WFTD: Good (tov): Taste and see how good “good” can be.

EXPOSTION: Today’s word is good. The Hebrew word for good is tov or tob. It means good, acceptable, pleasing. You will learn that not all good is created equal, especially when it comes to God’s palette.

“This is what the LORD, the God of Israel, says: ‘Like these good figs, I regard as good the exiles from Judah, whom I sent away from this place to the land of the Babylonians. 6…My eyes will watch over them for their good, and I will bring them back to this land. I will build them up and not tear them down; I will plant them and not uproot them. Jeremiah 24:5

BACKSTORY: God compares His people to two baskets of figs: one of ripe ones; the other is full of rotten figs. The ripe figs represent people who do justice, love mercy and walk humble as one people with one God and only him. The rotten fruit represents disobedient people who mistreat widows, orphans and the poor; starve children, and who walk proudly as idolaters, lovers of other gods. He favors the flavor of the good fruit—people who are acceptable, pleasing and plump with Spirit.

APPLICATION: Be your own fruit inspector. Use the Spirit as a source and sample of ripe fruit according to Galatians 5:22,23.

²² But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, ²³ gentleness, self-control against such there is no law. Galatians 5:22,23

There is no law against tasting the goodness of spiritually ripened fruit and producing some of your own. Darlene Griffin Pittman did. She was going to a Columbus Family Dollar when she saw a FedEx truck do a U-turn into a trailer park. Pittman looked in her rear-view mirror and saw the delivery driver get out and help a 75-year-old man get his wagon and groceries out of a ditch. When Pittman went to assist, the man told her he was on his way home from the food bank when he fell into the ditch after being overwhelmed by the heat. Luckily, he was rescued by Rondy, “I did not see the man in the ditch, but Rondy did,” she wrote. Pittman told Rondy she would help get the man home so that he could continue his deliveries. Rondy was thankful,” she remembers. “He said they are timed for their deliveries, but he still stopped to help this older man.” Pittman added that another man came to assist in getting the victim home.

It began with Rondy—the FedEx man—whose delivery that day included a basket of good figs disguised as the fruit of the Spirit of kindness.

As you do due diligence to you own exposition, illustration and application of Jeremiah 24:5 “Good figs, bag fruit” show and tell, consider your own basket of figs. What would you feed your kids? They will someday serve the same to others.