“God is with His children.
Indeed, He is with the whole world. He is everywhere; but He is with His church and children in a more peculiar manner.
So, besides the general respect, that I will not now stand on, God is ‘with us’ that are his in a more peculiar manner in all his sweet attributes: in his wisdom to direct us, with his power to assist and strengthen us, by his grace and love to comfort us; and he is with us in all our perplexities, to stay our souls.
He is with us by his sweet and gracious mercy, to feed us with hidden manna, with secret comforts in the midst of discomforts. When there is no comfort else with us, then God is with us; and then he is with us in the issue of all that a godly man takes in hand in his name.
He is with him in all crosses, to direct and turn them to his best good; ‘All things work for the best to them that love God,’ Rom. 6:23. He is with them in all his sweet relations as a gracious Father in covenant, as a husband. He is with them in those sweet comparisons: as a hen, Matt. 23:37; as an eagle, to carry them on his wings above all dangers, as he carried the Israelites in the wilderness, Deut. 32:11. He is with them in all comfortable relations.
Therefore God, in the Scriptures, borrows names from everything that is comfortable. He is with them as a rock, to build on; as a shield, to defend them; in the time of heat and persecution, he is a shadow, to keep them from the heat; he is with them as a light.
Christ is our life in death, our light in darkness, our righteousness in sinfulness and guilt, our holiness in impurity, our redemption in all our miseries. There is somewhat of God in every creature; therefore God takes names from his own creatures, because there is some strength or comfort in them.
God gives himself variety of names, as there are variety of our distresses. Are we in misery? God is a rock, a shield, a tower of defence, a buckler; he is all that can be said for comfort. He is with us in his attributes and sweet relations, and all sweet terms that may support our faith, that whatsoever we see comfortable in the creature, we may rise more comfortably to God, and say, God is my rock and shield, and my light and defense.
And then God is with us in every condition and in every place whatsoever. He is not only a God of the mountains and not of the valleys, or a God of the valleys and not of the mountains, as those foolish people thought, 1 Kings 20:28, but he is in all places, and at all times with his.
If they be in prison, he goes with them: Acts 16:22, seq., he made the prison a kind of paradise, a heaven. If they be banished into other countries, he goes with them; ‘I will go with thee, O Jacob, into Egypt, and bring thee back again,’ Gen. 48:21.
If they be in death, he is with us to death and in death: ‘In the valley of the shadow of death, thou art with me,’ Ps. 23:4. At all times whatsoever, and in all conditions, God is with us.
In all our affairs whatsoever God is with us. ‘Fear not,’ Joshua; ‘fear not,’ Moses. What was the ground of their comfort? ‘I will be with thee.’ He was with St Paul in all conditions, therefore he bids him ‘fear not,’ Acts 27:24. So our blessed Saviour, the head of all, in Acts 10:38, in the speech of Peter to Cornelius, he did all things well, ‘for God was with him.’ You see how God is with his children.
What is the ground that the great, and holy, and pure God, blessed for ever, should be with such sinful and wretched creatures as we are? that he should not only be with us, and about us, and compass us as a shield, but be in us?
The ground of all is his free love in Christ. Christ was God with us first. God, that he might be with us, ordained that Christ should be God with us; ‘Emmanuel,’ that he should take our nature into unity of person with himself.
Christ being God with us, that he might satisfy the just wrath of God for our sins, and so reconcile God and us together, he hath made God and us friends.
So that this, that God is with us, it is grounded upon an excellent and sound bottom; upon the incarnation of our blessed Saviour, that for this very end, that God might be with us, was God with us; that is, he was God and man, to bring God and man together; he was God and man in one, to bring God and man, that were at contrary terms, to terms of reconciliation; to recollect and bring us back again to God, from whence we fell.
So the reason why God the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost are with us, it is because Christ, the second person, God and man, is with us, or else there could be no such sweet terms as these are. You see how it is founded. Christ took our nature, and advanced and enriched it.
Now he having taken our nature and our persons to be one with him, how near are Christ and we together! There is one common Spirit in him and us, one common Father, ‘I go to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God,’ John 20:17.
There is one common kingdom and inheritance. We are fellow-heirs with him. Oh, how near is Christ to us! Our souls are not so near our bodies as Christ is to us, and God in Christ. So you see this, that God is with us. It is founded upon an excellent, wonderful, comfortable mystery.”
–Richard Sibbes, “The Matchless Mercy,” The Works of Richard Sibbes, Volume 7 (ed. Alexander Balloch Grosart; Carlisle, PA: Banner of Truth, 1638/2001), 7: 388-389.
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