NO. 1297<\/b><\/p>\n
A SERMON DELIVERED ON LORD\u2019S-DAY MORNING, MARCH 30TH, 1876,<\/b><\/p>\n
BY C. H. SPURGEON,<\/i><\/p>\n
AT THE METROPOLITAN TABERNACLE, NEWINGTON.<\/b><\/p>\n
\u201cMy God.\u201d \u2014 Psalm 91:2.<\/i><\/p>\n
If You were to find honey in a wood, and should wish to give some of it to your friends, I can imagine your cautiously taking it up in your hands, and carrying it very carefully, and yet when you reached the company you would find, to your sorrow, that a large part of it had 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 a like 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 honey-comb. Have you 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 on account 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, \u201cAh, 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 have spoken under the greatest excitement I have fallen far short of the admiration which the scene awakens.\u201d 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 full; 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\u2019s 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 to-day 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 understandings and to your hearts, and may we all rejoice together as we go out of this Tabernacle, each one of us saying, \u201cThe Lord is my portion, saith my soul.\u201d<\/p>\n
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I. <\/b>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 \u201cMy God.\u201d<\/p>\n
First, this is the young convert\u2019s early confession<\/i>. The instance we will give is Ruth, who lovingly said to Naomi, \u201cWhere thou dwellest I will dwell: whither thou goest I will go: where thou longest I will lodge: thy people shall be my people, and thy God my God.\u201d 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 \u2014 \u201cThy God shall be my God,\u201d 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 estate 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, \u201cI will be thy servant, for thou art my God.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cLord, thou art mine, for ever mine,
My heart is filled with joy divine;
Henceforth thou shalt my treasure be,
And I will find my all in thee.\u201d<\/i><\/b><\/p>\n
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 henceforth the God of the church and the God of the Lord Jesus Christ shall be your God. You mean to dwell with the Lord\u2019s people and live and die with them, for their God is your God.<\/p>\n
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 \u2014 but as truly God<\/i> to you. Is God in very deed your God<\/i>? for if he be 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 owns 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; but he makes God to be God<\/i>, that is first and sole in authority and power. This is a sure index of true conversion \u2014 when God is God<\/i> in your soul. As I have already said, God is not God to a great many, he is but a name, and nothing more to them; but when he becomes God<\/i> and it is a great word that \u2014 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 twenty, thirty, or forty years, I trust we can address our mother, the church, and say as Ruth said to Naomi, \u201cWhere thou lodgest I will lodge: thy people shall be my people, and thy God my God.\u201d<\/p>\n
These words, in the next place, may be regarded as the statement of the Christian\u2019s belief<\/i>: I mean here not merely his first confession of it, but his after statement of it. Here is our creed and our confession of faith. Take Thomas for the illustration. He has been very sceptical. 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; had he been alive now if the grace of God had not improved him, he would have been a \u201cmodern thought\u201d 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 tine 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\u2019s body infected his deity, he exclaimed, \u201cMy Lord and my God!\u201d In this plain, decided testimony to our Lord\u2019s 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 be any professing Christians in this world who do not call Christ their God \u2014 well, brethren, 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 \u201cvery God of very God\u201d to us, and that in the broadest and deepest sense. As the angels bow before him, so also do we; we count him \u201cworthy to receive honor and power divine.\u201d 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, \u201cWell, man, I do not see any opposition in it.\u201d \u201cBut surely it is a great opposition, Mr. Gadsby. They deny the deity of Christ.\u201d \u201cWhy, man,\u201d said Gadsby, \u201cthat is no opposition. Suppose you kept a baker\u2019s shop, and sold good bread, and a man came and opened an ironmonger\u2019s shop opposite, would you call that an opposition? Certainly not, it is a different line altogether.\u201d 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 own the deity of Jesus disowns him altogether. I cannot see how Jesus Christ can be anything but one of two things \u2014 either the Son of God or else a gross impostor who allowed his disciples to think him divine, and used the virtues of his character to support his claim; all the worse an impostor because he had a fine moral sense, and yet employed even virtue\u2019s self to aid his blasphemous ambition. Either God or an arch-deceiver he must have been. Brethren, we will have no mincing of matters about that point. Charity is all very well, but truth comes first. \u201cFirst pure, then peaceable\u201d is a good lolls for our judgment on such points. On the matter of our Lord\u2019s 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. 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, Christ, be not divine. But he is divine. This we will maintain in the teeth of all men as our confession of faith \u2014 Jesus Christ, the Son of the Highest, very God of very God, is my Lord and my God<\/i>.<\/p>\n
Thus, then, 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.<\/p>\n
Furthermore, my brethren, the words, \u201cA God,\u201d have often been used to declare the determination of the believer when he has been surrounded by opponents and persecutors<\/i>. 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, \u201cAs the Lord my God liveth. Whatsoever my God saith unto me that win I speak.\u201d Neither less nor more did he speak, because he believed in Jehovah as being his God, and submitted himself entirely to Jehovah\u2019s 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, ye who call yourselves the people of God, be ready always to stand up for Jehovah in whatever company you may be; for there are many gods and many lords in our land at this day, 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 a revelation uncouth and harsh: the God of Abraham, and 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, brethren, in this they greatly err, for the Lord changeth not, and is the same to-day under the gospel as he was yesterday under the law. We believe in the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, \u201cthe God of the whole earth shall he be called.\u201d We worship the God of Israel, the God who made the heavens and the earth, the God who cleft the Red Sea, the God who spake 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: \u201cBlessed be the Lord God of Israel; for he hath visited and redeemed his people, and hath raised up an horn of salvation for us in the house of his servant David; as he spake by the mouth of his holy prophets, which have been since the world began.\u201d \u201cThis God is our God for ever and ever: he shall be our guide even unto death.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThe God of Abraham praise
Who reigns enthroned above,
Ancient of everlasting days,
And God of love!
Jevohah, Great I AM!
By earth and heaven confest;
I bow, and bless the sacred name,
For ever blest!\u201d<\/i><\/b><\/p>\n
The words \u201cmy God\u201d may well express the secret vow of the believer as he consecrates himself to the most High<\/i>: of this we have an instance in the life of Jacob. He said, \u201cIf 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\u2019s house in peace: then shall the Lord be my God<\/i>.\u201d 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 twenty or thirty 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 again and said, \u201cYes, he is my God<\/i>.\u201d Have you never felt your heart full to overflowing while thinking over such a text as this, \u201cMy Beloved is mine and I am his\u201d? I do not know a more delightful contemplation for a quiet hour alone than to weigh each syllable of that promise, \u201cI will be their God, and they shall be my people.\u201d Look it over, turn it over, taste it, feed on it, and digest it, and see the mutual possession, even as in those other texts, \u201cThe Lord\u2019s portion is his people,\u201d and \u201cThe Lord is my portion saith my soul.\u201d Christ is ours, and we are Christ\u2019s. You cannot, dear friend, do better than oftentimes hand over again the title-deeds of your soul to God, yea, 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\u2019s. 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, \u201cWhom have I in heaven but thee, and there is none upon the earth that I desire beside thee.\u201d Thus with two words, \u201cMy God<\/i>,\u201d we avow our faith both in the presence of our enemies and before our Lord himself.<\/p>\n
But I cannot linger here. I must have you notice next, that these words, \u201cMy God\u201d have sometimes afforded the deepest possible comfort to children of God in times of terrible trouble<\/i>. When our dear Lord and Master was in his greatest woe \u2014 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, \u201cMy God! My God.\u201d True, it was attended with the question, \u201cWhy hast thou forsaken me?\u201d but still, as with a two-handed grip, he seemed to get a hold of God when he said, \u201cMy God! My God!<\/i>\u201d Driven to extremity, he settled his heart on that one point. There was the anchor hold of his hope, \u201cMy God, my God.\u201d He did not say, \u201cMy disciples\u201d: they had all forsaken him. He could not call on his mother and brethren: they were powerless to console. To 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 \u2014 this was the cry which kept him alive, and gave him strength to bear even to the end. \u201cMy God,\u201d saith he, \u201cthey have not robbed me of thee. My God, I still will appeal to thee. Though thou hide thy face and seem to forsake me, yet I know thou still art mine, and I hold thee fast to the end. My God! my God! \u201cYou will never have to use those words in so dire an extremity of woe; but if hereafter you ever come into deep waters, may you have grace to say, \u201cMy God,\u201d for if you do you will soon be enabled to shout, \u201cIt is finished.\u201d \u201cMy God,\u201d 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 \u201cMy God,\u201d 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 thou mayest conquer: the watchword of victory is, \u201cMy God.\u201d<\/p>\n
Once more. Those words have been heard in cases precisely the opposite of deep distress<\/i>. When very marvellous deliverances have been enjoyed, the expression \u201cMy God\u201d 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 \u2014 \u201cHe is my God<\/i>, and I will prepare him a habitation; my father\u2019s God, and I will exalt him.\u201d She had never reached that point, \u201cHe is my God,\u201d until Pharaoh\u2019s 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\u2019s 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\u2019s answer? He says, \u201cMy God<\/i> hath sent his angel, and hath shut the lions\u2019 mouths.\u201d You do not wonder that he said \u201cMy God,\u201d do you? I do not think he could have coolly said, \u201cGod<\/i> \u2014 God hath sent his angel.\u201d 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\u2019 den, made him feel that he must with arms of love and faith embrace the Omnipotent Preserver, and call him \u201cMy God.\u201d Beloved, if you have experienced joyous deliverances of the same order, you have learned to say, \u201cMy God.\u201d If you have seen your sins drowned in the Red Sea you have said, \u201cMy God,\u201d and if the lions have been chained, and you have escaped their jaws, you, too, have said, \u201cMy God.\u201d 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 \u201cMy God\u201d with a deeper emphasis, and feel your soul more fully filled with the blessed meaning of those two matchless monosyllables.<\/p>\n
So much, then, about the times when these words have been used. May the Spirit of God lead us to those specialities of experience in the midst of which these words shall become the frequent language of our hearts.<\/p>\n
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II. <\/b>Briefly let us notice in the second place what means this First Word \u201cMy\u201d \u2014 \u201cMy God.\u201d In what sense and respects can God be mine? He fills heaven and earth \u2014 can I call him mine? \u201cHis tender mercies are over all his works\u201d: I cannot set a hedge around his benevolence, or claim a monopoly of his compassion. How, then, can I call him nine? He is so inconceivable; he is boundless in nature; his every attribute is infinite. A man may call a province his own, for it is within his compass, he can travel over it, or sail round it: an emperor may call thousands of square miles his own, for, still, the eagle\u2019s pinion or the dove\u2019s 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. \u201cMy God.\u201d Love possesses what reason cannot even look upon.<\/p>\n
Still, what means this daring appropriation? Why, it must mean this among other things: first, that I own him to be my God<\/i>. Whatever gods others may have, Jehovah is God to me. To whomsoever 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 \u2014 to me \u2014 he is the only God. I wish that you in this assembly may all say at once, most heartily and distinctly, \u2014 \u201cLet others do as they will, but as for me and my house, we will serve the Lord.\u201d 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 owning the Lord to be our God.<\/p>\n
But, next, the words imply a personal recognition of him<\/i>. 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 Juggernauth, and of the thousands and millions of gods of Hindustan, 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\u2019s head, and another god with a cat\u2019s head: I am delighted to think that I was never on speaking terms with such monsters, and could never call them mine. If they be gods to others they are not so to us: we know them not, their names we despise, and their pretensions we detest. But, brethren, we know our God. It is true we have not seen him at any time. \u201cYe saw no similitude,\u201d said he, when he spake to his people from the top of Sinai. We have neither heard his voice at any time, nor seen hue 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\u2019s 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, and hearing, and taste, and 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 ear 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: a God who calls himself our lend, our Father; a God who invites us to come and reason with him a God who assures us of the love of his heart; a God who tells us his secrets, for \u201cthe secret of the Lord is with them that fear him.\u201d 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. Hence it is that he is no longer simply God to me, but he is \u201cMy God<\/i>.\u201d Just as when I know a man by familiar intercourse, he is not merely a friend, but he is \u201cmy friend,\u201d so has it come to pass between God and us; and by each believer he is fitly styled, \u201cMy God.\u201d<\/p>\n
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 relations with him. There is a natural and necessary relation 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 relation of a pardoned child. Oh, if you have ever been forgiven you will know him that forgave you, and you will say, \u201cMy God.\u201d If you feel the Spirit of adoption now within your heart you will know who adopted you, and you will cry, \u201cMy God, my Father.\u201d 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, \u201cMy God<\/i> will supply all my needs, according to his riches in glory by Christ Jesus.\u201d<\/p>\n
The pith of the matter lies in this. \u201cMy God\u201d means that we have appropriated him to ourselves<\/i>. We take him by a daring act of faith to be henceforth God to us, and all that he is we take to be ours for ever and ever. May we do this? Brethren, may we do this? Ah, yes, appropriating faith is warranted in the covenant, for the covenant runs thus, \u201cI will be their God, and they shall be my people.\u201d 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 hath received Jesus hath received the Father. Say \u201cMy Savior,\u201d and you need not be afraid to say \u201cMy God.\u201d Moreover, not merely does the covenant warrant it, and the act of God justify it, but there is the witness of the Spirit within us, which hath taught us our right to say, \u201cMy God.\u201d When we have said unto the Lord, \u201cThou art my God,\u201d 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 \u2014 calm rest, holy joy, quiet trustfulness, and assured confidence, all of which are the true fruits of saying, \u201cMy God,\u201d 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 \u201cMy God,\u201d for we have grown into saying it more and more in proportion as the Lord has sanctified us. As we conquer sin, we say, \u201cMy God\u201d more assuredly, and as we grow in grace we say, \u201cMy God\u201d with greater confidence: therefore it cannot be wrong. We expect in heaven to say \u201cMy God\u201d 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 for ever 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 \u201cGod our exceeding joy.\u201d \u201cAt his right hand are pleasures for evermore.\u201d We shall even in heaven find it bliss to say to ourselves, \u201cGod is mine.\u201d What God does<\/i> is great, what God has<\/i> is great, but what God is<\/i> 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 for ever. In grasping the Lord by faith, and saying, \u201cHe is mine,\u201d what a sweep the soul has made! It has, as it were, encompassed eternity, set its own seal upon infinity, and appropriated All sufficiency.<\/p>\n
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III. <\/b>Finally, let us spend two or three minutes upon the Last Word \u2014 \u201cMy God.\u201d \u201cGod! What does it mean? Ah, now, you have asked me a question which I cannot answer. The wise man was asked \u201cWhat is God?\u201d 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\u2019 end, he claimed twelve days more, for the subject was still beyond him, They bade him take the twelve 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\u2019s 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, brother, you and I can call him \u201cMy God.\u201d<\/p>\n
Let us reflect upon his being ours as to his nature, his person, his essence. There is Father, Son, and Holy Spirit \u2014 three in one: then the Father is my God: he hath loved me, he hath chosen me, he hath begotten me, hath provided for me, he is my Father, my all. Then, too, the adorable Son is mine \u2014 Jesus, the Redeemer, the Prophet, Priest, and King, the Intercessor, the Judge, is mine. Then the Holy Spirit is mine \u2014 the Instructor, the Quickener, the Sanctifier, the Comforter. Dew, fire, wind, dove \u2014 whatever the metaphor under which he veils himself \u2014 he is mine. The Father, the Son, the Holy Spirit \u2014 to these beloved and glorious of the one undivided Godhead faith says, \u201cMy God.\u201d<\/p>\n
When I have thought of the blessed persons let me think of his attributes<\/i>. 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 for ever. Truth is mine, he will keep his promise. Immutability is mine, he changeth not, and therefore I am not consumed. Rehearse all the attributes peculiar to the divine nature and say unto the Lord \u201cThou art my God, and therefore all thy blessed perfections and glorious attributes are mine.\u201d<\/p>\n
Think of him again in what he has done<\/i>, as well as in what he is. As Creator he is any Creator; not merely as creating me, but as making \u201call things\u201d for me, that I may richly enjoy them. Whatever I look upon I may enjoy, because he made it. He hath 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, \u201cThese are thy glorious works, Parent of good, Almighty; and thou givest them to me that I may see thee in them and enjoy them to thine honor.\u201d The Lord is also our Redeemer, and the believer calls him \u201cmy Redeemer\u201d and \u201cmy God.\u201d It was my God<\/i> that poured out his life unto death upon the bloody tree. My God<\/i> hath 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 ruleth 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 of him, and then to be able to say at the end of it all, \u201cHe is my God in all his works and in all his relationships, in all his attributes, and all his glories\u201d? To me it is the utmost bliss at this moment to claim with each one of my brethren that he is my God<\/i>.<\/p>\n
Do you know, if you could once say this \u2014 and I do wish that every man, and woman, and child in this house could from the heart say, \u201cMy God\u201d \u2014 if you could say this, it would sweeten so many things to you. This book \u2014 how you would love this precious Bible, for then you would say, \u201cIt is my book now, because it is my Father\u2019s book \u2014 my God\u2019s book.\u201d You would value every line of it. There would be a new sweetness in every single verse, because it is your Father\u2019s handwriting, inspired by his own Spirit \u2014 that Spirit which belongs to you, and it tells you of your own Savior \u2014 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, \u201cIt is my day, because it is the Lord\u2019s day \u2014 the day of my risen Savior. He has taken it to himself, and enclosed its hours for his own, and now henceforth I prize its earliest and its latest moments because they are his.\u201d A sense of the Lord\u2019s 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, \u201cMy God,\u201d you love all the Lord\u2019s people. Many a young Christian has been deceived by hypocrites because of his love to Christians, and that love is sometimes abated by such 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 brother\u2019s good and aim at benefiting him because he is one of Christ\u2019s members. Love for Christ\u2019s sake all those who can say \u201cMy God.\u201d<\/p>\n
I do not know, but I seem to myself to have talked away and to have missed my aim and object altogether, compared with what I have felt while meditating in private upon these dear and blessed words, \u201cMy God.\u201d It is a deep well, but the water is cool and sweet if you can draw it up. \u201cMy God,\u201d \u2014 there is more than satisfaction in the words. If you have no money, never mind; you are rich if you can say, \u201cMy God.\u201d If the husband is buried, if the children have gone home to heaven, do not despair, thy Maker is thy husband, if you can cry, \u201cMy God.\u201d 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, \u201cMy God.\u201d If the unkindnesses of men drive you to say \u201cMy God, you will be a gainer by them. 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 crones building on elms that were marked to be cut down. I thought to myself, \u201cYou foolish birds to be building your nests there, for the woodman\u2019s axe is ringing all around and the tall elms are tumbling to the ground.\u201d We are all apt to build our nests on trees that will be cut down. We get to love the creature and to say, \u201cMy this,\u201d and \u201cMy that;\u201d 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 \u201cMy God.\u201d<\/p>\n
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, and they see no beauty in God that they should desire him. No, but let me tell you \u2014 you who have no God and no Savior \u2014 the day will come when you would give your eyes, nay, you would give your very lives, if you could say \u201cMy God.\u201d Men have been worth thousands of pounds, and when they have lain a-dying without God they have said of their gold, \u201cIt will not do!\u201d<\/p>\n
They have had their money-bags brought to the bed, and pressed them to their heart, and said, \u201cThey will not cheer my soul, they will not calm my spirit.\u201d If you do not die crying out \u201cWoe is me that I die without God,\u201d 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 ever you lived and died without God and without Christ. How will infinite anguish rend your heart while you have to confess \u201cI 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! \u201cO sinner, I wish you would go to Jesus. May God\u2019s Spirit lead you to Jesus to-night. Cry mightily to God that he would give himself to you through Jesus Christ, the Amour. He will do it, for he waiteth to be gracious. Try him; and God bless you all, for Christ\u2019s sake! Amen.<\/p>\n
PORTION OF SCRIPTURE READ BEFORE SERMON \u2014 Psalm 37.<\/i><\/p>\n
HYMNS FROM \u201cOUR OWN HYMN BOOK\u201d \u2014 774, 198.<\/b><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
NO. 1297 A SERMON DELIVERED ON LORD\u2019S-DAY MORNING, MARCH 30TH, 1876, BY C. H. SPURGEON, AT THE METROPOLITAN TABERNACLE, NEWINGTON. \u201cMy God.\u201d \u2014 Psalm 91:2. If You were to find honey in a wood, and should wish to give some of it to your friends, I can imagine your cautiously taking it up in your … Continue reading “MY GOD.”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2627","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-sermons"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2627","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2627"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2627\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2627"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2627"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2627"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}