Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit · Sermon No. 2316
“Incline your ear, and come unto Me: hear, and your soul shall live: and I will make an everlasting Covenant with you, even the sure mercies of David.” Isaiah 55:3.
I GOT so far this morning [Sermon #2092, Volume 35—God’s Own Gospel Call.] as to plead with men to come to God to hear what He had to say, to give diligent and earnest heed to His teaching about their souls and about salvation. And while I pleaded, I can truly say, with all the strength I had, I made this one of the master arguments that, in hearing, their soul would live—and in coming to God, they would find Him ready to enter into Covenant with them, “an everlasting Covenant, even the sure mercies of David.”
That seemed to me to be one of the most astonishing Truths of God that was ever given to man to preach, that God would be a high contracting party with poor insignificant and guilty man, that He would make a Covenant with man! Yes, with you and with me—that He would bind Himself by a solemn promise, give His sacred pledge—and enter into a holy contract of mercy with the guilty sons of Adam! I thought that if men were in their right minds and God had taught their reason to be reasonable, they would be drawn to the Lord by such a wonderful promise as this, “I will make an everlasting Covenant with you, even the sure mercies of David.”
Remember that there was a Covenant of old, which men broke—the Covenant of works, “This do, and you shall live.” Keep such and such commands, and you shall be rewarded. That Covenant failed because man did not keep God’s commands and so did not earn the promised reward. We broke the terms of that contract and it is no longer valid, except that we come under penalty for the breach of it, and that penalty is that we are to be cast away from God’s Presence and to perish without hope, so far as that broken Covenant is concerned.
Now, rolling up that old Covenant as a useless thing out of which no salvation can ever come, God comes to us in another way and He says, “I will make a new Covenant with you, not like the old one at all.” It is a Covenant of Grace— a Covenant made, not with the worthy, but with the unworthy! A Covenant not made upon conditions, but unconditionally, every supposed condition having been fulfilled by our great Representative and Surety, the Lord Jesus Christ! A Covenant without an, “if,” or a, “but,” in it, “ordered in all things, and sure.” A Covenant of shalls and wills in which God says, “I will, and you shall!” A Covenant just suited to our broken-down and helpless condition. A Covenant which will land everyone who is interested in it in Heaven! No other Covenant will ever do this. I tried to expatiate upon that Covenant this morning and I thought that I would close the day by showing to any who desire to be in this Covenant of Grace what the blessings are that God promises to give to guilty men when they come to Him, when they accept His love and His mercy. What are these blessings?
I have little else to do, tonight, but to refer you, again, as I did this morning, to God’s Word. Beloved, if you had met together, after the death of some wealthy relative, and his will was about to be read to you, you would not require an eloquent lawyer—you would all be very attentive—and some of you who are a little deaf would recover your hearing! An important question would be, “What has he left?” A still more important enquiry would be, “What has he left to me?” Well, I want you to feel, tonight, that you do not need an eloquent preacher—I am only going to read God’s will to you, His Covenant, which is virtually the testament or will of Christ. And all that you have to do is to listen and say, “What has He left? What has He bequeathed to me? What does He Covenant to give to me?”
And remember that whoever you may be, if you are willing to be saved by Grace, you may be saved by Grace! If you give up all hope of being saved anyway else, you may be saved by the free mercy and love of God! “If you are willing and obedient, you shall eat the good of the land.” If you come and take Christ to be your Savior, then all the promises of God, which in Him are, yes, and in Him, Amen, are made to you! If you take Him, you take all that is in the Covenant, for He is the Covenant. Embodied in Himself is the whole Covenant of Grace and He who has Christ has all it contains!
I am going to point you to some of the passages in which we have this Covenant written out at length. I shall not say much upon any item, but I shall refer you to 12 wonderful mercies of the Covenant of Grace. Will you kindly look in your Bibles at the prophecy of Jeremiah, chapter 31, verse thirty-four? There is no music more sweet to me than the rustle of your Bibles. I sometimes preach, no, I frequently preach when I may read what I like and nobody follows me to see if I quote correctly. I have been inclined to buy you wheelbarrows, so that you may bring your Bibles to Chapel in them, since many of you do not seem to have any here. What is the best way of hearing the Word? Is it not to search and see whether what the preacher says is really according to the Word of God?