Finding God's Goodness in Adversity and Community

Awesome! We did great, and that's fantastic. I'm grateful to be back here tonight. I am the one that left behind; that's the way that I like to talk about it now. I'm not going to be bitter about this in some way or another, even though sure, I was gone for a couple of weeks myself, but that doesn't matter. Let's set that aside.

I'm grateful to be here. I know that Greg and Landon are doing a great job, and Clay's also recovering from his knee surgery, and the rest. We're grateful for all of them and all that they do. I'm grateful for the work that they do for this congregation, for our elders, and the deacons, and so many of our members who work in so many different ways in this place, in the city, and around the world. It's a beautiful thing to be part of a family of God that does not sit still. That's a great and wonderful thing.

Tonight, I've been assigned a topic: a psalm for those who rejoice in God's goodness. When I was thinking through this whole premise, I needed to stop for a second because the first thing that came to mind for me when it came to God's goodness is a friend of mine. In fact, he was probably the funniest person I've ever met in my life. I remember when we used to travel; we were in a singing group together. We would travel around the United States, singing when I was in college, an acapella group. It was absolutely some of the most fun times I've had in my life.

I remember particularly this was right in the early ages of 2001, somewhere around there. I remember we used to go—do you remember when you could go to the airport, but you could go actually beyond security? You could go to the gates to see people and the rest? Well, we were at an airport. I remember going there with him, and his name was Bobby. Bobby would instantly be bored because we would be waiting for long periods of time. A bored Bobby was a dangerous thing because it usually meant something was going to be afoot very quickly.

I remember the moment we were at the airport, and he saw this stand that had these balloons for sale. He looked at the balloons, and we looked at him and went, "Don't do it!" He was like, "I'm getting some balloons!" So he went and got the balloons, and then he went to a gate where he saw a plane was arriving. He stood outside of the gate going like this, just looking at the gate to a point where people were looking at him going, "Who's he waiting for?" He sat outside, and anybody who would walk up to him, he would go, "So excited! So excited! It's my uncle! He's got this taller, shorter guy. He's gonna ball him. He's got hair, but it's kind of like, you know, one of those middle things."

He was just kind of a bigger, smaller guy, and like, "Oh, I'm so excited!" He was just one of the favorite people in the world. Within 10 minutes, there were people who had international flights, people going all the—they're all waiting to meet whoever is supposed to be coming off of this flight because of this crazy college student going back and forth, acting like something was about to happen.

Then the flight lands, and all the people start coming out, slowly waiting. He's up on his tiptoes, looking around, trying to find them. We're sitting back going, "I have no idea what's going to happen. No idea how this is going to play itself out." Then finally, the stewardesses come out, which if you only think about a flight, that's usually the last people that come off the flight, outside of maybe, you know, the pilot.

He turns, and they're like, "Are you okay? My uncle, I'm waiting for him. Is he not on the flight? Sometimes he passes out, and he's hard to wake up. Could y'all go check?" They went back on the flight to go look for this suddenly passed-out person, and they'd come back out, and he's not there. When they come back out, like Charlie Brown, he slowly lets go of the balloons. They float to the ceiling of the airport. He lowers his head and slowly walks off, and then walks right by us and goes, "That was a normal Tuesday with Bobby."

Anywhere he went, it was pure joy, pure fun, no matter what it was. He would walk into a room, and I remember this at the Student Center at Fred Hartman University. He would walk in and go, "Hey!" and everybody would turn and look, and he'd go, "You're beautiful!" He was just one of those people, your joy, happiness of life.

I remember it was December 13th, and I was sitting at my grandfather's house in Henderson, Tennessee, and I was about to fly over to Athens, Greece, to go home where my parents had moved after I went to college. I'd never been there before at that point in time in my life. He was a good friend of mine on the other side of the phone named Joey, who said, "Brandon, I need you to sit down." I said, "What happened?" He said, "Bobby died."

He was on his way home to Tampa, Florida, where he was from, and 60 miles from home, after 13 hours, had been on the phone with his mom most of the night driving, fell asleep at the wheel. He would have been fine; he was wearing a seatbelt, wasn't speeding, wasn't doing all those things, but a tree branch came through the window and killed him instantly.

I remember just this earth-shattering moment of, "No, no, not him!" I mean, it was like joy was taken from the world in a literal sense for me. I remember getting in the same van that we had driven around the country with, getting in the van to drive to Tampa, Florida, for his funeral. His mom had asked us to come be the pallbearers at his funeral, and every mile marker along the way felt like we were getting closer and closer to the end. It was really, really tough in those moments until we started sharing stories of him.

By the time we got to his mom's house, we couldn't stop laughing. We got there, and it was tears, but it was laughter, and his mom looked at us like we were insane, and we probably were a little bit in that moment. We just started sharing the stories with her, and I remember her going, "Please keep going! Please keep telling these!" For four days, we told stories. That's what we did, and so many of the stories were very personal to us because they were from our trips together, all the things that we had done, and we were his closest friends in those moments.

So we just told story after story, and it was the happiest funeral I've ever been at, by far the most joy-filled funeral I've ever been a part of. Still to this day, the tragedy of it, 20-plus years later, I still look back and go, "That was an interesting time. Man, I miss him, but boy, do I remember him." The joy that exuded from those moments, in spite of the tragedy of what had happened, because of the way that he lived his life, the way that he just changed people's perception around him.

What does it mean to rejoice in God's goodness? You see, when we think of God's goodness, especially in this world, this is one of the biggest things that people outside of faith have a problem with because they look at the world, and they don't see goodness. I can tell you it's very easy to look at the world in that way and to look out and see the tragedies, the heartbreaks, the cancers, all of the horrible things that happen in this world, and look at it and go, "How could there be any goodness in this?"

You see, if you're outside of faith, you miss how God works in the mess that so often we created. See, this world was created and made perfect. It was we, through our sin, who broke all—who broke the peace, the Shalom that was there in the beginning. It is our sin that constantly calls us up to have to deal with the brokenness of mankind.

I've shared this example before: there's not one of us whose life is not altered in a second by a single phone call or a drive home because of a drunk driver—completely out of your control. There's not one of us who hasn't in some way been touched by moments like this in a broken world. So it's hard to look up and go, "Goodness! What goodness have you experienced or seen in the world we live in?"

Yet this psalm that we read, Psalm 34, and I hope you have your Bibles, we're going to read it again together because I want you to note this and see this. David, at the beginning, we're given this little insight of David when he changed his behavior before Abimelech, or Ahimelech, so he drove him out, and he went away. You'll find this story in 1 Samuel 21, where David is being pursued by Saul, and he finds himself running so much so that he ends up with Ahimelech, and all he has left going into the city of Gath.

Now, if you know anything about Scripture, Gath is a famous city for having one very large family line typically known as Goliath. Goliath was the one that was from this city. He finds himself in this city, and the king there is about to take him prisoner, in essence, and David pretends to have gone insane, so much so that he started marking the door frames, and then drool came down his beard and the rest. That's how it shows off his life.

So that's the setting of which then he writes this thing because the king looks at David and goes, "Do we not have enough mad men in this place? Get rid of this guy!" And David is released to continue on in his finding his path outside of Saul and then his own sons later on to become King David.

But notice what comes from David's mouth as this is happening: "I will bless the Lord at all times; his praise shall continually be in my mouth." Now, this is a hard thing for us to understand at times because we're really good at times—not always, but at times—in rejoicing in the joyous times. It is hard work to rejoice in times of sorrow. It can be soul-crushing to rejoice in times of sorrow.

What does it mean to rejoice in a time of sorrow? Let me give you some real-life examples: to celebrate the pregnancy of someone else when you've had a miscarriage or loss, to celebrate it all the same and to mean it, to rejoice with that family even when you suffer silently at times. Celebrate when someone else gets a promotion at work when you yourself have just lost your job because you love your brother and sister in Christ, and you are excited for them.

That's the reality at times of celebrating in times of sorrow, where you, in spite of the moments, learn to find the joy in the moment, to celebrate God's goodness no matter what is happening to you in that moment. You see, David plays this out in his life. He's being pursued, he's being chased, he's having to pretend he's crazy, and yet here he is celebrating in a way that most of us can't comprehend.

For he lays forth this beautiful psalm: "I will bless the Lord at all times; his praise shall continually be in my mouth. My soul makes its boast in the Lord; let the humble hear and be glad. O magnify the Lord with me, and let us exalt his name together. I sought the Lord, and he answered me and delivered me from all my fears."

One of the things I love about David is he never slides aside or puts aside all the things that can so easily distract us. In fact, he acknowledges them and says, "I don't know about you; I have some fears." And in spite of those, I find God's goodness in those things because the very fears that can so often distract us are actually also things that can give us courage to overcome those things because we know God is already on the other side of them.

And we, through God's love and mercy, find ourselves overcoming and being delivered from those things. "Those who look to him are radiant, and their faces shall never be ashamed. This poor man cried, and the Lord heard him and saved him out of all his troubles. The angel of the Lord encamps around those who fear him and delivers them. O taste and see that the Lord is good; blessed is the man who takes refuge in him. O fear the Lord, you his saints, for those who fear him have no lack. The young lions suffer want and hunger, but those who seek the Lord lack no good thing."

"Come, O children, listen to me; I will teach you the fear of the Lord. What man is there who desires life and loves many days that he may see good? Keep your tongue from evil and your lips from speaking deceit. Turn away from evil and do good; seek peace and pursue it. The eyes of the Lord are toward the righteous, and his ears toward their cry. The face of the Lord is against those who do evil, to cut off the memory of them from the earth. When the righteous cry for help, the Lord hears and delivers them out of all their troubles. The Lord is near to the brokenhearted and saves the crushed in spirit."

Notice he begins with, "I will bless the Lord at all times; his praise shall continually be in my mouth," and then he wraps it up in a way where he says, "The Lord is near to the brokenhearted." He's not dismissing the trials of life, the brokenness of life, but instead he says, "In all times, see the goodness of the Lord, for he is with the brokenhearted and saves the crushed in spirit."

"Many are the afflictions of the righteous, but the Lord delivers him out of them all. He keeps all his bones; not one of them is broken. Affliction will slay the wicked, and those who hate the righteous will be condemned. The Lord redeems the life of his servants; none of those who take refuge in him will be condemned."

This beautiful psalm invites us to an understanding of what it means to be spiritually and emotionally mature in how we view the world. Spiritually and emotionally mature because there's not one of us in here who can't sit down and make claims to hard times at some point in time in life—tragedies like most of us cannot comprehend.

Now, to be fair, if I were to make any comparison, I think we're going to struggle against the tragedies of what happened to Job. Anybody want to try to go up against Job? No? Nobody's going up against Job? That's good. Even in reality, when we look at these tragedies that we see in life, there are many of us, though, who fall into affliction where our mindset becomes a constant flow of negativity of all the things that have gone wrong.

We live in it, we wallow in it, we sorrow in it, but we do not think God's goodness through it. We don't see how God could use those moments, those situations, to glorify him in spite of those situations, and instead, we become embittered and angry and devoid of joy—the very thing that we need to overcome those moments.

What does it mean to find God's goodness? It's to realize and to understand that no matter what is happening, you are called—you and I are called—to glorify him because no matter what happens in this life, his gift of his Son, the hope eternal that we have, far supersedes anything you will experience in this life.

One of my favorite authors wrote, "The first second in eternity will make every moment in life pale in comparison to the glory of God." Yet we live in a world that is encouraging you to wallow in it, to sit in it, to make sure everyone knows all of the things that have gone wrong to you in your life. It's the invitation to constantly look back and see the pain, the traumas, the sorrows, and instead of dealing with them, they become who you are.

And instead of seeing how God can use them for his good and his glory, we sit in them, and they become our very identity. First and foremost, you are called to be a child of God, a believer. A Christian is one who walks in the footsteps of Jesus, after the Master in his life. That is what you are called to do. Everything else is a distraction if you allow it to be.

I remember a couple of years back, I was working in China, and we had this underground rumbling of a local group that was kind of looking to infiltrate some of the house churches we were working with. I read a couple of articles online at the time about them. They were called something like that was associated with the Falun Gong. This was underground churches in China, which was a banned group that were known for being very feisty, angry, dangerous, murderous—all of those terminologies would apply to them.

I had two brothers in Christ, and we were kind of being very, very careful about new people who were wanting to attend our services, specifically because we were meeting in house churches. I warned these two brothers over and over again, "You know, if we have some people who are overly eager, we should have questions because there's this cult that seems to have popped up that seems to be going into these individual underground churches and really causing some problems."

I remember I met this guy who came in, and the first thing he did was run up to me and said, "Now you are an American preacher, and I'm so excited to meet you! Tell me all about Jesus!" I was like, "Whoa! Summer, that doesn't happen in China for one at all!" It was very over the top, and so I had red flags going up everywhere, going, "There's something wrong here."

I warned these brothers over and over again. They said, "No, no, no, it's fine, it's fine! He's just very, very eager." I just had all these red flags about this moment. Fast forward a couple of weeks later, I just—I warned them over and over, "Don't spend time with him. He worries me. He seems like somebody's trying to infiltrate."

And especially if they invite you away for a weekend, do not go with him. In fact, they invited me away for a week, and I said, "I'm not going with you." They invited away these two brothers for this weekend, and I said, "Don't go with him." They said, "We're going to go! We're going to go meet his family and so forth." I said, "I just had this worry."

Two weeks later, I get contacted by some of the family of these two brothers in Christ who say, "Have you seen or heard from them?" I said, "I haven't. I've been trying to contact them for two weeks." They said, "Well, we don't know anything, but we've got a call in this region to go. They found these bodies, and will you be willing to go and see if it's them?"

So I did, and it was them. They had been unwilling to recant their faith, and so their life was cost to them. They went to a situation where I told them over and over again, "Don't do this! This is a bad idea!" But they, in their faith, just felt like they could not ignore this young man, that they needed to do something to help him, and so they went, and it cost them their lives.

I'm just going to be honest with you; my anger was fairly raging in those days, not just because of what had happened to these two brothers in Christ, but because they hadn't listened to me. I dealt with that anger for a long time until I started to see something happening with some of the underground churches that I didn't expect.

You see, they knew who this young man was. They found him, the police arrested him, and then these families, believers of these two men, went and ministered to him in prison for years until he became a true convert of Christ and has since started a prison church in the prison with over 5,000 converts.

I'll be honest with you; I'm still a little angry at times because I love those brothers. But the other side of me is, in spite of the things that happen in this life, God works, and he is good. God's goodness sometimes we can't see it in the moment, but it doesn't make it any less real. It doesn't make it any less powerful to see how God works through those moments.

You and I, we're blessed beyond belief. That's not our story in a place like this. Not one of you had any problem arriving today. No one stopped you at the door coming in. You don't have to worry about a lot of those things, and candidly, sometimes that's a good thing. Other times, I'm telling you, faith is a whole different ballgame when it costs you everything.

Can we be honest about that? That some of us might struggle to be here if it wasn't culturally acceptable currently? But I just want to encourage you tonight that God is good, and his goodness is worth your rejoicing no matter the situation you are in, no matter the trials you are in, no matter the things that you've gone through.

I'm not setting them aside; I'm simply saying in spite of them, God is good because God can work through all of the things that happen in this life. You don't think God can work through cancer? I've got some people I'd love to introduce you to. You don't think God can work through the death of a loved one? We have some people I'd love to introduce you to.

You don't think that others have not also in the same audience been through things that you can't comprehend, and yet they're here rejoicing in God, rejoicing in his goodness? Taste the Lord, for he is good!

So how do you do this? Well, there's a beautiful verse in Ephesians that you know well, but I hope you'll understand a different context to this tonight, and it's this: "Finally, brothers, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence, if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things."

You see, we often associate that as only the good things, when in reality, God works in all areas of life and can turn even the worst story in this life into something beautiful, something commendable, something righteous if we allow God to work through those moments.

Whatever is just, whatever is good, for we serve a good God who is worthy of our praise, worthy of our love and our devotion. Now, I don't know where you may be tonight, but I know that if you have not been baptized into Christ and you are walking outside of God, there is no better time than right now to die to yourself and arise in newness of life.

If, however, you're just struggling, maybe you have a hard time seeing that God is good, and it's a struggle right now, and you need—as God has given us a community of believers—to walk alongside you, to encourage you. Because it's one of the greatest gifts in the world is the church, God's family, to encourage us all.

We're here for you right now, not tomorrow. Right now, we're here for you. We want you to know that you're not alone because God is good, and he walks alongside his people. If you have a need, will you come as together we stand and as we sing?