Moreover by them Your servant is warned,
And in keeping them there is great reward. Psalm 19:11
From Charles Spurgeon on this verse– “We are warned by the Word both of our duty, our danger, and our remedy. On the sea of life there would be many more wrecks, if it were not for the divine storm-signals which give to the watchful a timely warning. The Bible should be our Mentor, our Monitor, our Remembrancer, and the Keeper of our Conscience. Alas, that so few men well take the warning so graciously given; none but servants of God will do so, for they alone regard the Master’s will. Servants of God not only find his service delightful in itself, but they receive good recompense; ‘In keeping them there is great reward.’ There is a wage, and a great one; though we earn no wages of debt, we win great wages of grace. Saints may be losers for a time, but they shall be glorious gainers in the long-run, and even now a quiet conscience is in itself no slender reward for obedience. However, the main reward is yet to come, and the word here used hints as much, for it signifies the word ‘heel,’ as if the reward would come to us at the end, when the work is done; – not while the labour was at hand, but when it was gone and we could see the ‘heel’ of it. Oh, the glory to be revealed! It is enough to make a man faint for joy at the prospect of it. It is enough to make a man faint for joy at the prospect of it. Our light affliction, which is but for a moment, is not worthy to be compared with the glory which shall be revealed in us [II Cor. 4:17.] Then shall we know the value of Scriptures when we swim in that sea of unutterable delight to which their streams will bear us, if we commit ourselves to them.”
From Phillips paraphrase, II Cor. 4:17-18–
“These little troubles (which are really so transitory) are winning for us a permanent, glorious, and solid reward out of all proportion to our pain. For we are looking all the time not at visible things but at the invisible. The visible are transitory: it is the invisible things that are really permanent.”
It was John Bunyan who gave us a keen statement on this verse of Psalm 19:11 and its focus towards the Word. Referring to the Bible he said–
“This Book will keep you from sin – or sin will keep you from this Book.”
May we people of His Book. Maranatha!