Transcript:

Hello, this is Pastor Don of Christ Redeemer Church. Welcome to The Kingdom Perspective.

The Bible tells us that essential to God’s character is His goodness. God is good and, as Psalm 145 reminds us, “The Lord is good to all, and His mercies are over all His works.”

In the broad narrative of the Bible, this goodness is seen both in the original creation and in the in the new creation—the new heavens and the new earth.

In the Genesis account of creation, God repeatedly pronounces his divine benediction upon all He has made. At the end of each day, He declares it “good”, and then on that final day of creation “very good”! Interestingly, the word “good” is repeated a total of seven times, the number of fullness and completeness. The point? The earth is filled to overflowing with God’s goodness. The Hebrew word for good (tov, as in the Jewish toast “mazel tov”, “good luck”) means pleasant, fitting, and beautiful. It is everything as it should be. God’s dynamic fullness and harmony can be seen everywhere in creation.

Likewise, we see this abounding goodness at the end of the Bible in the renewed creation. In Revelation 21 and 22, after the banishment of sin, we find a new heaven and a new earth (Revelation 21:1) with God crying out from His throne “Behold I am making all thing new” (Revelation 21:5). And from that throne of God comes the “river of the water of life” that feeds the “tree of life” that will be for the “healing of the nations” (Revelation 22:1-2).

Do you get the picture? In the original creation and in the final re-creation, God is a God overflowing with goodness to His creation.

The first and final image of God presented is not a court room of justice, but a throne room of generosity.

God was good long before He had to execute justice on evil.
And God will be good long after He is done executing justice on evil.

Something to think about from The Kingdom Perspective.

“Then 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 birds of the heavens and over the livestock and over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.’

So God created man in his own image,
in the image of God he created him;
male and female he created them.

And God blessed them. And God said to them, ‘Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it, and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves on the earth.’ And God said, ‘Behold, I have given you every plant yielding seed that is on the face of all the earth, and every tree with seed in its fruit. You shall have them for food. And to every beast of the earth and to every bird of the heavens and to everything that creeps on the earth, everything that has the breath of life, I have given every green plant for food.’ And it was so. And God saw everything that he had made, and behold, it was very good. And there was evening and there was morning, the sixth day.
~Genesis 1:26-31 (ESV)