Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit · Sermon No. 2762
“And takes hold of My Covenant.” Isaiah 56:4.
“And takes hold of My Covenant.” Isaiah 56:6.
IT was generally supposed by the Jews that no one except the descendants of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob could be in Covenant relationship with God. You remember, however, how Paul says, in writing to the Romans, “But Isaiah is very bold,” and he is so in this instance. He declares that men may take hold of the Covenant of God though, heretofore, they appeared to be shut out from its privileges. There were certain poor mutilated beings who were despised by some because of their disabilities—yet they were to be encouraged to keep the Lord’s Sabbaths, to choose the things that pleased Him and to take hold of His Covenant. Then there were the foreigners, of whom the Lord said, “Also the sons of the stranger, that join themselves to Jehovah, to serve Him and to love the name of Jehovah to be His servants, everyone that keeps the Sabbath from polluting it, and takes hold of My Covenant; even them will I bring to My holy mountain and make them joyful in My house of prayer: their burnt offerings and their sacrifices shall be accepted upon My altar; for My house shall be called an house of prayer for all people.”
It was thus clearly revealed that persons who appeared to be shut out from the Covenant because they were not of the seed of Abraham, were, in later days, to be encouraged to obey the commands of God and especially to obey His ordinance concerning the keeping of the Sabbath—which separated His people from the rest of mankind—and to take hold of His Covenant. It is of that particular action of taking hold of God’s Covenant that I am about to speak as the Holy Spirit shall enable me.
I. And first, let us enquire, WHAT IS THIS COVENANT? We must know the truth concerning this point, for it has been well said, “He who understands the Covenants holds the key of all theology.”
Well, then, let us bear in mind the fact that there was, first of all, a Covenant made with our father, Adam—not, perhaps, in set terms, but virtually—that if he would do the will of God, he would live and that, if he did so, we also would live by virtue of his obedience. But, alas, our great Covenant head, Adam the first, could not keep that Covenant. He took of the fruit of the tree which he was forbidden to eat and so the Covenant of Works, which had been made with him, was torn in pieces. We might say of that sad event what Mark Anthony said of the murder of Julius Caesar—
“Oh, what a fall was there, my countrymen! Then I, and you, and all of us fell down.” I should think that none of us want to take hold of that Covenant, for we are already all sufferers by it. We are, all of us, the heirs of sorrow, travail and death as the result of that broken Covenant. Those of you who fancy that you can get to Heaven by obeying the commands of God should remember that even the perfect Adam could not keep the Law of God, so how shall his imperfect children do what he failed to accomplish? He, in whom was no sin, for he was created without taint of guilt, disobeyed his Maker—so, shall not we be sure to disobey Him when all our powers and faculties are debased by the guilt which we have inherited from him?
Yes, we have disobeyed Him already. We have broken His Law again and again! So any hope of happiness through the keeping of the Law which we may have cherished, is forever vain. The Covenant of Works is broken and all hope of our being saved by it is gone forever—
“Vain are the hopes the sons of men
On their own works have built.
Their hearts by nature are unclean
And all their actions guilt.
Let Jew and Gentile stop their mouths
Without a murmuring word
And the whole race of Adam stand
Guilty before the Lord.
In vain we ask God’s righteous Law
To justify us now,
Since to convince and to condemn
Is all the Law can do.”
But, now, blessed be the name of the Lord, there is a second Covenant, made with the Second Adam, the Lord Jesus Christ!And by that Covenant, made with Him on behalf of all His people, it was provided that He should Himself perfectly keep the Law and also that He should suffer the penalty due from His people for their breaches of the Law. And that, if He did both these things, then all those who were represented in Him should live forever! We rejoice to know that Christ has both kept the Law and paid the penalty that His people had incurred by breaking it! He has rendered both an active and a passive obedience to the Law of God so, now, according to the conditions of the Covenant, all those for whom He lived and died, inherit, by Divine right, all the blessings which Christ, their Covenant Representative, has procured on their behalf!
I have already read to you the Inspired record of what those blessings are. Let me just recall them to you—“A new heart also will I give you, and a new spirit will I put within you: and I will take away the stony heart out of your flesh, and I will give you a heart of flesh. And I will put My Spirit within you, and cause you to walk in My statutes, and you shall keep My judgments, and do them.” All these are clear, definite, unconditional promises—there is no, “if,” or, “but,” in the whole quotation. There is nothing to be done, on our part, in order to win the blessing! All that had to be done was done by Christ our Representative more than 18 centuries ago! We fell, by no act of our own, in the first Adam—and we rise, without any merit of our own, in the Second Adam. The only question about which we need to be concerned, is—Are we in Him? I know that question can be answered in the affirmative by many of us—and I trust that others of us will be able to lay hold on that Covenant by the life-grip of faith—then they will also be able to say, “Yes, we are among those over whom Christ is the Head and we have a share in all the privileges of the Covenant into which He entered on our behalf.”