The Secrets of God: The Night Watches

Psa 63:6; 130:6; 42:8

By John MacDuff

Believer, your God has some mighty secret to confide to you! What is this, which, (a mystery to the world,) is to be conveyed in whispers into the ears of His people! "He will show them His Covenant!" Listen, this night, to this blessed "secret." You have pondered it often before. But its wonders never diminish by repetition.

The Author of it is God — the Eternal Father. He framed its articles before the foundation of the world. It is an inverted order of truth that would represent the atonement as the cause of God's love. God's love was rather the originating cause of the atonement. "God so loved the world." How runs the Covenant-Charter? "Everything belongs to you.... the whole world and life and death; the present and the future. Everything belongs to you, and you belong to Christ, and Christ belongs to God."

The initiative — the first overture of covenant-mercy was with Him. It was the insulted Sovereign who first dreamed of mercy towards the rebels; the injured Father who first thought of His ungrateful children. Wondrous secret — that from all eternity, the Heart of God was all Love to us!

Think of the Surety of the Covenant. It was the adorable Son of the Father. He voluntarily accepted the Covenant stipulations: "Lo, I come! I delight to do Your will, O my God!" He ceased not, until, all the terms being fulfilled, He could claim His stipulated reward: "I have glorified You on the earth, I have finished the work which You gave Me to do." And still He lives, and reigns, and intercedes, under the blessed title of "Mediator of the Everlasting Covenant!"

Think of the Almighty Dispenser of the blessings of the Covenant. It is the Spirit of all Grace — the third person in the ever-blessed, co-equal Trinity.

Think of the Heirs of the Covenant. They are all who, by simple faith, are willing to appropriate its inestimable blessings.

Think of the Security of the Covenant. There is nothing but contingency in other things. But all is certainty in the Covenant — "I will be unto you a God, and you shall be to me a people." Unfailing! it has the rock of Christ's Deity to rest upon; and a Triune God pledged to make good all its provisions — "My covenant will I not break, nor alter the word that has gone out of my mouth!"

Think of the Perpetuity of the Covenant: "I will betroth you unto me forever!"

Think of the rich Inheritance of the Covenant. Oh! here is the mighty secret of unfathomable love: "If children, then Heirs — Heirs of God." "Heirs of God!" All within the compass of Omnipotence to bestow! "God," says Beveridge, "thus speaks. "I AM that I AM!" He puts His hand to a blank check, that His people may write under it what they please, that is for their good.

My soul! are you an heir of God? Can you look upwards to the throne of that Great "I am," and say, "my God?" Happier words — a more glorious assurance — cannot thrill on an archangel's tongue! With such a Portion as this, surely I am independent of all others. Let that amazing "secret" form the last thought of this day; and, as the Almighty is even now whispering it in my ears, I may close my eyes, repeating — "I will lie down and sleep in peace, for you alone, O Lord, make me dwell in safety." Psalm 4:8