“Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life.” The
idea seems to be that, in the poetry of this beautiful Psalm, Goodness
and Mercy are represented as two persons, just as we find first Mercy and
Truth as two persons meeting each other in Christ Jesus, and then
Righteousness and Peace, two other persons, kissing each other in Him.
{94a} So here we have the two persons: Goodness, the bearer of every
gift that can possibly be required, and Mercy dealing most graciously
even with sin; the two following the servant of the Lord, and never
leaving him all the way through. And you may observe they _follow_ him,
so that he does not always see them, and may not even know they are
there. He may sometimes imagine that he is forsaken and alone, but he is
strangely mistaken, for Goodness and Mercy are close behind, the one to
supply his need, and the other to deal graciously even with his sin.
If we are in Christ Jesus, we may be as sure of the future as of the
past. We may be perfectly certain of the truth of the words of the Good
Shepherd, “They shall never perish, neither shall any man pluck them out
of my hand.” {94b} That promise is so sure that it can never fail, that
hand so strong that all the powers of hell cannot pluck the weakest
little one from its grasp, that heart so true that we may be perfectly
certain He will never abandon one whom He has called by the Holy Ghost
into fellowship with Himself.