God is our portion.
That thought presupposes the possibility of our possessing God. It
presupposes the fact that He has given Himself to us, and the answering
fact that we have taken Him for ours.
We are God's inheritance.
We give ourselves to Him--we do so where we apprehend that He has given
Himself to us; it is His giving love that moves men to yield themselves
to God. He takes us for His. What a wonderful thought that He delights
in possessing us! The all-sufficiency of our portion is guaranteed
because He is 'the former of all things.' The safety of His inheritance
is secured because 'the Lord of Hosts is His name.' And that name
accentuates the wonder that He to whom all the ordered armies of the
universe submit and belong should still take us for His inheritance.
Mark the contrast of this true possession with the false and merely
external possessions of the world. Those outward things which a man has
stand in no real relation with him. They fade and fleet away, or have
to be left, and, even while they last, are not his in any real sense.
Only what has indissolubly entered into, and become one with, our very
selves is truly ours.
Our possession of God suggests a view of our blessedness and our
obligation. It secures blessedness--for we have in Him an
all-sufficient object and a treasure for all our nature. It imposes the
obligation to let our whole nature feed upon, and be filled by, Him, to
see that the temple where He dwells is clean, and not to fling away our
treasure.
His possession of us suggests a corresponding view of our blessedness
and our obligation.
We are His--as slaves are their owners' property. So we are bound to
submission of will. To be owned by God is an honour. The slave's goods
and chattels belong to the master.
His possession of us binds us to consecrate ourselves, and so to
glorify Him in 'body and spirit which are His.'
It ensures our safety. How constantly this calming thought is dwelt on
in Scripture--that they who belong to Him need fear nothing. 'Fear not,
I have called thee by thy name, them art Mine.' God does not hold His
possessions with so slack a grasp as to lose them or to suffer them to
be wrenched away. A psalmist rose to the hope of immortality by
meditating on what was involved in his being God's possession here and
now. He was sure that even Death's bony fingers could not keep their
hold on him, and so he sang, 'Thou wilt not suffer Thine Holy One to
see corruption.' The seal on the foundation of God which guarantees its
standing sure is, 'The Lord knoweth them that are His.' 'They shall be
Mine in the day that I do make, even a peculiar treasure,' is His own
assurance, on which resting, a trembling soul may 'have boldness in the
day of judgment.'