FRUIT OF THE SPIRIT
GOODNESS
DR. JIM DIXON
AUGUST 3, 1986
GALATIANS 5:22-25, GENESIS 3:1-24
In the beginning, God created light and God said, “It is good.” He made the firmament, the stars, the vegetation, the fish of the sea, the beast of the field, the birds of the air, and of all these things, God said, “It is good.” And at long last, on the sixth day, God created man. “In the image of God created. He him, male and female, created he them,” and God said, “It is good.” But the Bible tells us that the creation is not so good as once it was because mankind has fallen, and Eden is gone, and paradise is lost. The taint of sin is upon the creation, “All have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God.” And there’s no one in the world today who is holy good, and there’s no one in the world today who is holy evil. We are all clothed in gray.
Now the Bible tells us that Satan is holy evil. He is clothed in black. The prince of darkness— he is a liar and the father of lies and the truth is not in him. And the Bible tells us that Jesus Christ is holy good. He is clothed and white. He is the holy one, the Son of God, the light of the world. He came into the world to show us once again what goodness is like, and He came into the world, the Bible says as the second Adam, to show us what mankind was truly meant to be, and he now offers clean white robes to all who believe in his name. He is the Lord of goodness. The Greek word for goodness is the word “agapos.” We understand its meaning through two teachings this morning, and the first teaching is this, goodness is an attitude of heart, is an attitude towards God, is an attitude towards God, which longs to please God. That is good.
In 1905, Nicholas II, Czar of all Russia, and his wife, the Czarina Alexandra were panicked. They were panicked because their newborn son, their only son, named Alexis, was dying. He was a hemophiliac and the doctors could not help him, and he was on the brink of death, and so the royal family did a very strange thing. They consulted a mystic monk whose name was Gregori Yefimovich Rasputin. The royal family knew little regarding Rasputin. They knew only that he had been trained in a mystic monastic cult in Western Siberia. They knew that he allegedly had healing powers. Some people called him “The Healer.” Some people called him “Savior” and he was, allegedly, a holy man, and so they consulted him. When Nicholas II saw this mystic monk, he knew he was looking at an unusual person. The eyes of Rasputin were set deep in his face, and they had a hypnotic quality. There was a power in him. And Nicholas II didn’t know whether that power was good or evil, but he hoped for his son’s sake that it was good and Rasputin went and he stood over this little infant son, and by some power, Rasputin raised this son up.
One year later, Alexis the heir to the throne, the only son of Nicholas, and Alexandra again fell ill and he was near death, and again, they consulted Rasputin, and again, the mystic monk came. And again, he stood over the child, and again, the child was raised up, and by these means, Rasputin began to work his way into the royal family and into all their activities, and he began to take part in their social life, and he began to make economic decisions for Russia, and he began to make political appointments and he put people in the office, he took people out of the office, and those who were watching him notice that he would put evil men in the office and good men, he would take away from the office. The masses were rising up against Czarist Russia and against Nicholas II because of Rasputin, but Nicholas II didn’t know what to do because he believed that the health of his only son was somehow tied to this mystic monk, and it became obvious after a while that this monk was not holy. Thousands, literally thousands of women were brought into Rasputin’s bedroom chamber. Some of them young, some old, some peasants, some royal, and he had sex with them, allegedly using new techniques learned in his mystic cult of Western Siberia, and the masses began to know that Rasputin was not aligned with God, but he was aligned with Satan.
By the year 1916, some of the high officials in the government of Nicholas II knew that Rasputin had to go or the Czarist Russia was going to fall, so they decided, they resolved that they would kill this mystic monk. They tried to poison him, But the poison didn’t hurt him, and by their own testimony, these high officials poisoned him again and he was immune to the poison. So, they resolved that they would have to kill him with their own hand. They went to him and because they hated his promiscuity so much, they castrated him, and they shot him through the skull and they thought him dead, and as they went to leave the room, suddenly he rose up and he began to strangle one of them and they shot him again in the head and they went to get a bag that they might put his dead body in it and when they came back, they saw his eyes open and they believed that he was demon-possessed. They bound his hands and they bound his feet and they put him in the bag, and they took him, and they threw him in a frozen Russian river and the next day they found him on the shore. Somehow, he had worked his way out of the bag and his hands were free and he made one final effort to save himself, but he was dead. But it was too late for the government of Czar Nicholas II. Three months later, in the March of 1917, the Bolsheviks overthrew Czarist Russia. Russia became Communist and by December of that year, Lenin was in power had there not been Rasputin and his corruption of the Czarist government, there never would have been a Communist Russia.
The World Book Encyclopedia describes Rasputin as greedy, selfish, and wholly dissolute. Some historians describe Rasputin as the most evil man who ever lived, but what made him so evil? Goodness is an attitude of heart that longs to please God. Rasputin had one desire in his life and that was to please himself, and he flaunted his degeneracy in the face of the Russian Orthodox church. He mocked the holiness of God, calling himself a holy man when his lifestyle was totally depraved. He blasphemed the God of the universe, and the horrible truth is, the Bible tells us, there is evil in all of us. Not in the same measure that was in Rasputin but evil, nevertheless. There is evil in you and there is evil in me, but goodness you see, is that longing to change. Goodness is that desire to have all evil removed from your life. Goodness is that longing to be rid of sin, to be purged, to be made clean. Goodness is that desire to be righteous in God’s sight and to be made holy, and if you’re a Christian this morning, if you’ve invited Jesus Christ to come and be the Lord and Savior of your life, then there’s some corner of your heart this morning, some portion of your innermost portion person that longs to be made clean—that longs to be without sin. There’s some portion of you that longs to be like Jesus Christ. And that portion is called good.
Thirty-five hundred years ago, on the edge of the Sinai Desert, Moses was tending sheep near Mount Horeb, and it was there that Moses experienced what some theologians call a theophany a visual manifestation of the Living God. God spoke to Moses out of a burning bush and God said, “I want you to lead my people Israel out of bondage from Egypt.” Moses said, “Who am I that I should confront Pharaoh?” God said, “I’ll be with you.” Moses said, “Well, whom shall I say has sent me? What is your name?” God revealed his name to Moses. God said, “Yahweh, tell the people, Yahweh has sent you.” The word “Yahweh” is hard to define The Hebrew word has been variously translated. Sometimes it is rendered. “I am who I am.” Sometimes it is rendered, “I am He who is,” but Yahweh is the name of God, and as the centuries passed, the Jewish people became more and more hesitant to speak the name Yahweh because they wanted to respect and honor the holy name of God. And so, by the second century before Christ, the Jews ceased to pronounce or to speak the name Yahweh anymore. Instead, they took the consonants in Yahweh, Y H W H called the Tetragram Maton, and they took the vows from another word, the word Adonai, which means Lord, and they took these vows, and they combined them with these consonants, and they formed a new word “Jehovah.” Instead of saying Yahweh, they would say Jehovah because they were afraid to say the true name of God. And it is this way for Orthodox Jews to this day, but it’s a tragic misunderstanding of the will of God. God wants us to honor His holiness. God wants us to honor His holy name, not by our refusal to pronounce it. He wants us to honor His holiness by seeking it. He wants us to seek his holiness, to seek after His righteousness, to seek His goodness if we would truly honor Him.
Jesus says, “Blessed are those who hunger and thirst after righteousness for they shall be satisfied.” If there’s some sin in your life this morning, some known transgression, some area of your life’s walk that you know is out of alignment with the will of God, God wants your repentance this morning and he offers you his forgiveness. He offers you a new white robe. He offers goodness.
Billy Graham, at a revival— a crusade really on the east coast had thousands of people except Christ. And he was asked afterward if it had been a revival. And Billy Graham said, “No.” He said, “Many people have come to accept Christ, but a true revival occurs only when there is a deep profound conviction of the holiness of God combined with a deep profound conviction of the sinfulness of man.” Revival is a commitment to holiness, a commitment to change, and a commitment to Christlikeness, and that is goodness. Peter says, “As obedient children do not be conformed to the passions of your former ignorance, but as He who has called you as holy. Be holy yourselves in all your conduct for it is written, you shall be holy as I am holy. Goodness, longing to please God and be like Him.
Secondly and finally, goodness is an attitude towards people. It’s not only an attitude towards God, but it’s an attitude toward people, and it’s an attitude of the heart whereby we long to serve people. We long to bless people, we long to help people. That is goodness, and we long to do these things in the name of Jesus Christ.
A story is told of a woman who went to a meat market. It was near Thanksgiving time. She said to the butcher, “I’d like to purchase a Turkey.” and the butcher reached down into his freezer and there was only one Turkey there and he pulled the Turkey out and he put it up on the scale. He said, “Ma’am, this Turkey weighs about 12 pounds.” The woman thought for a second and she said, “Well, you know,” she said, “I’m having a lot of people over for dinner and I think I need a larger bird. Could you give me a larger one?” And the butcher thought for a second, and then he took the Turkey and he put it back in the freezer and he began to fumble around as though he was looking for other turkeys as though there were more turkeys there and then finally he brought the same Turkey out and he put it on the scale again and he put a little finger pressure there and he said, “we’re in luck.” He said, “Ma’am, this one weighs 16 pounds. Do you want me to wrap this one up for you?” She thought for a second and she said, “You know, we’re having so many people over the house. I think I’ll just take both of them!” There’s a little bit of that butcher in all of us. There’s a willingness to deceive people sometimes to use people for our own benefit, for our own ends, but you see, goodness is the opposite of that. Goodness is not willing to deceive. Goodness doesn’t want to use people. Goodness just wants to serve people and meet their needs.
The Apostle Paul, in the book of Philippians, says, “Do nothing from selfishness or conceit but in humility, count others as better than yourselves. Let each one of you not look not only to His own interests, but also to the interests of others. Have this mind in you which is yours in Christ Jesus, who though He was in the form of God, did not count equality with God something to be clutched but He emptied himself, taking on the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of man and being found in human form. He humbled himself and became obedient under death, even under death on a cross.” In that passage, Paul is describing goodness. Goodness is sacrificial, giving to others. Goodness is reaching out to help others no matter what the cost.
When the Challenger went down late in January, in that tragic accident, the people of America were led to believe that the astronauts died instantly. We were led to believe that in the moment of the explosion, their lives were immediately snuffed out and they had no conscious awareness of the tragedy that was enveloping them, but this past week, NASA has released new information which indicates that at least some of those astronauts were aware of only for a few seconds of the tragedy that was occurring. The flight recorder, just before it was terminated, records the words of the Captain, Michael Smith, when he said, “Uh Oh,” acknowledging something was wrong. On the flight deck with Michael Smith, there were three other astronauts including Judith Resnick and Ellison Onizuka and Rick Scobee, and these three astronauts, together with the captain, were found still strapped to their seats at the bottom of the ocean. When they found them, they also found four emergency air packs, and they found that three of those emergency air packs had been turned on and they could only have been turned on manually. They were turned on immediately after the explosion. It is now believed that two of these astronauts (and their names were not given which two of the four) were alive apparently when they hit the ocean. They believe that because they found that in those emergency air packs and two cases, 80% of the oxygen had been used. Under normal breathing conditions, that was enough oxygen for two minutes and 45 seconds. and that was exactly the period of time between the explosion, and when the craft hit the water.
Descending 65,000 feet, it impacted with the ocean at 207 miles an hour. It’s not possible to construct or reconstruct the few seconds of consciousness that occurred right after the explosion. Certainly, those astronauts when they hit the water were not conscious as they fell. In fact, scientists tell us there were probably only six to 15 seconds of consciousness after the explosion, but in those 15 seconds or perhaps six seconds, these astronauts tried to save themselves and each other. It is known for a fact that Michael Smith’s emergency air pack was turned on, but the incredible thing was he couldn’t turn it on where he was sitting strapped into his seat. He could not turn on his air pack, and that means that one of two people, one of the two people sitting behind him, either Judith Resnick or Ellison Onizuka, one of these two people in those few seconds of consciousness, not only turned on their emergency air packs, but one of them went and turned on the emergency air pack of their captain seeking to save his life, a final act of goodness and a final moment of consciousness.
When you think about it as Christians, that’s how we’re called to live. However, much time is given us in this world—however much time we have on this earth— however much consciousness we have to the end, we are to reach out and seek to save and help. Those are who are about us. That’s goodness.
The Good Samaritan is called good because he tried to help a person in need. You see, goodness is not simply being good. It’s not simply holiness. Goodness in the sense of agathos is also doing good. It is good works. It is good deeds. Christ has called us to goodness but won’t force any of us. We must choose it.
There is a legend, and when this will close, and it tells of the island of Capri in the Bay of Naples, and according to this legend, wicked but beautiful sirens used to live on the island of Capri. They were beautiful women who sang enchanting and alluring music, but they were evil. When sailors went by the island of Capri on their great ships, sometimes the sailors would be bewitched, they would be drawn by this alluring music, and they would dive into the ocean, and they would die on the jagged rocks that surrounded the island. And so, the captains of ancient times, as they took their sailors past the island of Capri, would try various means to save their men. It was said that Ulysses when he took his men past the island of Capri, he gave them earplugs for their ears, and he told them all to turn away from the island. Hear no evil. See no evil—that’s how he tried to save them. But Orpheus, who was another captain, had another method of rescuing his people, and when he took his ships by the island, he was a good man, and he was a skilled musician and he played beautiful music of his own—beautiful and good and he simply let his man choose which music they would be drawn to, which way they would turn.
Jesus Christ is more like Orpheus than Ulysses. He plays beautiful music, and he asks you to choose—his way or the way of the world. Peter says, “I beseech you as aliens and exiles to abstain from the passions of the flesh, which wage war against the soul. Maintain good conduct among the nations so that in case they speak against you as wrongdoers, they may one day see your good deeds, your good works, and glorify God on the day of visitation.” Let’s pray.