Series: Isaiah
Title: Sure Mercies
Text: Isaiah 53: 3
Date: May 11, 2014
Place: SGBC, New Jersey
Isaiah 53: 3: 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.
When
God has given his child life, shown us our sins and drawn us to Christ our care
on Christ Jesus, God promises to feed our souls with everything needful for
life. He promises to make an everlasting
covenant with his believing child.
In that
covenant, God promises to give us Sure Mercies—our subject. They are the same
sure mercies which David was given—sure mercies of David.
This
everlasting covenant is a covenant of grace.
God does not make this covenant with his child because there is
worthiness in us, he makes this covenant with the unworthy. The everlasting
covenant is not made with conditions and works for his child to fulfill—God
makes this covenant with his child unconditionally.
The
work of redemption has already been fulfilled by our great Representative and
Surety, the Lord Jesus Christ. For the elect of God, there is not one “if” or
“but” anywhere in this covenant. This is a covenant of “shalls” and “wills”,
God says, “I will, and they shall;” God left nothing for his child to do—the
contracting parties in this covenant are the Three Persons of the Sacred
Trinity so all is accomplished for his people. Christ lived upon the earth in
Perfect Righteousness as our Representative. He died under the penalty of the
law as our Substitute. By virtue of Christ’s perfect obedience, every blessing
of the covenant is sure to all God’s elect.
Proposition:
Therefore, every promise God makes to his child in the everlasting covenant are
sure mercies: surely fulfilled, surely to come to pass, surely ours
forever—ordered and sure to every sinner who believes on Christ.
2 Corinthians 1:20: For all the promises of God in
[Christ] are yea, and in [Christ] Amen, unto the glory of God
So what
are these sure mercies? This is in no particular order. I will give you as many
as we have time for—so we will touch on them briefly.
I. FIRST, GOD PROMISES TO CLEANSE US—Ezekiel
36: 24: For I will take you from among the heathen, and gather you out of all
countries, and will bring you into your own land. [heavenly Canaan, heavenly Mt. Zion, New Jerusalem which
is above, his church] 25: Then will I
sprinkle clean water upon you, and ye shall be clean: from all your filthiness,
and from all your idols, will I cleanse you.
God graciously cleanses us from all our
filthiness and all our idols: by The Blood of Christ, by the Word of God (John
15:3), by the Holy Spirit.
Titus 3: 5: Not by works of righteousness which we have
done, but according to his mercy he saved us, by the washing of regeneration,
and renewing of the Holy Ghost; 6: Which he shed on us abundantly through Jesus
Christ our Saviour; 7: That being justified by his grace, we should be made
heirs according to the hope of eternal life.
Hebrews 9:14: How much more shall the blood of Christ,
who through the eternal Spirit offered himself without spot to God, purge your
conscience from dead works to serve the living God?
1 John 1:7 But if
we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship one with
another, and the blood of Jesus Christ his Son cleanseth us from all sin.
II. SECONDLY, GOD PROMISES TO GIVE US A NEW
HEART AND A NEW SPIRIT—Ezekiel 36: 26: 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 an heart of flesh.
The
stony heart of our flesh is what we are born with the first time. A deceitful,
sinful, proud, stony heart: hard, cold, barren, dead. It must be taken out of
the way.
God
gives us a new heart and a new Spirit. It is a broken and contrite heart, a
believing heart. a submissive heart,
a praying heart, with new motives, new tastes, new principles,
new ambitions. Has God given you a new heart?
2 Corinthians 5: 17: Therefore if any man be in Christ,
he is a new creature: old things are passed away; behold, all things are become
new.
III. GOD PROMISES TO SANCTIFY US TO A HOLY
WALK—Ezekiel 36:27 And I will put my
spirit within you, and cause you to walk in my statutes, and ye shall keep my
judgments, and do them.
When
God works grace in us, he put his spirit within us—the Spirit of his Son. The
man in the flesh cannot please God, he is not subject to God’s word and cannot
be. He cannot walk by the believer’s
rule of life which is to believe Christ and love our brethren.
But ye
are not in the flesh but in the Spirit if so be that the Spirit of Christ dwell
in you. By putting the Spirit of Christ in you, God not only calls us to
holiness, he gives us holiness—“Of God is Christ made unto you sanctification.”
Thereby God not only calls us to walk in his way, he makes us walk in his way.
How?
Illustration: Husband and wives, what makes you serve your spouse with
a cheerful heart: their demands or their love? Having the Spirit of Christ in
you is like having Christ’s sweet embrace, it is to have his love dwelling in
our hearts. Christ makes us obedient, not by compulsion, not by demands, not by
physical force, but by the sweet constraints of his infinite, unchanging love.
2 Corinthians 5: 14: For the love of Christ constraineth
us; because we thus judge, that if one died for all, then were all dead: 15: And
that he died for all, that they which live should not henceforth live
unto themselves, but unto him which died for them, and rose again.
IV. FOURTHLY, GOD PROMISES TO SAVE US FROM
UNCLEANNES BY PROVIDING FOR US—Ezekiel 36: 29… 29: I will also
save you from all your uncleannesses: and I will call for the corn, and will
increase it, and lay no famine upon you. 30: And I will multiply the fruit of
the tree, and the increase of the field, that ye shall receive no more reproach
of famine among the heathen.
Our
uncleanness is predeominatly from a fear of providing.
Illustration: Fallen
man is like a bunch of hungry dogs with one biscuit between them.
But by
giving us assurance that God shall provide, God takes that pressure off and saves
us from all our uncleanness. In temporal things: God has power to “call for the
corn,” and “to multiply the fruit of the tree.” David had this sure mercy. He
said,
Psalm 37:25: I have been young, and now am old; yet have
I not seen the righteous forsaken, nor his seed begging bread.
Most of
all in spiritual meat: he shall never take Christ the Bread of Life from us.
Only increase! It is Christ who saves us from all our uncleanness.
V. FIFTHLY, GOD PROMISES TO MAKE US LOTHE
OURSELVES FOR OUR SINS—Ezekiel 36: 31: Then shall ye remember your own evil
ways, and your doings that were not good, and shall lothe yourselves in your
own sight for your iniquities and for your abominations.
The
world sees no blessing in this! They teach self-exaltation, self-worth,
self-love, self, self, self! But you who have this blessing, rejoice in it! More on this in our next point.
VI. SIXTHLY, GOD PROMISES TO WRITE HIS LAW ON
OUR INWARD PARTS—TURN TO Jeremiah 31: 33 But this shall be the covenant that
I will make with the house of Israel; After those days, saith the LORD, I will put my law in their inward parts,
and write it in their hearts;
Note: In its
totality, the law God writes on the believer’s heart is described as: Romans 8:
2: the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus [this
law makes] me free from the law of sin and death. [This is a spiritual law, not
in stone, in the new heart.] This one law is made up of several laws. The
Hebrew writer quoting Jeremiah says, God will write “his laws” (plural) on our
heart.
The law of God.
By
nature, we have the law of God written on our conscience. But by nature, our
conscience is defiled. So we thought we could actually obey the ten
commandments. But when God writes his
law on our hearts, God makes us hear the law of Mt. Sinai for the first time, it
is spiritual, it reaches to the heart, so it declares us guilty. Paul said,
“for I had not known sin,” except God had made the law come alive to me. “When
sin revived, I died.” Then for the first time, we delight in the law of God: we
see it is holy, just and good.
Romans 7:22: For I delight in the law of God after the
inward man:
The law of sin (Rom 7: 21-25).
Every
believer is made free from the law of sin and death. Yet, to keep us from
looking to our flesh, God reveals in our inward man that in our flesh still
dwells no good thing. This is how he
makes us loath ourselves for our sin. We don’t know the law of sin until God
reveals it in the new heart. As a regenerated man, Paul said,
Romans 7: 21: I find then a law, that, when I would do
good, evil is present with me. 22: For I delight in the law of God after the
inward man: 23: But I see another law in my members, warring against the law of
my mind, and bringing me into captivity to the law of sin which is in my
members. 24: O wretched man that I am! who shall deliver me from the body of
this death? [does we look to our flesh, to the law, to our works. No! We don’t
look to the wretched to save us from the wretched!] 25: I thank God through
Jesus Christ our Lord. So then with the mind I myself serve the law of God; but
with the flesh the law of sin.
The law of righteousness
This is
the perfect righteousness of God’s holy law.
Romans 9: 30: What shall we say then? That the Gentiles,
which followed not after righteousness, have attained to righteousness, even the
righteousness which is of faith. 31: But Israel, which followed after the law
of righteousness, hath not attained to the law of righteousness. 32: Wherefore?
Because they sought it not by faith, but as it were by the works of the
law. For they stumbled at that stumblingstone; [Christ]
God
reveals in our hearts that because Christ, “who knew no sin, was made sin for
us, we are now made the righteousness of God in him.” Not by our works, but through
faith. So now, every true believer has established the law in perfect
righteousness through faith in Christ.
The law of faith
God
reveals in our hearts, that the righteousness of Christ is ours through faith
in Christ. We did nothing, Christ did it all!
Romans 7: 27: Where is boasting then? It is excluded. By
what law? of works? Nay: but by the law
of faith.
The law of liberty
This is
another word for the gospel of Christ. By the gospel, God reveals in our hearts
that Christ has set us free to worship and serve him in spirit and in truth—we
have free access to God.
James 1: 25: But whoso looketh into the perfect law of
liberty, [the gospel of “believe and love”] and continueth therein, he being
not a forgetful hearer, but a doer of the work, [believing Christ, loving one
another] this man shall be blessed in his deed.
But the
law of liberty does not make us live to our flesh: biting and devouring one
another.
Galatians 5: 13: For, brethren, ye have been called unto
liberty; only use not liberty for an occasion to the flesh, but by love serve
one another.
The law
of liberty makes us delight in mercy rather than judgment—it is the law by
which we shall be judged.
James 2: 12: So speak ye, and so do, as they that shall
be judged by the law of liberty. 13: For he shall have judgment without mercy,
that hath shewed no mercy; and mercy rejoiceth against judgment.
The law of love or the law of Christ—
Galatians 6: 1: Brethren, if a man be overtaken in a
fault, ye which are spiritual, restore such an one in the spirit of meekness;
considering thyself, lest thou also be tempted. 2: Bear ye one another’s
burdens, and so fulfil the law of Christ. [the law of love]
1 John 3:23: And this is his commandment, That we should
believe on the name of his Son Jesus Christ, and love one another, as he gave
us commandment….
So
these are the laws that God writes on the believers new heart.
VII. SEVEN, GOD PROMISES US RECONCILIATION TO
GOD—Jeremiah 31: 33: and [I] will be their God, and they shall be my people.
When God
says into your heart, ‘I will be your God.”
You resist no more! You delight
to be his child! Amazed that God has made his children. (1 Jn 3: 1)
VIII. EIGHT, GOD PROMIES TO MAKE US KNOW HIM—Jeremiah
31: 34:
And they shall teach no more every man his neighbour, and every man his
brother, saying, Know the LORD: for they shall all know me, from the least of
them unto the greatest of them, saith the LORD:
Man by nature does not know God nor can he know God.
1 Corinthians 2:14: But the natural man
receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God: for they are foolishness unto
him: neither can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned.
1 Corinthians 2:10: But God hath revealed [himself] unto us by his
Spirit: for the Spirit searcheth all things, yea, the deep things of God.
John 17:3: And this is life eternal, that they might know thee the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom thou hast sent.
IX. NINE, GOD PROMISES US FREE JUSTIFICATION—Jeremiah
31: 34:…for I will forgive their iniquity, and I will remember their sin no
more.
As long as you think you’re good by nature—righteous by
what you’ve done, you shall never have this blessing of free justification.
Matthew
9: 12: [Christ said] They that be whole need not a physician, but they that are
sick. 13: But go ye and learn what that meaneth, I will have mercy, and not
sacrifice: for I am not come to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance.
But you who know that all you are and all you do is sin, you
have God’s promise--“I will forgive their iniquity and I will remember their
sin no more.” Satan can accuse you to God all he wants. Every enemy can accuse
you. You may stumble a thousand times a day. God says, “I remember their sin no
more.”
Romans 4: 7: [David said], Blessed [happy] are
they whose iniquities are forgiven, and whose sins are covered. 8: Blessed is
the man to whom the Lord will not impute sin.
X. GOD PROMISES TO MAKE US FEAR HIM—Jeremiah
32: 39: And I will give them one heart, and one way, that they may fear me for
ever, for the good of them, and of their children after them:
True
godliness is the fear of God in the heart—the beginning of wisdom—“Of God is
Christ made unto us Wisdom.”
We
cannot make ourselves godly because we cannot make ourselves fear and reverence
Gid, much less make others do so! Only
God makes us truly godly! He does it by making us one with him in Christ and
one with each other. By setting each of our hearts on Christ alone!
“One
heart”: Each child born of God has the same law of
the Spirit written on our hearts. Each
true believer knows the sin of our flesh—temptations, afflictions, and trials
So you
won’t find true believers boasting in ourselves, exalting ourselves over brethren.
Instead, we sympathize with each other, put one another’s sins behind our backs
even as God has done our sins, remind each other to look to Christ alone. This
is true godly reverence, trusting God to make each other stand.
It is because
in this one heart God gives “one Way”—one way of salvation, one way of access
to God—a new and living way, one way of acceptance with God, one way of
justification before God, one way of sanctification and obedience to God—Christ
Jesus the Way.
Our
hearts and affections are single for Christ; our wills are subject to Christ,
filled with the fruit of Christ. (Gal 5: 22-23) We each desire for Christ to
have all preeminence.
Therefore,
each believer’s heart is pure, sincere, upright: unfeigned faith and genuine
repentance; love without dissimulation: toward Christ and toward one another;
you are Israelites indeed in whom is no guile. The reason is: God gives one
heart and one way in each believer. This is what makes a happy church family. Men
plant their churches by their means, schemes and cruel rules. Then they
struggle to hold it together by their means, schemes and cruel rules. But God
plants his church by giving each of us one heart and one way! He says,
Jeremiah 32: 39:…that they may fear me for ever, for the good
of them, and of their children after them:
For our
personal good and each other’s; for the good of those he shall call through our
gospel—our children after us.
XII. NINE, GOD PROMISES HE WILL NEVER TURN
AWAY FROM US AND WILL NOT ALLOW US TO TURN AWAY FROM HIM—Jeremiah 32: 40: And I
will make an everlasting covenant with them, that I will not turn away from
them, to do them good; but I will put my fear in their hearts, that they shall
not depart from me.
At times,
it may appear to us that God has turned away from us. He does it to do us good. Yet, he has not turned away from us. He
promises, “I will not turn away from
them, to do them good;”
God
turned away once—from Christ stood as our sin-bearer on the cross—but even
then, God did that for our eternal good.
Now, he promises, “I will not turn away from them, to do them good.”
But God
does promise he will put his fear in our hearts so that we shall not depart
from him. And we would, if he did not do so!
Believer,
aren’t you glad that God has made this promise in our hearts! He gives a
reverence for his holiness, with a fear of being found outside of Christ. It
makes us cling to Christ! I am so glad. Except for his power keeping me, I
would surely depart! But God will not leave you, and he will not let you leave
him. What a precious promise!
XII. LASTLY, GOD PROMISES US ASSURANCE
FOREVER—but it is not in you or me—it is real assurance,
assurance even when our hearts feel no assurance—Jeremiah 32: 41: Yea, I will rejoice over them to do them good, and I
will plant them in this land assuredly with my whole heart and with my whole
soul.
Brethren,
do not ever look to yourself for assurance.
This assurance is sure even when you and I have lost all assurance. God
says, “assuredly with my whole heart and with my whole soul, I will rejoice
over them to do them good and I will plant them in this land!”—in heavenly
Canaan, new Jerusalem! Now that is assurance!
See, my
friends, Christ is truly, “the mediator
of a better covenant, which was established upon better promises.” (Heb.
8:6). If you still foolishly want to come to God by the covenant of works, the
law says do all yourself—you are on your own.
But if you see that’s impossible, see your need of a Mediator, God gives
you three simple precepts: “Incline your ear, come unto me, and hear. And God
promises: “and your soul shall live, and I will make with you an everlasting
covenant, even the sure mercies of David.” Amen!