Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit · Sermon No. 374
“My Beloved is mine, and I am His.” Song of Solomon 2:16. THE Church says concerning her Lord, “My Beloved is mine, and I am His.” No “ifs,” no “buts.” The two sentences are solemn assertions. Not, “I hope, I trust, I think.” But, “my Beloved is mine, andI am His.” “Yes,” but you will say, “the Church must then have been gazing upon her husband’s face. It must have been a season of peculiar enjoyment with Him, when she could speak thus.” No, Brothers and Sisters, no! The Church, when she thus spoke, was in darkness, for in the very next verse she cries—“Until the day breaks, and the shadows flee away, turn, my Beloved, and be You like a roe or a young hart upon the mountains of Bether.” I say, Brothers and Sisters, this solemn certainty, this double assertion of her interest in Christ, and Christ’s interest in her, is the utterance of the Church even in her darkness, in the cheerless season of His absence! So then, you and I, if we believe in Christ, ought, even when we do not see His face, still to cultivate full assurance of faith, and never be satisfied unless we can say, “My Beloved is mine, and I am His.” When you cannot say this, my Hearer, give no sleep to your eyes, nor slumber to your eyelids. Be not happy; take no solace find no comfort as long as there is any doubt about your union with the Beloved—His possession of you and your possession of Him! We will now, having thus prefaced the text, come at once to it. There are two members, you perceive, to the sentence, “My Beloved is mine, and I am His.” These two things come in a strange order, you will say, “Surely we are first Christ’s, before Christ is ours.” A right thought of yours. We shall take the text, then, this evening two ways. We shall first speak of it as it would be in the order of time. “I am my Beloved’s, and my Beloved is mine.” We shall afterwards speak in the order of the text, which is the order of experience. The words as Solomon penned them, are not the order of fact as far as God is concerned, but the order in which we find out God’s great doings! You know God’s first things are our second things, and our second things are God’s first things. “Make your calling and election sure.” Calling is your first thing—election is the second. But election is God’s first thing, and calling is the next! You are not elected because you are called; and yet, at the same time, you shall never know your election until first you have made your calling and election sure! The order of the text is the order of experience. We shall take the members of the sentence as they would be if they spoke in the order of fact. I. To begin, then. I AM MY BELOVED’S, AND MY BELOVED IS THEREFORE MINE. 1. “I am my Beloved’s.” Glorious assertion! I am His by His Father’s gift Long before suns and moons were made, and stars twinkled in the midnight darkness, God the eternal Father had given the chosen to Christ, to be His heritage and marriage dowry. If God, then, has given my soul to Christ, I am my Beloved’s. Who shall dispute the right of God to give, or who shall take from Christ that which His Father has given to be His heritage? Fiends of Hell! Legions of the Pit! When God gives, can you take back the gift? If He puts the souls of the chosen into the hands of Christ, can you pluck them from Him? If He makes them Christ’s sheep, can you pluck them out of His fold, and make them your own? God forbid we should indulge the blasphemous thought, that any can dispute the ownership which Christ has in His people, derived from His Father’s gift! But I am my Beloved’s, if I am a Believer, because of Jesus Christ’s purchase of me. We were bought not with corruptible things, as with silver and gold, but with the precious blood of Christ. Christ has an absolute right to all that He bought with His blood. I do not believe in that dreamy atonement, by which Christ redeems, and purchases, and yet the purchase is a fiction, and the redemption a metaphor! All that Christ bought with blood He will have. If a man buys with gold and silver of an honest man, he gets his own, nor will he be content until he does; but when Christ ransoms with His blood and buys of God Himself, and redeems His own people, it is not possible that He should be frustrated of His purpose or denied the objective of His death! I am my Beloved’s then, because He has paid the full price for me, counted down the purple drops, and positively and surely has as much bought me with His money as ever Abraham of old bought flocks of sheep and oxen, or as ever of old Jacob served for Rachel and for Leah. No title deeds ever made estate more truly the property of the purchaser, than did the Resurrection guarantee the rights of Christ in the “purchased possession.” “I am my Beloved’s,” by a double tie—by the Father’s gift, and by the Son’s Divine purchase. These two things are not easily reconcilable to some minds. But let it be carried in your hearts as a matter of fact, that there is as much Grace in the Father’s giving the elect to Christ as if no price were paid, and secondly, that there was as full and true a price paid to the Father as though the Father had been Justice only and not Love. The Grace of God and His justice are, both of them, full-orbed, they are never eclipsed; they are never made to you with divided luster; He is as gracious as though He were not just; He is as awfully severe as though there were no Grace in His Nature. But more than this, “I am my Beloved’s,” for I am His by conquest. He fought for me, and He won me, let Him possess me. He went alone to that great battle. He defied all the hosts which had made me their prey, encountered first my sins, and slew them with His blood, He encountered Satan himself next, and bruised the serpent’s head, encountered Death, and slew him by “destroying him that had the power of death, that is, the devil.” O Christ! You deserved to have those for whom You did wrestle and agonize even unto blood, and who by Your strong hand, You brought out of the land of their captivity! Never could a conqueror claim a subject so justly as Christ claims His people; they were not only His, eternally His, by the purchase of His blood, but they are His because He has taken them by overwhelming might, having delivered them out of the hand of him who was stronger than they! That word which He gird upon His thigh, is both the right by which He claims, and the might by which He keeps His ransomed. Besides this, every true Believer can add, “I am my Beloved’s,” by a gracious surrender. “With full consent I give myself to You.” This is your language, Brothers and Sisters. It is mine. “I am my Beloved’s.” If I were never His before, I do desire to give myself up to Him now. His love shall be the fetters in which I, a happy captive, will walk at His triumphant chariot wheels. His Grace shall bind me with its golden chains so that I will be free, and yet His bondman forever. The mercies of each hour shall be fresh links, and the benefits of each day and night shall be new rivets to the chain. No Christian would like to be his own; to be one’s own is to be lost; but to be Christ’s is to be saved! To be one’s own is to be a wandering sheep; to be Christ’s is to return to the great Bishop and Shepherd of our souls. Do you not remember, many of you, the night when you first surrendered to Christ? He stood at the door and knocked—the door was overgrown with brambles; the hinges had rusted from long disuse; the key was lost; the keyhole of the lock was welded together with filth and rust. Yes, from within the door was bolted fast! He knocked—at first a gentle knock, enough to let you know who it was. You laughed. He knocked again. You heeded not; you heard His voice as he cried, “Open to Me, open to Me. My hair is wet with dew, and My locks with the drops of the night.” But you had a thousand frivolous excuses, and you would not open to Him! Oh, do you remember when at last He put in his hand by the hole of the lock, and your heart was moved for Him? “Jesus! Savior! I yield, I yield! I can hold out no longer, my heart melts. My cruel soul relents. Come in! Come in! Please pardon me that I have kept You out so long; resisted so long the wooings of Your heavenly love.” Well, you will say tonight, and set your solemn hand and seal to it, that you are Christ’s because you do once again, voluntarily and freely, surrender yourself to Him! I think tonight would be a very proper occasion for each of us to renew our dedication vows. We are, many of us, Believers; let us go to our chamber and say thus—“O God! You have heard our prayers as a Church. We have entered into Your house; we have seen it filled to the full. By this, the answer which You have given to our prayers, we rededicate ourselves to You, desiring to say with the spouse more fully than heretofore, ‘I am my Beloved’s.’”