A phrase that has been baked into Christian culture is “God is Good!” We sing it, we speak it, we declare it. We attribute it to blessings we received, prayers we have had answered, growth or opportunities we have been given. We attribute “God is good” to our idea of good. This is a correct application of this statement, but there is more to this statement than just us having a feel good experiences. God is good, comes from blessings yes, but it also comes from justice. The justice of God is good and the Hebrews knew that when God defeated His enemies, when God released justice, it was a reason for them to declare God is good!

We struggle, as New Testament believers with the idea that justice is good, the enemy being defeated is good, because we have been taught to “love our enemies and pray for those who persecute us” not to ask the Lord to destroy our enemies, burn our enemies, remove our enemies. We have been taught that is not “good”. Jesus shed His blood as the greatest act of justice the earth had ever witnessed. Jesus took the wrath of God upon Himself when He agreed to drink the cup of wrath while in the Garden of Gethsemane. Jesus defeated sin, hell and the grave in one weekend on earth. Yes, yes, yes, but the seeds of the enemy are still on earth, that is why evil is still running rampant on the globe in the hearts of people who do atrocities we don’t even understand.

God is good! We are witnessing the goodness of God in the land of the living in ways we would not call good. Nahum 1 says, “The LORD is good, A stronghold in the day of trouble, And He knows those who take refuge in Him. But with an overflowing flood He will make a complete end of its site, And will pursue His enemies into darkness. Whatever you devise against the LORD, He will make a complete end of it. Distress will not rise up twice.” God is making a complete end of some things, it looks like smoke rising, missles flying, volcanos erupting, the earth shaking, but God is good. For He sees things we cannot see, He knows things we cannot know, and we need to be careful not to call evil what God calls good. The Lord is good and His goodness is about to be revealed in ways we never recognized as good.