Jehovah is good. He is only good. He is always good. He is good in himself as the perfect God in whom there is no shadow due to turning. He is good as the infinitely perfect, true, and living God. He is wholly good. In all God’s being there is only goodness, perfect goodness, ethical perfection. There is no evil and no possibility of evil in God. He alone is good. He is good absolutely.

Then he is good in his deeds too. He is good in his counsel in every single act and decision. He cannot do evil. He decrees that evil happen and incorporates it into his eternal counsel as that for which he has a good purpose and through which he will be glorified as the only good God. For this cause did he raise up Pharaoh—and all his evil—that God might show his power and get himself glory on Pharaoh. Israel came into Egypt, and God turned the hearts of the Egyptians to deal subtly with them, and the Israelites came into bondage in order that he deliver his people and destroy Egypt. Nothing—also nothing evil—happens outside of the decree of the one true and only good God.

Thus in all that he does in the world, Jehovah is good, only good, and never evil. He is good in his wonders. He was good when he made the heavens and stretched out the earth and made great lights. Jehovah was good when he smote the firstborn of Egypt. He was good in that he brought out Israel and good when he made Israel pass through the sea. Good in that he overthrew Pharaoh, good when he slew famous kings and cast out the Canaanites and gave their land to Israel for a heritage and type of an eternal home in the new heaven and new earth. Good is Jehovah, only and ever good.

He is good who gives food to all flesh.

Yet one more example of his goodness. One more good deed proceeding from his good counsel is that Jehovah gives food to all flesh.

To flesh!

The angels are spirits. They are sustained by the inexhaustible fountain of all strength in God by his Spirit. Their meat is to do the will of their God day and night. They are creatures too who are dependent upon God for their strength. In him they live and move and have their being. Yet they need no food.

But flesh! Flesh is that which is of the earth earthy. Its form and substance is for this earth. Flesh refers to the animate and sentient creatures that inhabit the earth: the birds that fly in the heaven, the animals upon the land, the fish of the sea, and the myriad creeping and crawling things in all their untold variety.

But flesh refers especially to man. Flesh describes man as he came forth from the dust of the ground and from the hands of God. Flesh is skin, bones, and blood to touch, taste, and handle. Flesh stands for all of man’s wisdom, man’s strength, man’s ingenuity, man’s intelligence, man’s plans, and man’s works.

Flesh, whether of man or beast, needs food, some food, to sustain his life. That was true of Adam in the beginning and in his state of perfection. God made the trees of the garden for food for flesh. Preeminent among the trees God made the tree of life. The need for food is true of man after the fall too. His fleeting existence is sustained by food. Take away his food, and he dies.

Jehovah gives food to all flesh! He gives food to beasts, birds, fish, and creeping things. The scriptures speak eloquently of his giving food to all flesh. He daily listens as the lions roar, and he hunts their prey for them and satisfies the appetites of the young lions. He causes the eagles to mount up on their wings to hunt for food. Leviathan plays before him, and behemoth stalks the hills in his sight. These all look to Jehovah for their food. He opens his hand, and they are satisfied; he hides his face, and they are troubled.

He gives food to man. He says food not because this is the extent of his provision but because this is the most basic need of flesh. Food then is simply the most conspicuous example of his gifts and the most outstanding example of the minuteness of his provision. If he gives food to all flesh, he gives all things necessary for sustaining the earthly life of the creature, whether man or beast.

That Jehovah gives food to all flesh means too that he upholds and sustains that man in his existence, with all his talents and powers, and makes that food sustain that man’s life and by means of that food gives to that man his life. And that Jehovah gives food to all flesh means also that he gives man his riches and honor and glory and all his might and all his talents and abilities. Jehovah gives wine to make man’s heart glad, and he gives oil to make his face shine. God gives man his work, and man goes out in the morning to his work and to his labor until the evening. There is nothing that man possesses that God did not give.

Flesh describes man not only in his weakness and his limitation, as wholly dependent upon God, but also flesh describes his existence as fleeting. Like the grass that flourishes and fades, that grows and is quickly burnt, so man arises and as quickly passes away. His glory is as the flower of the field, so that almost as soon as it is sprung up its beauty is dying. His breath is in his nostrils and like a wind that passes away and never returns. So when the text declares that Jehovah gives food to all flesh, it makes flesh utterly dependent upon God. In him all flesh lives and moves and has its being.

Flesh stands in the text in contrast to deity. Jehovah gives to all flesh food because all is his. He declares that the silver is mine, the gold is mine, the food is mine, the grass is mine, the cattle on a thousand hills is mine, and man is mine. I am the potter, man is the clay. God is God and the God who gives to all flesh food.

Regardless of the ways and means that God uses, he alone gives food, and he gives that food to all flesh. He gives food to some as he did in the wilderness by food from heaven. To others he gives food by care and industry. By all sorts of ways and means, it is God who gives food.

And because it is God, the good God, who gives food to all flesh, he does so according to his own determination as to when and how much. When he gives food to the lions, he snuffs out the life of a zebra; or when he gives food to sharks, he must destroy the life of a seal pup. When he gives food to men, he gives some much food and to others food for the day. There is no flesh on the entire earth that has not for that day and according to his measure and by his exact distribution received his food from God. Every day and every week for all the thousands of days and years since he made the world, he gives life, food for life, and thus also all men’s powers, talents, and gifts; and he upholds them by that food in their existence.

Good is Jehovah who gives food to all flesh. His goodness does not depend upon his giving the food to all flesh; so that if he does not give food to some flesh, he becomes evil. He is good who does not give food to some flesh, whether beast or bird or man. He hides his face, and they are troubled, they fail, and they die. He gives food to all flesh, and they live and move; he withholds food, and they die; good is Jehovah who gives or who withholds.

Jehovah God is good, and that goodness reveals itself in this: he gives food to all flesh; so that out of the perfect moral purity and overflowing fountain of the goodness of his perfect being, he gives food to all flesh.

For his mercy endures forever! The goodness of that activity is to be explained by the consideration that he gives food to all flesh because his mercy endures forever. The goodness of a deed is to be understood by what motivates that deed. There is an objective standard of good. That is true. But take two similar acts of giving food, and examine those acts by what motivates them. So a farmer’s feeding his children is to be understood as good because he loves them and desires that they be fed and clothed and enjoy such comforts as he gives them. He may say no to them from time to time to teach them, but that is to be viewed in light of his overall purpose to bless his children. But that same farmer gives food to his steers to make them fat that he might slaughter them in order to feed his children with good beef. Both are good.

So Jehovah God is good who gives food to all flesh, for his mercy endures forever. The giving of the food to all flesh proceeds from and is motivated by Jehovah’s enduring mercy, his steadfast covenant love.

At the heart of mercy is the will to bless. In God mercy is his intense and perfect desire for his own glory and blessedness. He delights in himself as the only good. Everywhere God looks in his being and in all his works and ways and in all his decrees, there is eternal, spotless, and glorious goodness; and he delights in that and wills that he be blessed.

His mercy toward the creature then is his deep and tender pity upon them and the will to bless them by fellowship with him, the only good. Mercy describes the whole purpose of God for the revelation of his own glorious, blessed, and good being.

At the heart of mercy is Jesus Christ, in whom God wills his own glory and whom God wills to crown with glory and honor. That mercy, of course, extends to the entire creation, so that the creation as one whole is destined to be lifted from its sin-cursed misery into the heights of heaven. Thus his mercy toward his people is his eternal and unchanging pity on them in their woe, the woe of their sin and even the limitation of their fleshliness, and his will to deliver them by Christ Jesus from their guilt and bondage to sin and to incorporate them into his blessed fellowship and friendship that they might taste that the Lord is good.

It is his will to establish with them a covenant of friendship in which he is wholly responsible for them, in which they are wholly his, in which he does all for their advantage and salvation, and in which they are his people, called to love and serve him. It is his will to give the world to them as the eternal habitation of Jesus Christ and all his brethren chosen in him and made perfect and to lift them up along with the entire creation into the perfection of God’s eternal covenant of grace.

At the same time and according to the same purpose—his glory—to make vessels to dishonor and unto damnation that the wicked be damned so that God be praised. Speaking of his mercy, the prophets and the apostles said that God will have mercy on whom he will have mercy, and whom he will he hardens. He is the potter, men are the clay. He makes one vessel to honor and another unto dishonor.

He is good who gives food to all flesh because his mercy endures forever. Giving food to all flesh proceeds from and is motivated by his enduring mercy in the same way that making the heaven and earth proceeded from his mercy. Because he would have heaven and earth be the grand stage for the revelation of his goodness and mercy in the salvation of his people and the punishment of the wicked. He made the heaven and earth and great lights because his mercy endures forever. So also he gives food to all flesh. He sustains his people for the purpose of their blessedness in him. He sustains the wicked for the purpose of his glory in their judgment.

Giving food to all flesh proceeds from his mercy in the same way as dividing the sea and causing Israel to pass through on dry ground and overthrowing Pharaoh and his host in the Red Sea proceeded from his enduring mercy. Jehovah performed the miracle of the Red Sea for the salvation of Israel in his mercy and in that same act destroyed Pharaoh and his host in the Red Sea. So also because his mercy endures forever, he gives food to all flesh.

It is that mercy according to which in every act of God—from the creation of the world to the deliverance through the Red Sea to giving food to all flesh—there is such a work of God that every act serves the salvation of his people and the condemnation of the reprobate and the advancement of God’s whole glorious purpose for the revelation of himself as the only good and ever-blessed covenant God. He gives food to all flesh out of the same purpose and out of the same goodness as he destroyed Egypt and saved Israel.

It is as foolish to say that God gives food to the wicked in his love for them as it is to say that God overthrew Egypt in the Red Sea; drowned Pharaoh and his hosts; and destroyed Og, king of Bashan, and Sihon, king of the Amorites, in his favor toward them. God overthrew Pharaoh and his host in the Red Sea, and he gives the wicked millions of dollars and a comfortable life in the world. These are one and the same kind of act. In his giving food to the wicked, not only has God no attitude of mercy toward them, but also he is overthrowing them. So in his distribution of food, he is good not because he is gracious to all or merciful to all in that distribution; but he is good because, as when he destroyed Pharaoh, so also when he gives food he fulfills his own eternal purpose with all men and the whole world.

He is good in his giving of food to the wicked because that food serves to work out the eternal counsel of God for their destruction by setting them in slippery places in order to cast them down to destruction, while at the same time sustaining them even in their hatred and opposition against him, in order that his people have a world to live in. He is good when he gives food to all because he gives food to all according to the need of Israel his chosen. They stand at the heart of all his works and mighty deeds in the world and are his concern when he gives to this or that one this or that thing. He wills that there be a world yet in which his Israel can live and move and serve him, and so he gives food to all because his mercy endures forever. He wills that this world continue so that he might gather his Israel yet out of Egypt and into his fellowship, and so he gives food to all because his mercy endures forever.

He gives food to all flesh of beasts and birds because he wills that this creation be sustained until it is redeemed in the regeneration of all things when Christ comes again, and God does not forsake his creation and leave things to fortune or chance but has regard to all things and the food and needs of all creatures.

He is good in this especially, that to his Israel he gives food for their good in his deep and tender pity for them and the will to save them. He gives because he redeemed them. He gives them their food because his mercy endures forever, in which mercy he forgave their sins and atoned for their iniquities. He is good because when he gives food to Israel his chosen, it serves—all of it, every morsel—their salvation and glorification to the praise of his goodness.

Give thanks to God, thanks because he is good. The thanks of the believer is never dependent on the earthly thing itself; the thanks of the believer always is dependent on God himself and his character and activity in the world. The believer gives thanks then, whether in riches or poverty. He gives thanks because Jehovah is good when he gives food to all—or withholds from some—because his mercy endures forever.

That thanksgiving is a gift of the mercy of God when he gives earthly things to his people. Thus when we give thanks for earthly gifts, that we give thanks at all is because in the giving of those gifts the mercy of the Lord endures forever. No man gives thanks for earthly things unless with those things he also receives the blessing of the Lord. The world cannot give thanks. The unbeliever cannot give thanks. It is not merely that he gives thanks wrongly, but he cannot give thanks because thanksgiving is impossible where covetousness and thievery reign and where there is no blessing but a curse with the earthly gift.

Give thanks to the God of heaven, the God of gods, and the Lord of lords, Jehovah is his name, because he gives food to all flesh, in which activity his mercy endures forever.

Thanksgiving is not merely words; it is not merely an activity; it certainly is not limited to a day. Thanksgiving is an entire way of life in the world by those whom God in his mercy has redeemed and to whom he gives in mercy. It is the way of life of the redeemed believer in the world in the heritage and in the portion of the world that God gave to him. As he redeemed Israel and cast out the Canaanites and gave to his people their land, so the Lord has redeemed us from sin and bondage and given to us a portion of the world.

Thanksgiving is the way of life in that portion and with that portion. Thanksgiving is the way that we view earthly things; it is the position that they hold in our lives; it is the way that we live with them; it is the way that we acquire them; the way also that we use those earthly things.

Thanksgiving means that we seek forgiveness for all our sins with earthly things:

That we were so foolish as to suppose in our distresses that one whose hand gives food to beasts and to wicked men had forgotten us whom he redeemed with the blood of his Son…

That we were often so foolish as to envy the ungodly with all their abundance while we were chastened by the Lord…

That we were often this year anxious with respect to earthly things, whether we had much or little…

That we were sorely tempted—if we indeed did not frequently fall into temptation—to sin; so that when we had much, we forgot God; and when we had little, we stole in some way…

That we sought those things as god and did not seek God as God…

That often we were thankful for the abundance but not because Jehovah is good…

That often with our lips we said thanks to God, but with our minds we coveted after earthly things, served them, were anxious for them, or hoarded them instead of using them…

That we often with those earthly things sought our own pleasure and not God’s glory and that we withheld them from his service because we reserved them for ourselves…

That we abused and wasted of his gifts.

We must be sorry for all our sins with earthly things and be thankful for the righteousness of Christ that God imputes to those who believe in him in his mercy, so that we could even receive these things with his blessing.

Oh, thank the Lord that he redeemed us and let us live in his earth again with a free and good conscience.

Oh, thank him that he forgives our sins and all our covetousness and accounts us righteous on account of the perfect obedience of Christ, whose meat his whole life was to do God’s will.

Oh, give thanks that God with the gift to us of earthly things preserved us by his mercy from rushing headlong after those things as our god, so that in the mad pursuit of them we forsake all and follow mammon. If he did not preserve us this year by his mercy, we all would perish in the mad pursuit of mammon or in an equally miserable and wicked miserliness.

Oh, give thanks that you might thank him!

In the same way that he gave food to Egypt so that Israel would have a place to dwell during the famine, so God gave Egypt for his people so that the whole world serves the people of God and their lives in the world. We give thanks that our God reigns in the heavens over the unrighteousness and ungodliness of men so that all the world’s markets and economies and indeed every event in the world serve the purpose of his gracious salvation and care of his people.

With thanksgiving we must be resolved to receive such things as he gives us with the confession that he is good, for his mercy endures forever, so that all that he does in the world and in the lives of his people is calculated for their spiritual profit and advantage.

With thanksgiving let us receive and use gratefully what he gave to us, sanctifying it with prayer.

Give thanks to the Lord who gives food to all, for his mercy endures forever!