Transformed by God’s Goodness - Woodside Plymouth SN

SERIES TITLE: Who am I in Christ?

Week 6: Transformed by God’s Goodness

Outline:

1. Taste it (Ps 34:8a).

2. Trust it (Ps 34:8b).

3. Seek it (Ps 34:9-10)

4. Bottom Line: In Christ, we delight in the goodness of God.

Scripture Passage(s): Psalm 34:8-10

Doctrines to be Taught:

Focus of the Message: Like God’s Truth His Goodness shapes who we are in Christ. This impacts every part of our identity as we delight in Him and experience His transformation in our lives. This week we will turn our attention to this value that we hold to at Woodside to see why it’s something we need to consider in our lives.

SERIES RECAP

Hey everyone, over the past couple of student nights we have been going over the idea of “Who we are in Christ?”. Its an important question we all need to ask ourselves and it becomes a founding factor in our walks with Christ. Two weeks ago we went over how we know that God is Truth and everything that he says in the bible is always right, and that truth can allow us to lean on him continually. Now, this week, we are going to cover a topic which can be a bit more difficult to understand sometimes, and that is the goodness of God. At Woodside, we define goodness as anything that displays the character of God. So, if anything displays God’s character, we can know that it is good and delight in His goodness.

INTRODUCTION

When I say goodness, I’m sure you all can say a handful of things that you can define as good in your lives. Name some stuff for me. [Wait for a few responses]. I know I can definitely think of handful of things that I would call good in my life. My wife, food, my dog, fishing, my switch. There are so many things, but one thing I can say was really good in my life is the time I was able to camp with my family.

In my junior year of High school my family started to go on family camping trips. We’ve gone to a handful of places around Michigan’s west coast and once in Florida during Christmas. They honestly are some of my favorite memories of the time I got to spend with my family. And I was personally able to find a wonderful love and wonder that I didn’t know I had for nature.

One of my favorite locations that I camped at was Ludington State Park. Has anyone ever been there? It has one of my favorite forest hiking trails and Lake Michigan beach. I have so many memories of that place, one of the coolest and scariest memories was the time a huge buck almost ran me over as it pass me in the dark about half a foot in front of me at the end of a late hike.

But by far my favorite memory was when we decided to go to the beach at night to see a night sky presentation. It was incredible to see the beach at night and see the moonlight reflecting off the dark lake waters. As it got darker, I saw something that was one of the most beautiful sights ever in my life. And that was the Milky Way stretching across the night sky. I’ve seen pictures of it in books before, but to seeing it in person was breathtaking.

TENSION

When we think about delighting in something, it can be experiences we see and touch, food we taste, a certain smell we love, and even the sounds we hear. We can use all the human senses that God has given us to delight in the things of this world and this is good. But I don’t think we always see that the things we delight in so long as they glorify God are meant to help us delight in God’s goodness. I don’t know that we think or talk a lot about experiencing God’s goodness in our lives in all of the different senses He’s created us with but God actually addresses this in His word. So:

We can delight in so many things, like seeing how incredible nature can be, tasting delicious food, hearing our favorite music, and maybe even hitting the crispest high five with your favorite people. God has blessed us with all our senses to be able to enjoy our lives and delight in the blessings that he brings into them. But sometimes we can delight in these good things but miss the point of them. These good things are meant to direct our attention to God and remind us of His incredible love and impact in our lives and in return praise Him. Sometimes its a bit difficult to think about experiencing the goodness of God in our lives, but fortunately the Bible discusses this:

################################Slide############################ What does it look like to delight in God's goodness?

Tonight we are going to study this question in Psalm 34:8-10. As we look at this passage, we’ll see 3 ways we can delight in God’s goodness and be transformed by it.

TRUTH

################################Slide############################Taste it!

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Oh, taste and see that the Lord is good! - Psalm 34:8a

How many of you, when thinking about God, thought “I’ve tasted the Lord’s goodness”. What does goodness taste like? It’s a weird idea to think about. David didn’t literally mean to taste with your tongue, so don’t go licking your bibles. But what he was referring to was to experience God’s goodness. We can see this by looking at the verses that lead up to this passage. Take a look at verses 4, 6, and 7 and tell me what you see. [Wait for responses]. We see David speaking on how he has experienced God’s goodness through the deliverance he was provided. And something important to note is that this isn’t coming from a place of happiness, but a place of anxiety and fear. He needed God’s protection and was given it, which lead him to his declaration of tasting and seeing the Lord’s goodness. If David can experience this in his life, so can we. As we lean on God we can become more aware of the goodnesses he provides us even in difficult life situations, not just when life is going well.

God’s goodness can be experienced with the senses He gave us. Now I know that I just said that David didn’t mean literally tasting with your tongue in that passage, but we can still experience God’s goodness through our sense of taste today. For those of you in service today, what did we do at the beginning of service? [Wait for responses]. We took communion, which is our way of remembering the sacrifice of Jesus via his death and his victory over it in his resurrection. We are tasting God’s goodness through this act of remembrance. And when we share meals, we pray over our food as well, tasting of the blessings that he provides us.

When we sing worship glorifying who He is, when we pray to Him and praise Him for the things he does in our lives, we can experience his goodness through our hearing. When we gather as a community and support each others needs through volunteering or serving in the church we can experience his goodness via our touch. I could probably keep listing other ways and other senses, but I’d challenge you in your free time to consider the different ways you can experience God’s goodness through your other senses

Hopefully all of this can encourage you to proclaim the goodness of God. Not just to each other, but to other people in your lives who might not know God or His goodness. How have you experienced God’s goodness here at student nights? Do you have any stories that highlight God’s goodness that would build others up or even lead them to the gospel story? Have you considered how you can grow further in student nights? Small groups? Your community? And as you pray over others here or outside student nights, do you keep track of how God has answered that leads you to rejoice in his goodness?

We can also delight in God’s goodness as we:

################################Slide############################Trust it!

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Blessed is the man who takes refuge in him! – Psalm 34:8b (ESV) 

So we saw that David experienced God’s goodness through his protection and that drove him to delight in God. Then we can understand that anyone who looks for protection or rest in God can experience the same goodness. But why? Because, as we saw in the rest of verse 8, only God can provide the comfort and needs that our hearts desire. One of those desires that you might face as you are growing is a need to fit in or find where you belong. Sometimes we can find it in getting validation from good grades, playing well in your sport, or maybe being the person everyone wants to hang out with. These may be nice in the moment but they are temporary. More often that not even when we finally get these things, we find out they aren’t enough and want more or we slip up and lose what we worked to get. It can leave us wondering how we can get that feeling of purpose and belonging again.

When we rely on ourselves, or other people to find our purpose, belonging, or satisfaction we will never be able to obtain what we look for long term. And if we struggle for long enough, you may even wonder if finding that satisfaction is possible. For me when I went to college for the first time I thought that if I got good grades and interacted with the right people I would find my validation and be set for life. But, right at the end of my fourth year and lost contact with all the people I had met. And then my grades started to fall too, I became very depressed and didn’t understand where I belonged.

But, what I came to realize, and David realized this too, is that sense of satisfaction and belonging only comes from God. That true sense of belonging and satisfaction can only be realized through Jesus. And he has invited us to find our belonging as adopted sons and daughters of God, a family we will never be rejected by. Jesus’ death and resurrection gives us our freedom and its not dependent on whether we feel worthy enough to receive it but instead a gift of grace from God. When we find our identity in Christ, he provides us our sense of purpose and leads us in what our duties are. Sometimes that means being rejected by the world or even harm, but we no longer have to prove ourselves because in Christ we can rest.

The things of this world will always fail, but Jesus will always come through and give us our satisfaction. He leads us to what is truly good, and we can trust in Him because when we rest in Him we are blessed.

################################Slide############################Seek it!

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9 Oh, fear the Lord, you his saints,

for those who fear him have no lack!

10 The young lions suffer want and hunger;

but those who seek the Lord lack no good thing.

 – Psalm 34:9-10 (ESV)

David understood, like we do now, that we can only find satisfaction and goodness through God. When we seek that belonging and satisfaction in God, we become transformed by it. Its extremely clear when we look at it through the redemption that Jesus offers us. No matter what is happening in your life, seek the goodness of God because it will always grow and transform us.

Looking back at the passage we can see that when we seek the Lord we lack nothing, but when we look in other places for our needs we become like lions who want and hunger. In ancient times, and even still today, we can see lions as these big and incredibly powerful animals who roam the African plains as the kings of the land. Dominating and capable of taking down a ton of animals to satisfy their needs. But even these incredible animals can become victims of hunger.

David is describing people who go off on their own thinking they know better at understanding the needs of their heart. Disregarding God and seeking to fulfill their needs without Him. This happens with non-Christians but can also happen to Christians when they seek other things other than God. We go spiritually hungry and are left unsatisfied, suffering want and hungering. But in God’s goodness we discover that our needs are met and we lack nothing.

Whenever I listen to a song or watch a movie again I feel like I always hear or see something I didn’t notice the first time. This is like the gospel, whenever we seek it at the different points in our lives we get to see and experience different points of view than we have before. And the incredible part is that the gospel hasn’t changed at all, these different points of view caused by our different points in life provide us with transformation and we gain a whole new understanding of God’s goodness.

But, to be transformed we need to understand what it is that we want and desire within ourselves. It could be any of the things I mentioned before, or maybe its something personal to you that popped into your head right now. These things are not necessarily wrong to desire, and can be good up to a point, but they become a roadblock if they make you think that God isn’t needed to fulfill your needs. We need to reflect and answer ourselves honestly, why do we feel we need these things?

When we reflect we should not come to the conclusion that we are better off on our own, but instead see our need for Jesus’ redemption. To become more aware of the sinful forces in our lives that call for us to look away from God. Jesus is the satisfaction that can transform us to lean more on God for all our needs. But it requires us to seek him in the areas of our hearts that have we have not fully given to him. When we experience God’s goodness, it should lead us to worship and acknowledge who he is. Drawing us deeper community as He speaks not just through our lives but through the people around us to reflect the goodness of the gospel. And it should move us into the mission of sharing this goodness with the rest of the world, so they can understand that Jesus is the only one who can satisfy their hearts.

DESCENT

I hope that tonight you have been able to see:

################################Slide############################ In Christ, we delight in the goodness of God.

Let’s continue to delight in the goodness of God by growing in the gospel that helps us understand who we are in Christ. We should never reach a point in our lives where we say that I’ve heard everything already and know all that there is to know about the gospel or the rest of God’s word. Only God can say that, we’ll be continually learning for the rest of our lives and into eternity.

If you ever feel like you have, I encourage you to look internally and ask “why do I believe that?” If you answer that honestly it’s going to lead you to something that you’re failing to believe about who God is and if you surrender that to Him. It might expose some uncomfortable beliefs or thoughts you might have. But as you give them over to God you’re going to experience God in a new way that is different than you had before. And if you are experiencing God’s goodness in your life, you will be transformed by it!

So, delight in God’s goodness. Taste it! Trust it! Seek it! It’s transforms how you engage with God in Worship, Community, and Mission. And when you feel it’s lacking in your life again ask yourself “why is that?” It might reveal some uncomfortable things about what you believe but as you give those things to God you will experience Him and if you are truly experiencing God you will experience His transformation in your life!

LANDING

I hope as you think about experiencing God in your life, that it does help you engage with Him, others, and those in this world who desperately need Jesus. The one in who we can delight in the goodness of God.

Let’s Pray!