Now, if you'll take your Bibles
and open them to the book of Isaiah, we're going to be looking
at the 55th chapter of Isaiah, Isaiah 55, verse 3. Now, here's my subject today,
the sure mercies of David. I'm going to be talking about
a covenant. I'm going to be talking about the mercies of God. I'm
going to be talking about that everlasting covenant of grace. It's going to be an interesting
time, and I invite you to spend it with me. But here in Isaiah
55 verse 3, now listen carefully. Our God says, incline your ear
and come to me. Hear, and your soul shall live. And I will make with you, and
I will make with you an everlasting covenant, even, even, The sure
mercies of David. Do you hear what God's saying?
I think sometimes we read the Word of God and we read it so
flippantly and carelessly and so quickly that we just don't
really hear what God's saying. Do you hear what He's saying?
Let me paraphrase a little bit. He's saying, turn your ears this
way. Turn your ears this way. Listen
to me. Listen to me. He says, hear my
word, hear my promises, come to me, come to me with a hearing
ear, come to me with a ready heart, and your soul will live
forever. Hear me, come to me, incline
your ear, and your soul will live forever. I will make with
you an everlasting covenant. I, God Almighty, the eternal
living God, the King of kings and Lord of lords, will enter
into a covenant with you, a covenant that shall never change, and
never be broken, and never cease. And upon you, upon you, shall
come those sure, certain, certain, eternal mercies that I conferred
upon David. David, the sweet psalmist of
Israel, that man, twice God said, who is a man after my own heart.
Now you think about that. You got time to listen? You got
time to listen? That's what God says, listen
to me, come to me, incline your ear this way and your soul will
live and I'll make with you an everlasting covenant and I'll
confer upon you the sure mercies of David. Now if you're interested
For the next few minutes, I'll enlarge upon what we call the
everlasting covenant and the sure mercies of David, but you've
got to have some interest. I'm not here to entertain you
and we're not building a school over our way or promoting anything
special. I'm here to tell you about Christ
and about his mercies. You care to hear it? All right,
listen. First of all, the word covenant,
the word covenant appears in the Bible over 250 times. Just
the word covenant. Have you ever run across it?
How have you missed it? 250 times. Our Lord speaks of
a covenant with Noah. You know, every time you see
the rainbow, you ought to think of a covenant. For God said to
Noah after the ark came down from the flood, and God said
as he put the rainbow in the sky, he said, I'll never destroy
the water the world by water again, and that bow in the sky
will be a sign of the covenant that I'll make with you. I'll
destroy it by fire, but never by water." And then there was
a covenant with Abraham. And then there was a covenant
with Israel. And then there was a covenant with David. And many
more, over 250 times God talks about the covenant. Now listen
to me here, here's where you want to get, you want to listen
a little more carefully. I've been giving you general
information, but now this is to the point. There are two main
covenants with which we have to do. There are two main covenants
mentioned in the Scripture with which we have to do. The first
covenant, the first covenant called the covenant of works,
and that was the covenant made with Adam and all his sons in
him. Covenant of works made with Adam
in the Garden of Eden. And then that second covenant,
or the new covenant, and the reason it's called the new covenant
is not because it's a covenant made after the first one. Usually
the second comes after the first, but in this case, the first covenant
was second. The reason this new covenant
is called the new covenant is because it's newly revealed.
You see, God revealed the covenant of works before he revealed the
covenant of grace, though the covenant of grace preceded the
covenant of works. Christ was the Lamb slain before
the foundation of the world. Before God ever made Adam, before
God ever put Adam on the earth, He talked about the everlasting
covenant, surety of an everlasting covenant, Christ being the Lamb
slain before the foundation of the world, having a people chosen
in Christ before the world, before the foundation of the world.
So this new covenant is a covenant of grace, an everlasting covenant. So there you have the two covenants,
the covenant of work, and the covenant of grace, the old covenant
and the new covenant. Now then listen, we all of us,
every one of us, every son of Adam, every one of us is vitally
involved and vitally affected by that first covenant, the covenant
of works. Yes sir, we are all vitally affected
by that, every one of us, everybody out there listening to my voice.
that came from Adam, and everybody came from Adam. If you remember
the human race, you came from Adam. We all are involved in
and affected by that covenant of works. Now, here's what I'm
saying. I hope, by God's grace, that you and I have an interest
in that new covenant, in that covenant of grace, in that everlasting
covenant. Now I know those two covenants,
the rest of them ought to be studied. because they have some
relationship to our Lord Jesus Christ in revealing him to us.
But principally, you and I are involved in two covenants. One,
the covenant of works. Two, the covenant of grace. One,
the covenant made with Adam. Two, the covenant made with the
second Adam. One, the covenant of works made
with Adam who fell. And two, the covenant of grace
made with Christ by whom we're restored. In Adam we die, in
Christ we're made alive. That's what scripture says. In
Adam, death came. By man, Christ's restoration
or resurrection came. Alright, let's look for a brief
moment at the first covenant. The first covenant. What we call
the covenant of works. It was made with Adam. Adam was
a representative person. The word Adam itself means man. Made from the red earth. Adam,
red, earth, man. Adam was made from the earth.
God made him from the dust of the earth, breathed into his
nostrils the breath of life. He became a living soul. Eve
was taken out of Adam. God took a rib out of Adam and
made Eve. She's from him. He's her representative. He's her leader, her authority,
her federal head, just like He is all who came from Him. The
whole human race is in the loins of Adam. When that first child
was born, that's the first part of the human race. And from then
on, every child is a part of Adam's race. And that covenant
that God made with Adam, when He made him and put him in the
Garden of Eden, he's the trunk of the tree, he's the head of
the human race, he's the representative, he's the federal head, He is
man, M-A-N, Adam is man. And all men are in that man.
God never created but one man, and that's Adam. He created one
man. And everything else and everybody
else, every creature walking on two legs, called human, came
from Adam. And God spoke to Adam and gave
him a covenant. And it's summed up in four words.
God said to Adam, this, do, and live. That was it. All the requirements and the
laws that God gave to Adam summed up in one sentence of four words,
this, do, and live. God said, Adam, you're a king,
you're a prince, you have dominion over the whole earth, multiply
and replenish the earth, subdue the world, but there's one tree
in the garden of which you shall not eat lest you die. That tree
is a token of my sovereignty, token of your dependence on me,
token of my independence of you. That I do all things well, I'm
God. And Adam, of course, took the
forbidden fruit. You see, that covenant failed.
That first covenant failed because man didn't keep God's law. Man
didn't keep God's commandments. That first covenant was doomed
from the start because it was made with a creature liable to
fall. And because of Adam's sin, because
of Adam's fall, death, judgment, condemnation came upon all his
seed, all his people, all whom he represented. Adam is a representative
person. Let me show you that in the scripture
if you care. Notice I said because of Adam's
sin. This is what the Bible says,
what God's word says. What's our source of authority?
What's our source of information other than the scripture? We
can't just reach out and take doctrine out of the air and make
it stand. It's got to come from the word.
Now listen to Romans 5. By one man, verse 12, sin entered the
world. By one man, Adam, sin entered
the world and death by sin. Death is caused by sin. The sting
of death is sin. And death came into the world
and death passed upon all men. You see, when we're born of Adam,
we're born dead in trespasses and sin. Look at Romans 5, 17. By one man's offense, death reigned. Whose offense? Adam. He was a
federal head. He was a representative person.
Romans 5, 18. By the offense of one judgment,
judgment came upon all men to condemnation. Not some men, not
the worst of men, but all men and women. Romans 5, 19, by one
man's disobedience. Many were made sinners. That's
what we're saying. 1 Corinthians 15, in Adam all
die. I'm not making this up, dear
friend. I'm reading it from God's Word. When God spoke to Adam
in the garden, He spoke to the whole human race. Adam was our
representative. Adam is man. Adam's our federal
head. When he lived, we lived. When
he stood, we stood. When he died, we died. When he
sinned, we sinned. When he fell, we fell. And the
covenant was obliterated. It was eradicated. It was destroyed.
This covenant of works is broken. It no longer has anything for
us but condemnation. By the deeds of the law shall
no flesh be justified in God's sight. That's what it says. No
man is justified by works in the sight of God. It's evident.
It's evident. That was the first covenant.
Now, in my text, in Isaiah 55, 3, God says, I will make a new
covenant. I'll make a new covenant. We've
got to have a new one. The old one's broken. The old
one's done away with. The old one's destroyed. The
old one is lying in pieces at our feet. It can't do anything
but condemn us. We need a new one. And God says,
I'll make with you a new covenant. And there's six things about
this new covenant you need to look into. This new covenant,
and as I said before, it's newly revealed. It was already waiting,
Adam's fall. You see, God doesn't do things
like we do. We wait for something to happen,
then we make some plans. But God foresees all things.
He foreknows all things because He foreordains all things. Known
unto God are all His works from the beginning. He declares the
end from the beginning. And from ancient times, the things
that are not yet done, saying, my counsel shall stand. And Adam's
fall didn't slip up on God. There was a Savior before there
was a sinner. There was a Lamb slain before a sin offering was
needed. And this new covenant is newly
revealed. And it's a covenant of grace,
not of works, of pure grace. A covenant of works won't do
us any good. We had one of those one time. It didn't do us any
good. It won't do you any good now.
There's no use a preacher coming to you and giving you a system
of works by which to live. You can't live that way. And
then it's a covenant for the sinner, not for the righteous.
Christ said, I didn't come to call the righteous, but sinners
to repentance. There's none righteous, no, not
one. There's none that seeketh after
God. There's none that doeth good, no, not one. So it's a
covenant for sinners, not for the righteous. And then this
covenant is unconditional. As far as I'm concerned, and
you're concerned, as far as the creature's concerned. Now, it
has conditions, but Christ met them. Christ met them. You see, it's unconditional.
It's free. It's free grace. It's free grace. It's the gift of God. God keeps
saying that to us with a hard-headed and hard-of-hearing. He says,
eternalize the gift of God. You don't buy gifts. People give
them to you. You don't pay for gifts. If a
friend hands you a gift for Christmas or your birthday, and you hand
him a quarter, you'd insult him. And we insult God. We spit in
God's face all the time. We give him our quarters for
eternal life. It's unconditional. And it's
an everlasting covenant. It'll never cease. Everlasting. What does everlasting mean? Always
and always and always and always. And then this covenant is ordered
in all things. David talked about it. If you
read 2 Samuel 23, verse 5, it says these are the last words
of David. And this is especially significant
right here because our Lord said, I'm going to make a new covenant
with you and give you the sure mercies of David. So when David
was dying, the author of all the Psalms, the slayer of Goliath,
the ruler of the people, the man after God's own heart, you
know what his last words were? The last words David said before
he died. He said this. Although it be
not so with my house, God hath made with me an everlasting covenant."
That's the last word. David, who talked about the shepherd,
David, who talked about God's power, David, who talked about
God's holiness, David, who talked about God's Redeemer, and all
these subjects, he had 150 Psalms. But he came down to die. Where
did he find his rest? Where did he find his hope? Where
did he find his confidence? Where did he find his assurance?
God had made with me an everlasting covenant. And this is something
preachers don't preach about, and don't talk about, and people
don't study. And yet David, man after God's
own heart, when he came to face God in death, when he came to
meet God at the judgment, when he came to face eternity, he
said, you know, God hath made with me an everlasting covenant,
ordered in all things, and sure," watch it, and he said, this is
all my salvation. Think of the things he had done.
From a boy he'd been anointed king of Israel. He'd faced the
armies of the Philistines, the uncircumcised heathen, alone. in the power of God and slew
their giant, their champion. He'd reigned over Israel. He'd
made Israel the greatest kingdom on the face of the earth. He'd
written all these psalms. But when he came to die, he said,
you know what? All my salvation and all my desire, God made with
me an everlasting covenant. It's ordered in everything, nothing
like it. And then this covenant is filled
with a sure mercies, sure mercies. Oh, I tell you, sure mercies. I'm tired of temporary things,
aren't you? The hymn writer said, change
and decay in all around I see. Oh, thou that changest not abide
with me. Learn this, actually. Now listen to me. This everlasting
covenant which God says, I'll make with you, in which David
found his comfort and his desire and salvation, is made with us,
oh, get this, my friend, in our representative, the Lord Jesus
Christ. You see, that covenant of works
was made with us in Adam. In Adam, you see, we sin. In Christ, we're restored. As we born the image of the earthy,
we'll bear the image of the heavenly. The first man is of the earth,
earthy. The second man is the Lord from
heaven. The covenant of works was made
with that natural man, flesh, atom. He failed, he broke it.
That second covenant was made with us in Christ, with our second
atom. That's right, that's what the
Word says. It says, in Adam we die, in Christ we're made alive.
That's right. It says, by one man's disobedience
we were made sinners, by one man's obedience we were made
righteous. That's right. It's the eternal
covenant wherein God determined to save a people and He gave
them to Christ. He gave them to Christ. Our Lord
said, listen, John 6, 37, All that my Father giveth me will
come to me. and him that cometh out in no
wise cast out, I came down from heaven, not to do my own will,
but the will of him that sent me, and this is the will of him
that sent me. that all that he hath given me
I'll lose nothing but raise it up at the last day. This everlasting
covenant, God says I'll make with you an everlasting covenant. It was made with us in Christ. It wasn't made with us directly,
nothing we could do about it. We couldn't handle it. We couldn't
fulfill it. We couldn't understand it. We
couldn't embrace it. We couldn't meet its requirement.
No use God making any more covenants with us. We're dead in trespasses
and sin. But thank God, watch it, he made
it with Christ back yonder in the eternal councils of glory,
and he revealed it after Adam failed. He revealed it all the
way through his word. When God says, I'll make with
you an everlasting covenant, he's saying, this covenant is
made with you in Christ, and that's the only way it can be
certain. And that's the only way it can
be sure, because he never fails. God put everything in good hands,
in the hands of Christ. Now, there are two or three vital
things that you and I need to learn. Things that are not being
preached in our day, and things that most people don't know anything
about. And you know what they are? Here's one of them. God
forgives sin. But God never forgives sin and
frees the sinner at the expense of his character. Now he never
does. God never forgives sin or overlooks
sin or puts away sin at the expense of his character and his holiness
and his justice. God is righteous and he's going
to keep on being righteous. God is holy and he's going to
keep on being holy. God is just And he must keep
on being just. God must punish sin. He has to
punish sin. If he can be just and justifier,
if he can be both holy and merciful, then he will do something for
us as far as the saving of our souls is concerned. But there's
no way that a sinner can be justified in the eyes of God unless God's
holy law is honored and God's justice is satisfied. Now that's
just so. That's just so. You see, God
is holy. You and I are unholy. Now, the
only way that God Almighty can receive unholy creatures is for
them to be made holy. Be made holy in the eyes of the
law and before the throne of justice. And that's what He does
in Christ. This is why God provided a substitute. This is why Jesus Christ came
into this world in the likeness of sinful flesh. He was born
of a woman. Now I want to take you through
this a little bit. You see, God made with Adam a covenant. Adam
broke it and fell. The whole human race fell in
him. Sin, death, judgment, condemnation passed upon all men. We became
sinners. God had made with Christ, in eternity, an everlasting covenant
on our behalf. He made a covenant with us in
Christ, our representative. Well, from the time Adam fell,
God started giving promises and prophecies and pictures of this
Redeemer who would come, of this Christ who would come, of this
prophet like Moses and priest like Melchizedek and king like
David who would come and fulfill all that the sinner needed, and
all that the law required, and all that justice demanded, and
all that this covenant of grace required in order to deliver
its promises. So one day he came. Our representative,
our federal head, Our Lord from heaven. He came. And He must
be born like we're born. He was born of a woman. And He
must grow up from infancy to young manhood like we grew up,
subject to His parents, subject to all the laws, all the requirements,
all morality and decency and holiness and truth and beauty
and love and faith and everything that the perfect God required.
And He did no sin. He knew no sin. There was no
guile in his mouth. And he perfectly kept the law
on this earth. Walking in this attempted, tested,
tried, in all points as we are, yet without sin. See, he's a
representative person. A person. Not just an example.
Not a frustrated reformer. But a representative. He stood
for me. He lived for me. He died for
me. You see, he lived for me and
satisfied God's law, he died for me and satisfied God's justice.
The soul that sinneth, it shall die. Christ died. He was bared
and rose again. Now he's at God's right hand
as our representative. And watch this, 1 Corinthians
1.30, God says, but of God are you in Christ. In Christ, in
Christ, in his birth, in Christ, in his life, in Christ, in his
death, in Christ, in his burial, in Christ, in his resurrection,
in Christ, in his ascension, in Christ, in his mediatore reign. You're in Christ. And he is made
unto you all you need. Wisdom, righteousness, sanctification,
and redemption. It's all in Christ. You're complete
in Him. That's what it says. Everything
dwells in Him, and you're complete in Him. 2 Corinthians 5.21. Learn
two things in regard to the gospel. Substitution. Somebody taking
our place. And satisfaction. What He did
is sufficient. But 2 Corinthians 5.21 says He,
Christ, was made sin. made in the likeness of sinful
flesh, took our sins in his body on the tree. He was made sin
for us that we might be made the righteousness of God in him.
And the sure mercies of David, let me give you just three or
four and I'll quit. In Jeremiah 31, 33, God says, this shall
be the covenant that I will make with them in those days. I'll
put my law in their inward parts. Not written on stones, but written
on the heart. I'll write it on their hearts
that they'll love it, and I'll be their God, and they'll be
my people. Verse 34, and he said, they shall know me. They're not
going to have to say, let's teach everybody about God. Everybody
who loves God will know God. From the least to the greatest.
And then he said in verse 34, I'll forgive their iniquities,
and I'll remember their sins. No more. I'll blot them out.
No more. No more. He said in verse 39,
I'll give them one heart and one way, and they'll fear me
forever. Now watch verse 40, Jeremiah
32. I'll make an everlasting covenant with them, and I will
not turn away from them ever, and they shall not depart from
me. And you know the writer of the
Hebrews picks that same theme up in Hebrews 10, and he says,
God will put his law in our hearts, he'll remember our sins no more,
and he opens for us into the very presence of God a new and
living way. So come bold. Now I have this
message on the covenant on a cassette tape. On the other side is a
message I brought last week. If you want this message, write
to me, send two dollars, two dollar donation, We send it to
you by return mail. The covenant, that's the way
to order this message. Until next week, may God bless
you, everyone.