Psalm 31:19 Oh how great is your goodness, which you have laid up for them that fear you… The Divine goodness is not emptied out in heaps at our feet, when we first start in faith's pathway. Rather, it is kept in reserve for us until we need it, and then disbursed. 1. He laid up goodness in the creation and preparation of the earth. Think, for example, of the vast beds of coal laid up among earth's strata, ages and ages since, in loving forethought, that our homes may be warmed and brightened in these late centuries. Think of the minerals that were piled away in the rocks and hills, before there was a human footprint on the sand. Think of the laws of nature, as we call them, all arranged to minister to man's pleasure and benefit. Think of all the latent forces and properties that were lodged in matter, to be brought out from time to time, at the call of human need. Look at the medicinal and healing virtues, stored away in leaf, in root, in fruit, in bark, in mineral. 2. God laid up goodness for His people in His eternal covenant. It is a wonderful thought that before the world was made the plan of redemption was arranged, and blessings were laid up in the covenant of love for God's children. 3. The goodness of God was laid up for us by Jesus Christ, in His incarnation, obedience, sufferings and death. There is not a hope or joy of our Christian faith that does not come to us out of the treasures laid up by the obedience and the sorrows of our blessed Lord. 4. God has "laid up" His goodness. The word means hidden or reserved. The treasuries were not all opened at the beginning. The world is many centuries old, but every new century has seen new storehouses unlocked; and still we have not received all that God has to give. (1) This is true of the world of nature. Originally the wants of men were few and simple; but as the race multiplied and civilization advanced, new needs continually arose; and to meet these new needs, new supplies have been brought forth from God's treasuries. To illustrate: when primitive materials for light were about to be exhausted, the great reservoirs of oil in the bowels of the earth were disclosed; they were not then new made — they had been gathering there for ages — but the hidden stores were now first unlocked. And, further back, when the forests were being fast cut down and there seemed danger of a scarcity of fuel, the vast coal beds were found. In like manner, in these recent days, men are just discovering the powers of electricity — not a new creation, but an energy which has flowed silent and unseen through all space from the beginning, only to become known in these late days. (2) The same is true of the supply of the needs of individuals. No devout person can look back over the years of his own life and not see, how, always, just at the right moment, a treasure-house of goodness has been opened to meet his want. (3) The same is true of spiritual goodness. Take the Bible for illustration. It is a great treasury of hidden and reserved blessing. There has not been a chapter, not a line, added to the Bible, since the pen of inspiration wrote the last words; yet we know that every generation finds new things in the blessed Book. A young Christian cannot understand the deeper truths of spiritual life until he advances further in personal experience. There are many things that can be learned only when the heart has been prepared to receive them. 5. It follows, then, that the storehouses of goodness are not opened until we come to where they are. They are placed, so to speak, at different points along our path; the right supply always at the right place. At every river there is a bridge. In every desert there are oases, with their springs of water and their palm trees. For those who fear God and walk in His ways there is not a real need of any kind along the entire path to heaven's gate, without its goodness laid up in reserve. But we shall not get the goodness until we reach the point of need, where the supply is laid up. 6. God's goodness is laid up in heaven. The Rabbins say that when Joseph had gathered much corn in Egypt, and the famine came on, he threw the chaff into the Nile, that when the people who lived in the cities below saw it on the water they would know there was corn laid up for them. So, what we have in this world of Divine goodness is little more than the husks of the heavenly fruits, which God sends down upon the river of Grace as intimations to us and assurances of glorious supplies laid up for us beyond the grave. Life is full of unfulfilled hopes. But if we are God's children we shall find in heaven the blessed substance of every empty shadow we have chased in this world in vain, and the full fruition of every fair hope that on earth seemed to fade. The best is yet on before, and to the Christian, death, instead of being a loss, or a going away from goodness, is a glorious gain and a going to the richest, fullest, most soul-satisfying good. (J. R. Miller, D. D.) Parallel Verses KJV: Oh how great is thy goodness, which thou hast laid up for them that fear thee; which thou hast wrought for them that trust in thee before the sons of men! |
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