"Oh How Great Is Thy
Goodness!"
Psalm 31:19
Neither tongue nor pen
can ever tell the great goodness of our God. The best we can do is to observe
and declare that which is upon the surface of experience and the marrow of
Revelation. But to declare the essence of God's goodness would be to declare
the essence of God himself, and that cannot be done. Yet, I know this -
Goodness is that which God laid up for his people in eternity in the purpose of
his grace and that which he has wrought, is working, and shall work for his
people before the sons of men.
GOD HAS LAID UP
GOODNESS FOR HIS ELECT IN CHRIST IN HIS ETERNAL PURPOSE OF GRACE (Eph. 1:3). Before the worlds were made God bestowed every blessing of his
grace upon every sinner who shall ever trust his Son. Name something
good, truly good, whatever it is, it is the property of every believer.
Election, redemption, adoption, forgiveness, justification, preservation,
eternal life, these and all other good things have been given to God's elect in
Christ from eternity. And in eternal predestination God mapped the course by
which all the goodness of his grace must come to his elect.
THE LORD HAS WROUGHT
GOODNESS FOR US THROUGHOUT THE DAYS OF OUR LIVES (Rom.
AND HE SHALL WORK HIS
GOODNESS IN US BEFORE THE SONS OF MEN. I do not know how he will do it, but in
the last day, when God spreads the trophies of his grace before wondering
worlds, throughout eternity the Lord will cause his enemies and ours to see the
works of his goodness upon us. The rich man in hell will never cease to behold
the works of God's great goodness upon Lazarus in glory. "Oh how great is
thy goodness!"
Don Fortner