Pt 2 THE ONE TRUE GOD: None Good But God
- “GOOD”, why we assume this to be true and how the Bible brings it out clearly.
God is GOOD and his goodness is apparent to each and every one of us. ALL of mankind know that God is good, it is assumed in the most common a-theistic argument against his existence in the question of evil, ie “If God exists, why is there evil in the world?”. We will delve into this argument in my last message on this subject.
Mankind itself knows that God is good, even as they deny him, and yet is it those who are REDEEMED by him, those who turn to him daily and learn of him, those who receive his matchless grace and who see his work in our lives each and every day, that truly have the closest opportunity to know the goodness of God.
The more I come to know him, the more I feel I can’t even lift up my eyes to him, and when he covers me with his grace words simply don’t describe the immeasurable astonishment I experience that he would still love me in spite of myself.
When we see the blessings that God furnishes us with in our day to day lives, when we see his work in those that we pray for and those that we love, when the greatest burdens of our hearts are answered, and often in ways that we do not expect as time goes on, it is then that we see both the wisdom and goodness of God made manifest.
It is in those times when we are overcome by our recognition of the goodness of God, that I truly realise if I were to behold his face I would die! I would see myself in comparison to him and I would just die.
Exodus 33:20
20 And he said, Thou canst not see my face: for there shall no man see me, and live.
- Perhaps that’s why Isaiah fell on his face when he saw the Lord “high and lifted up”.
- Perhaps that’s the reason, after the drawing in of such great number of fish that both boats began to sink, Peter fell at the knees of Jesus saying “Depart from me; for I am a sinful man, O Lord” (Lk 5:8)
Mankind simply has no idea how evil sin is and how much it contrasts the goodness of God.
- Those who think they can be “good enough” to merit heaven, simply have no idea how sinful they are NOR how good God is.
- Those who think they need to somehow maintain their own salvation in their own strength, simply have NO IDEA how pervasive sin is in our flesh, NOR how God’s grace sustains us.
- Those who think you can lose your salvation, simply don’t understand salvation, nor understand how “the goodness of God leads us to repentance”
God did not only create all things good, THERE IS NONE GOOD BUT GOD!
Pray
He Made All Things Good
Genesis 1:26–31
26 And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth. 27 So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them. 28 And God blessed them, and God said unto them, Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it: and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth.
29 And God said, Behold, I have given you every herb bearing seed, which is upon the face of all the earth, and every tree, in the which is the fruit of a tree yielding seed; to you it shall be for meat. 30 And to every beast of the earth, and to every fowl of the air, and to every thing that creepeth upon the earth, wherein there is life, I have given every green herb for meat: and it was so.
31 And God saw every thing that he had made, and, behold, it was very good. And the evening and the morning were the sixth day.
What we have before us is the very beginning of history, the beginning of all creation, a record of that state of the world and all that is therein, after all that is made, was made.
This passage is the conclusion of the account;
Six days God laboured to make all that is seen in the world today. Everything you see before your eyes came from the dust of the earth, whether that be life itself or the tallest skyscraper, all came from materials found in and on the earth.
There is nothing ultimately “synthetic”, man cannot ever be able to create any new molecule, chemical nor mineral without employing the dust of the earth that God had made and called ‘Good’.
You have all heard the tale of the great scientists who have believed they found the secret of life and can now make life themselves and came to challenge God with their ability.
They call him down and determine to race him in the work, and just as they begin they reach down to get the same dust of the ground God used to make Adam, and God calls out, “hey…get your own dust!”.
Everything on earth is made from everything in earth that God made for man upon the earth, and IT WAS ALL GOOD!
Why? Because THERE IS NONE GOOD BUT GOD
The end of the creation week was identified with the creation of mankind from the particles of the dust of the earth, and it was then that God had determined all to be completed, “and behold, it was very good.
31 And God saw every thing that he had made, and, behold, it was very good. And the evening and the morning were the sixth day.
It is here that we come to understand that God had an end in mind when he created all that he had made, and that end is man. Man, we discover was not the pinnacle of God’s creation, it was not as we often think, the best part of God’s creation, it was not God’s version of the “icing on the cake”, mankind, we discover, is the very purpose of creation.
THE ANTHROPIC PRINCIPLE
(For those of you that are averse to science, the next five or so minutes you are free to enjoy a nap, Ill wake you with a big bang when done 😊)
The word “Anthropic” or the Greek word it comes from “Anthropos” refers to “Man”, the principle referred to is that all of the universe seems uniquely tuned for the existence of mankind.
Dr Benjamin Wiker
The anthropic principle. In short form, it is the discovery that the universe appears rigged, astoundingly fine-tuned, suspiciously calibrated as part of some kind of a conspiracy of order to produce life—indeed intelligent life. This fine-tuned conspiracy occurs on all levels, from the fundamental constants governing the formation of all the elements in the cosmos, to the extraordinarily precise relationship of planets in our solar system, to the delicate balances on our own planet.
All the information man has been able to gather to date shows clearly that we exist in a Universe so unique, so fine-tuned, the alteration of any aspect of it would never have enabled it to create nor sustain life in any form EVEN IN AN EVOLUTIONARY MODEL.
Scientists are fully aware of this phenomenon.
Physicist Paul Davies writes “such stunning accuracy is surely one of the great mysteries of cosmology.”
The late and most famous modern Physicist and Cosmologist Stephen Hawking, said
“why did the universe start out with so nearly the critical rate of expansion that separates models that re-collapse from those that go on expanding forever, so that even now…it is still expanding at the critical rate? If the rate of expansion one second after the Big Bang had been smaller by even one part in a hundred thousand million, million, the universe would have re-collapsed on itself before it ever reached it’s present state.” Stephen Hawking is now a theist.
Cosmological Physicists are aware of two main parameters within the first second of the so-called big bang that were required,
- one is the rate of expansion mentioned by Hawking in the quote above,
- the other is temperature.
If either were different by “one part in a hundred thousand million, million” mankind would never have come into existence, the universe itself would never have come into existance according to their Big Bang, evolutionary model.
Chance?
- 1×1017th. = 1 marked 5 cent piece among 1017 5 cent pieces in Victoria (120mm deep)
EXPLAIN.
- 1017x1017= 1034 = AUSTRALIA 7,692,024 KM2 Requires 27,180,296,819,788,000 x 5 cent pieces or 2.718 x 1016th power = 1 Layer only
To make it easy for the math, we will go three layers deep to make the Victorian equivalent at 1017th 5 cent pieces (Aprox 3.7mm deep).
But we still need to get to 1034th power for this universe to have begun by chance with those two parameters for the Big Bang.
So we go 100x more, now we are 370mm deep = 1019th
Ok, 100x more again, now we are 37 meters deep = 1021
100x more, now 3700m (3.7km) deep in 5 cent pieces or 3.7km = 1023
(Mt Kosciusko is only 2,228m above sea level.)
At 370km deep of 5 cent pieces to choose just one, we are 1025 power, and still 1 Billion times too small a number to get to 1034.
All this for just TWO parameters.
The Anthropic Principle has over 100 and that only applies to the Universe, there are over 150 additional parameters that make life on one planet possible in a given galaxy. And there are thousands of parameters required before we even get to intelligent life.
Roger Penrose, a famous British mathematician and a close friend of Stephen Hawking, wondered about this question and tried to calculate the probability of the initial entropy conditions of the Big Bang. According to Penrose, the odds against such an occurrence were on the order of 1 in 10 to the power of 10 to the power of 123 (1 in 1010 to the 123rd power). There is not a computer on earth, nor if we added all the super computing strength of every computer hardware, could we even begin to store the number of digits to get to that number.
Williams, Stephen. What Your Atheist Professor Doesn’t Know (But Should), wrote
Even if we were to write a 0 on each separate proton and on each separate neutron in the entire universe – and we could throw in all the other particles for good measure – we would fall far short of writing down the figure needed.
For those interested, I have two copies of those parameters, but the list is at least ten years old.
“In very large measure, it seems Humanity itself is the end goal of the Universe”
Sigmund Brouwer, The Unrandom Universe: 2002
Please understand that the data we have are based on a FALLEN world, yet all remains GOOD for life.
When God said;
26 And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth.
It was NOT an afterthought.
Ephesians 1:3–4
4 According as he hath chosen us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and without blame before him in love:
Before the foundation of the world, God had already had mankind in mind.
Titus 1:2
2 In hope of eternal life, which God, that cannot lie, promised before the world began;
Even eternal life and the manner in which God would save man was known to God and “promised before the world began”.
Man was not an after thought, he was a forethought, he was in the mind of God before God began his creation week, and he made ALL THINGS VERY GOOD.
Beloved, there were no storms in the world when God created the world,
Genesis 2:5–6
5 …. God had not caused it to rain upon the earth, and there was not a man to till the ground. 6 But there went up a mist from the earth, and watered the whole face of the ground.
The full and complete provision was made for man to live in perfect comfort.
By the end of Chapter 2 the Bible speaks of man saying;
25 And they were both naked, the man and his wife, and were not ashamed.
Genesis 2:25
Clearly there was no need for any covering, the climate must have been completely different from the seasons in the world that we have today.
Food was plenty when;
9 … out of the ground made the LORD God to grow every tree that is pleasant to the sight, and good for food;…Genesis 2:9
Creation was perfect and good for the existence of man in the world. There was NO evil in the world, all was good and would have remained good….but man!
He Watched Man Choose Evil
Genesis 2:8–18
16 And the LORD God commanded the man, saying, Of every tree of the garden thou mayest freely eat: 17 But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it: for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die.
18 And the LORD God said, It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him an help meet for him.
We notice in the text as we did in the first point that all was well in the world. God had made the world not only inhabitable, but created the perfect habitat where man could “walk with God in the cool of the day”.
God created mankind for fellowship and to join with God in everlasting happiness. All was created for him and to bless him.
Genesis 3:1–8
1 Now the serpent was more subtil than any beast of the field which the LORD God had made. And he said unto the woman, Yea, hath God said, Ye shall not eat of every tree of the garden? 2 And the woman said unto the serpent, We may eat of the fruit of the trees of the garden: 3 But of the fruit of the tree which is in the midst of the garden, God hath said, Ye shall not eat of it, neither shall ye touch it, lest ye die. 4 And the serpent said unto the woman, Ye shall not surely die: 5 For God doth know that in the day ye eat thereof, then your eyes shall be opened, and ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil.
6 And when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was pleasant to the eyes, and a tree to be desired to make one wise, she took of the fruit thereof, and did eat, and gave also unto her husband with her; and he did eat. 7 And the eyes of them both were opened, and they knew that they were naked; and they sewed fig leaves together, and made themselves aprons. 8 And they heard the voice of the LORD God walking in the garden in the cool of the day: and Adam and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the LORD God amongst the trees of the garden.
It was the fall of man that brought about a complete change in the order of creation.
Romans tells us that when mankind is redeemed, all returns to its original order of creation.
Romans 8:21–22
21 Because the creature itself also shall be delivered from the bondage of corruption into the glorious liberty of the children of God. 22 For we know that the whole creation groaneth and travaileth in pain together until now.
Everything changed after man introduced evil into the world.
Sin came into the world by man and both man and creation fell. Nothing has been the same since.
It is God that is good not man, this we instinctively know, but man chooses to blame God for all the evil in the world, Man still has a habit on blaming others for his own sin.
Even today, the insanity of the woke culture is literally blaming Christians for the murder of those children and adults in Nashville in the United States this week.
- Eve blamed the serpent,
- Adam blamed Eve and even God for given her to him to begin with.
- Man takes no responsibility for his own sin and UNTIL HE DOES, God cannot help him.
His Goodness leads to repentance.
Romans 2:1–6
1 Therefore thou art inexcusable, O man, whosoever thou art that judgest: for wherein thou judgest another, thou condemnest thyself; for thou that judgest doest the same things. 2 But we are sure that the judgment of God is according to truth against them which commit such things. 3 And thinkest thou this, O man, that judgest them which do such things, and doest the same, that thou shalt escape the judgment of God? 4 Or despisest thou the riches of his goodness and forbearance and longsuffering; not knowing that the goodness of God leadeth thee to repentance? 5 But after thy hardness and impenitent heart treasurest up unto thyself wrath against the day of wrath and revelation of the righteous judgment of God; 6 Who will render to every man according to his deeds:
The more we continue to ignore our own evil, the less likely we will have a relationship with all that is good. The text here tells us that we hypocritically judge others for doing the same things they do, and thereby we condemn ourselves.
Our ignorance of our own badness leads naturally to an ignorance of God’s goodness,which is employed to lead us to repentance and thereby salvation.
There is a strange thing that occurs when man remains willfully ignorant of his own evil, he finds himself repelled by all that is good. In fact, through his ignorance of his own evil he naturally comes to view those things that are good as evil.
Why does that occur?
Our denial of evil within forces us naturally to rationalize our evil as good. No man likes to think of himself as evil, the bible teaches that we naturally love ourselves,
Ephesians 5:33
33 Nevertheless let every one of you in particular so love his wife even as himself;…
A few verses earlier it says,
29 For no man ever yet hated his own flesh; but nourisheth and cherisheth it… Eph 5:29
It gets much worse in the last days, Paul warning Timothy;
“…perilous times shall come for men shall be lovers of their own selves…lovers of pleasures more than lovers of God” (2 Tim 3:1-4)
Therefore, in loving ourselves we naturally think that all that we do is good and find the greatest difficulty of all to admit ourselves as evil.
As such the passage here in Romans teaches we become hardened against all that is good
5 But after thy hardness and impenitent heart treasurest up unto thyself wrath against the day of wrath and revelation of the righteous judgment of God;
People who deny their own evil can’t stand being near those who desire righteousness.
All Christians recognize this when their old secular friends don’t really like spending time with them anymore, You have done nothing wrong, but for some reason your old friends despise you are drawn away from you.
Peter identifies this, turn to
1 Peter 4:3–5
3 For the time past of our life may suffice us to have wrought the will of the Gentiles, when we walked in lasciviousness, lusts, excess of wine, revellings, banquetings, and abominable idolatries:
4 Wherein they think it strange that ye run not with them to the same excess of riot, speaking evil of you:
Paul wrote to Timothy saying that “…all that will live godly in Christ Jesus shall suffer persecution” (2 Tim 3:12), therefore this is natural.
Your friends who ignore or love their sin, will hate you. Your “Christian” friends who ignore their sin, will ALSO not want to be around you, and all of them will be “speaking evil of you”, the more you seek to do good.
But look how the text concludes there in 1 Peter 4, verse 5 says;
5 Who shall give account to him that is ready to judge the quick and the dead.
There is a reckoning for all who remain this way till the end of their lives. Those who will simply not see their own sin as sin, will give an account for sin in the end.
But before this happens, and for you to remain temporarily affirmed in your sin, you are very likely to want to spend time with people more wicked than yourself, and they will be happy to spend time with you.
Your time spent with them; makes you feel better about your own evil.
Meanwhile, their time spent with you is to encourage you to do more evil than them.
So it’s a win/win temporary feeling between you that will end in a lose/lose state for you. As you give account to him that is ready to judge the quick and the dead
Why? Because; after thy hardness and impenitent heart treasurest up unto thyself wrath against the day of wrath and revelation of the righteous judgment of God; 6 Who will render to every man according to his deeds: (Rom 2:5-6)
Beloved, the evil we are seeing in the world today is revealing the truth of this so clearly;
People who are in love with the most extremes of sin and debauchery today are now violently attempting to compel people to agree with them. We are even being compelled through force of law to “affirm” whatever it is that people choose to think of themselves. They attack violently all the institutions that are charged to keep a good and civil society, they demolished the ten commandments that sat in the front of court houses for years, they despise God and attack with violence all representation of that which is good, even the innocency of small children as we saw early this week in the U.S.
We don’t know really which occurs first or whether both events occur concurrently, either there is first a breaking up of the hard fallow ground of the heart OR there is first a representation of the goodness of God revealed to a person that there is a turning around, a repentance.
The passage in Romans tells us that it is due to the hardening of the heart and despising of God and so not knowing that the goodness of God leadeth thee to repentance?
Hosea 10:12
12 Sow to yourselves in righteousness, reap in mercy; break up your fallow ground: forit is time to seek the LORD, till he come and rain righteousness upon you.
God’s goodness seems to become evident ONLY when we soften our hardened hearts “to seek the LORD”.
There Is None Good But God
Mark 10:17–23
17 And when he was gone forth into the way, there came one running, and kneeled to him, and asked him, Good Master, what shall I do that I may inherit eternal life? 18 And Jesus said unto him, Why callest thou me good? there is none good but one, that is, God. 19 Thou knowest the commandments, Do not commit adultery, Do not kill, Do not steal, Do not bear false witness, Defraud not, Honour thy father and mother. 20 And he answered and said unto him, Master, all these have I observed from my youth. 21 Then Jesus beholding him loved him, and said unto him, One thing thou lackest: go thy way, sell whatsoever thou hast, and give to the poor, and thou shalt have treasure in heaven: and come, take up the cross, and follow me. 22 And he was sad at that saying, and went away grieved: for he had great possessions. 23 And Jesus looked round about, and saith unto his disciples, How hardly shall they that have riches enter into the kingdom of God!
Jesus makes the clear statement that there is NONE GOOD BUT GOD.
God is the standard of what GOOD is, and all people know this to be true. It’s the reason why all who are evil hate God, and all those who hate God also hate those who mostly REPRESENT God.
God alone is good, he is perfect, he is HOLY, he is love, truth and glorious in holiness and wisdom.
In him there is no guile, there is no shadow of turning in him.
God is not capricious, he is KNOWABLE. The wicked are those who you cant KNOW from one moment to another what they might do, God is KNOWABLE, not capricious!
The single greatest representation of his goodness and his righteousness is his Son Jesus Christ, who came to die for sinners such as you and I.
Its truly difficult for me to comprehend this.
I would never have died for me. I might have been willing to die for someone else who’s life I valued more than myself, but never for me.
But there is mercy with God…grace, I cant comprehend his grace, I don’t understand truly why God would sacrifice his only begotten son for me…I wouldn’t.
In Jesus Christ, God demonstrated his perfect holiness, righteousness and goodness in a way that could never otherwise have been expressed by words.
God showed it by action.
God took our sin and nailed it to a cross in Jerusalem almost 2,000 years ago. God made Jesus to be sin for us, that we might be made righteous in God.
2 Corinthians 5:21
21 For he hath made him to be sin for us, who knew no sin; that we might be made the righteousness of God in him.
Can you understand this?
Certainly, there is a simple logic to it that I can understand. Even to this day I am free to pay the fine of a friend or loved one. I am free to take the penalty of another, such sacrifice is legal so long as the debt is paid, the one for whom the debt is paid is able to go free. The other however is retained to cover the debt.
But the more I see my sin, especially the way I was and the enmity and hatred I had toward God before I loved him….that’s what I don’t understand; why would he die for one who denied and despised him?
The Bible says, we love him because he first loved us. (1 Jn 4:19)
But God commendeth his love toward us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. Romans 5:8
And the only reason I know it is true is because the Bible says it and I believed it and now I know it is true.
There is NONE GOOD BUT GOD
Only God could come up with a plan like this.
Only God could conceive of a solution to the eternal problem for which man finds himself him.
Only God could devise a plan so ingenious to reveal the hearts of those who voluntarily will trust him and love him.
Only Jesus could have carried it out.
Only the Spirit of God could have revealed him.
Do you KNOW God is good?
Are you aware yet that there truly is NONE GOOD BUT GOD?
Have you yet seen yourself as a sinner for whom Christ died?
Will you believe it?
Then call on him!!!
Admit you are a sinner.
Believe that Jesus died for your sins.
Call him to save you!
There is simply is none other name under heaven given among men, whereby we must be saved (Acts 4:12)
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