All the Time

Jeremiah 12:1-4

February 9, 2025 • Mount Pleasant UMC

Let’s try this. God is good…all the time. And all the time…God is good. Well, now I know some of you have been around here for a while. When I was a new pastor in Indiana, Bishop Woodie White taught us all that call and response, and a lot of churches adopted it; I know I did in the church I was serving at the time. We used that response every Sunday for quite a while. Some credit worship leader Don Moen with starting it though a song of the same title, but for me it will always belong to Bishop White. God is good, all the time—and all the time, God is good. It’s a wonderful truth. God is good. God is always good. That calls for an “amen!”

So, if God is so good, and if God is in control of the world, why is the world in such a mess? Why do wars happen and why are children suffering and why is there so much political turmoil all the time? These sorts of questions are not new; they have been around a long time. “Christianity,” some have said, “has a problem with evil.” The argument goes like this: either God doesn’t care about our suffering, in which case he’s not good, or he can’t do anything about it, in which case he’s not powerful (cf. Myers, Unquestioned Answers, pg. 185). And for a lot of people, those are the only two options. Who wants to worship a God who is not good or not powerful? And so, to some, when we say, “God is good, all the time,” it sounds like we are ignoring the brokenness and the suffering that is all around us, like we’re sugarcoating the very reality we live with each and every day. So the question comes to us very bluntly: is God really good? There are a lot of people, some of whom may be sitting near you this morning, who are asking that very question.

This morning, we’re wrapping up our series called “Unquestioned Answers.” For the last few weeks we’ve been looking at some of the cliches that Christians often use to respond to critics. We say these things without thinking about what we mean, or how others might hear them, so in these weeks: we’ve been trying to flesh out the cliche with genuine, Biblical truth. None of these cliches have been easy to deal with, but today is perhaps one of the most challenging. We’re going to dive into the strange connection between the goodness of God and the problem of evil. And to do that, we’re going to start with someone who is often called the “weeping prophet,” a preacher in the Old Testament named Jeremiah.

Jeremiah worked for God, but that doesn’t mean he always liked or was in agreement with his boss. Some of you may understand how he felt! I mean, his job was to announce that because of their sin, the nation of Judah was soon to go into exile. You can imagine he was not a popular person, and at one point he even accuses God of tricking him into this job. “You deceived me, Lord,” he will tell God in chapter 20. Then he describes how people have responded to his ministry: “I am ridiculed all day long; everyone mocks me.” It’s a rough calling, and Jeremiah seems to have been tempted to walk away from it. But then he says, “If I say, ‘I will not mention his word or speak anymore in his name,’ his word is in my heart like a fire, a fire shut up in my bones. I am weary of holding it in; indeed, I cannot” (20:7-9). And so he preaches. And he is beaten down. And he looks around and sees a world he does not understand. Wicked people are prospering. Faithless people have an easy life. People are doing well who don’t deserve it (cf. Goldingay, Jeremiah for Everyone, pg. 71). Injustice seems to rule the day. Nothing seems to be working the way it should be.

Have you been there? Are you there now? According to the Fuller Youth Institute, 70% of youth group members have doubts about God during their high school years. Seventy percent. And some of them—many of them—carry those doubts into adulthood because no one has been brave enough to address them. No one has allowed them to ask the questions. They are just told, “God is good, all the time,” and that’s supposed to be enough. What Fuller found is that youth don’t doubt that God is God. What they doubt is whether or not God is good (cf. Myers 182) because of the questions I mentioned a moment ago, because of the state of the world they live in. That’s where Jeremiah is in the passage we read this morning. “You are always righteous, Lord,” he says (12:1). I know your character. I know your nature. I know who you are. I don’t doubt that you are God and I acknowledge you as my Lord. But. And that’s the kicker. But, Jeremiah says, I question your justice (cf. 12:1). I’m doubting that you are good. The statement “God is good all the time” is not theologically wrong. It’s not incorrect. What it is is naive and self-centered in the midst of a world that is asking for answers to its deep hurts (cf. Myers 183).

Jeremiah is not going to be satisfied with a pious cliche. He has heard enough of them, even from some of the people he’s frustrated with. He says some of these people are always talking about God, about spiritual things. They probably go to church every week, seven Bible studies in six days, and wear Jesus t-shirts when they go to the marketplace. Here’s how he describes it: “You are always on their lips but far from their hearts” (12:2). They speak a lot of words about God but they don’t believe any of them. The lives they live tell a different story. I knew a man many years ago who was a leader at his church, talked about God and if there had been social media in those days would probably have posted a Bible verse on his page every day. But I also knew people who worked for him and they told a very different story. The way he treated those around him was far from kind, far from the way Jesus would treat them. No one would have mistaken him for a Christian in the workplace. Jeremiah suggests that what we say is not what matters; it’s the heart (which, in Biblical imagery, is what controls our actions) that counts. No wonder they are treating Jeremiah so badly; their bad attitude toward God is being taken out on God’s servant (cf. Goldingay 72).

Jeremiah is dealing with a strain of ancient thinking that goes like this: if you live in the right way, everything will go your way. You will be healthy and wealthy and only have good things happen to you. That same thinking exists still today; we call it prosperity theology and there are a lot of preachers and ministries that teach that today, especially in our country. Honestly, in our time, it’s a merging of the so-called “American dream” and a few scattered verses mostly from the Old Testament. You can certainly piece together out of context verses from here and there to come up with that theology, but it does not match reality. And it doesn’t match the overall message of Scripture. Still, Jeremiah is having to answer to people who believe that and wonder why the righteous suffer while the wicked seem to be getting away with everything they want to do.

Those people, the wicked, are harmful to the nation in general, Jeremiah says. That’s what he’s talking about in verse 4, describing the punishment that has come on the land because of the wicked’s actions. The land is parched, the grass is withered, and the animals and birds have perished. Now, whether this is a direct result of God punishing the land or a result of the actions of the wicked people Jeremiah doesn’t say. Sometimes we bring disaster on ourselves. We can’t abuse the land and other people and not expect consequences. We can’t lie and cheat without it eventually catching up to us, partly because it gets harder and harder to remember what lies we have told to which people. Regardless of where the “perishing” is coming from, whether from natural or supernatural means, the people in Jeremiah’s day think God no longer sees them (cf. 12:4; Feinberg, “Jeremiah,” Expositor’s Bible Commentary, Vol. 6, pg. 458). They have given up hope on God’s goodness and God’s presence among them. Jeremiah’s job is to remind them of those things, to call them back to God, and he’s finding it to be an increasingly difficult job in a world that is running amuck.

There are three things I think Jeremiah reminds us in such a world, reassurances that God is still good in the midst of a world gone mad. The first is this: there isn’t anything we can’t say to God. Jeremiah is not the only one in the Bible who us of that; the psalmists, over and over again, tell God they are mad at him or that he’s doing things wrong, and we’re often not comfortable with that language. Sometimes we skip right over it. I knew a dear saint several years ago who had walked a long time with Jesus. He was the kind of gentleman that I loved to hear pray, even though whenever he prayed he would automatically lapse into King James English. He loved God, but he would never have thought to tell God he was angry or that God had done something wrong. He believed you didn’t talk that way to God, and maybe some of us believe that too. That if you speak to God in such a way, you might get struck by lightning. The Biblical authors, Jeremiah included, have a different viewpoint. As I said a few moments ago, Jeremiah accuses God of deceiving him, and in this morning’s passage he basically tells God that his idea of justice is messed up. We can say anything to God; he is big enough to take it. In fact, I heard a speaker once say that if we don’t tell God when we are upset, we’ll just have to repent of lying later. Jeremiah says what is on his heart and mind but he stays rooted in his faith. Even though he has questions and even accusations, he still knows God is righteous. He still believes God is good even when the world doesn't reflect that.

Second, Jeremiah believes and our faith says that wickedness will not last. It is temporary and in the end, God’s goodness will triumph. Here’s the truth: God created the world good. He created goodness because he is goodness. Evil is not the opposite of good; it is a corruption of the good. I like the way author Jeff Myers puts it: “Evil is to good what rust is to a car; you know its presence by what ought to be there and isn’t anymore. Evil cannot exist without a good it can attack” (188). What God created was good, but then he gave us the gift of choice, free will, and when he gave us that he made evil possible because we can now choose not to do good. He could have made us robots who automatically do the right and good thing, but that would not be love. Love means evil is possible. But free will also allows us to respond and push back against evil when we see it, when we experience it. I love the story of Robert Louis Stevenson, the author of classic books like Treasure Island, Kidnapped, and The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde. One evening, when he was a child, he was staring out the window as the lamplighter came down the street. The lamplighter would put his ladder up against the streetlight, light the wick and then move to the next one. When his parents saw him at the window, they asked Robert Louis what he was looking at. With great excitement he said, “Look at that man! He’s punching holes in the darkness!” That’s what we are allowed to do in our darkening world. When we do good, when we do God’s work, we are punching holes in the darkness and reminding the world of a God who is good all the time.

But we also need to admit that we have a limited perspective. God tells Jeremiah that in his response to his complaint. “If you have raced with men on foot and they have worn you out, how can you compete with horses?” (12:5). In other words, you can’t keep up with what’s going on around you, how can you possibly understand what I am doing? You can’t do this, so you can’t possibly do even more. God pretty much told Job the same thing when Job questioned why he was suffering. God gives Job a whole lot of scenarios and says, “When you can understand that, then you can question me.” Our perspective is naturally limited because we are human and he is God. Determining whether God is good based on what we can see is silly. We don’t have the long, eternal perspective that he does. As Paul tells the Romans, “In all things God works for the good of those who love him” (Romans 8:28). Paul does not say everything is good. He says God is working to bring good out of everything. If it’s not good, it’s not the end.

That is not meant to discount suffering, either the suffering you experience or the larger suffering in the world. Suffering is real and it’s part of being human. But here’s the third truth to remember: the answer to suffering is a person. The Biblical answer to evil and suffering is not a what but a who. When God became incarnate in the person of Jesus, he experienced everything we experience, including hurt and pain and temptation and suffering and death (cf. Hebrews 4:15). Especially suffering and death. He was put to death in one of the cruelest and most painful ways possible. The word “excruciating” means literally “out of the cross.” On that cross, Jesus took all of our pain and all of our sin and all of our hurt and all of our everything and redeemed it. What do I mean by that? I mean he showed us that even suffering can be turned for good. And when he was raised from the dead, he conquered the last enemy (cf. 1 Corinthians 15:26), death itself. Jesus’ death and resurrection shows that there is no suffering and no bad thing that can stand in the presence of the goodness of God. Through his death and resurrection, Jesus is setting the world right and one day all things will be made new, the way God intended it in the first place. Jesus told his disciples, “In this world you will have trouble.” Not might. Will. “In this world you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world” (John 16:33). That’s good news; that’s the gospel hope. That’s why, as I say often around here (quoting Frederick Buechner), “Resurrection means the worst thing is never the last thing.” The answer to suffering is a person: Jesus Christ the Lord.

In the meantime, we still live in a world of suffering, hurt, pain and death. How do we respond to those who are going through such times? Just saying, “God is good, all the time,” which is true, is not generally helpful. It makes it seem like we don’t care about their suffering. There is a more helpful approach, which begins with asking questions (Myers 191). Way too often when someone is hurting or when a tragedy happens, we begin making pronouncements or quoting Bible verses. Whenever a national tragedy happens, preachers get online and start telling people why this or that happened in their estimation, long before they or we even understand the event. We would be better off to take some time, especially when we’re dealing with someone we know well, to ask questions instead of making pronouncements. The statements we make may be true, but they may not be. We may betray a huge misunderstanding of what’s going on. The Biblical truth is true, but that doesn’t mean it’s understood or helpful or heard in the midst of a tragedy. So ask questions first. What happened? Can you tell me your story? What do you believe about what happened? How did you arrive at that opinion? We’re far better off to enter into their world rather than immediately trying to force them into ours.

Second, move in close. Maybe you don’t have to say anything; maybe the best choice is to just be there. In the Bible, Job is described as a “blameless and upright” man, but he has these terrible tragedies happen to him. His children are killed, his crops are destroyed, his livestock is killed—everything of value that he has is destroyed. His wife tells him to “Curse God and die.” Not helpful. Then he has three friends who come to see him. And for the first seven days they just sit with him. They don’t say anything. They are just there. I imagine maybe they got up once in a while to make sure he had food or water. They probably prayed for him. But they just came to be present. When they open their mouths at the end of the first week, that’s when they become less helpful. But for the first week they were just there, sitting near Job and being present (cf. Job 1-2). Move in close. Maybe that doesn’t mean physically going to be with them, but checking in on them. When one of my college friend’s spouse died suddenly, I started texting every day just to check in. I couldn’t go and sit for a long period of time, so I chose another way I could move in close, be present, show care. Make a call, send a text, give a hug, sit close by. Be the presence of Jesus in a hurting world (Myers 192).

  Third, when the time is right, share about the hope we have. The problem with Job’s friends is they wanted to argue. They wanted to blame someone, to figure out what Job had done to deserve what happened to him. That’s never the right choice, nor is it all that important. Law enforcement may need to do that in certain situations, but we don’t. Blaming is never a helpful strategy, though it seems to be the one so many people, especially politicians, choose first today. Instead, we the church should stop arguing, stop blaming, and find a way to share hope. Author Randy Alcorn put it this way: “Evil is temporary; God’s goodness and our joy will be eternal” (qtd. in Myers 192). We are told over and over again in the Scriptures that this world is not all there is. This world is not our final destination. There is something better coming. The promise in the last book of the Bible is that there is a place where there will be “no more death or mourning or crying or pain,” where every tear will be wiped from our eyes by the very hand of God (Revelation 22:4). God will live among his people, so whatever you think eternity is like, whatever images and pictures you connect with the word “heaven,” the truth is this: it will be so much better than all of that. God will be there, we will be with him, and he will make everything new. At almost every funeral I do, I read those words. I don’t have any answers as to why this person or that person suffered or had pain or anything like that. What I do have is hope to offer that for the one who believes, no matter what they went through here, there will be healing and wholeness and perfection in God’s presence. How do I know that? Because God is good, and he is good all the time, from before all time and into eternity.

So we’ve been on a journey these past few weeks, and we certainly have not covered all the cliches that Christians use. What I hope we have done in these weeks is to get us all to think more deeply and not just respond with unhelpful phrases. Paul says our calling is to be ambassadors of Christ (cf. 2 Corinthians 5:20). An ambassador officially reflects the country for which he or she works; their words and actions are officially the words and actions of the sending country. To be an ambassador for Jesus means we represent him in this world that is not ultimately our home. When people watch us, they should see and hear what he would say and do. So we need fewer cliches and more Jesus, fewer unquestioned answers and more deeply thought-out care. Let’s be people through whom others can see him and know that he is good, all the time. Let’s pray.