“THOU ART MY GOD”

J. G. Chalmers

Psalm 31: 3 (“Thou art my rock and fortress”), 4 (“Thou art my strength”),

14 (“Thou art my God”), 15 (“My times are in thy hand”)

The gospel is a great and glorious matter for in it God draws near to men in grace and love with the desire to gain men’s confidence and affections, and to effect in their souls the knowledge of Himself so that they might be happy and at home in His presence as there for the satisfaction of His love. We might think that God draws near to men just to forgive their sins. He does do that. If there is one present whose sins are not forgiven, we can tell you that God is near to you now and that He wants to forgive your sins. It is a fine thing to see a person troubled about his sins, in soul trouble. This psalm says, “Thou hast known the troubles of my soul” (Psalm 31: 7). You will find God near and ready and willing to forgive your sins. God’s present attitude to men is that of forgiveness. He is a forgiving God, and He has a perfectly righteous basis on which to forgive sins, the death of Christ, the One who has “once suffered for sins, the just for the unjust, that he might bring us to God”, 1 Peter 3: 18. Thank God, there is efficacy in the blood of Jesus to cleanse the vilest sinners from their sins; “The blood of Jesus Christ his Son cleanses us from all sin”, 1 John 1: 7. If you are in trouble about your sins, then repent. God enjoins men to repent; “repentance towards God, and faith towards our Lord Jesus Christ”, Acts 20: 21. Then you will be blessed. God will fill you with all joy and peace in believing (Romans 15: 13).

But God has far more in mind for men even than that. He draws near to men in this scene where sin abounds—Oh the grace of it!—to disarm men of every wrong thought of Himself and to bring into their souls a substantial knowledge of Himself. God wants men to know Him, as Paul says, “I know whom I have believed”, 2 Timothy 1: 12. Can each one present say that? We are in a wonderful time. In Old Testament times God was but partially known. In Abraham’s day God was known as the Almighty God; in Israel’s day by the name of Jehovah; but when we come to the gospels it is God in Christ. God made known in a Man, “The only-begotten Son, who is in the bosom of the Father, he hath declared him”, John 1: 18. O, the Man of the gospels, Jesus! “God was in Christ, reconciling the world to himself, not reckoning to them their offences”, 2 Corinthians 5: 19. God is not charging men with their sins, He is forgiving them, justifying them, for He wants to gain their confidence and have them for the satisfaction of His love now and eternally. Christ has been here and He has made God known. He has suffered once for sins, He has died, He has been buried, and He has been raised again, raised by the glory of the Father. God is so satisfied with Christ and His work that He has raised Him and set Him down at His right hand in glory. That is the situation now. There is a Man in the glory, a wonderful sight! As the hymn says—

‘O the sight in heaven is glorious!

Man in righteousness is there’.

God is infinitely pleased with the Man Christ Jesus, the Man in righteousness in heaven, who has met His every claim against the sinner, and God is towards men in blessing in the glad tidings, declared by the Holy Spirit sent from heaven (1 Peter 1: 12). Oh what tidings these are! God wants men to know Him. Do you know God? He has been made known by a wonderful Name, the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit (Matthew 28: 19). Do you know the Father? Do you know the Son? Do you know the Holy Spirit? Have you a personal acquaintance with each divine Person? That is why I read in this Psalm, for David was a man who was rich in experience with God, and when he says, “Thou art my rock” it suggests a believer, in the light of christianity, speaking to Jesus for Scripture says, “the rock was the Christ”, 1 Corinthians 10: 4. When he says, “Thou art my strength” it suggests our speaking to the Holy Spirit, and when he says, “Thou art my God” it suggests our speaking to the Father, that is, as we approach this psalm in the light of the full revelation of God in the present economy.

Can each one say to Jesus, ‘Thou art my Rock’? ‘Oh’, you say, ‘I know Jesus as my Saviour, the One who has saved me from my sins, my Deliverer from the coming wrath’. Thank God for that! But can you say to Jesus, ‘Thou art my Rock’? It means that you are conscious by the Spirit of a living link in faith and affection with the Man in the glory. We need to appreciate Christ as the Rock, the One who was smitten of God ere the blessing could come to us. God smote His well beloved Son. How touching! God felt doing that; Jesus felt it too; but Jesus is now risen and glorified and He

is the Rock to be spoken to.

Do you ever speak to Jesus as the Rock? If you have a sense of need in your soul, speak to Jesus and you will find the waters flowing to fill and satisfy you. “If any one thirst, let him come to me and drink”, John 7: 37. The Spirit is available to be drunk into since Christ has been smitten and glorified; the waters are flowing. Then you will remember that when Moses asked God to see His glory God said, “Behold, there is a place by me—there shalt thou stand on the rock”, Exodus 33: 21. Have we the desire to see the glory of God? It is to be seen; it shines in the face of Jesus, and we can contemplate it there. It is vast. This is something to be reached in our souls, to be conscious that God has put us in Christ, and there is no condemnation to those in Christ Jesus (Romans 8: 1). Christ is alive, the Man in the glory, the centre of God’s world, and we are in Him; that is our place, near to God, “a place by me … on the rock”. What favour! Nothing can shake a person who has a living link in affection with the Man in the glory, the Rock. Such a person is on solid ground, he can say, ‘On Christ the solid Rock I stand’; he can say appreciatively, “Thou art my rock”. Then He is our fortress. Do not be ashamed to confess Jesus as Lord. His name is a strong tower, the righteous runneth into it and is safe (Proverbs 18: 10). It is a fortress, impregnable, unassailable, unshakable.

Then David says, “Thou art my strength”. The Holy Spirit is our strength. He is the One who gives us power for spiritual things. We come to that experimentally in Romans 8. Romans 7 is the struggle of a believer. It is good to see a person in that struggle for it shows that he is exercised to get on spiritually. You want to do what is

right and you feel powerless to do it. What you learn is that the flesh in you does not change when you are converted, when you become a believer. It is still the same flesh as in your unconverted days, and God expects nothing good from it. He has condemned sin in the flesh. In the struggle you feel the need of deliverance, and the Deliverer is Christ; you turn away from yourself to Christ, the Man in the glory. Then you learn to appreciate the Spirit. He is available from God’s side on the principle of gift, the gift of God. God gives the Holy Spirit to those that obey Him (Acts 5: 32). Our side is to receive the Spirit. The Lord Jesus says that the Father gives the Holy Spirit to them that ask Him (Luke 11: 13). It is only in the power of the Spirit that we can overcome the flesh. “If, by the Spirit, ye put to death the deeds of the body, ye shall live”, Romans 8: 13. When you thus get the victory you do not take the credit but you thank the Spirit, you say in affection, “Thou art my strength”. You fulfil righteousness in the power of the Spirit. These are real experiences.

Then the Spirit is the earnest of the inheritance (Ephesians 1: 13). He gives us the present joy amongst the saints of our eternal portion. He empowers us to answer feelingly to Christ as His brethren and as His assembly, His bride. As the Spirit of God’s Son in our hearts He empowers us to answer to the Father in the feelings, affections, and intelligence proper to sonship. As the Father’s Spirit He strengthens us with power in the inner man fully to apprehend with all the saints the vast scene of glory that subsists for the pleasure of God and to render to God glory in the assembly in Christ Jesus. All this should cause us to say to the Spirit, “Thou art my strength”. Do you really know the Spirit as conscious of His indwelling you? The Lord Jesus said, “Ye know him, for he abides with

you, and shall be in you”, John 14: 17. There is no affinity between the world and the Spirit. A sister local here once said in conversation, ‘We would not have one thought Godward apart from the Spirit’. The Spirit helps us to know a vast range of things, the things which have been freely given to us of God (1 Corinthians 2: 12). In the appreciation of this we can say in affection, “Thou art my strength”.

Then David says, “Thou art my God”. Paul says, “To us there is one God, the Father”, 1 Corinthians 8: 6. Can you say, ‘My God and Father’? The believer belongs to the most dignified family in the universe, the family of God. “As many as received him, to them gave he the right to be children of God” (John 1: 12), also “See what love the Father has given to us, that we should be called the children of God”, 1 John 3: 1. The believer can say now, “Thou art my God” in the sense of this family relationship. He can say it, too, in the testimonial sphere, as in the path of separation in faithfulness to Christ, where he proves the Father in a circumstantial way; “I will be to you for a Father, and ye shall be to me for sons and daughters”, 2 Corinthians 6: 18. What an advantage the believer has over the man in the world! He has God as his Father, and he can say, in circumstances however testing, “Thou art my God”. But there is something even greater. God has marked us out for sonship through Jesus Christ to Himself; that is His purpose. In the assembly, in the service of God, we know God in His own realm of purpose and we trace every blessing to Him, the glorious source of all. There we can say happily, freely, and thankfully, “Thou art my God”.

Then David says, “My times are in thy hand”. What a touch that is! We think of the times the saints in this place are going through, the sorrow on our spirits in regard to our sister who is so

ill, and the saints in Macduff, where only this afternoon the Lord took a sister to Himself; but we can say restfully that our times are in His hand. The Lord Jesus says that times are in the Father’s authority (Acts 1: 7). God thought of you in purpose and your times are in His hand, as the hymn says, ‘Whatever they may be, pleasing or painful, dark or bright, as best may seem to Thee’—the same God. We wonder at times why some have so much discipline, so much sorrow, so much bereavement, so much testing, yet one who really knows God can say, “My times are in thy hand”, and they could not be in better hands, for the Father’s hand will never cause His child a needless tear! The sorrows, bereavements, and pressure are testing us all as to our knowledge of God. Do we really know Him? David had many testings, far more than we may have thought of, for the Psalms are the fruit of his actual experiences. Scripture speaks of the times that passed over David (1 Chronicles 29: 30) but he can say, “My times are in thy hand”.

Paul would say the same, even though in prison at Philippi or Rome (What choice epistles came from him in that Roman prison!)—he knew his God and that his times were in His hand. Oh I trust that each of us will grow in the knowledge of God so as to be able to say to Jesus, “Thou art my rock”, and to the Spirit, “Thou art my strength”, and to the Father, “Thou art my God”, and to say, in the restfulness of spirit that becomes persons who know their God, “My times are in thy hand”. May it be so, for His name’s sake.

Preaching at Cullen
2 November 1975