Thank you for that song. Let's go back to Ephesians 1
this morning. Ephesians chapter 1. Let me read one verse. Ron has already
read more than a half of this chapter, the designated portion
that I ask him to read. Well, let me read verse 5, and
I'll make mention of some things that are around this verse. But Ephesians 1, 5, having predestinated
us unto the adoption of children by Jesus Christ to himself, according
to the good pleasure of His will. Here's my subject today, God's
good pleasure. I want to talk to you about God's
good pleasure. Good. What does the word good
mean? Well, I pulled out my trusty
Webster's dictionary, It's always kind of a good thing to do, and
basically he says exactly what our concordance would say. Good
means having no defect. Good means that which is absolutely
free from disease. Good means that which is that
which is pure, that which is excellent. And so we can tell
right from the beginning then that when we're talking about
God's good pleasure, that which whatever His pleasure is, it's
without defect, it's going to be perfect, It's going to be without any
disease, that is, without the disease of sin, and that's what
afflicts us. And then, not only must we define
the word good, but we need to define the word pleasure. Well, it means that in which
you find enjoyment. A good word would be delight,
satisfaction, or intention. So when we're talking about God's
good pleasure, we're talking about that which he delights
in, which is absolutely without defect, It's perfectly pure. Now, when we talk about goodness, the Scripture says there's none
good but one, that is God. You see, that which is accurate
to be said of all of us, according to the Scriptures, we've got
lots of defects. We have lots of impurities. We have the disease of sinfulness,
of iniquity. That is a fact concerning all
of us. So actually, when we use the
word good to be biblically correct, it can't be used with reference
to us unless God gives us goodness. Now we have the gift of the Lord
Jesus. And the scripture says in the
book of Hebrews, every good gift and every perfect gift, excuse
me, in the book of James chapter one, every good gift and every
perfect gift that comes from above. If God gives something,
if the Lord gives something, it's gotta be good. Everything
he gives is good. There's a remarkable passage
of Scripture in the book of Nahum, chapter 1. Now, I don't want
you to take the time to turn there now, but you can look at
it at your leisure. It talks about the Lord is jealous. The Lord revengeth. The Lord
is furious. The Lord reserves wrath for the
wicked. The Lord hath his way in the
whirlwind. He has his way in the storm.
All of the clouds of the sky are the dust of his feet. He
rebukes the sea and makes it dry, like he did the Red Sea,
opening up a dry path through it. He dries up the rivers, as
he did the river of Jordan, so the children of Israel could
go to the other side. And then he says, the mountains,
they quake at him. The hills melt. The earth is
burned at his presence. And who can abide the fierceness
of his anger? But after all of that, there
comes this unusual, unusual statement. The Lord is good. That's the
next thing he says. After he talks about the anger
of God, the vengeance of God, the jealousy of God, the judgment
of God, after he speaks of all of these things, then he says,
the Lord is good. So we need to understand this.
Whatever it is that God does, it's good. It's good. It's good when He rescues, and He's good when He pours out
judgment. The Lord is good when He gives
us good health. The Lord remains good when He
gives us sickness. He's good in the difficult times,
and He's good in the wonderful times. Only God is good. Our Lord had a rich man come
up to Him one time, and he said, Good Master, what shall I do
to inherit eternal life? And the Savior said, Let's just
stop right there. Why do you call me good? There's none good but God. Are you saying I'm God? When you say I'm a good master? None good but God. He is perpetually
good. Of us, the Scripture says, there's
none that doeth good, no, not one. So that rules all of us
out. I'm sure that as we look at you,
as we think about you, as we observe you, we would say you're
a good person. You're a good lady. You're a
good gentleman. That's the way we use this word
good. But as we set our goodness beside
the goodness of God, then we have to say, there's none good
but one, and that's God. God is good. He's always good. You say, how can he be good in
his judgment? because his judgment is always
without defect. His vengeance is always absolutely
pure. You cannot find anything that
is less than good when you speak of God. In fact, the word God comes from,
originates from the word good, or vice versa. Good comes from
the word God. That's the origin of it. There's
none good but one, that's God. And somebody says, and I've had
people say this, a good God would never send anybody to hell. Yes. The good God, He has sent
people to hell. He is sending people to hell,
and He will yet send people to hell. And the reason for that
is because in order to be accepted by God, we must be good, and
therefore, if we're not good, God is good when He punishes
us for our sin. So that if any of us perish forever
in the outer darkness of everlasting hell, that judgment upon us is
good judgment because it comes from a good God who can make
no mistakes. His ways are always perfect.
and he never judges without good reason. He's good. One of my favorite of the Psalms,
and we all love the Psalms, of course, but I especially, I don't
know, Psalm 34 has endeared itself to me. And one of the verses,
verse 8, says, Oh, taste and see that the Lord is... What's the next word? Good. He's good. Blessed is the person, the man,
the woman, the boy or the girl that trusts in Him. Children
of God, you may be going through some
difficult troubles, fiery trials, God is still being good to you. His ways are past finding out. But do not the Scriptures have
this to say, and we know that all things work together. We're
talking about the people of God now. We're talking about the
redeemed ones. We're talking about the children of God. Those
who trust Him. Those who have been enabled by
the Spirit of grace to fully cast their souls upon the Lord
Jesus Christ. He's good. and He makes all things work
together for good. And we know this. That's what
it says in Romans 8, 28. And we know that all things work
together for good, for good, not for bad, not for ill, for good to them that love God,
to them who are they called according to His purpose. Well, who makes
all things work together for good? Our good God. The Lord who is
altogether good. He makes no mistakes. His ways are without defect. You say, Jim, I don't understand
how the things that I'm going through right now can work together
with all things for my good. There's a lot we don't understand
about the ways of God. In fact, you can't even understand
God. He's the infinite being. Can
you understand eternity? Can you understand this glorious
being who never had a beginning and who will never have an end? Can you begin to comprehend way
back before this world was made that God dwelt in the eternal
satisfaction of Himself, Father, Son, and Spirit? You can't understand
the ways of God. His ways are past us finding
out. But we know that all of His ways
are good. They're good. And He makes all
things work together for our good. And I think it would be
wrong to say our everlasting good, because when we leave this
world, our goodness is the same goodness we have right now, the
imputed righteousness and sanctification of the Lord Jesus Christ. and
the things of this world won't affect us in eternity. But in this life, in this life,
all things are working together for what kind of good? Our spiritual
good. That's what we need to remember.
Our spiritual good. You see, the things that happen
to us in this life the sicknesses, the heartbreak, the joys, the
happiness, all of those things, they have no effect on eternity. So all things work together for
good in this life, but only for God's people. God works all things together.
to fulfill His good pleasure. That's what satisfies Him. That's
what brings God delight. Now, I realize when we're talking
about God's joy, God's delight, God's contentment, He doesn't
have the same kind of characteristics we do. He doesn't have the emotions
that we have. He doesn't have the passions
that we have. But we do know this, He's good. See, when I think of goodness,
I think of the very person of God. You remember when the serpent
came to Eve Her name wasn't Eve then, she was just Woman. And
he said, eat of this forbidden fruit. And God knows that if you eat
of this forbidden fruit, the fruit that He has forbidden you
to eat, well, you'll be as God yourself, knowing good and evil." Up until that point, the woman
and Adam, they only knew goodness. That's all they knew. There was
no evil. They had nothing to compare good
with. But it says, in the day ether
of, God knows that you'll be gods yourselves and you'll know
good and evil. And she gave the fruit, whatever
it was, to Adam and said, look, I ate, it's fine. And he ate,
and they fell into sin. And suddenly, the Scripture says,
their eyes were opened, and this matter of good and evil, they now realize what evil is. And they can't get rid of it.
There's no way to get rid of it. You say, I'm not an evil
person. As we define evil, no. But as God defines evil, all
of us are evil. Because we're not good. You're
either good or evil. And all of a sudden they're evil
and they can't get rid of evil. Oh, they tried to cover it up,
but covering it up didn't do the job. They couldn't cover
it. And now they've got something
to compare goodness to. They have evil. But guess what? That good part, they don't know how to do good
anymore. They have no goodness, only evil. And so in their evil minds, they
said, we'll cover up our nakedness with fig leaf aprons. That'll hide us from God. We're
ashamed. We've lost the brightness, the
radiance of the very presence of God. They knew it was gone. And they tried to cover up. And
that's what people do by nature. They say, well, OK, Bob says
I'm a sinner. I'm going to do better. I'm going
to cover up my nakedness, so to speak. And so the fig leaf aprons that
we concoct and invent and knit together, sew together, are our
supposedly good works. Won't cover up our nakedness
though. Because you see, ours is not so much an outward evil,
it's an inward evil. That's where the evil's in the
heart. And so our Lord comes seeking
them in the cool of the day. Adam, where art thou? I'm over here hiding behind a
tree. I'm so ashamed. But I've covered
up. I'm going to do better. That's
the natural man's way. God said, won't do. The only
way you can be presentable, Adam and Eve, to Me, in essence, God
said, is if I do something for you. See, we think we've got to do
something for God. I've got to get rid of the evil
and be good! Be good! Well, I was taught, and I'm sure
most of you were taught since we were just little kids. Be
good! Don't be bad. This time of year,
be good, Santa Claus will come. If you be bad, he ain't coming. Right? Well, our problem is we
can't do good and all we do is evil because we are evil. God says, watch what I do. I'll
teach you how I'm going to take care of your evilness. And the Lord, that is the Son
of God, because God never speaks to anybody or nobody ever speaks
to God except through a mediator, except through the Son of God.
The Lord says, watch what I'm going to do. And to their absolute
horror, He killed innocent animals. And He skinned them. Oh, the
blood! Oh, the gore! Oh, the pain inflicted
upon that animal! Or two animals if he killed two
of them, one for each, for the man, one for the woman. And then
he actually, God took a knife, he skinned those animals. He said, I'm going to get rid
of them fig leaf aprons for you. And he stripped them off of him. He said, let me robe you with
this. And you see, in order for us
to be made good, God had to kill not an animal. See, that was only a picture. That's a valuable illustration. but really didn't put the evil
away. But here's what it pictured. That sacrifice of the Lord Jesus
Christ. God said, to make you good, and to be rid of your evil, I'm sending my Son to His death. And He will in His own body,
bear the sins of all my people, then I'm going to deal with Him
in justice." Oh, but Lord, Lord Jesus is good. You're right. But we're evil. So all of our
evilness had to be charged to Him. And then in the eyes of justice,
Since justice must go after evil and sinfulness, the justice of
God goes after our substitute who took our sins. All of our
iniquities were made to meet upon His glorious holy head. That's what the Scripture says. Then God in His fury, God in
His anger, God in His justice, He put His Son to death. And you know why? Because God
is good. God is good. So I don't see any
goodness in the death of the Lord Jesus Christ. Well, you
have no understanding of the Gospel of Grace. You have no
understanding why that blessed message is called glad tidings
of great joy. God did that which was good. He took the life of His Son.
But in that death, in that death, God fully demonstrated
just how good He is. He's so good, that when all of the transgressions
of His chosen people were heaped upon His Son, God is so good,
He turned His back on His Son. He forsook Him and He punished
Him. He's full of fury. That's what
Nahum said. He's a God of vengeance. He's
going to get vengeance. He's going to get vengeance on
account of our own evil. Where is His vengeance going
to be satisfied? It's going to be satisfied in
the sacrifice of His only begotten Son, that One who was made flesh
and dwelt among us. And all of that happened because of God's good pleasure.
This is what God delighted to do. You see, in that I said this
word, pleasure, is the idea of satisfaction. Satisfaction. Delight. You see, God got satisfaction
in the death of His Son. because in the punishment of
the Lord Jesus instead of the guilty, God was saving, redeeming,
reconciling His people unto Himself. And understand this, God didn't
need to be reconciled to us. He's right where He was when
we left Him. God doesn't have to be reconciled
to us. We've got to be reconciled to
God. We're the ones who did the wandering. We're the ones who
did the sinning. We're the ones who did the leaving.
And therefore, Christ came down here
to reconcile His people, to bring us back to God. Oh, bless the
name of the Savior, whose name is good. He is the good Master. Bless his name. Through the bloody sacrifice
of the Lord Jesus Christ, our evil was put away. And we're made the goodness of
God, the righteousness of God in the Lord Jesus Christ. See right here we have, And I'm
gonna, I'll have some more things to say about this tonight, but
here, I'll give you three or four things just briefly. Here
in verse five, here we see the origin of our salvation. Well, salvation, Jim, what does
that mean? It means rescue. It means the
deliverance of sinners from sin and every effect of sin, every
consequence of sin. And from the very beginning,
this matter of the salvation of folks like us was of the Lord. We were in trouble with divine
justice because of our sin. Our Lord Jesus came to do something
about it, but He came to do something about it because salvation originated
with God. That is the good pleasure of
God. What was God's good pleasure?
Well, in verse 3, to bless us with all spiritual blessings.
To choose a people unto salvation that we should be holy and without
blame before God. Well, it's God's good pleasure
to predestinate us under the adoption of children to Himself
all according to the good pleasure of His will. This is what delighted
God. If I were to ask you, what do
you think, and this is, I don't want to be too The theologians
would call this vulgar. We think of vulgarities as foul
language, but I don't want to speak of God in too common a
way. Maybe that's a better word here.
But what makes God happy? That'd be a good way. What delights
God? What delights God? Saving centers. That's His great delight. This
is the good pleasure of His will. To take a filthy, hell-deserving,
ill-deserving, sinful person, and raise that sinful person
up from the miry clay, wash him in the blood of the Lord Jesus,
robe him in the garments of salvation, put the perfume of the obedience
of the Lord Jesus Christ upon him, and stand him before a holy
God and God says, well done thou good and faithful servant. There's
the happiness, there's the glory of God, there's his purpose of
grace fulfilled. There's the good pleasure of
his will. It all started with God. Children,
the word origin means where it starts. You study in geography
the origin of The Ohio River. The origin of the Ohio River.
The origin of the Mississippi River. Everything has an origin. The origin of mankind came forth
from the creative glory of God. Where did salvation come from? It came from God's good pleasure. That's where it came from. This
is the origin. Don't tell me you don't want
to talk about election or predestination. If you tell me that, then I'll
know that you're not interested in the good pleasure of God's
will. This is what he was pleased to do. This is what, it's a very
common language, this is what delighted him, this is what made
him happy. It's what makes God happy, and
happiness with God is far different from our happiness. Joy with
the Lord is far different from our joy. But this is what gives Him glory.
Well, what is the design of salvation? I know what the origin of salvation
is now, the good pleasure of God's will. I gave you this. Secondly, what is the design
of salvation? Look down at verses 7 through
9. In whom we have redemption, in
Christ we have redemption through His blood. the forgiveness of
sins according to the riches of His grace, wherein He hath
abounded toward us in all wisdom and prudence, having made known
unto us the mystery of His will, according to the," here's this
expression again, good pleasure, which He hath purposed in Himself. What's the design of salvation? What's the design of redemption,
of this rescue of sinners by the bloody sacrifice and exaltation
of the Lord Jesus Christ? What's the purpose of that? I'll give you three things real
quick. Number one is for the glory of God. And you go through
here and as you read those verses, and I'm sure you read as Ron
read, It talks about what the Father did in salvation to the
glory of His grace, and then what the Son did to the glory
of His grace, and then what the Spirit of God did toward the
end of His reading. That's for His glory, the glory
of His grace. This is why God does everything.
It's for the glory of His great name. To God be the glory, great
things He hath done. That's the design of salvation. He has made known unto us. He's
made known unto us how He saves sinners. This is the mystery of His will. Would you know what is the mystery
of God's will? I mean, His will is infinitely
deep and infinitely high. What is the mystery of His will? His will is the salvation of
the people that He gave to Jesus Christ before the world began,
which will all work out for the glory of God, number one. This
is the intent. Number two, what's His intent? To exalt the Son of God. to exalt
the God-man, the one who actually came down
here, walked on this earth, obedient in all things, and then died
under the wrath of God to save His people. What's His intent? What is God's
good pleasure in the mystery of His will, in the mystery of
the Gospel? The third thing is this. to save
His beloved people. What a mystery. To save folks
like us, to gather us unto Himself. Spirit, have God ever showed
you what you are? I know you can't stand a full disclosure
of what you are, but has He ever showed you a little bit of your
sinfulness, of your evil? And then the Lord makes you to
know, I saved you. I saved you by grace, not by
works. I love you freely. Hosea says
that. I love you unconditionally. I
have purchased your redemption with my blood. I have quickened
you by my grace. Our salvation. That's important
to God. And it brings Him great delight.
It brings Him infinite satisfaction. And I'll give you one more. Go
with me to Luke chapter 2. I'll give you this and then I'm
going to send you home. Luke chapter 2. Look at Luke 2, and I'm not going
to take the time to read all of this. But you know the story
of the birth of our Lord Jesus here in Luke 2. He was born in
Bethlehem's manger. The angel appeared to the shepherds. The shepherds were chosen of
God to receive a visit from heavenly messengers. And first one angel
and then a bunch of angels. It says in Luke 2 verse 13, And
suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly hosts
praising God, and saying, Glory to God in the highest, and on
earth peace, good will, good pleasure, same thing, toward
men. You want to see God's good will? You want to see God's good pleasure?
He sends His Son to make our peace with God. In fact, the
Scripture says He is our peace. And He made peace by the blood
of His cross. What is this peace that He has
come to establish? Not peace between individuals
and a family. Not peace between nations. He
said, our Lord said, I didn't come to bring peace. He said,
I came to bring a sword. And you see on Christmas floats
you saw a couple of weeks ago or something like that, you know,
on Earth Peace. I get a little tickled any time
I see one of those beauty pageants. I guess they just had the Miss
America beauty pageant. Don't watch them anymore. Hadn't
watched them since, was it Bob Barker's? Used to take care of
them. Tell you how long ago it's been
since I've watched one. But do you have anything to say? I want peace in the world. Why can't we all be at peace
one another? I want to be at peace with everybody. That's not the peace that came
to establish. He came to establish peace between
us and our holy God. To make peace. And you know what? He did. He did. And the way is open. Our Lord
Jesus Christ is the very way to God. I am the way, the truth,
the life. No man cometh unto the Father
but by Me. The way is open to God. What kind of peace did He come
to establish? I'll tell you, two kinds of peace.
Legal peace, and that is vital. And lasting peace. Lasting peace. The war's over. The Savior has died. I know God's satisfied because
He raised Him from the dead. Oh, God's good pleasure. God's
good pleasure. I'll keep on with this theme
this evening. Hope that you'll be back. Let's
get our songbooks and we'll sing 84. Number 84, Come Thou Long
Expected Jesus.