Let me talk to you a little bit
tonight about covenant mercies. If you know anything about the
Bible, and most of you do, the word covenant is a key word in
the scriptures. It means a legal binding agreement. The first covenant established
is in Genesis, the second chapter. And that's the covenant of works
that God established with Adam. And the fulfillment of that covenant
was based upon, number one, the faithfulness of God, and number
two, the faithfulness of Adam. And we've been talking about
this quite a bit in recent messages. The covenant God made with Adam
is called the covenant of works. And basically, it amounted to
this. Adam, obey me and live. Disobey me and die. And we know God's always faithful. God can't lie. God can't be anything
other than faithful to his word. But Adam broke the covenant.
And all of Adam's seed, all of humanity, we were born under
the covenant of works. And being born under the covenant
of works, we have broken that covenant in Adam. But there's
another covenant. It's called the New Covenant.
It's called the New Covenant not because it's newer than the
old one. But it's the newest one revealed. It's the everlasting covenant
of grace. And it's this covenant that I
wanna speak about for a little bit tonight. The covenant mercies
of God. And I wanna make five statements
to begin with. Stay with me on these. Let us
remember, number one, that the written word of God was given
unto us that we might see and learn of the Lord Jesus Christ. That's why God gave us the Bible.
The Bible is all about one person, the Son of God, the Savior of
sinners. In Luke chapter 24 and verse
44, our Lord said to his disciples, he said unto them, these are
the words that I spake with you. I spake these words with you
while I was yet with you, that all things must be fulfilled,
which were written in the law of Moses, the first five books
of the Bible, and in the prophets, and in the Psalms concerning
me. What's the Old Testament all
about? Well, the question's not what
is it about, but who is it about? It's about our Lord Jesus Christ.
It's about somebody. It's about the person of our
Savior. And all of the sacrifices, all
of the offerings, all of the rituals, all of the ceremonial
laws that the Lord gave to Moses on Mount Sinai and things that
Aaron did as high priest for Israel, all of those things pointed
to the Lord Jesus Christ. And you have thus far read the
Old Testament in vain if you don't see that Christ is the
subject of the Old Testament Scriptures. Here's the second thing I want
to tell you. Let us remember that the written Word of God
is given unto us that we might see and learn, that the grace
of God And the salvation of God is only found in Jesus Christ. It's not found in the law. Paul
said, I love the law. I delight in the law of God after
the inward man. But salvation is not in the law
of God. If you run to the law of God
thinking that by your obedience to God's law, by your efforts
to conformity to God's law, that thereby you'll be accepted, you're
running to that which the Scripture refers to as the ministration
of death and condemnation. Know this, God's law can't save. God's law was given for two reasons. Number one, to condemn us and
to convict us. That's all it can do. It can't
show you any mercy. It can't forgive you of your
sins. I heard somebody on the news the other day said, you
know, would that our country live by the Ten Commandments?
God didn't give us the Ten Commandments to live by. Read your Bible. In Romans chapter
3, God gave us his law to shut our mouths and pronounce us guilty. There's not a one of us that
can keep the law of God inwardly or outwardly. Not in our words,
not in our motives. God's law was given to leave
us destitute of any goodness, to strip us of all self-righteousness, and to know that in the flesh
dwelleth no good thing. God's salvation is only found
in somebody, not in keeping rules, Not in rituals, not in walking
the aisle. Nancy and I were watching a little
TV this afternoon, and a famous movie star came on. And he made
the motion of the cross, the sign of the cross, I guess it
was. And then he said, I'm going to
pray this prayer, you pray this prayer with me. Let me tell you
something, making a motion a physical motion like crossing, you know,
this kind of stuff, that doesn't impress God. You get nowhere
with God through that. Oh, how blind people are that
they think that outward symbolism and outward performances or duties
of the flesh somehow or another will sway God over to our side. I've said this and I'll keep
on saying it till I can't say it any longer, till I have no
voice left. God is only impressed with his
son. And he's only gonna receive you
through his son. He's not gonna receive you for
your Bible readings. You need to read your Bible.
That's not how God accepts sinners. God's not gonna accept you because
of your prayers. You can get down on your knees
every night and pray till you get arthritis in your knees. You can't hardly get down anymore
and you can't get up then. I'm not saying don't pray, but
I'm saying prayer is not the way God accepts us. He accepts
us in through and by the Lord Jesus Christ. That's what the
book of God teaches. And thirdly, let us remember
that the written word of God is given to us that we might
see and know and learn that God deals with sinners upon the basis
of an everlasting covenant of grace. In the eternal counsel of God, our God detailed every facet
of the salvation of sinners in that covenant. And he took care
of every single thing and left absolutely nothing out. And one of the things that grieves
my heart as I occasionally listen to preachers on television is
that nobody, virtually nobody is talking about this covenant.
I grew up in church, in a Baptist church, and I was there faithfully. I'd never heard anything about
the covenant of grace. And I mean, I was in the, in Sunday school, as in what
we call the booster band. Wednesday night Bible study with
our pastor's wife teaching us. Right on up through the classes
in church and the Sunday school. I do not recall anybody ever
talking about the covenant of God's grace. And that's a failure on the part
of the Sunday school teachers and of the pastor. If you want to know something
about God's salvation, why wouldn't you go back to the very origin
of it? And the origin of salvation is
God's everlasting covenant of grace. Know this, everything that ever
happens in this world, everything, was ordained before the world
was ever made. And I know this is way beyond
our comprehension and our understanding, but all things that happened
every single day, all things that happened every single day
to every single person was ordained of God before He ever made the
world. All of the things that happened
this day to you, to me, to everybody else throughout the world, God
ordained it all. And that's His divine providence. People used to talk about God's
predestination and God's providence. Don't hear much talk about that
anymore. Because it's too offensive. But
we don't want to upset people. We don't want to offend anybody.
I'll tell you this, I don't want to offend God. I don't want to take my little
pen knife and cut out things that God has in His Word that
seems to offend some people. I believe Jefferson did that,
didn't he? You'll really have a holy Bible
then. This is His Word. He's exalted
His Word. He's exalted His Word. Heaven
and earth will pass away, but not the Word of God. We better
bow to the authority of God's Word. And it's okay to say, I
don't understand it. It's okay to say, I don't have
a grasp of that. It's okay to say, I just, I can't
see that. I pray for more light on that.
But it's not okay to say, I don't believe that. Now that's a horse
of a different color there. This is His Word. And His determination to save
is His everlasting covenant. The covenant of grace was a contract,
a compact, an agreement made from all eternity. And it was made between the Father
and the Son. Look at verse 3. I have made
a covenant, Jehovah God, the Father says, I have made a covenant. Well, who'd you make the covenant
with? My chosen I have sworn unto David Christ
my servant. Christ is the one spoken of in
verse 19. Then thou spakest in vision to
thy Holy One, to Christ, and saidst, I have laid help upon
one who is mighty. I have exalted one chosen out
of the people. I have found David my servant
with my holy oil, have I anointed him." Our Lord Jesus Christ, He's presented
here as one chosen out of the people. He was bone of our bone
and flesh of our flesh. And God chose Him to be the Savior. And God says, I have laid help
upon one who is mighty. The only one who can help us,
the only one who can save us has to be almighty. That's the
Son of God. But He had to be a man in order
to suffer, bleed, and die to pay the wages of our sins, which
is death. This is a covenant made between
the Father and the Son. And every minute detail of our
salvation is in this covenant. And unlike that covenant of works
that God made with Adam, this covenant was made between God
and Christ. And our Lord Jesus, and Matt
read it back in the office a while ago out of Isaiah 42, of Him
it was written, He shall not fail. Adam failed. You fail. I fail. Christ shall never fail because
He's the God-man. And God says, I have laid help
upon one who is mighty, for only one who is mighty can save us.
Only one who is mighty can stand, as it were, eye to eye with Jehovah, and know the perfect will of
God, and perfectly fulfill that will, and satisfy God. And let me add this now. Let
us remember that the written word of God is given to us that
we might see and learn that Jesus Christ, watch it, number one,
is the mediator of the covenant. Mr. Spurgeon approached this
in an interesting way, I thought. He said, in this coven, on the
divine side, representing the Trinity, was the Father. And he said, on the human side,
is Christ the God-man, and he represents his people. He's the mediator of the covenant.
A mediator is a mediator of two. Christ is our mediator in the
covenant because he mediates for us. Think about, let's say, if you work for a large company,
you have the owner of the company, And then you have somebody who
represents all of the employees. And the owner of the company
says, when we have a meeting, I'll meet with your representative.
Christ is our representative. And in that covenant of grace,
He stood for us. We had somebody there. We had
a spokesman there. We had a representative there.
We had a mediator there in that everlasting covenant. And He was of one mind and one
heart and one motive with the Father, which amounted to this, the glory
of God and the welfare of a chosen people. We had somebody there standing
as our representative. And he knew our names because
he wrote our names down in his own book, the Lamb's Book of
Life. And he was looking out for our
interests. He's the mediator of the covenant.
Number two, he's the messenger of the covenant. The Bible refers to him as the
angel of the covenant. How do we learn about God? How
do we learn about salvation? Who is it, who is it who's going
to inform us? The son of God by his spirit,
through his word. He's a messenger of the covenant.
And number three, he's the surety of the covenant. S-U-R-E-T-Y. He's the surety of the covenant.
He's the guarantor of the covenant. He guaranteed, He promised. He took an oath before the Father. I will go to the earth. I will
take upon me a body that thou wilt prepare me. And I will live
under the law that we have written with our own hands. And I will
bear the sins of all of those you gave me in covenant election. And I will suffer the wrath of
God, the vengeance of God. I will suffer that in my own
soul for all of our beloved people. And I promise, Father, I promise
all of those that thou has given to me, I will lose not a one
of them. I'll bring them all home safely
to thee. He's the surety of the covenant.
And one other thing, he's not only the mediator of the covenant
and the messenger of the covenant and the surety of the covenant,
his blood, his blood is the blood of the covenant. His blood sealed
the covenant. And this is the subject of Psalm
89. God's covenant mercies to undeserving
sinners through David's son, the Messiah, the Lord Jesus Christ. Let me just make a few more comments.
Look at the title of the psalm. Mascal of Ethan The Ezraite. Maskell. What does that word
mean? Well, it means it's a poem of
instruction. It's a poem to be contemplated. I'll tell you, no subject is
more worthy of instruction or to be instructed by and to contemplate
than the everlasting covenant of grace, and yet so few people
have ever even heard of it. It was drawn up by the eternal
pen in the infinite vastness of eternity past. And all of our salvation is in
this covenant. Everything was determined and
decreed in this legal binding agreement. The Lord chose a man to pen this
psalm. His name is Ethan the Azrahi. Ethan, his name means enduring,
perpetual. How fitting. because this covenant
the Holy Spirit leads him to write about is enduring and perpetual. It extends forever. What do we know about this covenant?
Think of the covenant of grace as being the solid foundation
upon which our salvation stands. Upon this foundation of the covenant
rests the glory of God, the exaltation of the Lord Jesus Christ, and
the salvation of His people. That's how important this foundation
is. It's the foundation God Himself
has laid And this covenant, this covenant required nothing
of man. I love that. Unlike the covenant of works. If you say to me, Jim, you got
to do this, got to do that, got to read so much Bible every day,
got to pray so many prayers, all of these things, you've put
me under a covenant of works that I can't keep. If my salvation is in any way dependent upon
my faithfulness, I'm a gone Jesse. There's no
hope for me. Because see, I'm just like you. I want to be more faithful, but
I'm not faithful. Do you think because I'm a preacher
that I walk around and Christ is always on my mind? I wish it were so. Oh God, I wish it were so. And
one day it will be so, when I get to glory. But I'm just a sinner
saved by grace, washed in the blood of the Lord Jesus Christ. My salvation stands on the firm
foundation, the footing, the very basis of the salvation that
is of God is this everlasting covenant that nothing and no
one can ever interfere with. That's how solid it is. And it requires nothing of me.
Doesn't that make you happy? It requires nothing of you. The beauty of the covenant of
grace is that everything is dependent upon our representative, Christ
the Lord. It's all of grace. Grace conceived
it. Grace designed it. Grace brings
it to pass. There's the grace of God in redemption. Christ came and died for His
people. There's the grace of God in the
effectual calling of sinners to Christ the Savior. The grace of God that designed
this covenant will see to it that all of the beneficiaries
who were written in the Lamb's book of life, all the beneficiaries
who were written in Christ's last will and testament will
receive the grace and the salvation and the eternal life that's appointed
to us. That makes me happy. And David, look at 2 Samuel,
I should say, 2 Samuel 23. And I'll give you this and I'll
quit. 2 Samuel 23, David got all of
his assurance and he had peace on his deathbed because he knew his salvation.
was in hands a whole lot bigger than his. And dependent upon one who is
mighty, our Lord Jesus Christ. 2 Samuel chapter 23. Verse one says, now these be
the last words of David. Now that's enough to pique my
interest. Man's on his dying bed. It's
his last words. and their words inspired by the
Holy Spirit, that gets your attention, it gets my attention. David, the son of Jesse said,
and the man who was raised up on high, the anointed of the
God of Jacob and the sweet psalmist of Israel said, the spirit of
the Lord spake by me and his word was in my tongue. The God
of Israel said, the rock of Israel spake to me, he that ruleth over
men must be just ruling in the fear of God. And he shall be
as the light of the morning when the sun riseth, even a morning
without clouds, as the tender grass springing out of the earth
by clear shining after rain. And David goes on to say this,
although my house be not so with God, my house not everything
that I want it to be. Well, he had a son who was a
devil, Absalom, tried to kill his own father, steal the kingdom
from him and others in his family. And I would ask you, Is your
house all that you wished it'd be? That you hoped it'd be? Your
children and your grandchildren or your parents or your aunts
and uncles and brothers and sisters? Is everybody safe in the arms
of Christ? Is everybody looking to the Lord
Jesus Christ? I wish they were. But not all of my family. They're
not so with God. I pray that they will be. But David says, yet, he hath made with me, he has
revealed to me an everlasting covenant. And I'll tell you this, it has
to be revealed. That's right, isn't it? It has
to be revealed. I've talked to people about the
covenant of grace. You know what they say a lot
of times? I just can't see it, preacher. Well, blind people
can't see. Only ones who can see are those
who are gifted with sight. Though everything's not right
in my house, I haven't been a perfect father. Far from it. I wasn't a perfect son. I'm not
a perfect friend. I'm not a perfect husband. I'm not anywhere near all that
I'd like to be. Nevertheless, God made with me,
God revealed to me an everlasting covenant. Watch it. Ordered. Furnished. Ordained. arranged in all things, and sure,
this covenant is guarded. It's kept watch over. Well, who guards the covenant
of grace, the everlasting covenant? Who guards it? God Himself. Let Satan roar. with all the
themes of hell, God cards this covenant. This is God's covenant.
He's not gonna mess with that. Satan can't mess with that. It's sure, it's guarded, it's
kept. And David says, and this is all
my salvation. Remember, he's on his deathbed. These are his last words. And
he says, this covenant, he said, this is all my salvation right
here. Well, whose covenant is it? It's
God's covenant. Whose salvation is it? It's God's
salvation. And who is this man who is writing
by the inspiration of God? He's God's child. And God keeps
his children safe. This is all my salvation. It's
all right there. When time comes for you to die, if they don't have you doped
up and drug, lots of morphine to keep you out of pain, if I'm
clear thinking, I'll tell you what. I'm not going to be thinking
about the things that I did for the Lord. That's not even going to enter
into the picture. I'm going to be thinking about
what God has done for me. I'm thinking about what the Son
of God has already accomplished for me. He paid my debt. He shed His blood and then He
washed me. He purged me. I heard somebody
talking the other day about purgatory. That's a lie. Make sure you understand. The only purging of sin is not
you going to a halfway place of punishment where God's gonna
purge the rest of them out. That wouldn't purge anything
anyhow. The only purging of sin took place at the cross. He purged us from our sins. This is all my salvation. I believe
I could lay down on my deathbed and close my eyes saying, Lord,
this is your salvation. I'm in your hands. I've been
in your hands forever. And in your covenant of grace,
you wrote down my worthless name. I'm one of your children. Christ
died for me. He put away all my transgressions. He brought in for me everlasting
righteousness. Jim, how do you know all of these
things are yours? Because he's brought me to trust
Christ, that's why. I don't look to anything I've ever
done. You're a fool if you have any confidence in something you've
done to merit God's heaven. You're a fool and you don't know
anything about the grace of God. And David says, this is all my
desire. This is all my delight. This
is all I take pleasure in. Although he doesn't make my house
to grow, maybe things, maybe people in
my family won't be saved. I don't know, that's outside
of my realm. I got no control over that, and
my family members don't either. That's all up to God, isn't it? I'll tell you what, this is my
hope. The everlasting covenant of grace.
Well, I got a song I want to sing.