Episode 7: Goodness: Overflowing in Christ
Our passages today are from: Psalm 25 and Galations 6: 8-10
How does the fruit of goodness compare to our understanding of 'good works'? And how do Jesus' and Paul's words on this fruit help us grow in our understanding and application of it? We're looking at both Mark and Galatians together today to grow our understanding of this fruit of the Spirit.
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How do you see God's goodness in Psalm 25? What is the impact of his goodness on his people?
How does Jesus reflect that same goodness?
What will it look like for you to do good without growing weary?
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This episode is sponsored by Moody Publishers.
A Christian publisher, they aim to resource the church’s work of discipling all people, with titles spanning from Bible commentary and reference to spiritual and relational growth.
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The following is an uncorrected transcript generated by a transcription service. Before quoting in print, please check the corresponding audio for accuracy.
Felicity: You're listening to the Two Sisters in a Cup of Tea podcast, the Bible Study podcast for everyday life. We're here for a 20 minute burst of Bible chat over a cup of tea and an English style biscuit as we open up the Bible and drive it to our hearts. This season we're diving deep into the fruit of the spirit together. Whether you've been listening for a while or have just found us, we're so pleased you're here. We're grateful to be partnering with Moody Publishers this season and the True Street Kids series by Amanda Cleary Eastend is a hit in our household. It follows Jack and his friends as they navigate life as middle school students but also investigates strange happenings. And the beauty of this series is that it's written from a biblical perspective and the author brings Bible truth into play without it being moralistic or dull. In fact, my son says he loves the humour. They're part of a Christian family and we see that on display as they work out life. My eight-year-old is hooked and we're about to read one together with his seven-year-old brother. Get hold of this series for any kids in your life who like adventure and who are between 8 to 12 years old. Grab a copy wherever you get your books.
Sarah: Welcome to Two Sisters in a Cup of Tea. My name is Sarah, I live in the UK and as ever I'm with my sister Felicity who lives in the States and we're really genuinely excited to be getting into the fruit of goodness today. We are just loving our studies on the fruit of the spirit. They are just rich for the heart Felicity aren't they and I can't wait to get going today.
Felicity: Yes, loving it. Still enjoying cups of tea. Let's be honest, we are recording this at a very early hour for me. The rest of the house are asleep. And I know I am sort of embracing the fruit tea world. mean, embracing would be a strong word for it, I think. I'm dipping my toe in. I just, really need a good solid Yorkshire tea first thing in the morning. So, thanks. License, license for Yorkshire right now.
Sarah: That's okay. Yeah, yeah absolutely yeah embrace the auction right now. Absolutely. Well as we get into goodness Felicity I wanted to just kind of tease this out a little bit the kind of the nature of the words that we've been studying and the kind of the virtues that we've been studying over the last few weeks and really like our perceptions of these different words. How have they how has your perceptions been changing as you've been studying words like peace and kindness and goodness? what's, yeah, tell me kind of that journey of how your understanding of these words has been changing.
Felicity: That's a good question because these words are in, they're kind of common parlance, aren't they? Everyone uses these kind of words, you know, be kind, let's be good, let's be better people, all these kind of things. And I think that the more that we have done this deep dive, not just into the fruit, the spirit, not just into this kind of isolated reality of these words, but actually as we've connected it to Jesus more and more then it's just become, they've become closer and closer to him. So my understanding of these words is just intimately connected with my understanding of Jesus. And it's been a really, it's been just a gradual kind of, feel like my gaze and my, I'm just drawn more to Jesus the more I understand and going deep into what these different words, so what is it to be kind or actually okay let me look at Jesus first I feel like that's become more of an instinctive thing that I go to Jesus first okay what does it look like for him to be kind what is his kindness therefore what does it look like for me to be kind and my whole definition of the word is just being shaped by that I think which it sounds kind of obvious doesn't it but I just don't think I've really thought about it in that way before so it's been a really good journey on that what about you?
Sarah: Yeah, I think the more that I've been delving into these words, the more that I've seen the difference and how distinct the world's view of kindness and peace and goodness is compared to a Christ-shaped kindness, goodness, patience. Take the word good, for example. So I mean, good in our culture, it's like a solid B, isn't it? It's like good is a solid B or it's, you know, in the kind of school rating, it's good, but there's room for improvement there. There's like, you know, it's not yet outstanding, is it? It's not the best. And actually, the more that we delve into goodness, as we see today, goodness here is the absolute purity. There's no higher. There's nothing else beyond God's concept of, you know, what good is and how it compares to him. I think it's just been really striking seeing how these words compare with our world's view on these words and how much the cross shapes the nature of these words as well. I think I've been really struck by that. Yeah, it's been a really good word study, hasn't it? I'm still really enjoying it. But we're getting into goodness today. We kind of backed and forth for quite a while, didn't we, on where to land our study in goodness and originally we went to mark 10, Felicity talk us through why we were going to start out there.
Felicity: Yeah, well, Mark 10, we have the rich young man and he's speaking to Jesus and he says, you're good. He basically declares that, almost accidentally it seems, he declares that Jesus is good. And Jesus says back to him, only God is good. And so that's like a direct statement from Jesus that God is good and that actually implicitly Jesus therefore is God as he talks about that. And we kind of were landing there, but there's more to this than just that couple of sentences. And the way in which we see that is by going back actually in the Old Testament so we're going to go back to Psalm 25 where we have this outright declaration of God's goodness and as we see that and as we then just have Mark 10 in mind we're to see that Jesus is then the outworking of all God's goodness as well and we'll get into that in more detail but and we'll then then consider what it is to then outwork that goodness ourselves so we go back to Psalm 25 and then we're going to dip into Galatians 6 and we're going to catch a good long look at Jesus along the way. Shall I read? Yeah. I'm going to read Psalm 25. We're going to read the whole thing so grab your Bibles if you've got them. Psalm 25.
In you, Lord my God, I put my trust. I trust in you. Do not let me be put to shame, nor let my enemies triumph over me. No one who hopes in you will ever be put to shame, but shame will come on those who are treacherous without cause. Show me your ways, Lord. Teach me your paths. Guide me in your truth and teach me, you are God my saviour, and my hope is in you all day long. Remember, Lord, your great mercy and love, for they are from of old.Do not remember the sins of my youth and my rebellious ways. According to your love, remember me. For you, Lord, are good. Good and upright is the Lord. Therefore he instructs sinners in his ways. He guides the humble in what is right and teaches them his way. All the ways of the Lord are loving and faithful towards those who keep the demands of his covenant. For the sake of your name, Lord, forgive my iniquity, though it is great. Who then are those who fear the Lord? He will instruct them in the ways they should choose. They will spend their days in prosperity and their descendants will inherit the land. The Lord confides in those who fear him. He makes his covenant known to them. My eyes are ever on the Lord, for only he will release my feet from the snare. Turn to me and be gracious to me, for I am lonely and afflicted. Relieve the troubles of my heart and free me from my anguish. Look on my affliction and my distress and take away all my sins. See how numerous are my enemies and how fiercely they hate me. Guard my life and rescue me. Do not let me put to shame, for I take refuge in you. May integrity and uprightness protect me, because my hope, is in you. Deliver Israel, O God, from all their troubles.
Sarah: Thank you so much, Felicity. It's just wonderful to read that again. And we've been sitting in this for a while, but that kind of, I love the way we see in verse seven, for you Lord are good. And what surrounds those words are kind of declaration of his love and his mercy and the fact that he's not going to remember the believers sins and the kind of depth of forgiveness that comes. And so his goodness is intimately tied up with what we've already been seeing during this season and the love, the mercy, the kindness of our God to not remember our sins, to remember them no more and forgiveness. That's good, isn't it? Yeah.
Felicity: is good, is literally good. I think his character is almost like, this is a kind of, I don't know whether it could be that this is the case, that you kind of almost have an umbrella term for his character, like everything that makes him good is every aspect of his character, and as you say, it's steadfast love, his covenant faithfulness, his just kindness, his, like, it's very active isn't it's very like God is in relationship with his people here and we see that not just in this psalm but all throughout the Bible like God's people are always running back to God. He is their stronghold their refuge their everything his goodness. Something that's really struck me is just his goodness and we see it in this song his goodness means that we can keep running back to him but his people can keep trusting him is he's always there He's always gonna be like this now the words and I listen to a Tim Keller sermon on God's goodness and he just used the word integrity and that's just really stuck with me as a way of describing this that there is nothing that is not good about God and because of that he is unendingly trustworthy. We can trust his goodness and his character in that.
Sarah: But love, yeah, and kind of hinted it there. Like, I love the fact that we see in this psalm that it's not just he's good for his own sake, and that would be wholly good and right for him to kind of be good as the creator of the world, and that's just where he sits in his goodness. But his goodness overflows, doesn't it? In creation, in the fact that everything that he makes is good. But also here, I just, I spent some time yesterday just noting down the kind of doing words of the Lord in how his goodness overflows to others and it's just so deeply relational and proactive in the way that he gives out. So he teaches, he saves, he loves, he forgives, he instructs, he guides, he confides, he reveals, he releases, he relieves, he frees, he takes away, he guards, he protects, he delivers. And that is just a beautiful picture of goodness isn't it? That it's just giving out to the receiver of the goodness. It's not keeping it for himself. It's all directed towards those who receive his goodness.
Felicity: Yeah I love that and that just makes it just not abstract isn't it? This is very concrete, this is in reality. God is good. I love that we have so remember Lord your great mercy and love in verse six and then you kind of have this statement in verse eight, and upright is the Lord therefore he instructs sinners in his ways and so we're just beginning to move into this idea that not only is God good but those who who follow him will reflect this goodness but the instruction in that is directly from God so there's no way of being good in the biblical sense of the word without God being involved in that and even just to see that because we're going to get into that in Galatians but to see that here in this psalm that the impact of this is then an outworking of of doing good as a reflection of God's goodness
Sarah: And that's a reminder, isn't it, of the kind John 15 language of, apart from me, you can do nothing. We need to remain dwelling in God's goodness to have any hope of then reflecting that goodness to those around us.
Felicity: And I love in verse 15 we have the psalmist just saying my eyes are ever on the Lord and and considering he's given us so much explanation of God's goodness throughout the psalm you hear all that yeah, that's exactly right like my eyes are ever on the Lord Let's not move on.
Sarah: Yeah, yeah, good, good one. But yeah, but his eyes are ever on the Lord, but he also, I don't know whether you noticed this, but he also is seeing increasingly his own sin in relation to the Lord's goodness, isn't he? There's this contrast here. He's saying, don't remember my sin, forgive my iniquity, though it is great. He's feeling the nature of his own heart, the more that he dwells on the Lord's goodness. And that kind of, I guess that kind of segways us into the fact that we're in a broken world, aren't we? Whilst it was created good, what we experience day by day in our hearts and in the world around us is brokenness.
Felicity: Which can then, I think, make us just ask the question a little bit of, is God really good? Because everything I see around me just kind of makes me just, but this isn't good. What's going on is not good. You see suffering, all these kind of things. So think that is a question that comes out when we think about God's goodness. And I think that then, ultimately, we see God's goodness in Jesus. That's it. If it was just left with creation, if it was just God's providence, if it was just kind of as is, then I think that probably is quite a right question. But because we have Jesus, the person and work of Christ, ultimately in redemption, we therefore know that God is good and the world and the good creation is marred by sin. But God’s goodness is unchangeably visible in Christ saving work. Like all that is in Jesus and all that we see in his action that is unthortably good.
Sarah: Good word, unthwartably. Is that even a word?
Felicity: I'm going to try and use that again today. I like that. I love this and there's a Puritan writer Thomas Brooks and he said this about Christ. said Christ is the greatest good, the choicest good, the chiefest good, the most suitable good, the most necessary good. He is pure good, a real good, a total good, an eternal good and a soul satisfying good. That's just great isn't it? That is good yeah.
Sarah: That was good, isn't it? That is a really brilliant description, isn't it? And as you say, like, yeah, what we see in Christ is that perfect integrity and that perfect goodness that he acknowledged in Mark 10 that, you know, no one is good but God alone, but Christ is the only one who reflects that goodness. And yet we are fused to Christ's spirit. We have Christ's dwelling in us. And so we can bear the fruit of that goodness. We can bear a Christ-shaped goodness in our lives. And I find that just astounding, even just kind of dwelling on that for a little bit, because it feels so distinct and so out there, because we're so marred by sin, aren't we? But actually, no, by the power of the Spirit, we can endeavour to do good to others and to bear the fruit of goodness. Felicity, why don't you just read for us then? So now we're gonna just quickly hop to Galatians chapter six and looking at verses eight to 10.
Felicity: Okay, here we go. Whoever sows to please their flesh, from the flesh will reap destruction; whoever sows to please the Spirit, from the Spirit will reap eternal life.Let us not become weary in doing good, for at the proper time we will reap a harvest if we do not give up. Therefore, as we have opportunity, let us do good to all people, especially to those who belong to the family of believers.
Sarah: Thank you. I think what really struck me, having spent time in Psalm 25 and then coming to this famous passage about doing good in Galatians, as I looked around those verses, to the verses around it, again, the instructions and the commands are very kind of proactive and giving out. So we've got restore gently, the one who's caught in sin, back in verse one. We've got carrying each other's burdens. We've got fulfilling the law of Christ as you did, you know, it's a beautiful kind of way of fulfilling the law of Christ. Further, back in chapter five, not acting out of selfish ambition. And all of this, actually as you seek to do good, you will reap eternal consequences. There's an eternal value to what you're doing as you look out of yourself and seek to bear the fruit of goodness towards others. But it's that kind of, it's those verbs, it's those doing, giving out nature of it, which I think is just really striking and really does reflect what we've seen of God so far.
Felicity: I'm challenging in that and I love that Paul just says it, that we would not grow weary of doing good, like the implication being that we might grow weary of doing good. Doing good is not like a straightforward, we can just keep going of our own strength in that. So even in the acknowledgement of that, I think he then pushes us back to, well how? How are we going to keep doing good? Well we come back to the goodness of God, who as you really helpfully pointed out in Psalm 25, we see his proactivity in that, his inter-relational, that he's always for us in it, and that is true for us just as much for the original reason of the psalm but it's true for us now in the person of Jesus God himself his goodness is outworked towards us and therefore because of him we are able to then keep doing good in the ways that we would want to do and I think one of the things as I think about what it is to do good there's a kind of I am gonna use another word the spirit but the faithfulness in that the kind of integrity of keeping doing good the picture is you’ve just drawn out in the surrounding verses is of a consistency, dependable goodness. I'd love to be known as someone who is dependably good, that whatever was going on I would be just I would have integrity in that. That's really desirable.
Sarah: Yeah. But I think also the way this works itself out in practice is that so often it's in the crucible of suffering, isn't it? Where people's goodness comes to bear on other people's lives. They're prompted to just kind of extend themselves beyond their kind of usual convenient kind of realm, if that makes sense, and to really serve one another humbly in love and to kind of really have a kind of cruciform shaped goodness, if you will, that is of costliness to themselves but really truly benefits the other. And I think that's been really, really obvious to me as I've watched you and others in the process of serving a very good friend at the moment, that your goodness, your desire to serve and to love and to bear that fruit of goodness has been born through suffering. And it's beautiful. And it's, I think it's just remembering that, it? That actually in the midst of all the brokenness, the Lord redeems and the Lord brings and enables people to be those proactive kind of bringers of goodness. And that is just a wonderful way to see the Lord at work.
Felicity: Yeah, it's a one to pray for isn't it again and again that we would because clearly that's not of our own doing and so...
Sarah: No, and as you say, it's keeping coming back to how much we have received ourselves of His goodness, isn't it? So we go back to Psalm 25 and we take those verbs for ourselves and say, wow, this is what He has done for me. Wow, I wonder how I can then reflect that to someone else. Would you pray for us, Felicity, to that end?
Felicity: Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Heavenly Father, we praise you that you are good, that you are perfectly good and that you show that to us, that we really do know your integrity in that, perfect consistency in that. We praise you for Jesus and for how he outworks that. Father we pray that you would please work this in us by your spirit Father please would we be able to bear the fruit of the Spirit in this goodness please would you enable us to be dependently good to be Christ reflecting in our goodness through suffering through good times through whatever it is Father please would you bear this fruit that we would be those who are good and would that be for your glory amen.
Sarah: Amen. I'm really enjoying this. It's really good, isn't it?
Felicity: Yeah good chat and just like heart level good stuff.
Sarah: Yeah. Well, if you have been enjoying these conversations and if you've been finding our podcast helpful, do tell others about it. We really value every time someone texts the link to a friend or gives us a rating or a view or sends an email about it, whatever it is, we would love to be encouraging others to be thinking about the fruit of the spirit as well. So we appreciate your help and every little truly does help. And we'll see you next time as we get into faithfulness together next Friday, and we look forward to seeing you then.
Felicity: See you then, bye bye. This season is sponsored by Moody Publishers.
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