Psalm 105. This has been a real blessing
to look at this chapter over and over and over. We can see
the hand of God in the history of the world for the sake of
His elect. When I read this, and I've read
this Psalm, Many times. And I'll probably read it many
more times over the next couple of weeks or two. Because it's
going to take up another one or two messages just to go through
it. But it's so comforting. It's so comforting to see and
understand that this world is God's. It's His. And He runs it day by day for
the sake of the elect. He manages everything for the
sake of the elect. And we'll see some of that as
we go through this psalm. But the title of the message
is this. God is a covenant God. That word covenant stood out
to me. He made a covenant with Abraham.
Isaac, Jacob, he's elect is what it's saying. He made a covenant
with them. We know through the Scriptures that God is a covenant
God. Everything that God has done,
is doing, and shall do is according to the covenant that He made
with His Son Jesus Christ before He created the heavens and the
earth. Everything is going as He has ordered it in that covenant. We know it as the covenant of
grace. I'm sure glad it's not a covenant
of works, the one He made with Israel at Sinai. It's a covenant
of grace. We have it by grace. God put
us in that number and in that covenant and the blessings of
that covenant by grace and for no other reason. Now, before
I heard Henry, preaching the gospel of grace before I heard
him speak of the covenant of grace? I'd never even heard of
that. I never heard the word covenant of grace. Isn't that
amazing? I never heard it. I thought about
that today. I never heard anyone say anything
about the covenant of grace until I heard Henry preaching the gospel. And I do not believe it is possible
to preach the gospel and not speak of the covenant of grace
that God made with His Son Jesus Christ. How can you read the
Word of God and not come across that word covenant? And not understand
that God is a God of covenant. He's a covenant God. Now I'm
going to pick up in verse 6. David identifies here in verse
6 who he's writing to. He's not writing to everyone.
It's not written to everyone. It's written to God's elect. O ye seed of Abraham, do you
really understand and see that you who believe are the seed
of Abraham? Do you know that? Listen, O ye
seed of Abraham, his servant, ye children of Jacob, his chosen,
his elect. You and I are children of Jacob. I know Jacob had the patriarchs
and the twelve sons there, but you and I are the elect of God. We are the sons of Abraham, I
promise. We are the chosen in Jesus Christ,
the sons of Jacob. David narrows down who he's speaking
here by saying, Ye seed of Abraham, ye children of Jacob, his chosen,
as opposed," now listen, "...as opposed to Esau, whom God hated."
Esau was the seed of Abraham, wasn't he? Jacob have I loved,
Esau have I hated. He didn't say, You children of
Jacob and Esau. He said, You children of Jacob. Not Esau. Not every Israelite
is counted for the promise. Not every Israelite is counted
as the seed of Abraham. You know that? This covenant does not belong
to the flesh. It belongs to the children of
promise who are born of the Spirit of God. Turn over to Romans chapter
9. Look at verse 6, "...not as though the word of
God hath taken none effect." Not as though the word of God
became void, it hasn't been effective. God said, My word shall not return
void. Didn't He say that? He said that. "...For they are
not all Israel, which are of Israel, neither because they
are the seed of Abraham." I mean, you go over there in that part
of the country, and they wear that as a badge. They wear that
as their ticket to heaven, as their ticket to paradise, that
they are the seed of Abraham. No, no, no. Not so. Neither because they are the
seed of Abraham are they all children. But in Isaac, the promise
seed, who represents Christ, shall thy seed be called, which
is speaking of Christ, and us in Christ. That is, they which
are the children of the flesh, these are not the children of
God. They are not the children of God. But the children of the
promise are counted for the seed. So when you stop and think You believe the gospel. You believe
God has saved you. He promised you to His Son long
before the world began. You are a child of promise. You're
not a child of God by chance. God's given you a chance. You're
a child by promise. When you realize that, that is... That is reason to give thanks.
Oh, give thanks, he said. And praise Him and sing unto
Him. You are a child of promise. And David continues to give us
reason, that is us the children of promise, reason for such praise
and thankfulness because of this in verse 7. He is the Lord, that
is Jehovah. He doesn't just call Him, He
is God. He said, He is the Lord. They wouldn't even mention that
name. They wouldn't mention the name Jehovah. They would just
say, Lord, the Lord. He's the Lord, our God, and His
judgments are in all the earth. He rules the heavens and the
earth. This is who God is. He's the Lord. He's Jehovah.
He's the self-existing One. He's the author of all life,
and He's the author of spiritual life. He has given us life in
Christ, who is Jehovah, Jehovah Jesus. He's Jehovah the Son. But He's our Lord, the Lord,
our God. This is something to be happy
about. Aren't you glad you're not worshiping some stupid idol
sitting on a shelf? Aren't you glad you're not wearing
a big old cross around your neck and all kinds of religious paraphernalia? Aren't you glad you're not doing
that? Well, thank God for it. Thank God for it. There was a
time I used to wear a t-shirt that had a finger pointing up
like that and it said, one way. I used to wear that to work.
Henry said, well, the less you have on the inside, the more
you gotta wear on the outside. And I had less on the inside then. John Gill said this, He is our
covenant God, our God in Christ, our God that has blessed us with
all spiritual blessings in Christ, our God that has regenerated,
adopted, and justified us, that supplies all our wants, and will
be our God and our portion forever, and therefore worthy of all praise,
honor, and glory. He's our God. Walk with your
head up. Walk with your head up. God is
your God. That doesn't mean walk with a
proud look. God hates a proud look. That's not of God. You
could walk with your head up and walk with humility. You know
that? If you have understanding. God's given you spiritual understanding.
And His judgments are in all the earth. This shows the universality
of the sovereign rule of the Lord our God. He rules this whole
earth for your sake. He does. He said, I kill and
I make a life. I wound and I heal. I, the Lord,
do all these things. He said, I gave Sheba for you. Sheba and Sheba, I think it was.
I gave them for you. These are just examples given
to us in the Scriptures of how God rules the world for our sake. Fire good. Why am I worried about
what's going on in the world? That's God's business. He's doing
it for us. You're going to see this in this.
He takes them to Egypt, then He turns the heart of the Egyptians
to hate them, and He just rules everything for them. Everything. Our God is no God of a region. Our God is the God of heaven
and earth. That's how the prophets of old, that's how they identified
God all the time. He created heaven and earth.
That's usually the way they would start. It's His. Now give me your attention. That's basically it. The prophets
would say, He created the heavens and the earth. Now give me your
attention. He sent a word and I'm going to give it to you. And then God is our covenant
God. Listen here in verses 8 through 10. He hath remembered His covenant
forever, the word which He commanded to
a thousand generations, to the end of this time and throughout
eternity, which covenant He made with Abraham. and his oath unto
Isaac, and confirm the same unto Jacob for a law, and to Israel
for an everlasting covenant." I'm preaching to Israel tonight,
and I'm speaking to you of the everlasting covenant that God
made with the Lord Jesus Christ. And God has remembered that covenant.
You know why you're here tonight? You know why you believe? God
remembered that covenant He made with His Son. You know why God
has forgiven you? He said, because I asked him
to. Well, there's some truth to that, but you know why he
forgave you? For Christ's sake, in honor of that covenant. Hebrews 13, 20, now the God of
peace that brought again from the dead our Lord Jesus, that
great shepherd of the sheep through the blood of the everlasting
covenant. It's an everlasting covenant.
That covenant will never end. You know, you and I throughout
eternity will enjoy the blessings of that covenant. We'll enjoy
the blessings of it. They're inexhaustible. God made
it. How can they be exhausted? There's
a covenant of grace made with the Lord Jesus Christ and with
His people in Christ. Christ agreed to be their surety,
their priest, their prophet, their king, His blood, the blood
of the atonement, to be the sacrifice, to be the Lamb, to be everything
to them. He agreed to do that. And the
Father agreed to bless Him. To bless Him. As He fulfilled that covenant.
And He has fulfilled that covenant. He's fulfilled it. It is through
the Lord Jesus Christ that all nations have been blessed. As
God told Abraham, through your seed all nations will be blessed.
He wasn't talking about the flesh. He's talking about Jesus Christ.
That's who he's talking about. Turn over to Galatians chapter
3. Galatians chapter 3. Let me start in verse 6. Even as Abraham believed God,
and it was accounted to him for righteousness, know ye therefore
that they which are of faith, the same are the children of
Abraham. And the scripture foreseeing that God would justify the heathen
through faith, preached before the gospel unto Abraham, saying,
In thee shall all nations be blessed." You see, it was foretold
that God was going to save Gentiles right here. And He preached it
to Abraham. So then, they which be of faith
are blessed with faithful Abraham. For as many as are of the works
of the law are under the curse for it is written, Cursed is
everyone that continues not in all things which are written
in the book of the law to do them. But that no man is justified
by the law in the sight of God, it is evident, for the just shall
live by faith, the same faith of Abraham. And the law is not
of faith, but the man that doeth them shall live in them." He
better. Christ hath redeemed us from the curse of the law,
being made a curse for us. For He has written, Cursed is
everyone that hangeth on a tree, that the blessing of Abraham
might come on the Gentiles through Jesus Christ, that we might receive
the promise of the Spirit through faith. Brethren, I speak after
the manner of men, though it be but a man's covenant, yet
if it be confirmed, no man disannulleth or addeth thereto. Now to Abraham
and his seed were the promises made. He saith not, and to seeds,
as of many, but as of one, and to thy seed, which is Christ. All nations have been blessed
through the Lord Jesus Christ. In other words, God has saved
out of all nations a people. That people, that sinful people,
that ungodly people that He died for, He has saved them. And they
were given to Him in that covenant. He promised them to His Son.
He promised them. And God never forgets He never
forgets His promise or His promises to His covenanted people. Isn't
that something? Here's another reason for such
praise and thanksgiving is this. God is faithful. Aren't you glad
He's faithful? He hath remembered His covenant
forever. There's His faithfulness. When it rains, sometimes it pours. When Hurricane Florence went
through, it flooded everything. It just flooded, didn't it? But
it stopped. It stopped. You know why it stopped? God
made a covenant with Noah. He called it an everlasting covenant.
He said, I'll not destroy. all flesh again with water. And here's what I'm going to
do. I'm going to make a covenant with you. And I'm going to put
a rainbow in the sky. And I'm telling you, I believe
every child of God after a rain, and they see a rainbow. The first
thing I think of is not the beautiful colors, which they represent
Christ in all His glory, His beautiful glory. But that's a
covenant. Every time you see it, remember
that covenant. God does. He puts that covenant
up there. And the world sees it. The world
sees it and the world thinks it's a beautiful rainbow. It's
a covenant. It's a covenant. But I thought
something interesting today. Look over in Revelations chapter
4. I'm not going to try to go into
any of this, but it's just something to read and to try to connect
it together. In Revelation 4, in verse 3,
and He that sat, that is sat on the throne, was to look upon
like a jasper and a sardine stone, and there was a rainbow round
about the throne. See that rainbow you and I see?
Oh, I tell you what, that rainbow's Christ. It represents Christ. And that rainbow, he says here,
there was a rainbow round about the throne in sight like unto
an emerald. There's a rainbow right there,
a covenant. It's that covenant. Now, the reason I say it's Christ,
look over in Revelation 10. And I saw another mighty angel
come down from heaven, clothed with a cloud, and a rainbow was
upon his head. And his face was as it were the
sun, and his feet as pillars of fire. But that rainbow, that
covenant, that rainbow represents a covenant, is upon his head,
is upon the head of the church, the Lord Jesus Christ. God told Noah, I'll make an everlasting
covenant with you. God is faithful. He's faithful
to His covenant. Think of this. He says here,
He hath remembered His covenant forever. God remembers our sins
no more, but He remembers His covenant with us in Christ forever. Isn't that something? God is faithful to His Word.
If He's given His Word, He will not go back on His Word. Listen
to Numbers 23, 19. God is not a man that he should
lie, neither the Son of Man that he should repent. Hath He said,
and shall He not do it? Or hath He spoken, and shall
He not make it good? Absolutely. Absolutely. One hundred percent. God said
it. It's not God said it and I believe
it as I've heard Henry say so many times. It doesn't matter
whether I believe it or not. I can't help but quote him so
much because I sat there for so long under him. But I can't
think of a better man to quote, for me anyway. God's faithful
to His Word. God's faithful to His Son. He's
faithful to His Son. He will do all that He promised
He would do. Christ did all that He said He
would do. He did all He said He would do. When our God the
Father is going to do all He said He would do. And all of
that is on our behalf. It's not, he's done all he said
he could do, or he said he would do, and Christ did all he said
he would do, and now you gotta do it all, because you said you'd
do it. No, we'd all go to hell if that was the case. We can't
even get through a day to do all we said we was gonna do.
I told Vicki I was gonna fix that stool in there in my study
today. It's still in my study and it
ain't fixed. I just, I said I'll try to get
it before the conference. But now God will do all He said
He'd do. I promise you, if He said He's going to fix that stool
today, it would have been fixed when He said it. He's good for His Word,
and He's faithful to His Son, and He's faithful to show mercy
to His Chosen in Christ. He's faithful. God is faithful. Listen to Lamentations 3, 22-23.
It is of the Lord's mercies. that we are not consumed, because
His compassions fail not. They are new every morning. Great
is Thy faithfulness." That would be a good one to sing at the
end. I told you a song would come up. Great is Thy faithfulness. Now what God has promised to
natural Israel, being a type of the church, He's fulfilled
in spiritual Israel. You see, Israel was a type. It
was a type of the church. You take the Israel of old. Israel
of old had those in it that believed, but it had a lot of tares in
it too, didn't it? There were a lot of unbelievers in it. They'd
enter not in because of unbelief. They were tares. They were of
the flesh. They were children of the flesh. But there were
some children of promise in that tribe. But what God had promised
to them, He has given to us in Christ. saying unto thee," in
verse 11, saying unto thee, saying unto thee, will I give the land
of Canaan, the lot of your inheritance. They hadn't even gone there yet.
They were just a small people. But God's telling them the future. But listen here. He's going to
give them the land of Canaan, the lot of your inheritance.
It was a land of promise. It was a land of promise. They
didn't purchase Canaan. It was a land prepared for them.
When they went in, it was already well-gardened fruit. Trying to think of preaches is
trouble. Joshua and Caleb and them, when they went over there
and spied the land, they brought those grapes there to carry them
on their shoulders. You could probably make a bottle
of wine out of one grape. They were so big. That's how
fruitful that lamb was. And you know those Canaanites.
Those Canaanites thought they were brilliant. Those Canaanites
thought they really had it on the ball. They thought that by
their ingenuity and their intelligence and their work that they produced
this great fruit. Look at what we produced. No,
God's producing it for His people. As you read in Ecclesiastes,
that, I'm not going to quote it verbatim, but the Lord has
blessed His work to give it to His people. To give it to His. God has allowed the human race
to produce for me and you. You have a job, don't you? Probably
the person that owns it hates God. I mean, it has nothing to
do with God. Every place I worked, they did. Except one. I worked for Bob Coffey for a
while. Except for one. They hated God, but you know
what? God prospered them because he had a sheep that needed a
job and needed to feed his family. And God provided. And how many
jobs God provided just to take care of one sheep? Isn't that
something? Oh, it was a land of promise,
a land prepared for them, a land given to them. They didn't work
for it. Heaven is a land of promise. You can't purchase it. You can't
purchase it by good works and giving. You can't purchase heaven.
It's a place prepared for us. Christ said, I go and prepare
a place for you. And it's a place we didn't work
for. We don't ever work for that place. We work in the Kingdom
of God. We do His bidding, but we're
not working to get it. And then these promises were
made, listen, with one man when he had no children. And when they went into Egypt,
they were but few. Seventy. When they were but a few men
in number, yea, very few strangers in it. But here's what I thought
when I read this. There's no reason found in us
as to why God saved us and blessed us in Christ. A few. There's a few here tonight. We could fill this place up if
you want to entertain sinners on their way to hell. You can
do that. But we'd also go to hell with
them if we was in that kind of ministry. The reason is found in God. and
his eternal purpose, which he purposed in Christ before the
world was. And I want you to notice here,
all Israel, as far as their natural Israel, they were all blessed
because of that covenant made with one man. They all went into
the land of Canaan, the ones that went in, they went in because
that covenant made with one man. So it is with us. God made that
covenant with one man. One man. Jesus Christ. And we are blessed in Him. We
have covenant mercies falling on us, raining on us day by day. Day by day. Now listen, we have this covenant
made with Christ and us in Christ, and God has promised protection. We have covenant protection.
We have promises that God will protect us. You know that? When they went from one nation
to another nation. You know, God called Abraham
out of the land of the earth, Chaldees. Abraham was a rank
idolater when God saved him. He wasn't looking for God. He
wasn't looking for God at all when God saved him. God had purpose
to save this man, make this covenant with this man. And he said, when
you go from one nation to another, I'm going to protect you. Wouldn't you like to know that
if you was going to go over to Iraq right now? There's some
countries where you go to Russia. I tell you, this is a good word
when you have to travel or In this world of evil, in this world
of evil, we have God's Word on it that He's going to protect
us. When they went from one nation to another, and from one kingdom
to another people, He suffered no man to do them wrong. Yea,
He reproved kings for their sin. He brought down kings, kings,
nobles. He brought them down to the dirt
for the sake of Israel. saying, Touch not mine anointing,
and do my prophets no harm. God rules this world for the
sake of His elect. When you go home, read the rest
of this chapter. Now listen, history revolves around God's
church. It revolves around the church
in this world. History cannot be understood
apart from the church. It can't be understood. And God
exercises control over all men and devils for our safety. He
exercises control in order to fulfill His will. He exercises
control over all of creation. God disturbed the Mediterranean
Sea. I mean disturbed it. and had prepared a whale. You know why? Jonah. Jonah. Jonah took off. He didn't want to go preach to
Nineveh. God's purpose is that you're going to preach to Nineveh.
And God stirred up that whole Mediterranean and was going to
drown that group until they threw him in the sea. And when they
threw him in the sea, God prepared a whale. You know, who knows
how long that whale had been prepared? Probably just a little
old thing. You know, when it started, for years, it grew and grew and
grew until it was big enough to eat Jonah. God rules all things. We can see the hand of God in
the history of the human race. The wars that have been won and
lost are according to the will of God. It's not who was stronger and
who was weaker, it's according to the will of God. And then
we see an example of this, of God's ruling over all things. We see an example of it in God
sending Israel into Egypt. And He foretold this, And this
is so interesting. This just kind of opened my eyes
to history again. God foretold the history before
it happened. He foretold this event. Now listen,
Genesis 15, 13 through 14. And he, that is God, said to
Abram, know of a surety this is going to happen. I like that. I like that. God is the only
one who can say, know of a surety. No, but surety that thy seed
shall be a stranger in a land that is not theirs, and shall
serve them, and they shall afflict them four hundred years." You
know, God turned their hearts to hate Israel, and had He not
done it, you know, Israel would never want to leave that place.
They kept wanting to go back to it. You know, in Babylon,
a lot of them didn't want to leave Babylon after a while.
God knows how to make us want to leave this world. He has to
wean us from it. We cry and moan and groan about
trials, and all it is is God's conformity to the image of Christ
and weaned us from this world. That's what He's doing. And also
that nation whom they shall serve will I judge, and afterward shall
they come out with great substance. We're not going out of here poor.
We are not going out of here poor. We are going out of here
with the full riches of Jesus Christ. Listen to this, I thought about
this and I just jotted this down. God foretells history. We look at history in the past
tense, don't we? It's always past tense with us.
God tells history in the future tense. History with God is always
in the future tense. He said, this is what's going
to happen. And when it happens, we call
it history. But it's God telling us what's
going to happen. You can read Revelation and read
a lot of things that's going to happen. You can read history.
History is written in the Bible. It's all written out. The whole
history of the human race is written in the Word of God. It's
written. He's going to destroy this world.
He's going to burn it up. One day it will be history. And then we see, now listen,
we see God's providence in creation again. For the purpose of His
elect, for the purpose of all those whom He saves. Verse 16. Moreover, He called for a famine
upon the land. Who did? God did. God did. God told Abraham, this
is what's going to happen. And now He reveals to us in Providence
how it's going to happen. When He told Abraham they were
going to go down in Egypt and serve them, be served for 400
years. 400 years. And they went down
there 400 years. 400 years. They were down there
about 30 years and they were going into service, this hard
service. God's good for His word, isn't
He? Good for His word. He called for a famine upon the
land. He break the whole staff of bread. I learned something
of that this year. First time I planted a garden
this year down here. First time I planted a pretty
good size garden and God burn it up. He withheld the rain. Someone said to me the other
day, said, well, if we'd have gotten that rain sooner, this
stuff would have survived. And I thought, it came right
when it was supposed to come. And I learned, and we learned
these things. God burned that thing. That didn't
produce hardly anything. But it's God's. It's not mine. It's His. Go to the grocery store. Thank God, He provided for us. If He burns up my garden, He
sends me to the grocery store. And I buy the food that some
other gardener planted, and evidently they must have needed the money. For whatever reason, God did
it. God broke the whole staff of bread. He brought them to
their knees. He brought them to their knees. But here's what we're going to
look at next week, Lord willing. Verse 17, He sent a man before
them. He sent a man of wisdom. Christ,
the wisdom of God. He sent a man of wisdom, told
him what to do. But before He ascended the throne
and took over Egypt there and all that was there, He had to
go to prison first. I'm not going to get into that. He sent a man
before them, even Joseph, who was sold for a servant. Well,
maybe that will water your mouth a little bit to read it.