Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit · Sermon No. 451
“For the Lord’s portion is His people.” Deuteronomy 32:9. “The Lord is my portion, says my soul.” Lamentations 3:24. The love of God changes us into its own image, so that what the Lord says concerning us, we also can declare concerning Him. God is love essentially, and when this essential love shines forth freely upon us, we reflect it back upon Him. He is like the sun, the great father of lights, and we are as the moon and the planets—we shine in rays borrowed from His brightness. He is the golden seal, and we, His people, are the wax receiving the impression. Our Heaven is to be likeness to Christ and our preparation for Heaven consists in a growing imitation of Him in all things. See, Brethren, how the Lord gives the Word, and our heart, like an echo, repeats every syllable. The Lord loves His people and we love Him because He first loved us. He has chosen His saints and they also have made Him their chosen heritage. The saints are precious to Jesus and unto us who believe He is precious. Christ lived for us, and for us to live is Christ—we gain all things by His death and for us to die is gain. The Church is the looking glass in which Christ sees Himself reflected. She is like a fair songstress taking up the refrain of Jesus’ canticles of love, while He sings, “My sister, My spouse,” she answers, “My Beloved is mine and I am His.” It is most delightful to perceive how, through Divine Grace, Believers come to have the same feeling towards their God which their gracious Lord has towards them. Our two texts present us with an interesting instance—the Church is God’s portion—He delights in her, He finds in her His solace and His joy. But God is also, as the result of this, the Church’s portion—her full delight and bliss. Beloved, the love is mutual. And whereas the Lord is married to His people, we perceive that it is no forced match on either side. He voluntarily gave Himself to her and she joyfully surrenders her all to Him. His whole heart He gave unto His chosen people, and now they as voluntarily, though led by Divine Grace, give themselves to Him. And while He clasps His Church in His arms, saying, “You are My portion,” she returns the embrace and rapturously cries, “You are my portion, O Lord.”
As God shall help me, and relying only on His Divine assistance, I shall try to work out these two texts at some length. We shall commence with, “The Lord’s portion.”” We will then proceed to the second, “His people’s portion.”” I. “THE LORD’S PORTION IS HIS PEOPLE.”
1. The text teaches us that the Church of God is the Lord’s own peculiar and special property. “The earth is the Lord’s and the fullness thereof. The world and they that dwell therein.” By creation, as well as by Providence, Jehovah is the liege Lord and Sovereign possessor of the entire universe. Let none venture to dispute His claims, or say that He is not the great Owner of all things, for thus says the Lord, “Behold, all souls are Mine.” But He has a special property in His Church.
As a king may have ample possessions, to all of which he has undoubted right, still he has royal mansions and crown lands which are in a very special sense his own. So has the Lord of All a peculiar interest in His saints. As Osborne and Balmoral and Windsor belong to our sovereign by a tenure which differs from her title and claim to the United Kingdom, so the Church is the peculiar heritage of the King of kings. The whole world is God’s by common right. He is Lord of the manor of the universe. But His Church is His garden, His cultivated and fenced field, and if He should give up His rights to all the rest of the wide earth, yet He never could relinquish His rights to His separated inheritance. “The Lord’s portion is His people.”
How are they His? We answer, first, by His own sovereign choice. Before they were fashioned, all creatures lay in His mind’s eye in the mass of creatureship, and it was in His power to make whom He would as vessels unto honor. He did so ordain to make His chosen and set His love upon them. When they lay in the impure mass, having all fallen, it was still in His power, through the plan of redemption, to raise up some and to make these His own special heritage. This He did altogether apart from any goodness in them at the time, or any goodness which He foresaw in them.
He had mercy on whom He would have mercy and ordained a chosen company into eternal life. These, therefore, are His by election. As our text says, Jacob is the lot of His inheritance, or as the Hebrew has it, “the cord” of His inheritance, an allusion to the old custom of measuring out lots by a line or cord. So by line and by lot the Lord has marked off His own chosen people, “and they shall be Mine, says the Lord, in the day when I make up My jewels.”
They are not only His by choice, but by purchase. He has bought and paid for them to the utmost farthing, so that about His title there can be no dispute. Not with corruptible things, as with silver and gold, but with the precious blood of the Lord Jesus Christ, the Lord’s portion has been fully redeemed. There is no mortgage on His estate, no suits can be raised by opposing claimants, the price was paid in open court and the Church is the Lord’s freehold forever.