AI-assisted analysis for orientation; read the source transcript or listen to the sermon to evaluate the interpretation.
The sermon presents salvation as grounded in God’s eternal choice and Christ’s effective purchase of his people. Christ gives himself to believers through his incarnation, substitutionary suffering, death, resurrection, ascension, and reign; therefore believers truly belong to him and possess him by faith. Faith receives Christ first, while obedience follows as the practical evidence that a person is Christ’s possession. This union gives assurance in spiritual darkness, courage before death, and confidence in the gospel invitation to every sinner who believes.
Theological center: Salvation rests on God’s electing purpose, Christ’s definite blood-bought redemption, and the believer’s inseparable union with Christ received by faith.
Applications: Cultivate full assurance · Trust Christ wholly · Obey Christ’s commands · Believe in Jesus now
Primary texts: Song of Solomon 2:16 · Ephesians 5:30-32 · Acts 16:31
“My beloved is mine, and I am his.” Song of Solomon 2:16 THE church says concerning her Lord, “My beloved is mine, and I am his.” No “ifs,” no “buts.” The two sentences are solemn assertions. Not, “I hope, I trust, I think,” but “My beloved is mine, and I am his.” “Yes,” but you will say, “the church must then have been gazing upon her husband’s face. It must have been a season of peculiar enjoyment with Him, when she could speak thus.” Nay, brethren, nay. The church, when she thus spake, was in darkness, for in the very next verse she cries—“Until the day break, and the shadows flee away, turn, my beloved, and be thou like a roe or a young hart upon the mountains of Bether.” I say, brethren, this solemn certainty, this double assertion of her interest in Christ and Christ’s interest in her, is the utterance of the church even in her darkness, in the cheerless season of His absence. So, then, you and I, if we believe in Christ, ought, even when we do not see His face, still to cultivate full assurance of faith, and never be satisfied unless we can say, “My beloved is mine, and I am his.” When you cannot say this, my hearer, give no sleep to your eyes, nor slumber to your eyelids. Be not happy. Take no solace. Find no comfort, as long as there is any doubt about your union with the Beloved—His possession of you and your possession of Him. We will now, having thus prefaced the text, come at once to it. There are two members, you perceive, to the sentence, “My beloved is mine, and I am his.” These two things come in a strange order, you will say, “Surely we are first Christ’s, before Christ is ours.” A right thought of yours. We shall take the text, then, this evening two ways. We shall first speak of it as it would be in the order of time. “I am my Beloved’s, and my Beloved is mine.” We shall afterwards speak in the order of the text, which is the order of experience. The words as Solomon penned them are the order of fact as far as God is concerned, but the order in which we find out God’s great doings. You know God’s first things are our second things, and our second things are God’s first things. “Make your calling and election sure.” Calling is your first thing—election is the second. But election is God’s first thing and calling is the next. You are not elected because you are called, and yet, at the same time, you shall never know your election until first you have made your calling and election sure. The order of the text is the order of experience. We shall take the members of the sentence as they would be if they spoke in the order of fact. I. To…