“…surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life…”

Were I to ask you to list all the things in your life about which you are 100% sure, I’d expect that to be a fairly short list. Somewhat sure is not the same as quite sure and quite sure is not the same as entirely sure. There are, I suspect, a handful of things about which we have absolute confidence. I hope that you feel good about the stability of your key relationships and your job and overall security. Most of us have a high degree of confidence in our banking system and are reasonably sure that our deposits are safe. Yet it is another thing entirely to say that I am 100% certain of a matter. Well, as we come near the end of our phrase-by-phrase look at the 23^rd, we find David making just that kind of assertion. On this point, David is 100% confident.

As a poet might, David personifies the covenant attributes of God’s character, pursuing him throughout his life. The psalmist was able to say, “I am sure of this. For as long as I live, the goodness of God and his steadfast love will go everywhere I go.”  Two things will always accompany me: goodness and mercy.  God’s goodness is the comforting truth that binds him to act only in ways that are in perfect keeping with his perfections. All that he does is good and right. “Oh, how abundant is your goodness, which you have stored up for those who fear you and worked for those who take refuge in you, in the sight of the children of mankind!” (Psalm 31:19)

You may recognize this rich word rendered “mercy”.  It’s the scarcely translatable Hebrew word, hesed, carrying themes of love and loyalty and tenderness and grace and covenant. The nature of the word itself denotes certainty. This mercy of God is a stable thing and wherever go, it will follow you. Listen to Derek Kidner on this phrase:  “Mercy is the covenant-word rendered ‘steadfast love’ elsewhere. Together with goodness it suggests the steady kindness and support that one can count on in the family or between firm friends. With God these qualities are not merely solid and dependable, but vigorous—for to follow does not mean here to bring up the rear but to pursue, as surely as his judgments pursue the wicked”.  I love how Charles Spurgeon binds our Lord’s merciful readiness to receive sinners to his character.

“I tell you, if he were to shut you out, dear soul, whoever you may be,
if you go to him, he would deny himself. He never did deny himself yet.
Whenever a sinner comes to him, he becomes his Savior.
Whenever he meets a sick soul, he acts as his Physician. . . .
If you go to him, you will find him at home and on the look-out for you.
He will be more glad to receive you than you will be to be received. . . .
I tell you again that he cannot reject you.
That would be to alter his whole character and un-Christ himself.
To spurn a coming sinner would un-Jesus him
and make him to be somebody else and not himself any longer.
‘He cannot deny himself.’
Go and try him.” 

Trust that, friends. Rest there. I don’t know where you’re going tomorrow, but I can tell you that God’s goodness will follow and so will his steadfast love. Wrap yourself up in that confidence, Christian. Until the day of your death (and beyond that day), wherever you go and whatever you do, you will never be – even for a moment — outside the merciful care of God, who is by his very nature, always only good. Where you go, goodness and mercy go. How very kind he is to us!