talking to you.

Just. Just come on.

Speaker 2

Just whoever is for he loves you. You life is saddled with guilt and depression. You've been discouraged. You contemplating suicide, you're contemplating ended it all. And today the Lord is telling. You know I love you and have plans for you. I don't I don't know who you are. Just. Just come and receive the father's love. He's coming. Receive his love.

The enemy has been tormenting you and your mind.

Speaker 2

The enemy has been tormenting you, telling you that you're worthless. Telling you that you're. You're hopeless. I'm telling you that you're better off dead. Today the Lord wants you to know that he loves you. He cares for you. He cares for you. He cares for you. He shed his blood. It became a curse. Jesus. So that we might become the.

Righteousness of God in Christ.

Speaker 2

Jesus. I don't know you can. You can come to church and feel worthless. You can come to church every Sunday and feel hopeless and feel useless today.

The Lord wants you to know that he loves you.

Speaker 2

He loves you. He loves you. He loves you.

Speaker 2

He loves you. He cares. You. Cares. He cares.

Speaker 2

He cares. He.

Some of some of you are wives. And you feel that you haven't felt loved in years. And you feel that your husband is is not loving you the way that you need. And you're angry and the Lord loves you. There are men here. You never knew your father.

Speaker 2

Your dad left when you were a child. You've been aching and longing to know your father. You feel rejected. You feel hopeless because your dad abandoned you. And I'm telling you, your father in heaven today, he.

And his desires to heal your broken heart. To bind up your wounds so that you are healthy and sufficient. And you live from a place of strength because your life has been provisioned.

Speaker 2

By the love of God, by the love of God.

You know, friends, I often like to remind you that faith comes by hearing not because you heard. So I want to encourage you to listen to this message on God's goodness over and over and over again. I believe it is one of the most profound revelations of the person of God, understanding that God is indeed good. And as you'll hear in future teachings, I believe that not recognizing the good goodness of God is really the source of all sin.

When we really understand that God is good, that he means us well, and he is lovingly provided his goodness for all areas of need in our life, that, friends, our hearts become more and more inclined to obey him and to stand firm on the truth of His Word. I continue to pray that God would open your heart, and that the spirit of wisdom and revelation, and the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ would continue to abound in your life as you stay connected to Insight Church Online.

If you missed the opportunity to invest and to give and to so early in the service, don't forget, to bring your tithe and your offering, to the Lord, friends, and we'll stand with you in faith and in prayer for God's very best for you and your family. You can use your church app. You can scan the QR code you see on your screen or text to give or visit our website at any time.

Thank you so much for being a partner. Thank you for being all. And before we go, as always, I'd like to speak God's blessing over you by saying to you, the Lord bless you and keep you. The Lord make his face shine upon you and be gracious unto you. The Lord lift up his countenance upon your friends, and give you his peace in Jesus name.

Always remember that Jesus, our Lord loves you, Pastor Sharon, and I love you. Be well. Be encouraged. I'll see you next time on insight Online.