My God

“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.”

1. 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 sobecause 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.

No man is truly converted until God takes His right place in relationship to him. The wicked forget God. The men of Belial defy God. The infidel denies God, but the child of God acknowledges God, submits to His authority and gives Him the throne of his heart. He does not give the Lord a secondary place and permit self to be first, for that would be to deify self and insult the Lord! He makes God to be God, that is first and sole in authority and power! This is a sure index of true conversion–when God is God in your soul. As I have already said, God is not God to a great many–He is but aname and nothing more to them. But when He becomes God and it is a great word, that–when He takes the place which the Creator, the Redeemer, the God should occupy–then is the soul converted, indeed!

Now, whether we were converted yesterday, or have known the Lord for 20, 30, or 40 years, I trust we can address our mother, the Church, and say as Ruth said to Naomi, “Where you lodge I will lodge: your people shall be my people, and your God my God.” These words, in the next place, may be regarded as the statement of the Christian’s belief–I mean, here, not merely his first confession of it, but his later statement of it. Here is our creed and our confession of faith! Take Thomas for the illustration. He has been very skeptical. Poor Thomas! He seems to have had too much brain and too little heart. He was always for fighting his way through intricate questions and for answering tough objections. If her were alive, now, if the Grace of God had not improved him, he would have been a “modern thought” Divine, a critical Brother suggesting more problems than all the rest of us could solve!

He must have tokens, marks and evidences, or else he will not believe! But he is highly indulged and the Savior permits him to put his finger into the prints of the nails and his hand into His side! And when he has done so, Thomas, by a strange but blessed logic infers the Deity of Christ from His wounds! He was the first, I believe, who had ever done so, but certainly not the last. And having, from the very wounds of his Lord’s body inspected His Deity, Thomas exclaimed, “My Lord and my God!” In this plain, decided testimony to our Lord’s Divinity, we all unite! It is the heartfelt confession of faith of every Christian in reference to the Lord Jesus! There is no room for two opinions on that point!

If there are any professing Christians in this world who do not call Christ, their God–well, Brothers and Sisters, we are sorry for them and pray the Lord to give them spiritual life and light. But as for us, the Man who bled on Calvary is “very God of very God” to us, and that in the broadest and deepest sense. As the angels bow before Him, so, also, do we! We count Him “worthy to receive Divine honor and power.” There are many differences of opinion in the Church of God which may be tolerated, but this is beyond all controversy and can never be a moot point! Here our protests against error must be firm and unmistakable.

I admired a remark that was once very merrily made by good William Gadsby when a Unitarian chapel had been erected near a Baptist place of worship. The story has been told to me that someone in the vestry was greatly mourning over the circumstance and saying what a sad opposition it was. Gadsby said, “Well, man, I do not see any opposition in it.” “But surely it is a great opposition, Mr. Gadsby. They deny the Deity of Christ.” “Why, man,” said Gadsby, “that is no opposition! Suppose you kept a baker’s shop and sold good bread, and a man came and opened an ironmonger’s shop opposite, would you call that an opposition? Certainly not, it is a different line altogether.”

And so it is. Where we preach the Deity of Christ, that is one line of things. But where that is denied, we cannot regard it as another form of Christianity! It is a different thing, altogether, quite as different as iron would be from bread. The Socinian is nearer akin to the Mohammedan than to the Christian. He who does not acknowledge the Deity of Jesus disowns Him altogether. I cannot see how Jesus Christ can be anything but one of two things–either the Son of God or claim. All the worse an impostor because he had a fine moral sense and yet employed even virtue’s self to aid his blasphemous ambition. He must have been either God or an arch-deceiver!

Brothers and Sisters, we will have no mincing of matters about that point! Charity is all very well, but the Truth of God comes first. “First pure, then peaceable,” is a good barometer for our judgment on such points. On the matter of our Lord’s Godhead we cannot, for an instant, hesitate–we do not merely believe Jesus Christ to be God, but we risk our eternal future upon that Truth of God! I am a lost man, I know, and for me there can be nothing but eternal destruction from the Presence of the Lord if the Savior, Jesus Christ, is not Divine! But He is Divine! This we will maintain in the teeth of all men as our confession of faith–Jesus Christ, the Son of the Highest, very God of very God, is my Lord and my God. Thus, my God is the first and last confession of faith of those who are under the New Covenant. It is the utterance, both of the babe in Grace, and of the more advanced Christian.

Furthermore, my Brothers and Sisters, the words, “My God,” have often been used to declare the determination of the Believer when he has been surrounded by opponents and persecutors. Grandly did old Micaiah use this expression when the false priests were round about him! Prophets who pretended to be inspired delivered their oracles and old Micaiah said, “As the Lord my God lives. Whatever my God says unto me that will I speak.” Neither less nor more did he speak, because he believed in Jehovah as being his God and submitted himself entirely to Jehovah’s sway. The false priests worshipped Baal, Moloch and Ashtaroth–but old Micaiah cared not what they worshipped–he knew who was his God and he avowed his God to their teeth.

O, you who call yourselves the people of God, be always ready to stand up for Jehovah in whatever company you may be, for there are many gods and many lords in our land at this time–and multitudes of professed Christians have turned aside from worshipping the God of Israel! They have set up new gods and the Eternal is despised. The Old Testament, they tell us, is an uncouth and harsh Revelation! The God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob is not at all the God of their fancy, for He is too terrible, too severe, too righteous, too just! They want a milder, gentler God and they pretend that Jesus Christ has revealed quite a different Deity from the God of the Old Testament. Ah, Brothers and Sisters, in this they greatly error, for the Lord changes not and is the same today under the Gospel as He was yesterday under the Law!

We believe in the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, “the God of the whole earth shall He be called.” We worship the God of Israel, the God who made the heavens and the earth, the God who divided the Red Sea, the God who spoke in thunder from Sinai! We believe that Jesus Christ has not come to reveal to us a new Deity, but to declare unto us the God who is from the beginning! Ours is the song of Zacharias–“Blessed be the Lord God of Israel; for He has visited and redeemed His people, and has raised up an horn of salvation for us in the house of His servant David; as He spoke by the mouth of His holy Prophets, which have been since the world began.” “This God is our God forever and ever! He shall be our guide even unto death.”–

“The God of Abraham’s praise is
Who reigns enthroned above,
Ancient of everlasting days,
And God of love!
Jehovah, Great I AM!
By earth and Heaven confessed,
I bow, and bless
Your sacred name,
Forever blest!”

The words, “my God,” may well express the secret vow of the Believer as he consecrates himself to the Most High–of this we have an instance in the life of Jacob. He said, “If God will be with me, and will keep me in this way that I go, and will give me bread to eat and raiment to put on, so that I come again to my father’s house in peace: then shall the Lord be my God.” We have each said that, I hope, many times, when we have renewed our vows unto the Lord. Though we have known the Lord for 20 or 30 years, yet, as we have needed Him anew in time of trouble, or as He has revealed Himself to us afresh in a way of deliverance, we have laid hold upon Him by faith, over and over again, and said, “Yes, He is my God.”

Have you ever felt your heart full to overflowing while thinking over such a text as this, “My Beloved is mine and I am His”? I do not know a more delightful contemplation for a quiet hour alone than to weigh each syllable of that promise, “I will be their God, and they shall be My people.” Look it over, turn it over, taste it, feed on it, digest it and see the mutual possession, even as in those other texts, “The Lord’s portion is His people,” and, “The Lord is my portion, said my soul.” Christ is ours and we are Christ’s! You cannot, dear Friend, do better than oftentimes hand over, again, the title deeds of your soul to God, yes, not of your soul, only, but of everything you have! For if you make an inventory of all you have to the last penny, it is your Lord’s. Even so is the Lord altogether yours and you should often renew your grasp of Him. Take Him to be your only Lord and God as long as you live and, while others boast in their treasures, be it your joy to cry, “Whom have I in Heaven but You? And there is none upon the earth that I desire besides You!” Thus with two words, “My God,” we avow our faith both in the presence of our enemies and before our Lord, Himself.

But I cannot linger here. I must have you notice, next, that these words, “My God,” have sometimes afforded the deepest possible comfort to children of God in times of terrible trouble. When our dear Lord and Master was in His greatest woe–when all the waves and billows of Judgment were going over His soul–the exclamation which came from Him at the climax of His grief was, “My God! My God.” True, it was attended with the question, “Why have You forsaken Me?” but still, as with a two-handed grip, He seemed to get a hold of God when He said, “My God! My God!” Driven to extremity, He settled His heart on that one point. There was the anchor hold of His hope, “My God, My God.”

He did not say, “My disciples.” They had all forsaken Him. He could not call on His mother and siblings–they were powerless to console. No arm, angelic or human, could minister to His aid. He was alone in the grasp of Death, unsupported and unsustained, forsaken of earth and Heaven, and left a prey to the powers of darkness, but this–this was the cry which kept Him alive and gave Him strength to bear, even to the end! “My God,” He said, “they have not robbed Me of You! My God, I will still appeal to You! Though You hide Your face and seem to forsake Me, yet I know You are still Mine and I hold fast to You to the end! My God! My God!”

You will never have to use those words in so dire an extremity of woe! But if you ever come into deep waters, may you have Grace to say, “My God,” for if you do, you will soon be enabled to shout, “It is finished.” “My God,” is a love note in days of peace and a war cry for hours of battle! It is mighty in times of joy, but it is still more potent in nights of sorrow. The man who can say, “My God,” is a match for Death and Hell! By that watchword he shall master sin and overthrow all the hosts of the world, the flesh and the devil. In this sign you may conquer! The watchword of victory is, “My God.”

Once more. Those words have been heard in cases precisely the opposite of deep distress. When very marvelous deliverances have been enjoyed, the expression, “My God” has frequently come from the lips of those who have experienced them. When Miriam took her timbrel and went forth in the dance because God had overthrown Pharaoh and his hosts, she sang a song which Moses had composed for her. And you will remember that one of the verses was–“He is my God, and I will prepare Him a habitation; my father’s God, and I will exalt Him.” She had never reached that point, “He is my God,” until Pharaoh’s hosts and his chosen captains had been drowned in the Red Sea–then she felt proud that she had such a God–and her faith exulted as she beheld His arm made bare!

Think, also, of Daniel and that happy moment when he exultingly called Jehovah his God. When the Prophet had been all night in the lion’s den, Darius comes, and with a plaintive cry he asks if Daniel yet lives. He is afraid the lions have devoured him. Do you notice Daniel’s answer? He says, “My God has sent His angel and has shut the lions' mouths.” You do not wonder that he said, “My God,” do you? I do not think he could have coolly said, “God–God has sent His angel.” He could not have spoken so coldly! The deliverance he had experienced, the great goodness of God in keeping him alive that night in the lions' den, made him feel that he must, with arms of love and faith, embrace the Omnipotent Preserver and call Him, “My God.”

Beloved, if you have experienced joyous deliverances of the same order, you have learned to say, “My God.” If you have seen your sins drowned in the Red Sea, you have said, “My God.” And if the lions have been chained and you have escaped their jaws, you, too, have said, “My God.” I earnestly hope that if the trouble which has now come upon you should prove to be sharper and more grievous than any before, it may turn out to have been sent in order that you may say, “My God,” with a deeper emphasis, and feel your soul more fully filled with the blessed meaning of those two matchless monosyllables!

So much, then, about the times when these words have been used. May the Spirit of God lead us to those specialties of experience in the midst of which these words shall become the frequent language of our hearts.

II. Briefly let us notice, in the second place, what this FIRST WORD, “MY”–“MY God,” means. In what sense and respects can God be mine? He fills Heaven and earth–can I call Him mine? “His tender mercies are over all His works.” I cannot set a hedge around His benevolence, or claim a monopoly of His compassion, can I? How, then, can I call Him mine? He is so inconceivable! He is boundless in Nature! His every attribute is Infinite! A man may call a province his own, for if it is within his compass, he can travel over it, or sail round it.

An emperor may call thousands of square miles his own, but still, the eagle’s pinion or the dove’s light wing can soar from boundary to boundary of his empire! The broadest dominion may be mapped and measured. But how can I call that mine which I cannot even conceive? If my thought cannot compass it, shall my heart possess it? Yes, yes, so the text says! “My God.” Love possesses what reason cannot even look upon! Still, what does this mean, this daring appropriation? Why, it must mean, this, among other things–first, that I acknowledge Him to be my God. Whatever gods others may have, Jehovah is God to me! To whomever Jehovah may be a name, he is God to me, and, as Father, Son and Spirit, three Persons in one blessed Unity, I adore Him!

He may be despised and rejected. There may be other names set up in competition with Him, but to me–to me–He is the only God! I wish that you in this assembly may all say at once, most heartily and distinctly–“Let others do as they will, but as for me and my house, we will serve the Lord.” I hope you will avow yourselves, this day, to be His people and take the God of Israel, the God and Father of your Lord Jesus Christ, to be your God! That is a part of the meaning. There is an acknowledging the Lord to be our God.

But, next, the words imply a personal recognition of Him. Venus and Jupiter and Bacchus–those ancient deities of Greece and Rome–we have all talked about them as myths and fictions. But as actual gods we ignore them–they are no gods to us! Some of us read classical books in our boyhood. I am sure they have done us more harm than good, but we have read them and, therefore, we know all about the imaginary history and doings of those most disgusting gods and goddesses. But we are very well aware that they are dreams and falsehoods–we know no such beings–they are nothing to us! We have heard, also, of Juggernauts, and of the thousands and millions of gods of the Hindus, but we have no acquaintance with them.

I have felt thankful when I have seen likenesses of Krishna and Siva, that they were no relations of mine! There is one god with an elephant’s head and another god with a cat’s head. I am delighted to think that I was never on speaking terms with such monsters and could never call them mine! If they are gods to others they are not so to us–we know them not, their names we despise–and their pretensions we detest. But, Brothers and Sisters, we know our God! It is true we have not seen Him at any time. “You saw no similitude,” said He, when He spoke to His people from the top of Sinai. We have neither heard His voice at any time, nor seen His shape. Yet as spirits speak to spirits we have been cognizant of the action of the Spirit of God upon our spirits!

You and I know that we have often been moved by one another’s spirits. This very night, while I am speaking, my spirit is known of your spirit, and you are recognizing my spirit while I speak. In much the same way the Holy Spirit, by His mysterious operations, has come into contact with our spirits so that though we know Him not by sight, hearing, taste, or smell–all of which deceive us–yet we recognize Him by an inner and Infallible sense which was created in us at our regeneration by the hand of God! That there is a God we know by spiritual perception. He has opened our ears so that we hear His voice. He has given us new sight by which we perceive Him and are even more assured of His Presence than we could be if we had the evidence of our eyes and ears!

He is not a God in cloudland to us, He is intensely real and true! He is a God with whom we speak. He is a God who calls Himself our Friend, our Father–a God who invites us to come and reason with Him–a God who assures us of the love of His heart! He is a God who tells us His secrets, for, “the secret of the Lord is with them that fear Him.” O men of the world, we are as sure of the existence of God and of His being ours as ever you can be sure of your gold or your lands! And we are as truly acquainted with Him as you are with your friends! Therefore it is that He is no longer simply God to me, but He is “My God.”

Just as when I know a man by familiar communion, he is not merely a friend, but he is, “my friend,” so has it come to pass between God and us and by each Believer, He is fitly styled, “My God.” I hope the matter has proceeded further than that. We not merely know that He is God and have not only recognized His Divine existence, but we have come into a relationship with Him. There is a natural and necessary relationship between God and His creatures, but it is not always recognized. When it is discerned by the soul, because the Spirit of God illuminates the heart, man rises into a new relationship to God and feels as he never felt before. For instance, he comes into the relationship of a pardoned child. Oh, if you have ever been forgiven, you will know Him that forgave you, and you will say, “My God.”

If you feel the Spirit of adoption, now, within your heart, you will know who adopted you and you will cry, “My God, my Father.” You receive of His bounty according to the gift of His Grace from day to day and, therefore, while consciously receiving abundant mercies from the Lord, you learn to say, “My God will supply all my needs according to His riches in Glory by Christ Jesus.” The heart of the matter lies in this–“My God” means that we have appropriated Him to ourselves. We take Him by a daring act of faith to be, from now on, God to us, and all that He is we take to be ours forever and ever!

May we do this? Brothers and Sisters, may we do this? Ah, yes, appropriating faith is warranted in the Covenant, for the Covenant runs thus, “I will be their God and they shall be My people.” It is justified, also, by the act of God, for did He not give His Son? And when He gave His Son to redeem us, could He withhold anything from us? Did He not, in that act, virtually give us Himself, for Christ is in the Father and the Father is in Him–and He that has received Jesus has received the Father! Say, “My Savior,” and you need not be afraid to say, “My God”! Moreover, not merely does the Covenant guarantee it and the act of God justify it, but there is the witness of the Spirit within us which has taught us our right to say, “My God.”

When we have said unto the Lord, “You are my God,” the Holy Spirit has not chided us, nor smitten our conscience, nor rebuked us for presumption, nor humbled us for pride on that account! But, on the contrary, peace has followed–calm rest, holy joy, quiet trustfulness and assured confidence–all of which are the true fruits of saying, “My God,” and at the same time the genuine works of the Spirit of God. Thus we know that we have not erred when we have made this claim. Moreover, dear Friends, we may expect our confidence and assured appropriation to become stronger and stronger as life goes on. We have not been wrong in saying, “My God,” for we have grown into saying it more and more in proportion as the Lord has sanctified us.

As we conquer sin, we say, “My God,” more assuredly, and as we grow in Grace we say, “My God,” with greater confidence. Therefore it cannot be wrong. We expect, in Heaven, to say, “My God,” still more positively. Beloved, how boldly we shall say it there! No sin, no doubts, no clouds to divide us from Him! Then shall we know that the Infinite Jehovah is ours to enjoy forever and ever! Oh, it is not crowns of gold, it is not music of sweetest harps, it is not palm branches or white robes of victory that our souls will most delight themselves in–we shall triumph in “God our exceeding joy!” “At His right hand are pleasures forevermore.”

We shall, in Heaven, always find it bliss to say to ourselves, “God is mine.” What God does is great, what God has is great, but what God is, is far more than what He does or has, because He can do and have infinitely more than He ever has done or has created! Yet it is God, Himself, and what He is which is ours forever! In grasping the Lord by faith and saying, “He is mine,” what a sweep the soul has made! It has, as it were, encompassed eternity, set its own seal upon infinity and appropriated all sufficiency!

III. Finally, let us spend two or three minutes upon the LAST WORD–“My GOD.” “GOD! What does it mean? Ah, now, you have asked me a question which I cannot answer! The wise man was asked, "What is God?” And he requested that he might have a day to consider his answer. When the sun had set, he said that he must have three days, for in thinking of it, the subject grew. They gave him three days and when these were over he demanded six days more, for the subject was greater than ever. When they called upon him at the six days' end, he claimed 12 days more, for the subject was still beyond him. They bade him take the 12 days and they would hear the result of his thoughts. The next time he said that he must have a month, and, at the month’s end, he gave them no information, but assured them he must have a year. When the year was over he confessed that he should need a lifetime–he should never be able to tell them what God was so long as he lived!

There is no defining the Incomprehensible One! Yet, Brothers and Sisters, you and I can call Him, “My God.” Let us reflect upon His being ours as to His Nature, His Person, His Essence. There is Father, Son and Holy Spirit–Three in One. Then the Father is my God–He has loved me, He has chosen me, He has begotten me, He has provided for me–He is my Father, my All. Then, too, the adorable Son is mine–Jesus, the Redeemer, the Prophet, Priest and King. The Intercessor, the Judge–He is mine. Then the Holy Spirit is mine–the Instructor, the Quickener, the Sanctifier, the Comforter. Dew, fire, wind, dove–whatever the metaphor under which He veils Himself–He is mine. The Father, the Son, the Holy Spirit–to these beloved and glorious of the one undivided Godhead, Faith says, “My God.”

When I have thought of the blessed Persons, let me think of His attributes. Omniscience is mine–the Lord knows everything for me. Omnipotence is mine–He will do everything for me. Justice is mine, reconciled to me by the death of Jesus. Mercy is mine, enduring forever. Truth is mine–He will keep His promise. Immutability is mine–He changes not and, therefore, I am not consumed. Rehearse all the attributes peculiar to the Divine Nature and say unto the Lord, “You are my God and therefore all Your blessed perfections and glorious attributes are mine.” Think of Him, again, in what He has done, as well as in what He is. As Creator He is my Creator–not merely as creating me, but as making “all things” for me–that I may richly enjoy them.

Whatever I look upon I may enjoy because He made it. He has made all things holy and the curse which sin engendered He has removed through the death of His Son. And now, as I traverse the world, I may delight myself in the works of the Creator and say, “These are Your glorious works, Parent of good, Almighty. And You give them to me that I may see You in them and enjoy them to Your honor.” The Lord is also our Redeemer and the Believer calls Him, “my Redeemer,” and, “my God.” It was my God that poured out His life unto death upon the bloody tree. My God has loved me and given Himself for me. The Lord is, moreover, the Sanctifier. He carries on the work of Grace in the soul and in this He is my God. He is the God of Providence and rules all things according to His will–and in that Character He is my God.

The Lord Jesus Christ will come to judge the world–and Heaven and earth shall pass away before the Glory of His face. But He that shall make Heaven rock and reel is my God–and He that shall make the rocks run like rivers and the stars fall like withered leaves from the tree is my God, the God of my salvation! Oh, is it not blessed to think of God in any light or aspect under which you are able to conceive Him and then be able to say at the end of it all, “He is my God in all His works and in all His relationships, in all His attributes and all His glories”? To me it is the utmost bliss at this moment to claim, with each one of my Brothers and Sisters, that He is my God. Do you know, if you could once say this–and I wish that every man, woman and child in this house, could, from the heart say, “My God”–if you could say this, it would sweeten so many things to you!

This Bible–how you would love this precious Bible, for then you would say, “It is my Book now, because it is my Father’s Book–my God’s Book.” You would value every line of it! There would be a new sweetness in every single verse because it is your Father’s handwriting, inspired by His own Spirit–that Spirit which belongs to you and it tells you of your own Savior–the Savior who loves you and who gave Himself for you. If you could call God your own, you would love the Sabbath supremely, because you would say, “It is my day because it is the Lord’s day–the day of my risen Savior. He has taken it to Himself and enclosed its hours for His own–and from now on I prize its earliest and its latest moments because they are His.”

A sense of the Lord’s being yours would make you love His people, too. When I first came to London from the village where I formerly preached, I was very glad to see anybody who came from that region. And if I had seen a dog wag its tail that I had once seen in that village I should have been pleased! I should have loved anybody for the sake of the dear old place and, surely, when you can say, “My God,” you love all the Lord’s people! Many a young Christian has been deceived by hypocrites because of his love to Christians–and that love is sometimes ruined by ill deeds. But where there is overflowing love to the Father, there will be affection for the family. Be it ours to show it!

If you see in any man anything that is like Christ, love him for it! If he is not all you would like him to be, remember that you, also, are not all you ought to be. Surely if Jesus Christ loves a man, you should love him, too. Seek your Brothers' and Sisters' good and aim at benefiting them because are one of Christ’s members. Love for Christ’s sake all those who can say, “My God.”

I do not know, but I seem to, myself, to have talked away and to have missed my aim and objective altogether, compared with what I have felt while meditating in private upon these dear and blessed words, “My God.” It is a deep well, but the water is cool and sweet if you can draw it up. “My God”–there is more than satisfaction in the words! If you have no money, never mind, you are rich if you can say, “My God.” If the husband is buried. If the children have gone home to Heaven, do not despair, your Maker is your Husband, if you can cry, “My God.” If your friends have forsaken you, if those who ought to have sustained you have been cruel and unkind to you, He changes not, and He bids you call Him, “My God.” If the unkindness of men drives you to say, “My God,” you will be a gainer by it! Anything which weans from earth and weds to Heaven is good!

I saw, yesterday, a park in which they were felling all the trees. And yet there were the poor cranes building on elms that were marked to be cut down. I thought to myself, “You foolish birds, to be building your nests there, for the woodman’s axe is ringing all around and the tall elms are tumbling to the ground.” We are all apt to build our nests on trees that will be cut down. We get to love the creature and to say, “My this,” and, “My that.” And from this weakness our sharpest sorrows arise. If you build nowhere but on the Tree of Life, which never can be felled–if you build nowhere but on the Rock of Ages which can never crumble–happiness will be yours of a safe and lasting kind. But you can only do this by saying, “My God”!

Now, I dare say there are some unconverted people here who wonder what we are making all this fuss about. They have their own hoarded treasures and cherished possessions. They see no beauty in God that they should desire Him. No, but let me tell you–you who have no God and no Savior–the day will come when you would give your eyes, no, you would give your very lives, if you could say, “My God.” Men have been worth thousands of pounds and when they have lain a-dying without God they have said of their gold, “It will not do!” They have had their moneybags brought to the bed and pressed them to their heart and said, “They will not cheer my soul, they will not calm my spirit.”

If you do not die crying out, “Woe is me that I die without God,” yet, at any rate, after death, when you shall have risen from the dead and you see the Judge–and you stand as a criminal before His bar–you will think yourself ten thousand times ten thousand fools in one that you ever lived and died without God and without Christ! How will infinite anguish rip your heart while you have to confess, “I tried to gain the world, but lost my soul! I am a fool of the worst order! Alas! That I should be such a maniac!”

O Sinner, I wish you would go to Jesus! May God’s Spirit lead you to Jesus tonight! Cry mightily to God that He would give Himself to you through Jesus Christ, the Savior! He will do it, for He waits to be gracious. Try Him! And God bless you all, for Christ’s sake! Amen. PORTION OF SCRIPTURE READ BEFORE SERMON–Psalm 37.

HYMNS FROM “OUR OWN HYMN BOOK”–774, 198.