Psalm 31:19 – “I Wish”

As always, here’s my fairly literal translation of these verses:

¹⁹What great Your good which You have stored up to ones fearing You, have made to ones taking refuge in You, before the sons of mankind?

What a wonderful God we serve! Here we live in a world with an enemy who hates us and hounds us, who crushes us to the ground every chance he gets, who musters his minions in this world to do his hateful, murderous, lying for him. But we have a God who “stores up” goodness for us! We have a God who is more than ready to shower that goodness on us in the very sight of men – sometimes in the sight of those very minions so resolved to destroy us.

Satan must have loved it when he got to kill all of Job’s children and steal all his wealth, but what did God do? “The Lord blessed the latter part of Job’s life more than the first … he had seven sons and three daughters … Nowhere in all the land were there found women as beautiful as Job’s daughters … after this, Job lived a hundred and forty years; he saw his children and their children to the fourth generation. And so he died, old and full of years” (42:12-17). And not only did the Lord pour out all these blessings on poor Job, but He wrote down Job’s story to be a blessing to the human race for as long as there’s a sun in the sky!

Satan thought he was winning when he moved his minions the chief priests and the Pharisees and even Jesus’ own disciple Judas Iscariot to turn against Him, to beat Him, to torture Him, to lie about Him, and to murder Him. But in the blindness of his arrogant pride, Satan never dreamed that the greatest possible goodness of the Father’s heart was being poured out, even as he was reveling in the victory of his cruelty!

“How great is Your goodness, which You have stored up for those who fear You, which You bestow in the sight of men on those who take refuge in You.” What a treasure grace is! “The prodigal thought he had spent all in the ‘far country,’ but he found an ocean of love still flowing from his father’s heart” (The Biblical Illustrator, W. Birch).

Pause a moment and consider what there is for us who’ve chosen to fear Him, to take refuge in Him. See in this passage two aspects of God’s goodness toward us. First of all, there is no measure of the goodness he has “stored up” for us. Heaven is a pile of gold as big as all the universe and what is every little kindness He shows us but just a little foretaste, just a little cordial of that heavenly blessing stored up for us in Christ!

And those kindnesses are in fact cordials of that endless wealth of goodness which actually get “bestowed” upon us. Every day we enjoy His kindnesses. We know that His big kind heart is so great that He even makes His sun to shine on the evil and the good and His rain to fall on the just and the unjust. He does great good to the very people who hate Him and never will bow to Him. But those people will never know what you and I know. They’ll never see the unfathomable kindness that we enjoy every day!

I think it is a part of growing as Christians that we actually see more and more clearly those kindnesses. I will never forget the first time I really realized just how much I don’t deserve His mercy and yet He loves me with an everlasting love. But I feel today I see that very blessing all day every day, in a thousand different kindnesses.

I love too that He does it “in the sight of men.” That’s what I want Him to do. I want the world to know how kind He is. I want them to see what they’re missing – not because they see me but rather they see Him being great in His kindness to me.

Lord, help us to see Your kindness, but more than that, that others would see Your kindness to us, that You’d soften their hearts and draw them to You.

I wish the whole world could read this simple little verse and know all the same joy it gives us who know Him.

“Behold what manner of love the Father has lavished on us, that we should be called the children of God!”