Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit · Sermon No. 819
Delivered on Lord’s Day Morning, July 5, 1868, by C. H. SPURGEON, at the Metropolitan Tabernacle, Newington..
“God, even our own God, shall bless us. God shall bless us.” Psalm 67:6, 7.
“GOD, even our own God.” What an exceedingly sweet title! What a loveliness and liveliness of heart must have been in the man who first applied that endearing name to the God of Jacob! Though it is thousands of years ago since the sweet singer of Israel thus spoke of the Lord of Hosts, the name has a freshness and even a novelty about it to believing ears, “God, even our own God.” I cannot resist touching that string again, the note is so enchanting to my soul! That word, “own,” or “our own,” seems always to throw an atmosphere of delicious fragrance about anything with which it is connected. If it is our country—
“Lives there a man with soul so dead,
Who never to himself has said,
‘This is my own, my native land?’”
Whether it is a land of brown heath and shaggy wood, or a far extended plain, all men love their own fatherland and in exile they are smitten with homesickness for their own country. It is so with regard to the house in which we were reared. That old roof tree, that ancient homestead—it may have been covered with thatch and have been one of a group of poor cottages, but still it was our own home and a thousand kindly thoughts gather around the fireside where we, in childhood, nestled beneath a parent’s wing. “Our own!” Why, all our relatives are endeared to us by the fact that they are our own!
“Father” is a silver word at all times. But, “our father,” “our own father”—how the name grows richer and turns to a golden word! “Our own child.” “Our own brother.” “Our own husband.” “Our own wife”—the words are most melodious. We even feel the Bible to be all the dearer to us because we can speak of it as “our own old English Bible.” As the Jew’s book, coming from God in Hebrew. As a book for the Greek, coming in its latter half to the Gentile in the Greek tongue, it was a priceless treasure. But translated into our own familiar Saxon tongue, and, on the whole, translated so well, our own English Bible is doubly dear to us.
The sweetness of the words, “our own” led me to call the hymn-book from which you sing, “Our Own Hymn-Book,” hoping that, perchance, the very name might help to weave your affections round about it. But what shall I say of “our own God”? Words fail to express the depth of joy and delight which is contained within these three monosyllables, “Our own God.” “Our own” by the Everlasting Covenant in which He gave Himself to us with all His attributes, with all that He is and has, to be our portion forever and ever!
“The Lord is my portion, says my soul.” “Our own God,” by our own choice of Him, a choice most free, but guided by His Holy Spirit so that we who should have chosen our own ruin were sweetly led to make our election of the Lord, because He had made His election of us. “Our own God”—ours to trust, ours to love, ours to fly to in every dark and troublous night—ours to commune with in every bright and balmy day, ours to be our Guide in life, our Help in death, and our Glory in immortality! “Our own God,” affording us His wisdom to guide our path, His power to sustain our steps, His love to comfort our lives, His every attribute to enrich with more than royal wealth!
The man who can truthfully, out of a pure heart, look up to the Throne of the infinite Jehovah, and call Him, “My own God,” has said a more eloquent thing than ever flowed from the lips of Demosthenes, or fell from the tongue of Cicero! You are favored beyond all men, you to whom this is a household word, “our own God.”—
“Our God! How pleasant is the sound! How charming to repeat! Well may those hearts with pleasure bound, Who thus their Lord can greet!”
I think the Psalmist used this expression in this sublime ode as a kind of argument and assurance of the blessing which he foretold. “God shall bless us”—that is true, it is to be believed, but, “our own God shall bless us”—that sentence flashes conviction upon the most timorous! It wears assurance as a frontlet between his eyes! It bears upon its surface its own evidence! If the Lord has been gracious enough to make Himself our own God, He did not do this for nothing—there is a loving intention in it. If in the tenderness of His compassion He has said, “I will be their God, and they shall be My people,” it must be with a design to bless us with unspeakable blessings in Christ Jesus!
Covertly, there is a powerful reason urged in the delightful title and the more we think upon it the more we shall see it. This morning I intend simply to keep to the words, “God shall bless us. God shall bless us.” They have been sounding in my ears like far-off bells, ringing their way with a march of music into the deeps of my soul. May the same angelic melody charm the ears of all my Brothers and Sisters in Christ Jesus. “God shall bless us. God shall bless us.”