In this sermon, the speaker shares a personal anecdote about his children playfully bumping into him to illustrate the concept of having God always by our side. He emphasizes the importance of recognizing God's presence and relying on Him during difficult times. The speaker then references Psalm 96, which encourages giving glory and strength to the Lord, worshiping Him in holiness, and fearing Him above all gods. The passage also highlights the stability and joy that comes from acknowledging God's reign. The sermon concludes with a reminder to give thanks to the Lord for His goodness and enduring mercy.

It's good to be back again with you today on Eagle's Wings. Last week I was sharing with you on the goodness of God. Truly, He is good. You know, the scripture says that His goodness leads us to repentance. The scriptures actually teach a lot of things about His goodness to us. It covers a lot of different subjects. And because He is good, we're to give thanks. Because He is good, we're to rejoice. Thou, O God, hast prepared of Thy goodness for the poor. Scriptures share, Hear me, O Lord, for Thy lovingkindness is good. And on and on and on. Last week we left off with the goodness of God with Moses. How God revealed Himself to Moses as being good. And I shared with you a little bit about the difference between goodness and His holiness. We're not even talking about God's holiness. Even though it's connected because you can't separate God. But the goodness of God is not the same as His holiness. But the goodness of God is that which we see Him to be. Like the Lord Jesus Christ, He went about doing good. He helped people. He was kind. He was compassionate. He felt their needs. He ministered to their needs. He fed them. That was the goodness of God. He healed them. He raised their dead. That was the goodness of God. It's that which disposes Him to be kind, as Tozer said. Cordial, benevolent, and full of goodwill toward men. He said that He was tender-hearted. He was quick of sympathy. His unfailing attitude toward all moral beings is open, frank, and friendly. Tozer said by His nature He is inclined to bestow blessedness and He takes holy pleasure in the happiness of His people. Well, as I share things with you today, I know that life is hard for many of you. It's been hard for me. But one of the things that God has used to teach me how to fly on eagle's wings, to live by His grace and in His power, is to dwell in the realm of the Father's love and goodness. He is good. That's His nature. That's what He is. What He does is good. And to do good, you must be good. God is good, so all He does is good. So if goodness is to come out of you and me, we must be full of God, filled with the Holy Spirit. One of the fruits of the Holy Spirit, of being filled with the Spirit, is goodness. Everything God does in my life, in your life, is for good. And as I shared with you last week a few verses, I'm going to continue on today on some thoughts about the goodness of God. If you want to turn over to 1 Chronicles chapter 16. 1 Chronicles 16. I want to share some things with you today in continuing on about the goodness of God. And we left off last week while you were getting your Bibles and getting to 1 Chronicles 16, how that when you come face to face with God as Moses did, and actually he saw God's back parts, and we don't understand everything, but he had this response that he worshipped Him and he wanted God to go with him. My friend, if you're not having much of a worship life, then you don't know the goodness of God. And if you're not craving God to go with you wherever you go, to the store, to work, on your trip, go fishing, go hunting, wherever you go, and you want Him to go with you, and you want Him to guide you and give you direction. If you're not seeking His fellowship and seeking His direction in everything you do, then you don't know Him. You may not even be saved. One of the gross errors of our day is that we have adopted a false gospel into our churches. A gospel where you can believe without any commitment. And it's actually an intellectual belief that never gets into your heart, never affects your life. If you've got a salvation that hasn't made you break from your sin and go a different way, then you haven't got the salvation of the Bible. You haven't got the Jesus of the Bible. The Jesus that I know and the Jesus of the Bible is the one that when He comes in where the Scripture says, therefore if any man be in Christ, He is a new creature. He's a new creation. The old things have passed away and new things have come. You can't be content anymore with your drunkenness, with beating your wife, with cheating, with lying and stealing. The Holy Spirit who dwells within you will not let you be content. He will deal with you on it. You can't be content anymore with contaminating your body, with having illicit sex, living in adultery or fornication. You cannot do it anymore and be a Christian and live content in that peace. The Spirit of God will make war in your life. And He will deal with you as He deals with me. He wants us to know Him. And in all His dealings with us, He is trying to get us to understand that He is good and that everything that He does for us is good. Everything He does in my life is for my good. Everything He does in your life is for your good. Now, if you have the passage there, God's presence is good. In 1 Chronicles 16, verse 34, the cry went out, O give thanks unto the Lord, for He is good, His mercy endureth forever. Sometimes when you just read a verse, you say, Oh, that's nice. That's a nice verse. Oh, give thanks unto the Lord, for He is good, for His mercy endureth forever. But you've got to understand, they had a revival here. And this giving thanks unto the Lord for His good is actually the apex of a lot of stuff that went on before that. Now, many years before, Israel had lost their ark to the Philistines. And then they had got it back, and on the way bringing it back, they had tried to bring it back by the way of man. And they had followed the ways of man. The Philistines had sent the ark back on a new cart with an ox, and they didn't know the ways of God. This is why so many of us in our churches today, we're just doing the same thing. We're following the ways of the world in our church, and we've got a showbiz Christianity. And we've got a flesh works system of worship. And we try to drum up the best we can on Sunday morning. You know, God's not interested in our best. He's really not. He's interested in us just dying and letting Him do His best through us. The best that we can do is just filthy rags. Your best in getting yourself saved is just filthy rags. Your best in trying to live a Christian life is just filthy rags. Paul said, for me to live is Christ. To die is gain. And so here they were. They sent this ark back on this new cart in Israel. They followed the ways of the pagans, just as many today in our churches. Many Christians are following the ways of the pagan world. Instead of getting into your Bible and seeing what God says, and doing it that way, and forgetting about the other way. Well, they tried it. They tried the way of the Philistines. So they put the cart, the ark on a cart, bringing it back. The cart hit a stone or something. The ark began to tip. One of the men reached out and touched it. And Uzzah died when he did. And you know the rest of the story. How it brought fear. David was afraid, afraid of God. Well, they wasn't doing things right. The judgment of God will fall when we try to do His business in the ways of man. And so they parked the ark for a while. God blessed the folks there where the ark was parked. But then there came a day when God said, go get it. Bring it home. Do it right this time. And David did his homework. And he got the priest in there, the Levites to do it. And they brought it home. They put the staves in this time to the rings. And they bore it on their shoulders. And they brought it in. And there was great rejoicing. Great revival broke out. And in verse 4 of 1 Chronicles 16 says, He appointed certain of the Levites to minister before the ark of the Lord, and to record, and to thank and praise the Lord God of Israel. They were grateful. They were experiencing the goodness of God now. Verse 8, They gave thanks unto the Lord, and they called upon His name. They made known His deeds upon the people. Verse 9, Sing unto Him. Sing psalms unto Him. Talk ye of all His wondrous works. Glory ye in His holy name. Let the heart of them rejoice that seek the Lord. Seek the Lord in His strength. Seek His face continually. Remember His marvelous works that He hath done. His wonders and the judgments of His mouth. O ye seed of Israel, His servant. Ye children of Jacob, His chosen ones. He is the Lord, our God. His judgments are in all the earth. Be ye mindful always of His covenant. And they come on down through the passage there in verse 23. Sing unto the Lord all the earth. Show forth from day to day His salvation. Verse 24, Declare His glory among the heathen. His marvelous works among all nations. For great is the Lord, and greatly to be praised. He also is to be feared above all gods. Slip on down to verse 28. Give unto the Lord, ye kindreds of the people. Give unto the Lord glory and strength. Verse 29, Give unto the Lord the glory due unto His name. Bring an offering and come before Him. Worship the Lord in the beauty of holiness. Verse 30, Fear before Him all the earth. The world also shall be stable that it be not moved. Let the heavens be glad. Let the earth rejoice. Let men say among the nations, The Lord reigneth. And note, you go through all of that. He comes out and He says in verse 34, O give thanks unto the Lord, for He is good. For His mercy endureth forever. Now I'm saying all this to bring you up to a point. He is good. And we are either proclaiming His goodness or trying to proclaim our own goodness. Now up to that point, there had been a shallowness in their worship. There had been something missing because the presence of God was not where He should be. The presence of God was not in Jerusalem. So when God led them to bring the ark back to Jerusalem, you have all of this bursting forth of praise and giving thanks. And when they get to the apex of it, they cry out, O give thanks unto the Lord, for He is good. And today, one of the reasons that we are in such a dry state in our churches, and I was in one last night and the night before, where a friend of mine was speaking, and it was dead. He wasn't dead. The church was dead. There was nothing there. And it was so dead last night when they started to sing the first song. My friend, Brother Max, got up and walked out. I knew what was going on. He was seeking a place to get with God and talk with Him about the deadness. I was there sitting there praying about it. We need revival. So many times we don't realize how dead we are. And so they had experienced revival, and at the apex of it, they just were focusing in on God's goodness. They'd gone through the barrenness, and now He was coming back. And my friend, today, we need to come back to God, so we'll focus on His goodness, so we'll be rejoicing. His people are not hilarious today. We're gloomy, moody, touchy, depressed, oppressed by all kinds of demons, heckling spirits, demons of lust or plagueness, covetousness, idolatry. We're plagued with all kinds of things because we're not focused on God. Thou wilt keep them in perfect peace whose mind is stayed on Thee. And the reason I'm sharing this series with you on the goodness of God is so that you'll come back to God. There's no peace and joy in the world Jesus told us there wouldn't be. In the world, you'll find tribulation. Why has the church been trying to imitate the world? It doesn't have anything. The world is play-acting. We've adopted the Hollywood methods into our worship services, and when we go home, we're empty. We're not full of the goodness and the glory of God. We haven't worshipped. We've been entertained, and we've done our thing, and we're empty. God's presence is good, though, and that's what it boiled down to. His presence was there, and they said, Oh, give thanks unto the Lord, for He is good. His mercy endureth forever. You know, back in Luke 9, when Peter, James, and John went up on the Mount of Transfiguration with Jesus, and you know the story. Let me share it with you a little bit. It says it came to pass about eight days after these sayings. He took Peter, and John, and James, and went up into a mountain to pray. And as he prayed, the fashion of his countenance was altered, and his raiment was white and glistening. And behold, there talked with him two men, which were Moses and Elias. Now, you've got to remember that they were asleep while this was going on. And then they woke up. It says, But Peter and they that were with him were heavy with sleep. And when they were awake, they saw his glory and the two men that stood with him. And it came to pass, as they departed from him, Peter said unto Jesus, Master, it is good for us to be here. And that was great. It was good for them to be there. And that was fine. That was a good statement to make. It was true. But then he went on, and he said, Let us make three tabernacles, one for thee, one for Moses, and one for Elias, not knowing what he said. While he thus spake, there came a cloud and overshadowed them, and they feared as they entered into the cloud. And there came a voice out of the cloud saying, This is my beloved son, hear him. And when the voice was passed, Jesus was found alone, and they kept it close. And they told no man in those days any of those things which they had seen. Now, my friend, you and I, we are missing so many times, I believe today, the goodness of God and the glory of God. Because we are switching over, and we're trying to tell God what to do next. The goodness of God is to be experienced day by day in our lives, and we're just to let Him be God and do what He wants with us and for us. You know, back over in 2 Chronicles chapter 5 and verse 13, there's another little saying on His goodness. And it goes like this. And it came even to pass as the trumpeters and the singers were as one to make one sound to be heard in praising and thanking the Lord. And when they lifted up their voice with the trumpets and the cymbals and the instruments of music, and praised the Lord saying, For He is good, for His mercy endureth forever. That then the house was filled with a cloud, even the house of the Lord. And again, it goes back to the Ark of the Covenant. Here they were, they were worshiping before God and offering the sacrifices. And the end conclusion is, He is good. God is good. And you can get into the passage and study it out yourself. Tremendous passage. He is good. Chapter 7 and verse 3. You go over in 2 Chronicles 7 and 3. And when all the children of Israel saw how the fire came down and the glory of the Lord upon the house, they bowed themselves and their faces to the ground upon the pavement and worshiped and praised the Lord saying, For He is good, for His mercy endureth forever. Whenever God comes on the scene into a life, that life recognizes that God is good. And so when God's presence abode there and came into the camp, into the Ark, into the Holy of Holies, their one voice cried out, God is good. God is good. And the reason you and I so many times do not have the praise of God on our lips, we do not have the glory of God in our lives, we do not have the joy of Jesus in our lives, is because we do not have a focus on Him. We're not focused on His presence and His goodness to us. We're focused on circumstances and all these things happening to us. And we don't even realize that God is causing them to happen for our good. He's working something out in our lives. This psalmist was reading, my wife and I, she shared this psalms with me the other day, Psalm 16, I think it was on the 16th of the month. Tremendous psalms. We flip back over there, you know, in verse 11, He said, In thy presence is fullness of joy. Verse 11, Thou will show me the path of life. In thy presence is fullness of joy. At thy right hand there are pleasures forevermore. Go back up to verse 2. The psalmist said, O my soul, thou hast said unto the Lord, Thou art my Lord, my goodness extendeth not to thee. You know, it takes us a long time sometimes in life for us to figure out that our goodness doesn't reach up to God. Our goodness is tainted. It's affected by our nature. What we need is His goodness to come down and fill us. And to overwhelm us. Psalm 16, 5, The Lord is the portion of mine inheritance and of my cup. Thou maintainest my lot. The lines are fallen unto me in pleasant places. Yea, I have a goodly heritage. I will bless the Lord who hath given me counsel. My reigns also instruct me in the night seasons. I have set the Lord always before me. Because He is at my right hand, I shall not be moved. Who is at your right hand? I illustrated this with my children yesterday. I got up and I told one of them, Now, I want you to come bump into me. And she did. Little Joni came over there and then John had to help her out, the four year old. So my 11 year old came over and they bumped me and I would fall over. And they got a big kick out of that. Then I said, Now, Joshua, I got my 16 year old, who's almost as big as I am or tall as I am. His belly's not quite as filled out as mine. But anyway, I said, Here, you stand at my right hand. Shoulder to shoulder. And so he did. Now, I said, Joni, now bump me. And boy, she bumped me. And there wasn't much give. And John, he come over there and tried to throw me a tackle too. And I said, This is the way we're to be. We're to set the Lord always at our right hand. Recognize that He is there. And so in these bumps of life, these circumstances come along, we're not moved because the Lord is at my right hand. He is good to stay there by me. He is good to take care of me. He is good to allow me to go through these trials that I might know. How good He is. But when you forget that He's at your right hand, then you're moved. These things hit you and they knock you off. Look at Psalms 25. The psalmist said, verse 7, Remember not the sins of my youth nor my transgressions. According to thy mercy, remember thou me for thy goodness sake, O Lord. Good and upright is the Lord. Therefore will He teach sinners in the way. I am prone to sin. I wish I wasn't. But I have a nature that continually plagues me. And God is teaching me that I have to continually trust Him or it will get me. And God is good and upright. Therefore, He'll teach me in the way. You know, the blessings of life are because of His goodness. God blesses us in life because of His goodness. I was thinking about Matthew 7 and verse 11. Where Jesus said, If ye then, being evil, know how to give good gifts unto your children, how much more shall your Father which is in heaven give good things to them that ask Him? What about that? God's goodness is the ground of our expectation, Tozer said. Now think about that. God's goodness is the ground of our expectation. God, this last week, has also taught me one day some tremendous things about temptation. And He taught me some deep things about not looking to man for my needs, but to look to Him. And it's taken me a long time to learn not to be a beggar on men. And the Spirit of God even got me the other night at the meetings that we were at, when I had a friend there and I bowed down to pray in a way that he could see the bottom of my shoes. And I got to thinking about that. Why'd I do that? So he would see how they were wore out on the bottoms, so maybe he might feel sorry for me and buy me a pair of shoes. And God the Holy Spirit came along and He knocked on my door. And He said, Listen, who are you looking to to supply your shoes? Your friend who has a little bit more money than you? Or me? Man, God has a way of just putting His thumb on us and just putting us down into the dirt. The heart is deceitful and desperately wicked. Who are you looking to to supply your needs? Are you looking to your salary? Are you looking to your retirement? Your social security? You may not have that. The way things are going in this country, there may not be anything around. Look to God. He's good. Let Him be your blessing. God's goodness is the ground of our expectation. You know the Psalms. I think I'm going to take some time in the Psalms next week, if the Lord is willing, and just go with you on God's goodness through the Psalms. I've got a couple minutes left. Let's get back and pick out a couple of them, okay? Go to Psalms 27. Psalms 27. Excuse me for the rustling of the paper here, if you hear it in the mic, but listen. Psalms 27 and verse 13. You know, because of God's goodness, we have hope. He gives us hope. Listen to this. I had fainted unless I had believed to see the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living. He gives us hope. Go over to 31 verse 19. Oh, how great is thy goodness, which thou hast laid up for them that fear thee, which thou hast wrought for them that trust in thee, before the sons of men. Sons of men. Heaven's treasure is His goodness. Wow! For all eternity, we're going to experience His goodness. But my friend, if you do not receive Jesus Christ as your Savior, if you do not repent of your sin, come to the end of yourself and realize that you can't save yourself, you're going to miss out on His goodness and you'll have to experience His wrath. He doesn't want you to experience His wrath, but because of His judgment, His justice, that's the only thing left. If you will not receive of His goodness a free gift through Jesus Christ, which is salvation, you receive it by faith, you'll have to experience His wrath. Oh, take His goodness. Receive His goodness. The Bible says the earth is full of the goodness of the Lord. Oh, all things He's doing in our lives, He's doing to bring us to see His goodness. Well, our time's gone. I'm going to have to go. Until next time, I'm going to trust God to continue to bless you and for you to experience His goodness and remember Jesus Christ is all you need. Is He all you want? May God bless you, my friend.