When “Good” Isn’t Good

Introduction

As a relative newcomer to the Orlando area, I take for granted sometimes that you locals and natives know everything that Orlando has to offer. But sometimes I found out that’s not the case. Many times the tourists and newcomers take advantage of things, and the locals say, I’ve never been there, I’ve never done that. I want to tell you about something that Orlando has to offer that you may not be aware of. And if you’re not aware of it, you need to take advantage of it. There’s a place you can go. I’m not going to tell you the name just yet, see if you can guess it. There’s a place you can go in Orlando. It’s very popular. In fact, I imagine everybody in Orlando and outside of Orlando knows about this place.

You need a pass to get in. The parking lot, especially on the weekends, is very full. And they don’t know, I don’t know all the details. They don’t always do this, but at times, and this weekend was one such time, you can go through and they have different stations, and you could get these little food samples.

Husbands and boyfriends, that’s a cheap date. Go to Sam’s Club, and if you’ve got a membership to get in, you can go around and you can just fill up on just the samples alone. Deedra and I were doing that a couple weeks ago, and she tried a sample of pizza. Normally I like pizza. But this pizza was unique. The crust was not made from pizza dough. The crust was made out of cauliflower. Deedra tried it, I refused. Take a hard stand against cauliflower. The only thing worse than cauliflower is cauliflower pretending to be something else. And so she ate it and she said, Well, that’s good. It doesn’t really taste like cauliflower at all. And I thought, well, then what’s the point? Trying to make it taste like bread dough, just give me bread dough.

But she said, No, it’s good, really. Try it. It’s good. And you may not know this about me. Deedra does. On occasion I can be stubborn. And I said, no, I’m not trying it. Because you see, her definition of good and mine are very different. And just because she thought that cauliflower infused fake pizza was good. Didn’t necessarily mean I thought it was going to be good. We talk as Christians, a lot about good. And appropriately so. We want to be good people, don’t we? We want to do what is good. We want to promote good.

But I think it behooves us, on occasion at least, to pause and think about what is good. And maybe more importantly or more correctly than discussing what is good, is to discuss who gets to decide that it’s good. Just because Deedra said that pizza was good didn’t mean that it was good. Not by my standards, at least. And so what is good? And who decides what is good? And so this morning we want to talk about the subject of good. And want to make sure that we understand that sometimes what is good, at least in our eyes, isn’t always good. In fact, a closer examination will show us that even that which is good in God’s eyes isn’t always good. So let’s talk about that subject this morning.

1. Good Things Declared by God Aren’t Always Good

We first of all recognize that sometimes good things, even declared so by God, that sometimes in some context, those good things aren’t always good. Can you think of something that might fit that category? Of something that is good, something that was declared good even by God Himself. That might not always be good. Turn with me, if you will, in your New Testament to the book of Hebrews, chapter 13. There’s a lot of subjects that we might could put in this category of things that are declared good by God, but aren’t always good. But the one I want to talk about first this morning is just the idea of sexual relations. That’s a way to wake you up on a Sunday morning at 9 o’clock, isn’t it?

The Hebrew writer says in Hebrews chapter 13 and verse 4, marriage is honorable among all and the bed undefiled. Let’s pause there before we finish that declaration. Marriage is honorable, the bed is undefiled. I don’t think I need to come close to any line in helping you to understand the euphemism there in talking about the marriage bed, that what’s really being talked about. If you have any misunderstandings about what’s being talked about, the next phrase that finishes up that verse would clarify it. After saying the bed, the marriage bed is undefiled, he goes on to say, but fornicators and adulterers, God will judge. If we’re talking about two categories, here’s the marriage bed, and this category is fornicators and adulterers. Can we agree, without being too crude, can we agree that in both scenarios the same thing was taking place?

One, he says, is honorable and undefiled. That is not only good, it’s a good that was not only declared good by God, but a good that was given by God. This is God’s plan. God’s intent. And he declares it, honorable, undefiled. But you take that very same activity that’s declared in this situation as being good and put it here outside of the marriage relationship, and it’s not good. That’s an understatement, isn’t it? Fornicators and adulterers, God will judge. Unmistakable language. Even if some euphemism is used in that verse, it’s absolutely ungetaroundable, isn’t it, what he’s talking about. Let’s spend just a brief amount of time giving some definitions. Fornicators and adulterers. The word fornication is simply a broad term that means, in fact, it’s translated that way by some of the more modern translation, that means any form of sexual immorality, any type of sexual union that is outside of the God approved marriage between a man and a woman.

The broadest sense. Anything that is disallowed by God in the sexual realm would fit under the scope of fornication. And so we could talk about the idea of pre marital sex. Of engaging in that, which God says is good when it’s in the marriage relationship, but prior to that marriage, and by the way, it doesn’t matter how cute he is, it doesn’t matter how pretty she is, it doesn’t matter how committed y’all may feel to one another and whether you plan to get married soon or not, God says that’s not good. Adultery falls as kind of a subcategory to the broader category of fornication. Adultery is illicit sexual union that involves at least one of the parties being married to someone else. And so if you’re married to someone, that bed is undefiled.

But any other bed is not.

I fear sometimes that we are, I don’t know about the best way to describe it maybe is we might call it bandwagon Christians. And what I mean by bandwagon Christian is we like to jump upon some hot topic and say, that’s, we want to talk about that, and we almost talk about that exclusively, whether it’s a good topic or a bad topic that we’re trying to condemn. And we do that to the neglect of maybe some other things. I fear, now don’t misunderstand me. Now, this is just my opinion. I’ve been wrong at least once. But it’s my opinion, I fear that sometimes we maybe have jumped on the bandwagon of the anti-homosexuality movement. Now don’t misunderstand me. That is clearly condemned in Scripture. But let’s not become so rampant in our vigilance of condemning homosexuality that we kind of gloss over these other sexual sins that are just as wrong in the eyes of God.

In fact, if we think about it, if we’re to think about it from some kind of political or national view, we understand that our country as a whole, our legislature, our courts, have changed their view about the idea of homosexuality, of homosexual marriage, haven’t they? They changed the definition. And we’ve got all up in arms when they changed the definition of marriage and broadened it that by the legal definition of marriage, in some states at least, now involves people of the same sex. And we got so exercised and up in our, and again, rightly so, the Bible condemns that. But we have to wonder why we are surprised. Our world’s been changing definitions for a long time, haven’t they? They’ve changed definitions of what was an acceptable marriage.

2. Limited by God’s Judgment Rather Than Our Own

They’ve changed the definitions of what can end a marriage, a divorce. And so when we come along and change the definition of the very basic tenets of what marriage is, at least in the eyes of God, should we be upset? Yes. Should we be surprised? Probably not. Because this world, including our own country, has been changing definitions for a long time. This has been coming. This isn’t a new thing. This is just the last step in something that’s been happening for decades, maybe even centuries. And so you see, here’s something that’s good, even good in the eyes of God, but it’s not always good. And that brings us to our second point. When we talk about this concept of good, we must understand that we must always be limited by God’s judgment rather than our own.

Who says what is good? It’s really God. Not my emotion. We get so driven by emotion. We get so driven by our own stubborn will of what we want and what seems good. We may even be altruistic in our in our views of what seems good not just for me, but what I think in my infinite wisdom is good for you, and I’m going to push and promote that rather than humbling myself and saying, no, you know, maybe I don’t know what’s best. I don’t know what’s best for me. I surely don’t know what’s best for you. And so I must limit myself to God’s judgment rather than my own. We won’t turn back there, but you remember the famous story in 2 Kings chapter 5.

Greg’s not here, so I have to do some Old Testament preaching. 2 Kings chapter 5, you remember Naaman. Naaman is famous for not being a captain in the army. Naaman’s famous for being a leper, isn’t he? And that little maiden girl that says, Oh, if my master was only in Israel, there’s a fellow in Israel who can heal leprosy. Talking about the prophet. And you remember Naaman goes and the prophet doesn’t even come out to him himself. The prophet just sends a messenger and says, You go down in the Jordan River and you dip a few times, and then you’ll be made whole. And we read in that story and we think, wow, that’s great. Go do it. In fact, that’s what Naaman’s servant said, isn’t it?

Go do it. Naaman is all offended. But remember the famous words, if you’re reading in the old King James, behold I thought. He said, I thought he was going to come out here and do this big grand show. I mean, I’m Naaman after all. And I thought he was going to do this, and he was going to wave his arms and make some big pronouncement. Or if he wasn’t going to do that, okay, the idea of immersing myself in water, if that’s going to be the healing, aren’t there better rivers than this dirty?

And he was going to go away in a huff and leave the same leper that he came. Because he said, I thought it was going to be this way. Been here a little over a year, it’s time for me to start repeating illustrations. I may have used this one before. When I was a teenager in high school, I worked for a grocery store. And you know a teenage boy knows everything. Knows much more than adults and his bosses, and I may have fit into that scenario. And been working at this grocery store and worked in the produce department. My boss’s name was Durwood Boyd. I’m not making that up. I was working one day, and Durwood had told me what to do about displaying the apples a certain way, and I had a better way of doing it.

And so I said, Durwood, you know, I think we need to, and then began to expound upon my wisdom of displaying apples as a 16-year-old boy. And I’ll never forget Durwood’s response. Durwood had the quintessential combover. And he wore a cap with the grocery store logo on it. And he took his cap off and flipped that hair back over his bald spot and put his cap back on. And he said, Boy, we ain’t paying you to think. I kind of got the point. That wasn’t my role to decide. My role was to do what I was told. Now, don’t take that illustration too far. God does not require that we check our brains at the door. Christianity is a logical endeavor. But God’s not paying us to think.

God’s not paying us to decide. Turn with me, if you will, again in the Old Testament, the book of Habakkuk, chapter 2. The short book of Habakkuk is an unusual book of prophecy because it’s not the prophet speaking to the people on behalf of God. We’ve reversed the process. The prophet is speaking to God on behalf of the people. And Habakkuk has two major objections to God in the book of Habakkuk. First of all, his first objection is, God, your people are wicked. You need to do something about it. And God says, okay, I’m going to do something about it. I’m sending this nation, they’re going to judge them. Habakkuk says, Oh no, I didn’t mean that. Don’t do that. Those people are worse than us.

You can’t do that. And so, in this context of Habakkuk not understanding the plan of God in two ways. Notice the conclusion in Habakkuk chapter 2. And in verse 20. But the Lord is in his holy temple. Let all the earth keep silence before him. Now there’s a lot of points to be made from that, but in this context, here is Habakkuk saying, God, I don’t understand. Not only do I not understand, I don’t agree. Now that’s difficult words for us to even utter, but that’s what Habakkuk was saying. God, I don’t agree with what you’re doing. But the Lord is in his holy temple. Let all the earth keep silence before him. Who gets to decide what is good? Let’s make some applications to that.

Let’s make a congregational application to that. Who gets to decide what is good for the South Bumby Church to do? What’s a good work? We could put our heads together and come up with some fantastic works, couldn’t we? And in the context of us deciding, it would be difficult for someone to argue that those aren’t good works. But ultimately the question must be asked and answered. Who gets to say it’s a good work? Some grand charity program. That’s surely a good work. Instrumental music in worship would just help our singing so much. Some kind of social entertainment, athletic program that would draw in more people, particularly young people, because you know we’re losing our young people. Who could argue that wasn’t a good work? Maybe reaching out overseas in some kind of ministry that’s digging wells or building hospitals or helping villages.

Who could say that’s not a good work? But the question still stands, who gets to decide what is good? It’s God. Even when I don’t understand, and take it to Habakkuk’s level, even when I don’t agree with the way God is doing things and telling me to do things, my reply ultimately must be, the Lord is in his temple. Let all the earth, and by the way, that includes me, keep silence before him. Only God, only God gets to decide what’s good.

3. Truly Good Things Can Become Bad When Misused

Even good things so decided by God, we must understand that even truly good things, and again, maybe good things that God would allow and permit, that even truly good things can become bad when they’re misused. Turn over with me, if you will, to Romans chapter 14 in your New Testament. I would argue that it’s a good thing when you have convictions, strong convictions about your personal moral purity. And I’ll take it even further. Personally, I would argue that if God says, here’s the line, and you say, you know, just to be careful, I’m going to put my personal line here. Kind of the old Baker’s dozen. You give 13 donuts just in case. You want to make sure they get 12. And so to make sure they always get 12, we’re going to give you 13.

That way, if even if I mess up, you still got 12. And so I’m going to draw that line. Here’s God’s line. But for me, I’m going to be just extra careful, and I’m going to put the line here. Because I don’t want to cross God’s line. I would say.

They were just talking about their own personal, spiritual, moral lives, that that would have probably been okay. The problem was is when they began to elevate that concept, they made their line God’s line, and God’s line their line. They failed to distinguish, no, this is God’s law. This is just my own personal preference. They made their own personal preference really God’s law, God’s line. They moved God’s line. And they had no right to do that. The other problem was, can we agree? Is then they began to impose that on somebody else. No, wait a minute. That’s not the line. Here’s the line. Well, whose line is that? It’s my line, but you must abide by it as well. That’s what they had done. And so maybe what started out as a good thing, that extra caution became a bad thing.

And Jesus would condemn them for that. Condemn them for making as the commandments of God their teachings. We have a similar scenario in Romans chapters 14 and 15. Where it says, beginning in verse 1 of Romans chapter 14, receive one who is weak in the faith. And not to dispute over doubtful things. The apostle here is going to talk about, we know the scenario, the first century problem of eating meats. Now, this wasn’t the 21st century vegetarian concept. It wasn’t a health issue. It wasn’t that we don’t want to eat that because we’d have to kill a living cow to do it. They didn’t care about that. The problem in the first century with eating of meats is that many times these meats, these animals were sacrificed at some altar to some foreign God.

And they had been told you can’t go to that temple and worship that God that way. And so they had said, Well, if I can’t do that, if I can’t go eat the feast where the meat that’s sacrificed to the idol in a worship service is taking place, then I’m going to draw the line here that I’m just not going to eat the meat. Better safe than sorry. And again, as a personal proclivity, is that probably okay? In fact, Paul’s going to say, doesn’t matter whether you eat or don’t eat. But Paul is saying, don’t dispute over those things. For one believes, verse 2, he may eat all things. But he who is weak eats only vegetables. Well, let’s pause here and see a point that I think sometimes we miss.

We see it in this context of Romans 14, but we don’t apply it to our context. Do you realize that the Holy Spirit, through the Apostle Paul, has just said, the Christian, who has the more restrictive attitude that has gone beyond the law of God and said, if God’s line is there, then I’m going to back up and be even more safe and draw it here. That the Holy Spirit says, that person’s the weak one. We usually reverse that, don’t we? We would normally see a Christian, do you realize that they, God said, don’t do this? They won’t even do that. They’re stronger than I am. I hope to get that spiritually strong. Paul is actually saying, no, that’s the weak one. That is the more restrictive.

Now again, don’t misunderstand me. He’s not saying the weak one’s the one who does exactly what God has said to do. No. The weak one is the one who’s so afraid that he’s just written things off the list that God said was okay. Now, verse 3 of Romans 14, let not him who eats despise him who does not eat. And let not him who does not eat judge him who eats. For God has received him. Now skip on down to verse six. He who observes the day, he expounds this to the observance of certain feast days or holidays. He who observes the day observes it to the Lord. And he who does not observe the Lord, to the Lord, he does not observe it. He who eats eats to the Lord, for he gives God thanks, and he who does not eat to the Lord, he does not eat, and gives God thanks.

Do you see what the Holy Spirit is saying there through the apostle? He’s saying, Is it good to not eat meat? Sure. Now it’s not more good, but it’s good to not eat meat. And he also says, is it good to eat? As long as you’re not worshiping an idol when you’re doing that. Is it good to eat meat? It’s good to eat meat. It’s not more good, but it’s good. But he’s dealing with a scenario in which two camps of people, probably more one than the other, were taking something that was good and making it not good by insisting and shaming their brethren who weren’t doing otherwise. And so you can see the apostle Paul says, either one is good. You can serve God. God will be well pleasing to you, whether you’re the weak one, you’re the strong one, really, they’re both good.

But don’t take that which is good and make it bad. By causing your brother to stumble.

4. How We View Our Brother

One, it was our second point, is we let God determine what is good, certainly for the other person. But the second key, I think, in this context of Romans chapter 14 that we’re going to notice, is how we view our brother. I think the danger, what the Pharisees had done and what I might be in danger of doing, is that when I began to view you through my lens, that you need to answer to me, and where I’ve decided to draw the line. And you need to please me. And you need to watch how you act around me. I want to read through Romans chapter 14 or read sections of Romans chapter 14. I want you to notice that Paul, in talking to these brethren, who are on two different sides of an issue, that he says both were good.

And how he describes the brother on the other side? Listen, Romans chapter 14. Let’s look at verse 3 again. Let him who eats despise him who does not, let him who eats, let not him who eats despise him who does not eat, and let not him who does not eat judge him who eats, for God has received him. In my Bible, I’ve underlined that phrase.

What’s the implication? You receive him because God has. Verse 4, let’s just read the first question. Who are you to judge another’s servant? What’s the implication there? They’re not your servant. Whose servant are they? They’re God’s servant. Skip down to verse 10. Again, just the first question of the verse. Verse 10, but who, why do you judge your brother? Not your adversary, your brother. Skip down to verse 15. Yet if your brother is grieved because of your food, you’re no longer walking in love. Do not destroy with your food, notice this, the one for whom Christ died. You notice as we’re looking at these, he doesn’t just use the same terms to describe our brethren who may be on the other side of an issue which God has said both sides are good.

He uses different terms, I think intentionally, to slap us in the face with the awareness of who that person is. They’re another servant. They’re my brother. They’re the one for whom Christ died. Verse 20, do not destroy the work of God for the sake of food. Now you could argue that the work of God is the body of Christ, the church in its broadest scope. I would argue that the work of God is that brother. And it really doesn’t change whether we’re talking about brethren collectively or brothers singularly. He says, do not destroy the work of God for the sake of food. Do you see how that changes everything? Understanding that God gets to determine what is good. And understanding that you’re my brother. You’re the one for whom Christ died.

You’re the work of God.

Conclusion

How am I going to use what is good? Well, what’s good? Pizza with cauliflower as the crust? Is that good? You know who gets to decide that issue? The one that’s eaten it. And that’s going to vary from person to person. What is good? How is good to be defined and how is good to be used? You know who gets to decide that? The one who is in his holy temple. And you and I keep silent before it. Would you pray with me this morning? Our God and Father in heaven. As our Savior said, when he is upon this earth, there is none who is good but God. We thank you for being our good God. For always doing what is right and good and fair and noble and loving.

And we thank you for the good blessings that you shower upon us. Humble us, not just this day, but throughout our lives, Father, to always seek your good, to live by your definitions, to live by your will. Help us to put you first, and others second, and ourselves last. Help us to truly be your children and to be good. Bless us in this endeavor. Hinder us in any way in which we would not truly reflect your goodness. This is our simple prayer in Christ’s name. Amen. We’ll now be dismissed to our classes.