Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit · Sermon No. 1297
“My God.” Psalm 91:2.
IF YOU were to find honey in a tree and should wish to give some of it to your friends, I can imagine you cautiously taking it up in your hands, carrying it very carefully—and yet, when you reached the company, you would find, to your sorrow, a large part of it would have oozed out between your fingers—so that you had failed to convey to others what was so delicious to yourself. I fear I shall be in the same condition when this sermon is done and, therefore, I am the more eager to assure you at the beginning that the honey which I wish you to partake of is, indeed, of the very richest kind! My text has been, to my own heart, sweeter than honey and the honeycomb!
Have you ever been in the Alps, or in some other region where the scenery is peculiarly impressive? And has there happened a singular conjunction of sun and cloud, of brightness and shadow which has made the view before you to be transcendently sublime, or surpassingly beautiful? If so, when you have reached your companions, you have tried to tell them what you have seen, but in proportion as the scene has been exquisite and charming, you have been conscious of your inability to convey to them any satisfactory idea of the spectacle. If it had been a commonplace affair you could have accomplished the description and conveyed your impression of it to other minds.
But because of its being so altogether superior and out of the common way, you have failed, after the most earnest endeavors, to succeed, and you have exclaimed, “Ah, you should have been there, yourselves! Had you seen with your own eyes, you would then have understood my descriptions. But now the task of description is hopeless. Had you been there you would have known that I do not exaggerate! On the contrary, you would have felt that when I had spoken under the greatest excitement, I fell far short of the admiration which the scene awakens.”
It happens to me in happy hours that a text of Scripture becomes peculiarly delicious to my heart, even as marrow and fatness to the feaster—and these two words have been so. They filled my spirit with sweetness even to the fullest! But I fear that I cannot convey that sweetness to you. I have seen, in these two words, such a wonderful display of Divine condescension, of the Lord’s favor to His chosen, and of the intense delight which springs out of that condescension and favor that had I but been in the pulpit at the time, I could have preached with freedom, but now I do not find it so easy. Expression limps today where enjoyment leaped yesterday!
However, may God the Holy Spirit help you to see in the text what I have seen in it, even if I cannot point it out to you! And then our meditation will be remarkably delightful and profitable to us. May the Spirit of God bring fullness of meaning out of the text to your understanding and to your hearts. And may we all rejoice together as we go out of this Tabernacle, each one of us saying, “The Lord is my portion, said my soul.”
I. First let us think of these TWO WORDS TOGETHER. And to get at them, let us see when they have occurred in sacred history. Let us consider some of the more remarkable and special occasions upon which children of God have used these two words together and have said, “My God.” First, this is the young convert’s early confession. The first instance we will give is Ruth, who lovingly said to Naomi, “Where you dwell I will dwell: where you go I will go: where you lodge I will lodge: your people shall be my people, and your God my God.”
That last resolution was the avowal of a spiritual change. She might have been determined to lodge and to abide with her mother-in-law and there would have been but little in it. But when it came to this—“Your God shall be my God,” then there was hope that she had been delivered by the Grace of God from the bondage of idolatry and had come to put her trust under the wings of Jehovah, the living God! Ah, dear young converts, if the Lord has revealed your sinful state to you and has led you to Jesus Christ to find life and salvation, you will come forward and give yourself to the Lord and declare, “I will be Your servant, for You are my God.”—
“Lord, You are mine, forever mine, My heart is filled with joy Divine! Henceforth You shall my treasure be, And I will find my all in Thee.” You will next give yourself to the Church according to the will of God and you will tell the Church that you do so because from now on the God of the Church and the God of the Lord Jesus Christ shall be your God. You mean to dwell with the Lord’s people and live and die with them, for their God is your God. Some of you have lately been converted, or profess to have been so. I trust your profession is thoroughly truthful, but be sure you examine yourselves. Have you taken God to be your God? Not to be a mere name to you, nor as a sacred word to sing about and pray about—but as truly God to you? Is God, in very deed, your God? If He is, He will rule your soul, He will dominate your whole spirit and sway His scepter over your whole heart.