Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit · Sermon No. 2438
“Yes, I swore unto you, and entered into a Covenant with you, says the Lord God, and you became Mine.” Ezekiel 16:8.
DURING this last summer I took a little journey into the country, as I had an opportunity of preaching and visiting in the region where I lived as a little child and where I afterwards spent some of my school-boy days. Everything was very vividly interesting to me, much more so than it could have been to anybody who was a stranger to the district. Now I want some of you, especially you who love the Lord, to go back in thought to your early days when you were children in Grace. Yes, go back even further than that—to the time of your spiritual birth—those first hours when your love to your Lord was true and fervent, and everything round about you was fresh and bright and joyous.
Biographies are generally interesting if they are biographies, that is to say, if the events of the person’s life are truly told. But I think that the most interesting biography to any man is his own life. Take that book down from the shelf and look into it. You say that you have not kept a diary? Well, perhaps not, but you have one in your memory. You may have read Pepys’ Diary, or Evelyn’s Diary—they are interesting—but I want to get you to read your own! Turn over the pages of the book of memory and think of those first times when you sought and found the Savior, when you repented, when you believed, when you yielded yourself up to Jesus—when He took you to be His and you took Him to be yours! I am sure that this exercise will awaken many happy thoughts and I feel equally certain that it will suggest many regrets. But the happiness will be good for you if it excites your gratitude—and the regrets will be good for you if they deepen your penitence.
I want you, then, to go back for a little time and think of what God did for you, then, and of what He has done for you since. You are called to this retrospect by such a chapter as the one before us, which is God’s own statement of how He dealt with the chosen nation. It is also, in a parable, the Lord’s declaration of how He has dealt with us. He remembers it and He would have us remember it and, in the words of our text, He reminds us of the Covenant He made with us—“Yes, I swore unto you, and entered into a Covenant with you, says the Lord God, and you became Mine.”
Beloved, the time of our conversion, the time when we joyously realized that we were saved, was a covenanting time! The Covenant, itself, as to God’s part in it, was made with Christ on our behalf before the earth was! It is older than the hills, it is as ancient as God, Himself! But, as far as we are concerned, the Covenant comes into practical, experimental context with ourselves when we believe in the Lord Jesus, rely upon His atoning Sacrifice and depend upon His promises of Grace. I repeat that converting times are covenanting times. We made a Covenant with God then. We said—
“‘Tis done! The great transaction’s done!
I am my Lord’s, and He is mine.
He drew me, and I followed on,
Charmed to confess the voice Divine.
High Heaven, that heard the solemn vow,
That vow renewed shall daily hear,
Till in life’s latest hour I bow,
And bless in death a bond so dear!” The Covenant was also on God’s part, for He has promised to save all those who trust Him. And that promise became ours when we trusted His dear Son. All the promises of the Covenant of Grace became promises made particularly to ourselves when we received the seal of the Covenant by believing in the Lord Jesus Christ!
It is a somewhat singular thing that in this chapter God does not say anything about Israel’s part of the Covenant. He seems to pass that over as though it were never worth mentioning. The nation had so entirely forgotten it and had been so altogether untrue to it, that the whole stress of the chapter seems to lie on what God did, how God kept the Covenant. Though the sin of the people is brought to their remembrance, yet the Lord does not say to them, “You entered into Covenant with Me,” but He says, “I swore unto you, and entered into a Covenant with you, says the Lord God, and you became Mine.” So, at this time, I shall not say much about the Covenant that you made with God—do not you forget it—and do not forget that you have often forgotten it. You covenanted with God that you would be His and you meant it when you made the promise. You know how far you have been true to it, but what I want to remember, myself, and for you to remember, too, is God’s Covenant with us—what He promised to do for us and what He has done for us! Let this thought dwell in our minds, that it may renew our love to our Lord and make us continually to realize that we are truly His because He has made a Covenant with us.
Here, then, is our text—“Yes, I swore unto you, and entered into a Covenant with you, says the Lord God, and you became Mine.” My remarks upon it will be, first, that it was a Covenant freely made. Secondly, it was a Covenant entirely of love. Thirdly, it was a most sure Covenant and, in closing, I will try to show you that this Covenant involves very gracious consequences.