Genesis 15:20
“I know God is good. I just don’t think he’s good to me.” Maybe you’ve heard people say this, or something similar. Maybe you yourself have said or thought it. The feeling is understandable. On the one hand, no one wants to deny what Scripture clearly teaches: “O give thanks unto the Lord; for he is good!” On the other hand, however, we experience things that are clearly not good: a chronic illness, the death of a loved one, or a crushing disappointment. Is it possible for someone who goes through intense, even devastating, trials to say sincerely, “God is good to me”? When the Bible speaks of God’s goodness, it is not just delivering information we must memorize. Rather, it is inviting us into a relationship with a Person who may be experienced. For example: “Oh, taste and see that the Lord is good! Blessed is the man who takes refuge in him!” Psalm 34:8 “Oh, taste and see,” the psalmist sings, “that the Lord is good!” To taste something like sweet honey means to have a direct, personal experience of that sweetness. When it touches your tongue, you say, “I know that honey is sweet.” But you also say, “And it’s sweet to me,” because you are tasting it. The next phrase helps us understand what this means with respect to God: “Blessed is the man who takes refuge in [or, trusts] him!” This line of poetry puts tasting parallel to trusting, indicating that tasting is to honey (for example), as trusting is to God. To experience the sweetness of God’s goodness, then, means to trust him. But let us see how this works practically in the life of someone who went through extreme difficulties and still knew God to be good to him. Joseph, the son of Jacob, is well-known for the way he was mistreated by his brothers. Driven by jealousy, they wanted to kill him but instead sold him into slavery where he spent the rest of his adolescence and young adulthood in prison. Through a series of events, Joseph eventually became second in command of all Egypt. With this authority, he instituted an ingenious program of agricultural conservation, saving Egypt and surrounding territories from starvation—including his own brothers who had mistreated him. In a tender moment, when his brothers were afraid that Joseph would take his revenge on them, he assured them: “Do not fear, for am I in the place of God? As for you, you meant evil against me, but God meant it for good, to bring it about that many people should be kept alive, as they are today. So do not fear; I will provide for you and your little ones.” Thus he comforted them and spoke kindly to them. Genesis 50:19-21 Joseph’s statement teaches us three truths known by people who “taste and see” (i.e., “trust”) that God is good. They know: (1) something about evil, (2) something about God’s plan, and (3) something about God’s power to bring about that plan.
