Welcome to Reign of Grace. This
program is brought to you by Reign of Grace Media Ministries,
an outreach ministry of Eager Avenue Grace Church in Albany,
Georgia. It is our pleasure and privilege
to present to you the gospel message of the sovereign grace
and glory of God in the person and work of the Lord Jesus Christ. We pray that today's program
will be a blessing to you. Thank you for listening and now
for today's program. Welcome to our program today.
I'm glad you could join us. Now today I'm going to give you
the second part of a two-part message entitled, The Sure Mercies
of David. The Sure Mercies of David, this
is the conclusion of that two-part message, part two. And the title
was taken from the book of Isaiah, chapter 55. If you'd like to
follow along in your Bibles, Isaiah 55. And verse three is
where the title comes from. And it says, let's just read
verse three. I went over the first two verses
last week and I urge you to get that message. But anytime I do
a continuation or a two part, three part, however many part
message, I try to make each message stand on its own. So you who
didn't hear last week's, you won't be lost as to the content
because I'll bring it all together. But here is a gospel call from
the prophet Isaiah to the people of Judah and Jerusalem. It's
the gospel call of evangelism. You know evangelism is the preaching
of the good news of salvation by the sovereign mercy and grace
of God in and by the Lord Jesus Christ and based on His blood
and His righteousness alone. And so it's salvation conditioned
on Christ who fulfilled those conditions. That's important
for this message. And he says in verse three of Isaiah 55,
incline your ear. That simply means listen, listen
to what I'm about to tell you. And that's what I say on this
program every Sunday morning. Listen to what I'm saying, because
what I'm saying is important. This is the word of God. He says,
and come unto me. Now this, Isaiah is not saying
come unto Isaiah, he's saying come unto Christ. Come to the
Lord pleading the mercies, the sure mercies of David, which
is the Lord Jesus Christ. Plead His blood for the forgiveness
of all your sins. Plead His righteousness. You
see, He's the only way of salvation because of who He is. He is God
in human flesh without sin. He is God-man. He's the Word
made flesh who dwelt among us. He's Emmanuel. and that is God
with us. Great is the mystery of godliness.
God was manifest in the flesh. And because of what he did. What
did he do? What did he accomplish? That's
something that I think every one of us need to think about
very carefully and often and study the Bible. Because today's
false gospel will tell you that Jesus Christ came to make salvation
possible for us if we do our part. The part we do varies among
different denominations. And that's a false gospel. The
false gospel says that Christ came to make you savable. But that's not why he came. That's
not what he accomplished. Jesus Christ came into the world
to accomplish the salvation of all for whom he died, and they
shall be saved. Now, that's not everybody without
exception. And somebody says, well, that's
not fair. Oh, let me tell you something. You take that up with
God. God does what's right and what is just. And you're not
God, so you're not even left to figure those things out. All
you're to do is to incline your ear. Listen to what I'm saying.
If you do, if I incline my ear, if I listen to this and believe
it, listen to what he says, incline your ear and come unto me, hear
and your soul shall live. That hearing is not the cause
of spiritual life. It's the result of spiritual
life. It's the evidence of spiritual life. Your responsibility is
to hear and believe. Now, I know that if left to ourselves,
we will not hear and believe, but that's not our business.
That's God's business. God is the one who takes care.
Your responsibility is, in your mind and in your heart, is to
listen and hear and believe. And he says, and I will make
an everlasting covenant with you, even the sure mercies of
David. an everlasting covenant. And
we went back to 2 Samuel 23. I want to go back there today.
2 Samuel 23. These are the last words of King
David. And what I want to show you is
this, that the sure mercies of David, as I mentioned last week,
is not King David the person himself. The sure mercies of
David Here in Isaiah 55 and what David is talking about here in
his last words, his deathbed confession, you might say, in
2 Samuel 23, the sure mercies of David is a prophecy of the
coming Messiah, the Lord Jesus Christ, who according to the
flesh, his humanity, was made of the seed of David so that
he as God-man standing as surety and substitute of his people,
God's chosen people, could do for them what they cannot do
for themselves. And what is that? Satisfy the
justice of God for their sins. Make an end of sin, Daniel said.
Finish the transgression. Bring in everlasting righteousness. That's what we cannot do. We're
sinners. We fell in Adam, fell into death
and sin and death. We're born spiritually dead in
trespasses and sins. And we cannot, we cannot conquer
sin. The best person who has ever
lived on this earth, I don't know who that is. I'm talking
about the best mere human being now. I know if we talk about
the best person, we're talking about Christ alone. He is the
best. He's the only good and righteous
person as far as that's concerned. But when we're talking about
fallen humanity, which includes all of us, and that does include
all of us without exception, the best person who has ever
lived out of that mass of fallen humanity That best person, my
friend, let me tell you something, has never been good enough, righteous
enough. We all have sinned and come short
of the glory of God. And that's why we need Christ. That's why salvation can never
be by the works or the wills of men. It's only by Christ. Well, David said that in his
deathbed confession. Look at 2 Samuel 23 and verse
five. He said, although my house be
not so with God. He's talking about his family,
talking about his kingdom, because it was a mess. You know, they say that David's
reign, King David's reign was the most glorious time of the
kingdom of Israel on earth. And it was for a lot of ways,
but you remember at the end of his career, his oldest, his son,
Absalom turned against him and rebelled and tried to take over
the kingdom and have his father killed. We know about David's
life. And he says, although my house,
my kingdom, my family be not so with God, not right with God.
He says, he that is God, yet he hath made with me, David personally,
an everlasting covenant. Made with David an everlasting
covenant? Yes. He says, ordered in all
things and sure. In other words, there's no possibility
that this everlasting covenant could fail, no matter what David
did. Now that doesn't mean that that
excuses David's sin or promotes David's sin. It's just a fact. It's ordered in all things and
sure. Who ordered it? God did. Why is it so sure? Because the surety of this everlasting
covenant was not King David the man, it was the seed of David,
the greater son of David, the Lord Jesus Christ, the God-man. I preached a message several
weeks ago, or it may have been months ago, concerning this subject
of who is your surety? Who is surety of your salvation?
Well, if you believe the false gospel that pervades today's
religion, that Christ made salvation possible, if you would do your
part, that he died for everybody, conditioned upon people doing
this, that, or the other, believing, repenting, obeying, whatever,
depending upon your denomination. then you'd have to say you are
the surety of the covenant. Because Christ's death didn't
make anyone sure to be saved, it just made salvation possible.
Now if that's the case, according to the Bible, none of us will
be saved because the Bible says we're sinners. And that if left
to ourselves, we will never come to Christ. That's the case. I've read this so many times
on this program in Romans chapter three, how there's none righteous.
There's none that do it good. There's none that seeketh after
God. He's not talking about some low class of humanity there that
we've risen above here in the Bible belt and we've done our
part. No. And here's the thing about
it. If you're the surety of your
salvation, What happens in times when you doubt or when you stray
or when you forget? Where's your surety then? You
say, well, God feels sorry for me. There's nothing in the Bible
like that. Christ is the only surety of salvation. And that's what David is saying.
David's speaking as a sinner saved by the grace of God. And so anytime we talk about
the sure mercies of David, we're not talking about David the man
sitting on the throne of Israel ruling, or even David, certainly
not talking about David who committed adultery with Bathsheba and plotted
to have her husband murdered. But we're not even talking about
David who penned Psalm 23, that beautiful psalm. Listen, David was a great man,
but he was a sinner saved by grace and there's no position
higher among men. What we're talking about in the
sure mercies of David is the Lord Jesus Christ. He's the surety. The blood of Christ washed away
David's sins, purged David's sins. The righteousness of Christ
imputed, accounted, charged, was David's justification before
God. I'm gonna show you that in just
a moment. But he says this, he said, a covenant ordered in all
things ensured. That's the everlasting covenant
of grace. The gospel of salvation is the preaching of the terms
of the everlasting covenant of grace. And so the gospel in taking
in mind that we're sinners who have nothing to recommend us
unto God. Last week I dealt with that in
Isaiah 55. We have no money. We have nothing
to buy salvation or any part of it. We don't have one penny
to contribute to the payment of our sin debt. And so, the
gospel, taking in mind that we're sinners who have nothing to recommend
us unto God, presents the grace of God, unconditional, toward
us, in the Lord Jesus Christ, who paid the price of salvation
for His chosen people, and secured their salvation as their surety. And it's by His blood that the
sins of his people are washed away. It's by his righteousness
imputed that they stand before God, not guilty, righteous before
God. And David realizing that says
this in 2 Samuel 23 5, he says, for this is all my salvation. That's my whole salvation. It's
not part Christ and part me. I've heard of preachers making
statements like this. They'll say, God has done everything
that he can do. Now the rest is up to you. Now
let me tell you something. If God has done everything he
can do, there's nothing up to you now. Everything he can do,
I've heard preachers talking about those who say, well, Christ
has built a bridge all the way over this river of sin and the
river of darkness. And he's left that one little
part for you to fill in or that God has built the bridge. All
you have to do is walk over. Let me tell you something. David
said, it's not part me and part Christ. It's all Christ. This
is all my salvation. He says, and therefore it's all
my desire. It's the only thing I want. Somebody
says, well, I wish it were some other way. If you ever see your
sinfulness and your depravity and the grace of God, you won't
say, oh, I wish it was some other, this is the only way it can be.
And that's the covenant, you see, that's the sure mercies
of David. And David said, although he make it not to grow, although
not everybody in my family, my kingdom sees this. My friend,
the world, will reject Christ and the gospel. And unless the
sovereign grace of God by the power of the Holy Spirit steps
in and gives life to a dead sinner, resurrects that sinner from the
dead, he will never believe this. Believing the gospel is the work
of God in a sinner. Now, turn to Psalm 32. Let me, I want to show you, you
know, somebody will ask me a lot of times, you know, when I go
in the Old Testament and talk about people like Abraham, Moses,
David, or even Isaiah the prophet or Jeremiah, they'll ask me,
they say, well, how can you know that these men back in the Old
Testament knew all this? Well, first of all, they certainly
didn't know everything. The Bible is a progressive revelation
of truth. But the gospel truth, the basic
kernel message of the gospel, has always been the same. And
I often make it like this. You go back to Abel. He's one of the first examples
of a sinner, saved by grace, coming to worship God. And he
brought the blood of the Lamb. And how much did Abel know? Well, we know that Abel knew
that he was a sinner, that he had no money, no price, you know,
Isaiah 55, that he had nothing to recommend him unto God. And
he knew that salvation was wrapped up in one who was identified
to his mother and father, Adam and Eve, as the seed of woman.
And this seed of woman, that speaks of both the deity and
the humanity of the Messiah, the promised one. All right? And so, now Abel didn't know
a lot of things. He didn't, for example, Abel
didn't know that the Messiah would be born in Bethlehem, the
city of David. He didn't know that the Messiah
would be born of the seed of Abraham and then later the seed
of David. He didn't know all that. There
were things that were revealed afterward. So, but Abel did know
that this person, this Messiah, this anointed one, this Savior
would be God in human flesh. He knew that this person would
have to take his place as surety and substitute and work out for
him an everlasting righteousness of infinite value. That he would
have to die for his sins pay that debt and produce righteousness. That was what was typified and
taught in the sacrifice when God slew an animal, Genesis 321,
and made coats of skin and took the fig leaf aprons off of the
works of man and put on the skins. That's a picture of Christ. You could talk about Abraham.
What did Abraham know? Well, he knew more than Abel,
but Abel and Abraham believed the same gospel. Their ground
of salvation was in the future promised coming Messiah and his
righteousness alone. And the New Testament tells us
this. Christ himself in John chapter eight said, Abraham rejoiced
to see my day. And he saw it and he was glad.
What did David know? Well, let's go back to Moses.
What did Moses know? Christ said in John chapter five,
Moses wrote of me. So Moses knew this. Well, here's
David in Psalm 32. Now we're talking about the sure
mercies of David. And here's what David says in
Psalm 32. Look at verse 1. This is a Psalm of David. Psalm
32. He says, Blessed is he whose transgression is forgiven, whose
sin is covered. Blessed is the man unto whom
the Lord imputeth not iniquity, charges not iniquity, and in
whose spirit there is no guile. Now, David wrote this. In these
two verses, he uses basically the three main words in the Old
Testament that identify sin. Look at it again. Blessed is
he whose transgression is forgiven. What is a transgression? It's
a breaking of the law. David knew that there was no
salvation by works of the law. He was a lawbreaker. You say,
well, he tried to keep the law. Well, sometimes he did and sometimes
he didn't. How do you, now we can go into
all that and just, but that's not what I'm talking about today.
But he was a transgressor, but his transgression was forgiven.
He said, whose sin is covered. That sin there, that word sin
there in the Old Testament means to not measure up, miss the mark. For all have, just like in the
New Testament, for all have sinned and come short of the glory of
God. That's like we've missed the mark. So what that means
is, No matter how high I rise in religion, in morality, in
sincerity, or in knowledge, I still come short of that which God
requires. Now, what is it that God requires?
Well, He says the glory of God. Where do you find the glory of
God? In Christ. Christ is the glory of God personified. The Bible talks about how God
brings his people to himself by revealing the light of the
knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.
In other words, no matter how high I go in this life as a sinner,
I still fall short of Christ and it's his righteousness that
God requires. God's gonna judge the world in
righteousness by him. And that sin is covered. Now
the covering here, is a reference to the mercy seat in the Holy
of Holies, that lid that covered the Ark of the Covenant, covered
the broken law on which the high priest sprinkled the blood of
the sacrifice. So when he says sin is covered,
he's not talking about being covered over or hidden from view,
he's talking about sin is covered by the blood. And then he says,
blessed is the man unto whom the Lord imputeth not iniquity.
Iniquity means it doesn't balance out, it's unequal. In other words,
I can never balance out with what God requires. I'll always,
always be a sinner and in whose spirit is no God. Now turn to
Romans chapter four, and here's the New Testament commentary
on what David wrote concerning his salvation. Now here's the
sure mercies of David. Romans four and verse six. Paul the Apostle, writing by
inspiration of the Holy Spirit, he says, even as David also describeth
the blessedness of the man unto whom God imputeth, that word
impute now, I use it all the time, it means to account, to
charge, to reckon, imputeth righteousness without work. God charged David
with righteousness without works. without David's works. And when
did David say that? Verse seven, saying, blessed
are they whose iniquities are forgiven and whose sins are covered.
Blessed is the man to whom the Lord will not impute sin. Now,
what is he talking about here? He's talking about the sure mercies
of David. David was a sinner saved by grace. He looked by faith to the promise
that God made to send Messiah into the world, the Lord Jesus
Christ, who as David's surety would take his place, having
David's sins imputed to him, charged to him, he would take
David's place and die the death that David deserved and earned. And it's the same for me, it's
the same for any believer. That's what Christ did. My sins
were imputed to Him, charged, accounted to Him. He was made
sin, 2 Corinthians 5, 21. His righteousness has been imputed,
accounted to me, reckoned to me that we might be made the
righteousness of God in Him. How did He accomplish that righteousness? By His death on the cross, His
obedience unto death on the cross as surety and substitute of His
people. He died and he was buried and
he arose the third day. And his resurrection is the clear
statement and testimony of God that all his chosen people were
justified based upon the accomplishment of the obedience unto death of
the Lord Jesus Christ. And their salvation is sure and
certain. And listen, that includes not
only their justification before God, their being declared not
guilty, their legal standing before God, it also includes
the new birth. They shall be born again. Christ
said it this way in John 6, 37. All that the Father giveth me
shall come to me. and him that cometh to me, I
will in no wise cast out. Now, anybody who says, well,
all of that seems right, but what about me? What do I have
to? Listen, the Bible still commands you and commands me and commands
all of us to believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and you shall be
saved. What I preach to you does not
negate or cancel out that, doesn't even rival it, doesn't oppose
it. It says, whosoever shall call
upon the name of the Lord shall be saved. I'm telling you right
now, call upon the name of the Lord and you shall be saved. But now, what is it to call upon
the name of the Lord? You know, the first time that
that phrase called upon the name of the Lord is used, it was with
Abraham. And it says this, that Abraham built an altar and called
upon the name of the Lord. Now, why did he build an altar?
To sacrifice. What was Abraham doing? He was
showing in type and picture there in God's prescribed way of worship
how Messiah would come and die for his sins and establish righteousness. You see, to call upon the name
of the Lord involves the sure mercies of David. You gotta know
who the Lord is. And he identifies himself in
his word through Jesus Christ. The Lord, Jesus Christ, as he's
identified and distinguished in the scripture, God with us,
and what he accomplished on Calvary, the salvation of his people,
as he performed all the duties and conditions of salvation as
their surety and substitute. And when David spoke those words
on his deathbed, When Isaiah preached that message in Isaiah
55, incline your ear, come unto me, the sure and God will make
an everlasting covenant with you, even the sure mercies of
David. What that means is God making an everlasting covenant
with me or with you means that he'll bring his people, bring
his people to believe the gospel, to rest in Christ. to plead His
blood and His righteousness alone as the sure mercies of David,
the sure salvation, the surety of the covenant. And that's the
covenant of grace. And grace reigns through righteousness
unto eternal life by Jesus Christ our Lord. Do you see the sure
mercies of David? Do you see the gospel, which
is the gospel of the covenant? That gospel that leads sinners
to Christ, the sure mercies of David. I hope you'll join us
next week for another message from God's Word. We are glad you could join us
for another edition of Reign of Grace. This program is brought
to you by Reign of Grace Media Ministries, an outreach ministry
of Eager Avenue Grace Church in Albany, Georgia. To receive
a copy of today's program or to learn more about Reign of
Grace Media Ministries or Eager Avenue Grace Church, write us
at 1102 Eager Drive, Albany, Georgia, 31707. contact us by phone at 229-432-6969
or email us through our website at www.theletterofgrace.com. Thank you again for listening
today and may the Lord be with you.