God Is Good: Simply the Gospel of Jesus Christ by Ivon Hartness is a heartfelt, chapter-by-chapter walk through the Gospel of Matthew, written as both a teaching guide and a personal testimony. Hartness begins with Jesus’ genealogy and birth, lingers over Joseph’s quiet righteousness, follows the wise men, John the Baptist, the Sermon on the Mount, the temptations in the wilderness, the parables, the cross, and finally the resurrection and Great Commission. The book’s central conviction is steady and unmistakable: God is good, Jesus is the promised Savior, and the Gospel is not merely information to study but truth meant to remake the heart.

What moved me most was the book’s sincerity. Hartness writes like someone who isn’t trying to impress a classroom but to sit beside a reader with an open Bible between them. I felt that especially in the early chapters, when Joseph’s choice to protect Mary becomes more than a familiar Christmas detail. It becomes a picture of restraint, mercy, and obedience under pressure. The same warmth appears in the discussion of the wise men, where Hartness gently corrects popular nativity assumptions without sounding smug, and in the resurrection chapter, where the stone rolled away is treated not as a theatrical flourish but as an invitation to look inside the empty tomb. That kind of devotional imagination gives the book its pulse.

Hartness is passionate, direct, and deeply personal. The book explores themes of grace, repentance, obedience, spiritual warfare, and the new heart, with a preacher’s urgency. For me, that made the book feel wonderfully earnest in places. When he writes about the Beatitudes as a progression of the soul, or about Jesus resisting temptation through Scripture, the theology feels authentic. I didn’t always find the style polished in a literary sense, but I found it honest, emotionally present, and anchored by a genuine desire to help readers encounter Christ rather than merely analyze Him.

I found God Is Good to be an affectionate, plainspoken, and conviction-filled guide to Matthew, one that values clarity over complexity and devotion. Its concluding emphasis on the risen Christ gives the whole book a fitting sense of arrival, like a long walk ending in morning light. I’d recommend it especially to newer believers, small-group readers, or Christians who want a warm devotional companion through Matthew.

Pages: 199