Life in the Covenant | Psalm 103:15–18 & Romans 8:28–39 | Unfading Love in a Fading World
In a world where memories fade and everything we build eventually wears out, God’s covenant love endures forever.
This message from Pastor Mark Groen reminds us that life in the covenant is not about our grip on God, but about His unbreakable grip on us. From the frailty of life described in Psalm 103 to the assurance of salvation in Romans 8, we see the power of an everlasting promise — a love that cannot fade or fail.
A day will come when no one on earth will remember your name. But heaven will remember because your name is written in the Lamb’s Book of Life. The covenant love that God called you with is the covenant love that will keep you.
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Thank you for joining us for this week's sermon from First Reformed Church in Edgerton, Minnesota. Each week, we dig into God's word, trusting that the Holy spirit will continue the good work of sanctification in us. Not terribly long ago, I was looking through some old photographs. As I was looking at them, I thought about how many pictures we take now. Due to the smartphone, our Our cameras are now in our pocket. It just slides in. Before, our cameras, even the small ones, barely fit in your pocket, and they were fragile. Because of the digital nature of these photos now, we don't need to spend too much time worrying about how many photos we're going to take because we're worried we're going to run off this thing called film. How many of you remember film? In the past, we had to be pretty careful with how many pictures we took. Well, now we'll take 15 pictures of, say, our food, because in the first one, the lighting wasn't just right. And on top of that, we have the instant gratification of being able to see the results right away. Innovations to the camera have made taking all of these photos possible.
But how many of them mean something to us? Have you ever gone through your cloud storage backups of your photos and realize that you have a whole lot of really unimportant pictures to sift through to get to the ones that matter? And all these photos exist there on your phone and somewhere out there in the Ether of either Google or Apple's cloud mystery backup place. But when was the last time? You had some of these photos printed out on some quality paper that would last so you could have them as an archive of important memories and important people. But even if we do print them out, they fade. It starts with the colors fading a bit, and then maybe the edges starting to get bent. And over time, they will either end up in the or become so fated or tattered that they aren't worth keeping anymore. Even worse, the significance that some of these photos has will fade, maybe even faster than the color on the paper. Because what is significant for us is likely to be far less important for those who come after us. And even with digital storage, keeping an archive drive of our photos, that doesn't mean they're going to last.
In 50 years, is anyone going to want to continue to pay the fee for the cloud backup on your pictures that you are taking now when they don't have any idea who most of the people in the pictures are? We live in a world where memories fade, technology changes, and even the things that we try to preserve eventually disappear. What once felt permanent turns out to be truly fleeting. God's word is clear in reminding us of this truth that everything around us is fading. But even though our possessions, our bodies, and our legacies are fading, holy scripture tells us there is something something that endures. The steadfast love of the Lord does not fade like an old photograph. His covenant faithfulness isn't stored in some fragile cloud server somewhere, and it is independent on our ability to remember. Instead, his covenant faithfulness is rooted in the covenant that he has made with his people in the person and work of the Lord Jesus Christ. That is an everlasting covenant that doesn't fade and it cannot be deleted. As we look at God's word today, we find that both Psalm 103 and Romans 8 are reminding us that in a world of fleeting moments, life in the covenant is anchored in something that is everlasting.
Our lives may fade like grass, but God's promises don't dry Our memories may be dim, but his mercy shines as bright today as the moment that he first called us to himself. This is why we have been looking at this important idea of covenant this fall. The word covenant isn't a word that we use terribly often. Really, it makes the idea seem like deeply theological, That's something people talk about in books or discuss in panel discussions or something like this. But in reality, the idea of covenant is so unbelievably practical for us because our questions, our fears, and our anxieties, they so often come from living as though everything depends on us. We fall into the trap of thinking that it's about our strength, our performance, or our ability to hold it all together. But our understanding of covenant reminds us that life with God rests not on our grip on him, but instead his grip on us. And it is unbreakable. So this section of Psalm 103 we read this morning reminds us of a pretty harsh truth, doesn't it? It says, The days of man are like grass. We flourish, and then we're no more.
And you know this, not just because the Holy Word of God tells us, but because we see it in our world every day. Our human frailty is never far off, is it? Whether we're reminded of it on the news by the loss of someone that we care about deeply in our lives, or by the way our joints crack and pop when we get out of the chair, we know that these frames fail. This is the ultimate struggle that we have. So much of what we see in the world is humanity trying to extend life. You even hear people saying that someday in the future, we will be able to transfer our consciousness into some machine. It just proves the fact that we are at war with our degrading bodies. We have been since the curse. Death entered because of the sin of our first parents violating the covenant of works in the garden. We have felt the effects ever since. The Psalm knew this to be true a few thousand years ago, and we know it to be true today. We try to solve the problem with technology or with medicine, but the Psalm here gives us something better.
Our hope is not in other frail creatures who think they can solve this problem. Where the Psalmist points us to, where scripture points us to, is the one who is outside of time. He points us to the one who doesn't fail. God does not fail. He is not like the grass. He has steadfast love, and it's from everlasting to everlasting. That phrase, steadfast love. I did not plan it out four or five years ago when we started doing the Psalms responsibly, that we would end up saying the steadfast love of the Lord endures forever a bunch of times on this day. It just happened to take place that we're talking about the steadfast love of God so much today. That phrase, steadfast love, is really the translation of one Hebrew word. It's hesed, and it's one of the deepest and richest words in all scripture. It means that God has a loyal, covenant-keeping love. It's the love that doesn't give up when we fail. It's a love that doesn't stop because we drift away. Hesed, what we translate as steadfast love, is not a feeling that comes and goes. It's a commitment that endures. When we talk about God's steadfast love, we're talking about his promise to stay faithful even when we are not.
This idea of steadfast love shows us his mercy in action, and it is shown to us in his patient, loyal, and unwavering love from generation to generation. This is how God is shown to us, not only here in the Salter, but throughout all of Scripture. He is in covenant with his people, and he will not break it because he is steadfast, because he is changing. And so the steadfast love, spoken of in the Old Testament, is shown to us fully in the new covenant. When God, the Son himself, takes on our flesh to keep the covenant that we have broken. We are covenant breakers. And so the covenant keeper comes to us in our flesh, and it is in his work that we see the steadfast love of God is not just an abstract idea of some mystical being somewhere out there in the universe having good warm feelings about you. In Christ, we see that the steadfast love of God is a sacrificial act where Jesus himself bears the curse of the covenant in our own flesh and fulfills the promises of God so that his people might be reconciled to him. So the song songs that were sung by David for the steadfast love of the Lord endures forever.
Those songs that were sung by him and by all the people in the old covenant, they become visible in the reality of the cross, where Jesus achieves what no amount of human effort could accomplish. In the new covenant, we are made right with God because we have union with Christ. He fulfilled the law in our place. He bore the wrath of God for our sin. And so this covenant in his blood is the fulfillment of all that the Old Testament pointed to, and it gives us peace with God. And this reality is what the apostle Paul makes clear for us as we move forward into our reading from Romans 8. As those who have union with Christ, we know that he is working all things together for good according to his purpose. We read that he has predestined us to be conformed to the image of the Son. He called us and he justified us and he glorifies us. These four verses here are amazing. God not only is working all things together for good, and we see that all of this is is the work of God here? He predestined that his people would be called to himself.
When he called, he justifies. God didn't send out a call to us and then sit and wait for us to answer. Why is that significant? It's because on our own, we would never answer. Scripture is clear as to what the fall of man did to us. It made us dead in our sin. If answering the call of God was up to us, we would never answer. Not because we don't hear the call or because we don't understand it, but because we are dead sinners in rebellion against a Holy God. And so Paul tells us that God also did this work of not only calling us, but justifying us. And the word justify means be declared righteous. It's a legal term. We see here that he made those who were unrighteous, righteous. We are declared righteous, and in doing so, he brings us from death to life. We are not righteous on our own, but righteous because Christ was righteous in our place, and we have been united to him by faith. Well, then we read that we're glorified by grace through we are able to be in the presence of a Holy God. Why? Because we're clothed in the righteousness of Jesus.
This is what our covenant keeping God has done for us to save us and to give us eternal life. And so what follows here is a fantastic expression of why we can have confidence in this truth and why this stuff matters. And it's not just stuff for theologians to debate. So for a A significant portion of my life, when I would read Romans 8, I would have a focus on that line that God works all things together for good, statement. And then the predestination stuff we see in these verses. And then that great line, If God is for us, who can be against us? Well, then I would read the next few verses, mentally checking out, looking forward to that statement at the end of the chapter that says, Nothing can separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus, our Lord. So it must have been either late 2008 winter or 2009 winter. I remember that because I was speaking at a youth retreat that we were doing. We had a group of youth directors who planned these things together. We did camps and retreats, and then we all did our own share of the work of speaking and planning to keep the cost down for the students.
And I can remember where I was when I gave this talk on Romans 8. I don't remember if I selected Romans 8 myself or if it was assigned to me by the topic we were teaching. But preparing that message forced me to slow down and actually pay attention to these words that are in front of us today and really soak in the deep level of assurance that Paul gives the people of God in these verses that I had previously treated rather flippantly. The first thing Paul does is he assures us by reminding us that God spared his own son, or he didn't spare his own son, but he gave him up for us. He says, Why would he not give us all things. In other words, if God works salvation for us by sacrificing his own son, why would he withhold the benefits of that from us? Why would he not give that to his people if he did all that, if he sacrificed his own son? It's important that we understand here as we read this, that when Paul says, Give us all things, Paul isn't talking about earthly things when he talks this way.
He's talking about that which is far more important than possessions or wealth. He's talking about our real problem, the curse and death. Why would he not give us life over that? And then to help us see the depth of this, he asks a few more questions. Who can bring a charge against God's elect? Well, can any human bring a charge against God's elect? No. Can the devil and his demons bring a charge against you? Well, no. The only one who can do that, who can bring a charge against you, is God. And what did he do? He justifies us. The one who can bring a charge against you, Christian, is the one who has declared you righteous. Then he asks, who can condemn? Christ Jesus. Well, he's who our judge is, right? Well, what did Jesus do for you? He died for you. He defeated death because he was raised for you. And now he is at the right the hand of God, interceding for us. Notice that the assurance that Paul wants you to have about your salvation in Christ is not just rooted in the past, the death and resurrection, but he also roots your assurance in what Jesus is doing right now, interceding for you at the Father's right-hand.
That is how we can have access to God. And so the covenant that God made with his people in Christ is everlasting, and it provides us with peace and assurance in the truth that we've been made right with God through the work of Jesus on our behalf. And so these questions here are at the root of some well-known verses that follow them. And so Paul starts with some more questions. Who shall separate us from the love of God in Christ? Tribulation, distress, persecution, famine, nakedness, danger, or sword. Well, I think that covers pretty much every last awful thing that can happen to you in this life. I'm not sure what's missing. That encompasses everything that the world will throw at you. For good measure, Paul throws in Psalm 44: 2 to remind us that suffering, that is something that happens for your sake. We are regarded as sheep to be slaughtered. He lets us know that this is the expectation. These things are the reality of life in a sin-cursed world. But now Paul's answer takes us from the depth of those circumstances to the height of the reality of who we are in Christ.
We are more than conquerors through him who loved us. Neither depths, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, no things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all of creation will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus, our Lord. So when the circumstances of life come at you, when you hear the voices that cause you to doubt whether or not God loves you or whether you've done enough to earn his favor, remember these words and remember that this God is in an everlasting covenant with you. He is faithful. You don't have to earn his favor. He has come to you and nothing can separate you from that love. You are more than a conqueror. You are established to the end. You are above and not beneath because your covenant God has steadfast love for his people. And because you have been given the gift of faith, you are his child. This is sure, this is secure. It does not fade. Like I mentioned earlier, every last picture we've ever taken will one day fade. The paper will crumble, and someday, even the digital copies of our memories will be deleted.
But the love of God in Christ Jesus doesn't fade. It can't be shut down. Because you've been united to Christ by faith, you will not fade away. You are in an everlasting covenant with God. You are united to Christ, and he doesn't fade. A day will come when no one on earth will remember your name. But heaven will remember because your name is written in the Lamb's Book of Life. The covenant love that God called you with is the covenant love that will keep you. The one who died, rose again, and is right now interceding for you at the Father's right-hand, will never let you go. And so live with this truth as your peace and your hope. That is what life in the covenant is all about. Amen. Let us pray. Almighty God, we thank you for the assurance that you give us in your word. That because you have laid hold of us in Christ and we are united to him, we have peace in a world that is fading. We pray that you would give us a strong faith in your covenant love that we might have resolve to live for you.
And as we journey through this world where doubts and insecurities rise, We pray that your voice, the voice of your word, telling us that we have salvation, that we are more than conquerors, would be what we hear. That we might not only have joy and peace and comfort in this life, but that we might be your faithful witnesses of this great covenant love to the ends of the earth. Amen. Thank you for joining us for this week's sermon. For more information about First Reformed Church, head to our Facebook page or website, edgertonfrc.org.
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