I belong to my beloved and he belongs to me; he pastures his flock among the lilies.I am my beloved’s, and my beloved is mine. He browses among the lilies.I am my beloved’s, and my beloved is mine: he feedeth among the lilies.I am my beloved’s, and my beloved is mine: He feedeth his flock among the lilies.
4 sermons cite this verse
I may seem to be uttering truisms, but I cannot help it. These are the sort of Truths of God upon which one cannot give allegories, illustrations, or fine sentences. The Truths themselves are so glorious that it would be like painting the lily and gilding it with pure gold to try to adorn it. We must not attempt it, but just leave the Truths as they are for the Spirit of God to apply them to your souls—and so I mean to do after I have mentioned a few practical inferences from the Truth which I have been trying to set before you. The first is, beloved Brothers and Sisters in Christ, this—let us each one endeavor by faith to realize our nearness with Christ. He has entered within the veil, but He has entered as our Forerunner. Remember that although you are imperfect, feeble, sorrowing, yet you are one with Jesus Christ! You believe that as a Doctrine, but I want you to realize it now as a fact. If you had a rich friend who had given you an equal share with himself of all that he possessed, even if you had not entered upon the possession of it, you would think, "I have not to depend upon charity for my daily bread, for my rich friend has made me as rich as he is, himself." Now, whatever joy that might give you, it ought to give you far more to think that you are one with Christ and that Christ is one with you! When you suffer, Christ is suffering in one of the members of His mystical body. And when He rejoices, it is His desire that His joy may be in you, that your joy may be full. He has married you and He means you to take His riches as well as Himself and to reckon that all He is and all He has is yours. If the Holy Spirit would cause you to realize this, it would make your soul leap within you and bless the Lord and magnify His holy name! "I am my Beloved's and my Beloved is mine." No, more, I am a member of His body, of His flesh and of His bones. Our interests are one, for we are one and Christ up there, in the heavenlies, is but myself there, for I am in Him and I shall soon be actually and literally where He is, as I now am in the Person of Him who is there as my Representative and Forerunner. …
My Brothers and Sisters, it was, moreover, a complete surrender which they made. No Christian in the olden times gave himself in part to the Lord and in part reserved himself for idols, or for himself—and had any attempted to have done so, they would have been spurned, for it is of Christ's rule in the Church that He will have all or none. You must, as a Christian, be all a Christian, or nothing of a Christian! There is no such thing as dividing between God and the devil, between righteousness and sin. The surrender must be without reserve and without limit. If you have truly given yourselves to the Lord, you have given Him your body—no more to be polluted with sin, but to be a Temple of the Holy Spirit. You have given Him your mind—no more to be a free thinker after the boasted free thought of the slaves of skepticism. You have given up your faculties—to sit with them at the feet of Christ to learn of Him, to take His teaching for the Truth of God and His Word the one court of appeal for all questions. You take Him to be your Teacher beyond all dispute and His Doctrine to be unsullied truth for you. You have also given up to Him your tongue to speak for Him, your hands to work for Him, your feet to walk or run for Him—your every faculty of body and mind in beautiful partnership for His service! As for your newborn, angelic, spiritual nature—that must emphatically be the Lord's—and will always be the royal and reigning power within. You are today in the trinity of your nature—body, soul and spirit—altogether Christ's! And this includes, if you are a sincere Christian, all that you have—all of talents, all of time, all of property, all of influence, all of relationship, all of opportunity. You count nothing to be your own from this time forth, but you say with the spouse, "I am my Beloved's and my Beloved is mine." …
"Well," says another, "but I heard a voice in the air." Nonsense! "But I did," you say. Superstition! "But I am sure I did." Well, what does it matter? I care not where the voice came from if you heard it only with your outward ears. It is as likely to have been the devil that spoke as anybody else, if, indeed, it was anybody at all! You are as likely to deceive yourself as anything in the world. The prayer of the text, is not, "Say to my ears," but, "Say unto my soul, I am your salvation." Do you understand what soul-talking is? Oh, dear, dear—the most of people do not understand anything that has to do with the spirit world—there are materialists in Christianity as well as in other matters. They suppose that to worship God means to sing in a certain way, to bend the knees and to say certain words. Why, you may do all that and yet there may not be a fraction of worship in it! And, on the other hand, you may worship God without any of it. A man may sing God's praises without ever opening his mouth! A man may pray unto God and yet never say a word, for it is soul-singing and soul-praying that God accepts! And when God speaks back again to the soul that has learned to talk with Him, He does not speak lip-language, tongue-language, or ear-language, but soul-language! I have already said that this soul-language sometimes takes the body of preaching, or of the Word of God and so becomes, as it were, a thing to appeal to the ears, but even then the letter kills—it is only the Spirit that makes alive. It is God's soul talking to man's soul that is needed here. And mark you, dear Friend, if ever God speaks to your soul, you will not have to ask who it is that speaks, for if ever the eternal God comes into direct contact with the human heart, there is no making a mistake! Do you understand this? Some of you think I am fanatical. I would to God you were all as fanatical! May you have God talking with your soul and may the Holy Spirit bear witness with your spirit that you are born of God! Pray the prayer and may God hear it now, "Say unto my soul, I am your salvation." …
Or did the golden band signify His activity? The golden lesson is that we imitate Him. Christ is in Heaven, and yet He wears a band. Christian, always keep your band round your loins. "Stand, therefore, with your loins girded about," says the Apostle, "and your lamps trimmed." This is not the place for the Christian to unbind. Heaven is the place of rest for us—not this world of temptation and of sin. Always stand ready to suffer or to serve! At the Master's gate, watch and wait to do His bidding. Never, on weekdays, and much less on Sabbath days, let your spirits be out of order for Christian service! We ought so to live that if called to die at any minute, we would not need to say a prayer—ready for Heaven, ready for a life of service or for a death of glory! The true way for a Christian to live in this world is to be always as he would wish to be if Christ came at that moment. And there is a way of living that style—simply depending upon the blood and righteousness of Jesus Christ—and then going out into daily service for Him, moved by love to Him, saying to Him, "Lord, show me what You would have me do." I wish we always were as I have thus said we always should be. The Lord can teach us! Let us ask Him to teach us the lesson. We told you, moreover, that the golden band indicated His enduring love, inasmuch as it is girded about His chest. Well, then, the golden lesson is, let us love Him in return. Let us wear the golden band, too. Oh, Beloved, love Him with all your heart, and soul, and strength! Let no rival come between you and Jesus. Keep your heart chaste for the Well-Beloved. My greatest longing is that I may present you as a chaste virgin unto Christ, that there may be nothing by way of error in respect to Doctrine or to holiness of life that may disturb the full union of your souls with Jesus. Oh, to see that golden band, and as we see it, to feel that He has belted us about after the same manner! "I am my Beloved's, and my Beloved is mine." I am not the world's, nor is the world for me—I belong to Jesus, and Jesus belongs to me! May that be the deep feeling and the truthful expression of everyone of you. …