City Central Church Podcast
Knowing the Goodness of God
Chris Hippe
what's God saying right now? What is he saying to me right now? How is he functioning right now? What is it about him that we that for this day right now, that it's August 31st, praise God, summer is almost over. You see, if you had an eternal mindset, you wouldn't be booing right now. Hallelujah, that was a trap. So August 31st, 2009, okay? What is God saying to his church right now, worldwide? There's a hunt going on. You'll see people run to conferences. What's God saying? The run to, to websites. What God's saying? And it's so very important that we understand what God is saying now. But I want to tell you is this, is that in order to understand and hold onto and firmly grip wholeheartedly what God is doing now, that we must know God. If we don't know God and who he is, then I can try to hear the word of the hour and do the meditation and going, he's coming in power, he's gonna do a youth movement. I can mentally ascend to it, but my life doesn't wrap around it, if that makes sense. But if I'm no God and I understand who he is, and I seek him, then when he says the word of the hour, it's me. And so what I want to invite us to tonight is the understanding that when I go to God's vision and knowing God, that when he comes and brings the word of the hour, it's a given. You don't need, have you ever had the original design? Time and you're going, I am a world changer, I am a world changer, I am a world changer. And you repeat yourself, that's what a believer is doomed to, if they do not know who he is, how he functions, how he never changes, that he is the same yesterday and forever more, and that he, you know what, he was then good, and he will be then good. And right now, quite frankly, he is just as good as he was when he sent Jesus to the cross as his resurrection, hearing and coming back. When we know him, when we know him, then the word of the hour is like, of course, verse is going, oh my word, where'd that come from? I didn't even know that was happening, but when we know him, that's why the power of what you heard here is really key for you and I, to grab hold of him. It's not about what you and I can do for him, it's about what he wants to be for you first, and then what you can do. He wants you and I to ascend to such a degree that we know him in such an intimate way that our lives just become much more at peace. It's a byproduct of knowing God. What are the byproducts of knowing God, the fruits of the spirit? Amen? - Amen. - Anybody want to recite those? No, we'll just lay off those for a second, okay? So tonight, this is what I want to do, is I had an interesting conversation with a brother this week, and this brother cooked up this question for me over the last month, and he was very good to me, and he said, I have been thinking about this question for a month and I want to ask it to you, and you know whenever a very smart man of God is thinking on a question for a month, you know you're in a duty strap-on rocket ship, here we go, what is he gonna say, you know? Well, he asked a question and I don't really remember all that he asked, but it wasn't so much the question that struck me as what the question did to me. The question forced me into a spot, I think I gave him one of those really vaguely specific pastoral answers of jargon, have you ever heard that before? It's like a Holy Spirit political move to get out of the conversation, if you guys can. But you find yourself in a place going, I'm a little bit disturbed because this question that he asked me is forcing me to look at myself and go, God, who do I believe you to me? When I look back over my life over the last, you know, 11 years, and who do I fundamentally know God to be not mentally but experientially, because that will be what carries me through to the end and finish strong like all seven. And so where I find myself today, I started to go, God, what is it? And then the history, it surely came to me, and I just went my word, 'cause there's oftentimes God will show an attribute of himself to you, for you, and it's just like a special connection. He's not different to you than anybody else, but it's like he magnifies this attribute of himself, and he goes, you know, Jeremy, me, and you. This is what I have for you. There's these revelations that come of his attribute and go, I will preach it, I will pray it, I will worship it. I don't know, there's something about this thing that I cannot escape. And so open your Bibles, and I want you to, I want to explore that thing with you tonight in Exodus 33. And if we look at Exodus, what we find is Moses is audaciously dealing with God. The Israelites have already destroyed one of their, their, one of their opportunities. Remember the tablets go down, the whole golden cap comes out according to Aaron, boom, the furnace made it, oh my word, where did it come from? That whole process has happened, and what we see then is in verse 12 and beyond, what we see is God is, and Moses is coming before God. And he's presenting himself in a pretty audacious move. In the first half of 33, what we see is, is all the people would, would watch Moses go out to the tenant meeting, and here is all the people, they come out to the edge of their tents, and all of a sudden the glory of God fills the temple where Moses is meeting, and all of a sudden the people start worshiping God in their own homes, interesting about the secret place, and in their own homes, they start worshiping God and have an overflow 'cause they're watching what's happening to Moses. Number one, so you think that's powerful? I would, that's, games that match take me home now, but Moses starts getting pretty audacious with God. He, he, he then keeps going through verse 12 and beyond, then he says, he, he says, Lord, I wanna talk to you, and the Lord talked with Moses, face to face, so that's another encounter. And then there's another encounter that you see in verse 15 that says, he says to, Moses says to the Lord, he says, if your presence does not go with us, do not bring us up from here. So he basically says, listen God, I want your presence and I want your rest, God says done. And then he says, well, make sure your presence comes with us, God says done. And he, it's a pretty astounding principle that we can't build the whole of it tonight, but it's a pretty astounding thing for you to research and to realize God is encountering Moses. I mean, encountering his face is changing. I mean, this is, this is what everything is about. This is what we pray for. And then verse 18 comes up, and this is where I start to get a little bit more undone. Verse 18 is astounding to me because he said to the Lord, Moses said to the Lord, please show me your glory. Then God said, I will make all my goodness pass before you and I will proclaim the name of the Lord before you. Now it's interesting that Moses says God, show me your glory. How many of you have ever prayed that prayer? Sing the song, may your kingdom come, do we not live? God that you would send your glory to this high school, that you send your glory to this junior high, that this family would know your glory. We pray the prayer, and here is Moses asking the question. God show me your glory, but God doesn't really answer the question, or does he? He says, then he said, I will make all my goodness pass before you. God says, I will make all my goodness pass before you, not glory. He says, I will make all my goodness pass before you, and I will proclaim the name of the Lord before you. So what he's saying is this, catch this, he says that the goodness, he's saying, my goodness will pass before you, and within my goodness there you will find my glory. Within God's goodness is the possession of his glory. And on top of that, he says, and I will proclaim about myself, 'cause I like myself that much. I will tell you about me, and I will not go in front of you and tell you about you, Chris, if you. I will go in front of you, and I will tell you all about me because that's what you want. You don't want me to talk to you about you, that's boring, let me share with you because it's my joy to share with you your heart's desire, and that's for me. So he passes before the Lord, and the Lord's goodness passes before him, and what you see is he proclaims, and we actually get to see what happens in this, in verse five of 34, chapter 34 verse five it says, now the Lord descended in the cloud, this is his next 40 days, okay? Now the Lord descended in the cloud and stood with him there, and proclaimed the name of the Lord. This is the Lord proclaiming his own name. How many of you would just love that? Remember when God the Father came down, this is my son and who I am well pleased? Whoa, what was that? This is God himself proclaiming himself, he's proclaiming his own name, and the Lord passed before Moses, and proclaimed this about himself, the Lord, the Lord God, merciful and gracious, long-suffering and abounding in goodness, and abounding in truth, keeping mercy for thousands, for giving iniquity and transgression and sin, by no means clearing the guilty, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children, and the children's children to the third and fourth generation, and so Moses made haste and bowed his head toward the earth, hallelujah from Moses. He says this about himself, he says, the Lord God, I am merciful, and I am gracious, and I am long-suffering, and then he says abounding in goodness. You see, Moses got to very well see the goodness of God, the abounding goodness, the abounding goodness is his disposition to be merciful, kind, benevolent, and loving to people. This is God's heart, not just for you and me, but for every other leader who walks around, who's walking around this facility, all around, God's mercy and his love is for them. And what he says, Chris, if you understand my goodness, you don't need a message on evangelism, you'll be overflowing so much, because you have just got to hear him and know him because he's so good. I could walk down the street, he's abounding in goodness and truth, he's merciful, and long-suffering, come to you, all of you that are weary and have you laid in calm. This is God's heart and his desire for us, keeping the mercy for thousands, for giving iniquity, God's goodness is a wonderful, wonderful thing. You know, Matthew 16 says this, remember when Jesus comes up to Peter and he says, Peter, I want to hit you with some questions. Number one is this, who do people say that I am? It's kind of a second-hand question if you've ever had those second-hand questions, you know? It's like, Joe, what does Kyle think of me? It's kind of a setup to a more important question, right? And so you never know what you're gonna get. And that's exactly what Peter said. Well, hey, let's throw this thing out here. Well, some say John the Baptist, some say Prophet, some, and quite frankly, they're all four strikeouts. I mean, they're just, they're four audaciously different opinions about who Jesus was. And so Jesus goes, okay, thank you. Now, Peter, I want to ask you a question. Who do you say that I am? There's a time in the life that Jesus and God will come and ask us, well, who do you say that I am? Who do you know me to be? Am I angry and resentful and indifferent and condemning? Who do you say he is? And when you and I answer that question, we will produce the fruit of that knowledge. And so from me, God said, Chris, who do you say that I am? From this question this week. So Chris, who do you say that I am? And I came out going, God, I get it. I just get it. You're good. You've always been good. You're never gonna stop being good. You are good then. Today, tomorrow, he is good. But never let kind, merciful God with his eyes attentive to you and your problems. He is near, draw to him and know him. You see, sometimes we get struggling, struggle with motivation. I don't know anybody else struggle with motivation. Oh, I'm just self-motivated, man. Praise God for you. Good? I need help. I need all the encouragement help I can get. Four little kids running around like, God, merciful. That's why that's my prayer. Whoo! You're good today, I know it, but you need to help me now. You know, that's the key. Well, when I come into a revelation of his goodness and how good he is, how can you not do something about it? How can you not put more of it? How can we not want a fast pray cry out? Come to the prayer meeting. Look for every lost young person that's floating around every street, evangelize to your neighbor, see a family getting restored. How can you not? This is my passion is that when we wrap around the goodness of God, many become many things that seem insurmountable to me and my flesh become doable. Because they're coming through him, through him and now. And so the goodness of God is for you and for me. And so when I see my weakness, then it's incredible how I can view my weakness through the goodness of God and how it just makes sense. I can view my immaturity through the goodness of God and it makes sense. Or I can look at my immaturity and go, oh, I'm just such a long way off, amen? So if you have your bibles, I want you to open up to Psalm 25. And what we can see is this is the goodness of God. You see it in your weakness. We can see it in our frailty and our humanity. We can see it. It's like giving me help in time of me, giving me revelation to my goalness. It's like kindness that leads me to repentance. These are all forms of his benevolent goodness on my life going, God, I don't even, I mean, I just look at my life and every good thing is because of your goodness. Like, honestly, men, how many of you got a pretty incredible wife on your hands? This is you raise your hand, yeah, there's your hand. Now, men, for you and I, I'll give you double fist, okay? For me, I have to acknowledge that I never did say, I get back to the exact opposite, quite frankly. If you know a lot of our story, to give this amazing woman of God, it's only by God's goodness that anything good has ever happened to me. And for a man that was on a one-way track to help and nothing good within me and Jesus Christ and his ultimate act of goodness died out across, then I don't have eternal life. And live free of this weight, are you joking me? I don't need someone to come and tell me, oh, he's drunk, I'm like, God, he's good. And you want me to tell you how good he is? I'll tell you what he did for me and I'll tell you where I was at and the gutter I was in. In fact, I could tell you the gutter in it that I was in three hours ago, that he saved me out of me once again. The goodness of God. Look at what Psalms 25 verse 8 says. It says this, good and upright is the Lord. Therefore he teaches sinner sinners in the way. Good and upright is the Lord. Therefore he teaches sinners in his way. What you see here is, here's David actually saying this and the Lord extends mercy to him being a repentant sinner and in his interesting verse nine talks about bringing justice into the fallen world and that his goodness is gonna be what brings the justice. His goodness will bring the justice. His goodness will fulfill the words that you and I live for to see a generation rise. It'll be his goodness, it'll bring it into alignment. It's a goodness, it'll bring a building. It's his goodness, it will make it all happen. And I don't have to go, oh, it's his heavy hand and he's angry, no, no, no, that's a wrong faulty understanding of God he's building. He's good. Nehem, Nehem, look, best of luck finding that one. Praise God, I wrote it down. Nehem, one, seven, just listen to it. Don't look it up, write it. Write these things down so you can study this. Nehem, one, seven says this, the Lord is good, a stronghold in the day of trouble and he knows those who trust in him. The principle of Nehem is this, if you know he's good, you'll trust him. If you know he's good, then you'll trust him. But if I don't know he's good, then I'll be fighting to trust. God, I trust you, I trust you, I trust you. See, that's mental ascension that I've been at, okay? I'm not saying, oh, I'm just victory guy over here. I'm working this thing through too, okay? But if I understand that he is good in essence and will never change, then I can trust him. But if he's evil, condolences, indifferent, what am I gonna get from him? Then I'm just like, wow, where are you God? He's never changing, and there he is. And so I trust in him. Psalms 52 one says this, why do you boast in evil, oh mighty man? The goodness of God endures continually. The goodness of God endures continually. Praise God. Romans two four says this, or do you despise the riches of his goodness for parents and long-suffering? Not knowing that the goodness of God leads you to repentance? The goodness of God leads you to repentance? Jerry helped me with this this week. Jerry said, "Repentance is good news." (audience applauding) It is such good news because I can be alleviated from the pressure, and I understand that it's a gift that he's given to me. And so, you know what's a good indication is this, is if God comes and corrects me, and asks me to repent, and I go, oh man, to get all condemned, I don't know the goodness of God. But if he comes and says, hey Chris, you got some arrogance. You're right. Okay, praise God. It's good. I want you to point out the nasty business in my life. Please have mercy God quickly. And so if I can celebrate, it's probably a pretty good indication that I'm tapping higher on a goodness scale. Yeah, that's right. Praise God. Last one is this, Psalms 34 verse eight. Oh, taste and see that the Lord is good. Blessed is the man who trusts in him. It's interesting that Psalms 34 says, taste it, taste it, and see it. It's not some ethereal notion. Taste, taste, it's not some like super spiritual life. Well, that must be spiritual taste. He's talking about it. Taste and see how good he is. It's like experience, goodness. Recognize how good he has been in your life. This is not, this is not going, oh, I just haven't recognized how good I need to repent now. Oh, I need to, we need to thank him more. No, this is coming into a revelation team of how good he is, and tasting it, and saying it and going, here we come, I can't lose. Because he's good, and I focus on him, and I will win. So who we see the Lord to be will drive our expectation. If God is good, then we can expect incredible things. If God is good, then we can expect incredible things. Are you expecting incredible things? Are you expecting incredible things? Or are you kind of going, I need an upgrade on my expectation. No, that's just kind of heavy in the room. Don't let it get heavy in the room. How do you need an upgrade? I want an upgrade, okay? I want an upgrade on the goodness of God. Because when I understand he's good, then I will live with expectations today, the day. Your coworker might go, stay today, for what? I don't know, something real good. (audience laughs) You're like, well, what are you expecting? I don't know, just really good things all day long. What's going on with you? I serve Jesus. And see, he's the one that's good. And he's the one that did the ultimate act of goodness for anyone on the planet, for you too, buddy. And you can come to him and taste it. I taste it every day and see what I see every day. It's called goodness. Not anger. Not indifference. Not, oh, I can't. He's so good to us. A.W. Tozer said this. From Christ we learn how God acts toward people. The hypocritical, the basically insincere, will find him cold and aloof as they once found Jesus. But the penitent will find him merciful. The self-condemned will find him generous and kind. To the frightened, he is friendly. To the poor in spirit, he's forgiven. To the ignorant, he's considerate. And to the weak, he's gentle. To the stranger, he's hospitable. This is the goodness of God. So if you find yourself in one of those places tonight, if you're needing strength, if you feel weak, if you're feeling ignorant, poor in spirit, frightened, he wants to extend to us his goodness. And he wants for you and I to have a revelation that, folks, this is not gonna happen in a night. This is not, this is something that I'm praying that God gives you this insatiable desire that I need more of him. I have got to open this word. I just, I cannot let go. Because if you learn something tonight, then that just means you haven't memorized this thing and you actually are like me, you're learning as you go. And there's so much more revelation in this thing. And so tonight, I want to encourage you with the goodness of God. Stand your feet with me. I'm going to, we're gonna send you a message this week. Tomorrow by Graham Cook, it's a wonderful message. It's called God is the kindest person I've ever met. Pretty ingenious. Praise God. And we're gonna attach to you scripture on the goodness of God. We have got to be a people that are eating the word of God for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. And that we would come after him with all of our heart, mind, soul, and strength and that the word would come alive. The word would come alive. Father, we just declare your goodness over us as a group. We look at every situation that we are in and we declare you're good. We declare in the face of all forms of opposition of the enemy that says the exact opposite that we've extended his goodness and that there's a limit to his goodness and that we cannot, we just declare it false in Jesus' name. We speak to you, God, and we declare and agree that your goodness is for us. Your goodness is for me. Your goodness is for me and my household. I want you to put your hands on your mind tonight. Put your hands on your mind tonight. Pray this prayer with me. Father, renew my mind. - Oh, I want you to renew my mind. - I want to see you. - I want to see you. - I want to know you. - I want to know you. - That's the good father that you are. - That's the good father that you are. - Heal my mind, God. - You are my God. - Set me free. - Set me free. - From the deceptions. - From the deceptions. - Of the enemy. - From the enemy. - And I've lived under for so long. - That's the better for so long. - You are good. - You are good. - And I want to taste and see it. - I want to taste and see it. - How many of us know that he loves to show himself to us? Think of it, we are created in this image and there is no more delight that God has than to share himself with us. And we pray in such a way that we need to beg for him to come. But it's kind of like God saying, "You kid me, I wouldn't miss this for the world." You said, "Go" in the beginning of your prayer and I was there. I was there. That's the desire God has for you and I. So tonight this is what I want you to do. Let's have Shane roll it. Come on back up Shane and take us into a song of worship. But I want you to turn to someone that you know in a marriage team. If you are married, I want you to pray for one another. If you are male or female, I want you to pray for the same gender. I just want you to put your hand on their shoulder, the back of their shoulder tonight.