DO YOU WANT TO BE ACCEPTED?/ HERE IS THE SECRETE

I. First then, here is a matter most worthy of your best and profoundest thoughts- “IN THE BELOVED," or, POSITIVE UNION.
1. In explaining this positive union, let us begin by saying “in Christ,” - that is, in his heart, and in his heart from all eternity. With prescient eye Christ beheld his people before they were yet formed. He looked forward through eternity and the rolling years of time, and he foresaw that God would make man; and that man in Adam would fall and be ruined. His eye looked over all the sons of Adam, and selected those whom he saw fit according to the counsel of his will: and these at once were put into his heart to be his darlings, his favourites for ever and ever. It was not in time that Christ first wrote the names of his people upon his heart: it was a time before all times, when there was no day but the ancient of days; when creation’s first year had not commenced; when all things slept in the mind of God as a thought, but had not come forth from his hand as a deed. We look upon the rocks with their long deposits of sand and shells: we go deeper down and see the long ages that must have passed while the stony strata were being formed; we wonder at the period that the aqueous and igneous rocks must have occupied in their formation; and sometimes we are staggered at the thought of what a great thing time is. We find we cannot grasp the idea of “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth;” it is so far back that the wings of our imagination flag before they reach it as a resting place. But there was an eternity before all this; and all these ages are but as the drop of a bucket compared with the deep and bottomless sea of the eternity of God. Yet, when we fly back into the dread eternity, where thought is lost and mind faileth, we discover in the breast of Christ eternal thoughts of love towards his children. Is it not a joy that can make your spirits dance, like David before the ark, that we are always Jesus’ beloved ones, always in the heart of him whose heart was afterwards in the fulness of time pierced for us? Hath he not said, “I have loved thee with an everlasting love; therefore with the bands of my kindness have I drawn thee.” “As the Father hath loved me, even so have I loved you.” That is, without beginning; ever since there was a Father and a Christ. It were blasphemy to suppose that God’s love to Jesus was not always existent, or that Christ had a beginning in the Father’s affections. Even from that time Jesus had chosen his people, and they were in his heart. Beloved, as they were in his heart, so they have been in his heart ever since. When they fell in Adam they did not fall out of Christ; when they lived in this world a life of iniquity, yet still there was his great love wherewith he loved us, even when we were dead in trespasses and sins. When they scorned his grace, his love defied, trampled on his cross, and despised his blood, yet still never from his heart were they erased, for they had been engraven there too deeply by the nails, for sin to destroy the remembrance. And now, to-day, now that we are continually backsliding, nothing has been able as yet to tear us from his heart. We are there, and we shall be there, in death’s dark gloom and in eternity’s mysterious splendour- dear to Jesus still, for is it not written, “He hateth putting away?” “Having loved his own which were in the world, he loved them unto the end.” So, then, beloved, we are in Christ in the sense that we are in Christ’s heart, and we always were so if we are his people.
2. But, secondly, we are also in Christ's book. Having loved us, we were chosen in him and elected by his Father. We were not chosen separately and distinctly, and as individuals alone and apart. We were chosen in Christ.
3. Thirdly, we are in Christ’ s hand. We are in Christ’s heart as our heavenly lover. We are in Christ’s book as the medium of our election. We are in Christ’s hand as our surety. You will remember, beloved, than when Laban gave up his flock to Jacob, Jacob took them upon the condition of suretyship. Jacob said unto Laban, “That which was torn of beasts I brought not unto thee; I bare the loss of it; of my hand didst thou require it, whether stolen by day, or stolen by night.” Now, all those whom the Father gave to Christ were bestowed upon Christ as a surety; and at the last great day, at the Redeemer’s hand will God require" the souls of all that were given to him. He is the great Shepherd of the sheep, responsible as the Mediator, responsible to him who possesseth all in all. Sponsor for his people, surety for all the chosen, he standeth at this hour before the eternal throne.