THIS GOD IS OUR GOD
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"For this God is OUR GOD for ever and ever; he will be our guide even to the end." Psalm 48:14
Strong language this! But not too strong for faith to employ. In some believing minds, of doubting, though not of doubtful faith; of fearful, yet not of despairing hearts; it may sound like a vain-glorious boast, and appear a claim almost too presumptuous for a sinful mortal to prefer. Nevertheless, it is truth, and, more or less profound, is the experience of every child of God, and may be the language without any exaggeration of the weakest believer that ever touched the fringe of the Savior's robe. We too much forget that what has been the spiritual attainment of the saints in a past dispensation, may be equally the experience of the saints in every succeeding one. If, amid the twilight shadows of the old economy, believers could embody their faith in language as strong as this, why should believers, dwelling amid the full blaze of the present dispensation, upon which the Sun of Righteousness has risen in noontide splendor, speak in language more timid and doubtful?
Saving Faith and its Divine Object have been the same in every dispensation and age of the Church. The faith of Adam, the first and greatest sinner of his race, which looked to the Promised Seed, before, yet the gates of Eden were closed upon him, is essentially and objectively of "like precious faith," with which the penitent thief washed himself in the crimson fountain flowing at his side. Thus we must be careful of supposing that there is any eminence in the divine life, to which other saints have attained, unattainable by us. That there is any sacred height in grace, holiness, and assurance which they have reached to which we may not ascend- or, that there is any knowledge of Christ, any conformity to His likeness, any intimate relations with Him experienced by others, which may not be our experience too. Thus, strong and bold as is the language of David, there lives not a child of God who may not adopt it as his own, and exclaim, "For this God is OUR GOD for ever and ever; he will be our guide even to the end."
With an exposition of this truth, the present volume approaches its close. Let us consider some of the sacred ideas suggested by the remarkable expression– "THIS God." It is evident that the inspired speaker refers to some especial attributes of God upon which he had been expatiating, which designate Him as the covenant and redeeming God of His people. "This God- this very God- this great and glorious God, is our God." What, then, are some of these distinctive attributes which especially identify Jehovah as the "OUR God" of His people?
In the first place, 'This God' of REVELATION is 'our God.' This God, who has made such a divine and wonderful revelation of Himself- His Being and mind, His will and heart; in His word, is, 'our God.' In other words, the God of the Bible is ours. All that that inspired and precious volume declares concerning Him, all the thoughts of His mind it reveals, all the love of His nature it makes known, all the teaching of His Spirit it conveys, all the precious promises, all the gracious invitations, and the glorious hopes, and solemn warnings and faithful admonitions it contains, are ours, because the God of the Bible is ours. Accept the Bible as your own. Read it as the letters of your Heavenly Father addressed personally to you. Let no sophistry shake your confidence in its divine inspiration. Beware of that false reasoning that teaches that God's Word is in the Bible, but that the Bible is not God's Word. The giant evil of the day is infidelity unblushingly assailing the truth, and impeaching the integrity of the Sacred Scriptures. Be vigilant and prayerful here. Lose your Bible, and you lose your all. If, then, the God of revelation is yours, the revelation of God is equally yours. All that this blessed volume contains belongs of a right to you. The Divine Redeemer, the glorious gospel, the free salvation, the precious promises, the gracious invitations, the rich consolations, the blissful hopes, the holy admonitions, all, all are ours, because the God who wrote the Bible, who gave the Bible, who has preserved the Bible, and who dwells in the Bible, is 'OUR God.'
May the hand of your faith upon this Divine Charter of blessings, and exclaim, "It is mine, all, all is mine, because the God who inspired it is my God. In giving me Himself He gave me all that was His and this is His most precious gift, next to His beloved Son, whom it reveals. Let me believe it firmly, deal with it reverently, read it devoutly, and walk in its divine precepts holily, and do all in my power to give to all who may not possess, as I do, this heavenly chart, this divine compass, this unerring light in the soul's solemn travel to eternity."
"Holy Bible, book divine,
Precious treasure! you are mine!
Mine to tell me where I came;
Mine to teach me what I am;
"Mine to chide me when I rove;
Mine to share a Savior's love;
Mine are you to guide my feet;
Mine to judge, condemn, acquit.
"Mine to comfort in distress,
If the Holy Spirit bless;
Mine to show by living faith
Man can triumph over death;
"Mine to tell of joys to come,
And the rebel sinner's doom
Oh, you precious book divine,
Precious treasure! you are mine!"
This INCARNATE GOD is 'our God.' The great truth of the Bible is- "God manifest in the flesh"- the Incarnation of the Son of God. And the belief of this truth, an essential doctrine of salvation, is equally essential to our being saved. No soul can possibly have eternal life who disbelieves, and, disbelieving, rejects this great cardinal doctrine of the Christian faith. "This is how you can recognize the Spirit of God: Every spirit that acknowledges that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is from God, but every spirit that does not acknowledge Jesus is not from God. This is the spirit of the antichrist, which you have heard is coming and even now is already in the world. If anyone acknowledges that Jesus is the Son of God, God lives in him and he in God."
From these words we infer that, apart from faith in the Divinity of Christ, and a believing and personal reliance upon His Atonement, no man living can be saved. But how assuring and comforting is the truth that this Incarnate God is 'our' God! This God who left the heavens and came down, not in the nature of angels, but of men, who was "made flesh," who was "made in the likeness of man," and as Man was encompassed with our sinless infirmities, hungered and thirsted, wearied and sorrowed as we, lived a life of toil and poverty, was sustained by charity, was assailed by persecution, moved in comparative obscurity and solitude, and then died a felon's death– this wondrous Being, this God in our veritable nature, this Incarnate God, this Jesus is our God.
Claim your relation to, and your possession of, this God-man, my reader. He is bone of your bone, and flesh of your flesh. He is "very man of very man," as He is "very God of very God." You have not a human element that did not enter into His humanity. Nothing that was human– for sin is a Satanic and not a human element, an accident and not an original concomitant of our creation- was foreign to Him. It is, therefore, your privilege to claim Him as your Elder Brother, "in all things made like unto His brethren," and in all your afflictions of mind, body, and estate, to repair to Him as a "brother born for adversity."
Oh, what a distinguished blessing from among our precious and endless catalogue of blessings is this– the blessing of knowing that Jesus is ours! That all the fullness of the Godhead essentially dwelling in Him, and all the fullness of the manhood mediatorially His, belongs to us! That every perfection of His being, and every element of His nature, and every pulse of His life, and every fiber of His heart- His every thought and affection and feeling- is ours! "Behold the Lamb of God!" "Behold the man!" for this God, this very God-Man, this very Man-God, is ours!
Christ loves you to recognize your personal interest in Him. He is honored by your claim of free grace to all that He personally and officially is. He is glorified by your continuous coming to the "unsearchable riches" of His grace, wisdom, and love, and from their inexhaustible fullness making large and unlimited draughts. "All things are yours, for you are Christ's, and Christ is God's." Receive, then, this "great mystery of godliness, God manifest in the flesh," which, in other words, is the great mystery of love, and prefer your personal claim to its untold wealth exclaiming, "This incarnate God, this God who stooped to my nature, who girded Himself with my sinless weaknesses and infirmities, my sickness and sorrows, is my God; all the sinlessness of His nature, all the sympathy of His manhood, all the tenderness of His love, all the filial oneness of His relation as the Elder Brother, all is mine!"
This REDEEMING God is our God. The Redemption of man is the achievement of God. Not so evident is creation a divine work– the sun, the moon, and the stars which He has made evidencing 'His eternal power and Godhead'- as is the work of man's salvation. Upon this, His last and greatest work, He has concentrated the boundless resources of Deity. Here His glory meets in its focal power and splendor. God spoke the universe out of nothing, and formed man from the dust of the earth, but in the Redemption of man, He became incarnate in the person of His beloved Son, exhausting heaven of its richest treasure, and conferring that treasure upon man in the person of Jesus the Savior, 'His unspeakable gift.'
Behold your divine possession! This Redeeming God is our God. This God who has redeemed us at a cost so dear and precious to Himself, as the gift, the sufferings, and sacrifice of His only-begotten and beloved Son, who charged all our sins to Him, laid all our curse upon Him, exacting from Him, as our Surety and Substitute, the utmost penalty of our transgressions and hell-deserving; this God of redemption, this redeeming God is our God. If, then; and this is the logical deduction of faith- if the God of Redemption is our God, it follows that the Redemption of God is ours. This is our warrant to believe in Christ, and to trust in God, and to commit our souls to Jesus, and to accept unhesitatingly, unreservedly, His complete and free salvation; this God, who provided so suitable and so great a redemption, is our God: therefore, we are justified in casting ourselves upon the infinite merit, the atoning work, the sacrificial death of Jesus; yes, upon Jesus, our personal Savior Himself, and believe and be saved.
Trembling, fearful saint, oh, possess this your possession! If the God who redeemed you is yours, then avail yourself of all the precious blessings flooring from that great redemption– a present salvation, a full forgiveness of all sin, completeness in Christ, peace with God passing all understanding, and joy unspeakable and full of glory.
With your personal unworthiness, with your countless sins, with your deep poverty, you have nothing to do. The only object that is now to engage your thoughts, and fix your eye, and inspire your hopes, is Jesus! If you were under a great pecuniary liability, and an wealthy friend were to assume your responsibility, and cancel it to the utmost fraction, you would justly reason- "Why need I more be troubled about this matter? Why yield to fear and despondency? I am released from responsibility, my obligation is cancelled, my debt is paid, and I am legally discharged from all liability, arrest, and judgment. I will emerge from the shadows of my imprisonment into the bright sunshine of heaven, and will walk at liberty, bearing with me my legal protection and my full discharge, none daring to make me afraid."
Apply this simple reasoning to the salvation of your soul, and see to what a blessed conclusion and happy peace it will conduct you. Christ bound Himself in the covenant of grace to be our Surety. He became responsible to the moral government of God His Father for all its claims upon His people. He said, in terms virtually in accordance with that engagement, "Upon Me let their sins meet; with Me let their curse rest; upon Me let their punishment and condemnation fall. All that my Church owes I will pay; all for which My Bride is responsible I will discharge; all that My saints have most righteously incurred I will freely and fully endure. Let these go their way."
Oh, wondrous love! Oh, matchless grace! Oh, self-sacrificing mercy! Wonder, O heavens! be astonished, O earth! With such an all-sufficient Savior, with such a full, finished, and free discharge from the guilt of sin, the condemnation of the law, and the arrest of justice, will you any longer pursue your heavenly journey- your soul bowed down to the ground, like a bulrush, your harp of song silent upon the willow, your path bedewed with tears, and the desert vocal with nothing but your sighs, groans, and complaints? Rise! He calls you! Jesus bids you come and walk in the light and joy of His salvation. Uplift your head, take down your harp, retune and sweep its strings to the high praises of Emmanuel, for your great debt is paid, and "there is now no condemnation to those who are in Christ Jesus." With the Church of the Old Testament let the Church of the New sing, but with a louder and sweeter strain, "I will greatly rejoice in the Lord, my soul shall be joyful in my God; for He has clothed me with the garments of salvation, He has covered me with the robe of righteousness."
This COVENANT GOD is our God. God has ever been a covenant God to His Church. Whether it be the Old Covenant or the New- the covenant of the law or the covenant of grace- the covenant with our father, the first Adam, or the covenant with Christ, the Second; He has always sustained the endearing relation of the covenant God of a covenant people. But it is especially by the nature, obligations, and promises of the new covenant of grace made in and by Christ, that God, even our own God, has bound Himself to us. The old covenant of works made with Adam, the federal head of his race, the terms of which were, "Do and live; sin and die," was broken by our first parents, and by its violation compromised the present and eternal happiness of their posterity. But the new covenant of grace entered into by the Sacred Three on behalf of elect sinners, on whom grace and glory were eternally and forever settled in Christ Jesus, their covenant Head, Surety, and Mediator, is absolute and new, filled with all spiritual blessings, signed and sealed by the blood of the New Covenant, accepted and ratified, on the part of God, by His raising up Christ from the dead. "I will," says God, "make an everlasting covenant with you, even the sure mercies of David." "This is my blood of the new covenant" says Christ.
And similar to this is the prayer of the apostle- "Now the God of peace, through the blood of the everlasting covenant, make you perfect." Take hold, then, by faith, beloved, of this covenant; for the God of this covenant is your God. 'By two immutable things in which it is impossible for Him to lie,' He has engaged Himself to be your covenant God, to supply all your need, to guide your journeyings through the wilderness, to keep you by His power, and to conduct you safely from grace to glory, from earth to heaven.
Again, I say, take hold of the covenant! All your history is arranged, all your needs are provided for, all your trials, and afflictions, and sorrows are appointed in this covenant. Not more truly is it like a rainbow round about the throne of heaven, bright like an emerald, than it is round about your person and your path, as to that throne and to that heaven your covenant God is gently, skillfully, surely leading you.
This tried, this proved God is our God. The religion of the true believer is experimental; it is the religion of the heart. He has no dealings with an unknown, imaginary God. He does not know God from the hearing of the ear, or from the reading of books, or from the religious conversation of others merely, but He knows Him from personal acquaintance, from heartfelt experience, from close and constant dealings. There has been a manifestation of God in Christ to his soul, and with Job he can say, "I have heard of You by the hearing of the ear; but now my eye sees You." And with the converted Samaritans, "Now we believe, not because of your saying; for we have heard Him ourselves, and know that this is indeed the Christ, the Savior of the world."
Oh to be a true, an experimental Christian! The religion of the ear, or of the eye, or of the imagination, or of the intellect, will not, and cannot bring the soul to heaven. The abodes of endless woe are peopled with souls who went down to its regions of despair with no better religion than this! Oh, give me the humility of the publican, the trembling faith of the diseased woman, the flowing tears of the penitent Magdalene, the last petition of the dying thief, rather than the most intellectual religion or the most gorgeous ceremonial that ever the mind invented, or the eye beheld.
But our God is the tried, the proved God of His people. His Word has been tried, and proved divine. His promises have been tried, and proved true. His veracity has been tried, and proved faithful. His love has been tried, and proved unchangeable. His compassion has been tried, and proved real. In a word, His children can all testify, by personal, holy, and loving experience, that God is all that His revealed Word declares Him to be, and that the Lord Jesus is all that the prophet declares Him to be- the 'Tried Stone' for sinners to build upon, and for saints to trust in.
Oh, the blessedness of knowing that this prayer-hearing, prayer-answering, and prayer-exceeding God; this promise-making and promise-keeping God; this love-unchanging, and covenant-keeping God is 'our God!' What encouragement have we to deal personally, constantly, and closely with our God in all the circumstances and events of daily life! We repair to Him in need, in difficulty, and in trial, in the firm persuasion that in the history of His Church He has proved all that we now require Him to be; that all that He has been He is now; and that what other saints have found Him in their experience we shall find Him in ours.
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