Let's turn back to Malachi. I'm not going verse by verse
through Malachi. I was deliberately wanting us
to have, as we go through John's Gospel, a picture of what lay
before the Jews. In the book of Malachi, as throughout
the rest of the scriptures, there's an extraordinary contrast between
the religion of men The claim to be the followers of the Lord
Jesus Christ and the real religion that is generated from God brings
all the glory to God and in that is all the comfort of God's people. Let's read these first few verses
again of Malachi chapter 2. This commandment is for you,
if you will not hear and will not lay it to heart, to give
glory unto my name, saith the Lord of hosts. I will even send
a curse upon you, and I will curse your blessings, yea, I
have cursed them already, because you do not lay at the heart.
Behold, I will corrupt your seed and spread dung upon your faces,
even the dung of your solemn feasts, and one shall take you
away with it. The verses I want to look at
now are just briefly these next few verses here. And you shall
know that I have sent this commandment. Now the commandment there is
the commandment of all the judgments he's going to send. It's God's
decrees that we have just read. That's what it means. It's God's
decrees in those verses two and three. I've sent this commandment
unto you that my covenant might be with Levi, saith the Lord
of hosts. My covenant was with him of life
and peace, and I gave them to him for the fear wherewith he
feared me and was afraid before my name. The law of truth was
in his mouth, and iniquity was not found in his lips. He walked
with me in peace and equity, and did turn many away from iniquity. For the priest's lips should
keep knowledge, and they should seek the law at his mouth. For
he is the messenger of the Lord of hosts. all the time in the rest of the
Old Testament to see that the Levi that's spoken about here
is not the Levi in the flesh. Nor is it speaking of the descendants
of Levi. This is a glorious picture of
our Lord Jesus Christ. It's a picture of what he will
reveal to that religious world by his coming. But it's also
a glorious picture of the covenant, the covenant of grace, the covenant
in his blood, the covenant of life, and peace and all of our
salvation is tied up in it, this covenant. The covenant, I want
us to be reminded, is a person. The gospel is a person. The declaration of the gospel
is the declaration of a person. It's the Lord Jesus Christ who
is declared. The Lord says in Isaiah chapter 49, thus saith
the Lord the Redeemer of Israel and His Holy One, to him whom
man despises, that's what man did to him, to him whom the nation
abhorred, to a servant of rulers kings shall see and arise, princes
shall worship because of the Lord that is faithful and the
Holy One of Israel and he shall choose thee. Thus saith the Lord,
in an acceptable time I have heard thee, in the day of salvation
I have helped thee, and I will preserve thee and give thee. for a covenant of the people
to establish the earth and cause to inherit desolate heritages. You can read more about that
in Isaiah chapter 42, but I want us to be reminded of a verse
that is so sweet. And I trust it is a verse which
is your portion now. We went to a funeral last week.
David here is talking about his funeral. These are the last words
of King David and he says in verse 5 of 2 Samuel 23, these
are verses that need to be written down and memorised and the Lord
might cause them to be the comfort of our souls as they were the
comfort of David's souls. And listen to what David says
in verse 5, he says, be not so with God. And if you look at
his house, whichever way you look at his house, his own family
was extraordinarily dysfunctional with children raping each other
and murdering each other and another one trying to usurp the
throne from him. His house was a mess. His house of Israel was a mess,
and his own personal house was a mess. Whichever house you want
to look at, it was a mess. It's not so. Let my house be
not so with God. Yet, yet, this is one of the
great buts of scripture, isn't it? This is David's great but,
isn't it? He looks at his own life, he looks at his own nation,
and he can look at all the extraordinary things that he's done. And we
often think of David's sins, but we don't think enough of
the glory of David. He was the sweet psalmist of
Israel. He was a man after God's own heart, David, and he had
a lot that he could have boasted in at the end of his life. He
could have looked around at his life and said, look what I've
done, look at this city, look at this kingdom that I have,
look at the lands, look at the people. He says, yet he, God,
hath made with me an everlasting covenant It's an eternal covenant. It's
a covenant that was given before the foundations of the world.
It was a covenant that the parties to this covenant are the God
the Father, God the Son, and it's recorded by God the Holy
Spirit who was present there. God has made with me, but where
was David when that everlasting covenant was made? Where was
David? David was in the Lord Jesus Christ. He was in union with him. God
has made with me, and every believer, every true child of God can say
exactly the same thing as David. He's made with me an everlasting
covenant. He made the covenant. It's not
a covenant of works. It's a covenant of grace. It's
a covenant in his blood. It's the eternal covenant. It's
an everlasting covenant. God's children were put in it
before the foundation of the world in union with the Lord
Jesus Christ. Such is the security of the children of God. He has
made it with me. I didn't make it. I was a recipient
of it. That's what grace is, isn't it?
He does all the work and his people receive all the blessings.
He has made with me an everlasting covenant. Listen to what he says.
It's ordered in all things. It's ordered in all things and
sure, and sure. God's made it sure. Ordered in
all things and sure. For this is all my salvation. All my salvation. It's not this
plus some things that I do. It's not this plus my obedience.
It's not this. And my faithfulness, it's Him. This is all my salvation and
it's all my desire. It's all my desire. Although he make it not to grow,
it's an everlasting covenant. It's an unchangeable covenant.
God doesn't change. The covenant doesn't change.
It doesn't grow. It doesn't grow old. It doesn't
diminish in any way at all. It doesn't ever need to change.
It's an everlasting covenant. This is the covenant that Malachi
is speaking of here and this is the covenant that all of God's
sent servants bring to the people of this world that will hear
them. They bring this everlasting covenant. They bring this everlasting
covenant. Listen to what the promise of
God is in 2nd Corinthians chapter 3. Not that we are sufficient of
ourselves. He's talking about the insufficiency of us. He'll
go on to say that we have a treasure in earthen vessels. Not that
we are sufficient to think anything as of ourselves, but our sufficiency,
the sufficiency of the declaration of the gospel is of God. God sends the gospel. God raises
up people to preach the gospel. God sends the gospel to the people
who will hear the gospel. God causes the hearing ear and
the seeing eye. God causes all of these things. Our sufficiency is of God, who
also hath made us able ministers. That is a servant who hands around
a platter, just like the disciples handed around their bread in
John 6. We're able ministers. of the New Testament, the New
Covenant, the Eternal Covenant, the Eternal Covenant. It's new
because it's new every morning. The blessings are new every morning. Not of the letter, so it's not
the covenant that's got anything to do with our activities and
our works, it's not the covenant with Moses, it's the covenant,
the eternal covenant, it's the covenant in the blood of the
Lord Jesus Christ. You can read about it in Hebrews
13, 20. Not of the letter, but of the Spirit, for the letter
killeth, but the Spirit giveth life. So in this covenant, this
covenant's a person, as I reminded you. This covenant's an eternal
covenant. This covenant's the covenant upon which the children
of God rest their heads on the day of their dying. They look
to this eternal covenant. It's the Spirit that giveth life.
There's life in this covenant. So let's go back to our passage
in Malachi. I want us to see how incredibly
significant this is. And you can ask people who have
been in religion what they know of the eternal covenant, who
are the parties to it and what are the results of this covenant,
and you'll know whether they've been taught by people sent of
God or not. But listen to what God says,
this commandment, verse 4, they shall know there's a time coming
When all the world will know that God has sent his decrees
into this world and the result of it is that my covenant might
be with Levi. Our covenant might be with Levi. We don't have a lot of time so
I just want us to be reminded again that this Levi is not The
Levi in the flesh. This Levi is the Lord Jesus Christ. He is the Great High Priest.
He is both the Levi that's spoken of here and he's also the Melchizedek
that's spoken of in Hebrews. He is the the priest of the covenant,
and listen to what Deuteronomy 33 says, and of Levi he said,
let thy thumen and thy urim, those words mean lights and perfections
that were used for direction and guidance of the children
of God in the days of that dispensation, let thy urim and thy thumen be
with thy holy one. You might remember that one of
the accusations that the Apostles brought against the Jews is that
you've actually taken the Holy One of God and put him to death. The Holy One is the Lord Jesus
Christ. My covenant, now let's just listen
to what God says about this covenant. My covenant was with him. And I want us to note as we go
through here that all of the verbs are in the past tense. Why are all the verbs so often
in the scripture? You read Isaiah chapter 53 and
it's all in the past tense. It's all in the past tense. Why is it in the past tense?
Because when God decrees something, it's finished and done and it's
sealed. So when God declares it, he can
declare it to have been finished. This is 400 years before the
Lord Jesus Christ came. My covenant might be with Levi. My covenant was with him of life
and peace. My covenant was with him of life
and peace. Covenant is with him. The covenant
is with him and it's a covenant of life and peace. Listen to
the outworkings of this covenant in the lives of the children
of God in this time. This covenant's a covenant, as
I said, it's a covenant of the Lord Jesus Christ. It speaks
of him in 1 Timothy chapter 1, he says don't be ashamed, don't
be ashamed of the testimony, don't be ashamed of what God
testifies about God in the scriptures, don't be ashamed of it. In John
chapter 6 a multitude left because they were ashamed of what he
said about himself. Don't be ashamed of the testimony of our
Lord, nor of me his prisoner, but be thou a partaker of the
afflictions of the gospel according to the power of God. You will
suffer afflictions according to the power of God. Who hath,
listen to what he says, who hath saved us? Note the order that
God speaks of in terms of this covenant. Who has saved us? He
saved us first and called us. All the saved will be called.
with a holy calling. It'll be a calling that comes
from God himself. It'll have the power of God in
the hearts and the minds and the lives of those who are called. Not according to our works. It's
got nothing to do with our activities, brothers and sisters. This is
him working, isn't it? Not according to our works, but
according to his own purpose and grace. And this is speaking
about this covenant again. His own purpose and grace, which
was given us in Christ Jesus before the world began. When were you saved? You were saved before the world
began. You were saved by the work of
the Lord Jesus Christ on the cross. You were saved when he
birthed you again. Listen to what he goes on to
say. But he's now made manifest. He's been brought into light
by the appearing of our Saviour Jesus Christ. Listen to what
he's done. Who hath abolished death. Now
under David died happily on his pillow. Who has abolished death. and has brought life and immortality
to light. Praise the Lord. Through the
gospel, through the gospel. It's a covenant of life. I gave
that my covenant was with him for life. The Lord Jesus Christ
is our peace, brothers and sisters in Christ. People say, well,
make your peace with God. If your peace wasn't made in
the eternal covenant, and your peace wasn't made at the cross
of the Lord Jesus Christ, and He's not your peace, then there's
no point in you trying to make peace. God's the one that makes peace.
The covenant was with Him for life and peace. My covenant was with Him for
life. In Him is life. The only true
life, the only true life before God, the only true life with
God is all in Him and He's our peace. All the terms of peace
and reconciliation are in the hands of our surety, in the hands
of the Lord Jesus Christ. He is the surety of that eternal
covenant, Hebrews 7.22. It means that he's not just a
guarantor, it means that he takes full responsibility for the sins
of all of his people and he takes full responsibility for all their
righteousness and holiness before God. That's what it is to be
a surety. He takes full responsibility.
When the hands, as it were, of God were struck in that eternal
covenant before the foundation of the world, at that moment
and from that time on, the Lord Jesus Christ is looked to by
God his Father for everything that's needed for every one of
his children to be in his presence. Everything. God looks to him. God looks to him and he says,
you behold, you listen to my beloved son, in whom I am well
pleased. And do you know what? Everyone
who's in him is well pleased before God as well. That's the
gospel, brothers and sisters. It's a declaration of who the
covenants are. There is peace. There is peace. Two parties that were separated
are now at peace. We can be in the presence of
a holy and righteous and just God because of the Lord Jesus
Christ. Not only are we in his presence,
but we're welcomed in his presence, and we're commanded to come into
his presence. He is our peace, and that peace
was made by the blood of the covenant. And I gave them to
him. The Lord God is speaking here,
and he speaks of seven things that the Lord Jesus Christ does.
has done, will do, seven things that were enacted in the history
of Israel that they would come to know. I gave them to him. He gave him this covenant of
life and peace, verse five, for the fear wherewith he feared
me and was afraid before my name. You only have to think of the
Lord Jesus Christ with sweating those great drops of blood in
Gethsemane's garden. In John chapter 12 he says, Now
my soul is troubled. God the Father gave him a cup. He was the Lamb slain from the
foundation of the world, but God the Father gave him a cup
in Gethsemane's garden and the Lord Jesus Christ, the Holy One
of Israel, looked into that cup and he saw He saw that in that
cup which caused his heart to break, and on a cold night, the
blood to pour from the pores of his skin and drop as great
drops to the ground. What was in the cup? He says, unless I drink this
cup, it will never pass away. People say that in the cup was
the wrath of God, and there is a very real sense in which that's
true. But the wrath of God is always fixed and constrained
by the justice of God. So there was wrath. But what
was in the cup that caused the wrath to fall? In that cup were
all the sins of all of the children of God. all of the sins of all
of the children of God. And he drank that cup. As 2 Corinthians
5 says, God made him who knew no sin to be sin for us. Sin cannot be in two places at
once, brothers and sisters in Christ. God cannot see sin in
two places and be just and holy. God made him to be sinned, which
means that all the sins that I've ever committed and all the
sins of every elect child of God were placed by God the Father
on his precious Son. And he suffered, as only God
can suffer. He suffered the infinite wrath
of holy God on every one of those sins until God says they're gone. God says they And that's why
he presents his people holy, unblameable, unapprovable in
his sight. He does the presentation, because
in him they have none of those things. We have no sin. That's
what it is to be justified, brothers and sisters, to have never sinned
in the sight of God, because God put all the sins of all of
his people on the Lord Jesus Christ. This is the covenant,
this is the covenant that the children of God were to contemplate
as they studied the book of Malachi and thought about the coming
Messiah. He feared, he was feared. Only
the Lord Jesus Christ truly revered his father's name. Only the Lord
Jesus Christ truly revered and feared the infinite justice of
God. Listen to what else was in. The
law of truth was in his mouth. The Lord Jesus Christ was full
of grace and truth. Truth written as promised. And true comes from God who is
truth and cannot lie. And he speaks the truth. And
he says, I am the way, the truth, and the life. And it's called,
the Holy Spirit is called the Spirit of Truth, and His work
is to reveal He who is the truth. See, the gospel was in the mouth
of the Lord Jesus Christ. The gospel was in His mouth.
The law of truth was in Him. He perfectly obeyed the law of
God. He perfectly obeyed it in heart
and soul and mind and strength. No other human being has ever
obeyed one of God's laws to the satisfaction of God, but it was
in His mouth. He loved the law of God and God's
children love the law of God. And we love to see the law of
God fulfilled and perfectly satisfied in the Lord Jesus Christ. The
law of truth is in his mouth and iniquity was not found in
his lips. Iniquity was not found in his
lips. That's obviously not talking about any human being. There
is iniquity in so much of what we do at the very best of times.
How much iniquity has come from the lips of every child of Adam
throughout this world. Iniquity was not found in his
lips. Don't you love the fact that all through the gospel accounts
we have these Pharisees, these religious Pharisees, the religious
nitpickers, and they poured over the life of the Lord Jesus Christ
and then at the end they had Judas who'd been with him for
three years to examine him and they examined him up and down
And the only charge they could ever bring against him, he said
to them, he said to them, didn't he? Can you accuse me of any
sin? No human being could ever do
that. The only accusation they could finally bring against him
was that he would claim to be God. That's why they killed him. The Jews killed him because he
claimed to be God. Iniquity was not found in his
lips, in heart and mind and body and soul. He was perfect in every
way. And listen to what he says then
in verse 6. He walked with me in peace and
equity. That word equity means It means
uprightness, a level place. It means straightness. He walked
with me in perfect obedience and he did it naturally and he
did it from his heart and it wasn't any strain or burden to
him. He's always doing his Father's will. I delight to do my Father's
will. My food is to do my Father's
will. I come to do thy will, O my God. Mercy and truth have met together
in the Lord Jesus Christ. Verse and the fifth one in this
glorious description of this covenant mediator, he did turn
many away from iniquity. When the high priest went into
the Holy of Holies, one of the things that he had to do was
take in a sacrifice for the iniquity of their holy things. There was
no iniquity in the holy things of the Lord Jesus Christ. He
turned many away from iniquity. He turns his people away from
iniquity by taking their sins upon himself and completely and
suffering the punishment for them that God says they no longer
exist. Don't you love what Colossians
2 says about him and what he did on the cross? And he says,
and you being dead in your sins and the uncircumcision of flesh,
hath he quickened together with him, you made him alive together
with him, having forgiven you, what? All your trespasses. And he's blotted out the handwriting
that was against us. His lips kept knowledge. His
lips kept knowledge of God. His lips kept knowledge of God
and His will and His law and His name. He challenged those
people, didn't he? In verse 2 of this same chapter
he says, you're going to suffer this because you do not give
glory unto my name. The Lord Jesus Christ glorified
the name of his father in everything he did and said. He glorified
the word of God. His lips kept knowledge. As God
will accuse these Jews in Malachi 1.14, he says, I am a great king. My name is dreadful, my name
is to be feared. The priest's lips should keep
knowledge, they should seek the law at his mouth. Don't you love
seeing the law of God in the mouth of the Lord Jesus Christ?
And he is the messenger, for he is the messenger of the Lord
of hosts. He's the messenger, this covenant
Levi is the messenger. The one who's covenant, who bears
that covenant, who is the covenant, the covenant with him of life
and peace. He reveals God. If you've seen
me, he said to Philip, you've seen God. He says all the fullness
of the Deity dwells in the Lord Jesus Christ. He's the messenger
of the Lord of Cove. He reveals the Lord of hosts.
That word hosts means the Lord of armies, the Lord of angels,
or the Lord of stars. It's meant to show us the absolute
power and sovereignty of our God. He reveals God to men, and
He reveals man to man, and He reveals God's salvation in the
Lord Jesus Christ. He's the messenger of the covenant. David rested on his pillow. An old man and he rested on his
pillow with sweet thoughts of an eternal covenant, with sweet
thoughts of the Lord Jesus Christ. May we be led to rest as he does. all of God's children do. Verse
20 of Hebrews 13 says, Now the God of peace that brought again
from the dead our Lord Jesus, the great shepherd of the sheep,
through the blood of the everlasting covenant. What will he do? Verse
21, Make you perfect in every good working in you that which is
well-pleasing in his sight through Jesus Christ, to whom be glory
forever and ever. I can rest. I can rest in the
green pastures of his word and his promises. I can rest as John
did on the breast of the Lord Jesus Christ. Let's pray. Our Heavenly Father, we do thank
you and praise you for your dear and precious Son, by whom and
through whom we have access into the very throne of God and we
are declared by your word, Heavenly Father, to be seated with the
Lord Jesus Christ in heavenly places and we pray that you would
cause us to have views of the glory of your Son in heaven and
the glory and the wonder of finished redemption that sins of all of
his people gone forever, Heavenly Father, and that he now, by your
Spirit, is working, working in the hearts and lives of all your
people, causing us to hear your voice, to hear the voice of the
shepherd, and come, and come into his presence. Draw us, Heavenly
Father, draw us, and we will come after you. May you By Your
Spirit, make His broken body and His shed blood precious to
Your people, Heavenly Father. For we pray in Jesus' name, and
for His glory.