GOD IS ABSOLUTELY GOOD

October 10 

You are good and do good; teach me your statutes. Psalm 119:68

In 1808, Allen Gardiner entered the British Royal Navy.  It was while he was in the Navy that he got saved.  When he was in China and saw the idolatry of the people, God moved his heart to become a missionary.  He eventually went to South America to give the Gospel to the unreached tribes there in 1838.  In 1851, at the age of 57, he died of disease and starvation while serving on Picton Island at the southern tip of South America. When his body was found, his diary lay nearby. It bore the record of hunger, thirst, wounds and loneliness. The last entry in his little book showed the struggle of his shaking hand as he tried to write legibly. It read, "I am overwhelmed with a sense of the goodness of God." 

Allen Gardiner understood that we are not deserving or worthy of anything; that God owes us nothing.  We, on the other hand, owe all we are and have to God. 

1 John 1:5 says that “God is Light and in Him there is no darkness at all.”  This is another way of saying that God is absolutely good/pure.  As a result, all that He does is good as Psalm 119:68 says.  Psalm 107:1 says, “Oh give thanks to the Lord, for He is good.” 

How has God been good to you this past week?  Did you thank Him for the liquid in your eyeballs so your eyes are not itchy?  Did you praise Him for the air that you breathe?  I praise God that one day last week the pick-up coming right at us did not hit us.  God causes His rain to fall on the just and unjust alike.  Psalm 145:9 says, “The Lord is good to all.”  Fundamental to the person of God is His goodness.  Our English word “good” comes from “God.”  Goodness is the essence of God.  There is no evil in Him whatsoever (1 John 1:5). 

Ike Graham