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With praise and thanksgiving, they sang to the Lord: \u201cHe is good; his love toward Israel endures forever.\u201d And all the people gave a great shout of praise to the Lord, because the foundation of the house of the Lord was laid. But many of the older priests and Levites and family heads, who had seen the former temple, wept aloud when they saw the foundation of this temple being laid, while many others shouted for joy. No one could distinguish the sound of the shouts of joy from the sound of weeping, because the people made so much noise. And the sound was heard far away (Ezra 3:11-13).

\u201cGod is good, all the time; all the time, God is good.\u201d

Many of you know this line and may have used it yourself. It was featured in the God\u2019s not Dead movies. But I think that many of us may not use it very well, that is, we only use it at certain times. Here is what I mean. I hear people use the line, \u2018God is good\u2019, when they have experienced something which they consider good.

For example: when someone is in a car accident but unhurt and the insurance payout is good. Or when someone loses a job but quickly gets a better one. Or when cancer treatments are successful so that the doctor declares \u2018cancer free.\u2019 Or when we think we failed a test but the teacher gives us a B+ (if, that\u2019s still a thing).

Generally, one doesn\u2019t hear \u2018God is good,\u2019 after the doctor says there is no more treatment, or the accident results in permanent injury, or the job lose results in extended unemployment or the test result is a D-.

So, this raises an important question: is God only good some of the time? Does God take time off from being good? Of course, he doesn\u2019t. \u201cGod is good all the time.\u201d

This is what the Israelites were declaring as they rejoiced and cried together. They had returned from exile, cleaned up some of the rubble and burnt material in Jerusalem and begun to rebuild the temple. When the foundation had been laid, they paused to give praise to God. They created a such a loud noise it could be heard for miles around. However, people heard both crying and rejoicing.

The thing was, the old folks had seen the temple that Solomon had built. This new one wasn\u2019t going to be anything as grand as the old one. Its not that these folks were \u2018fuddy duddies\u2019 who didn\u2019t like anything new. They recognized that Israel had been reduced to little more than a stump of the tree it had once been. The new temple was symptomatic of that.

Yet, they too declared, God is good.

Why? Because God\u2019s love endures forever. Those old folks new this better than the young. They were the ones who had seen Israel\u2019s sin and they knew that the exile had been a result of this sin. Israel had done it to herself. God should have given up on them. But he hadn\u2019t. He had moved Cyrus to let Israel return to her own land, the land God had given them.

God\u2019s goodness was seen in his faithfulness despite Israel\u2019s sin. God was and is good. They could see that. They saw it in the beginning of the new Jewish community centred in the temple.

Yes, Israel was starting over. But she wasn\u2019t much.

I think we will all have the same experience when we gather for public worship next month. We\u2019ll be back but it won\u2019t be much.

Yet, God\u2019s goodness enables us to endure downturns. And it important to praise God, to declare that God is good, even when life is not. Because especially when we don\u2019t feel like it, praise becomes an act of faith. It\u2019s a declaration that God will see us through the darkness. And at times it is also a declaration that God will see us or a loved one through the vale of death. Jesus is our shepherd even then.

Nehemiah put it this way, "The joy of the Lord is your strength" (Nehemiah 8:10).