ALLIANCE WITH GOD—NOT WITH THE GODLESS!

A Sermon by Dr. Walter A. Maier

“Shouldest thou help the ungodly and love them that hate the Lord? Therefore is wrath upon thee from before the Lord.” II Chronicles 19:2

GOD, OUR REFUGE AND STRENGTH: We praise Thy goodness for enriching us through faith in Jesus, Thy Son and our Savior, with the heavenly assurance of our eternal triumph over sin, death, and hell, and for fortifying us even now with the guarantee of Thy grace in solving or removing every problem which may beset us. Daily deepen our love for our compassionate Redeemer, who on the Cross shed His blood for our cleansing and salvation! Lead us to ally our souls with Him, and refusing to rely on men who oppose Thy Word, thus overcome every enemy of the faith with the victory cry, “I can do all things through Christ, which strengtheneth me!” Direct our Government to avoid every entangling alliance with atheism by showing our leaders how suicidal is the policy of strengthening those who oppose Thee, almighty Maker and Master of mankind! Guard our young folks from being unequally yoked together in marriage with unbelievers! Convince them that the only home which can have the pledge of happiness is the household in which husband, wife and children have the same true faith! Be with us and keep our souls separate from sin and consecrated to Thee! Comfort the sorrowing, afflicted, deserted, and bereaved! Provide food and warmth for the victims of war’s cruelty! By Thy Holy Spirit, bless us with peace in our nation, our homes, and our hearts! Hear us and help us for Jesus’ sake! Amen!

Would it be possible for Jesus Christ, were He now with us in body, to be elected president of she United States? This was the question a national magazine recently asked its readers. Our Lord’s answer, of course is clear. He who once spurned the crown in Galilee would not accept the presidency since His kingdom is not of this world, but in the heart of believers, redeemed by His blood. Nor would the Savior stoop to many practices of present-day politics. Another fact would keep Christ from the presidency. More than half the people in this country have not entrusted their souls to Him; why would they be ready to give Him leadership in national affairs? Three fourths of our citizens stay away from church every Sunday; why, then, would they be willing to go to the polls for Jesus? No; if the Son of God were in Washington today, as He once was in Jerusalem; if He were to expose the hypocrisies and pretenses of our political, social, and religious life, you may be sure His enemies would kill Him just as mercilessly as His first-century foes nailed Him to Calvary’s cross.

If Christ would not be elected President, could He—to take a smaller sphere of activity—be chosen Head of the American homes? Probably not, for how many of our families take time to thank the Almighty for the large quantity, the numerous variety, the high quality, of food we enjoy? I have seen families in Berlin bow their heads while the father spoke a warm, earnest word of gratitude to God for the meal: tea—made of leaves and berries, black bread and peanut butter, the last a relief-package item added to welcome visitors; and I have seen people in our land start and finish an entirely prayerless meal, in which the waste sent to the garbage would have kept starving sufferers alive. No! With the divorce rate in some sections reaching the marriage rate; with by far the greater part of our families, including many churchgoing households, too busy to read God’s Word and join in thanks, our Lord would not be chosen Head of the homes in the United States.

Let us narrow the circle once more and ask, if Jesus lived with us, would everyone in this country accept Him as the Savior of his soul and Sovereign of his life? Carlyle once told a woman who asked him what would happen, should Christ come to Great Britain, that the mob would take him out to Newgate and hang Him; and similarly, were the Son of God to appear on the present scene with His scathing indictment of sin, His attacks on pride and sham, His insistent demands for repentance, humility, and sacrifice, masses would coldly turn from Him and allow themselves to be led into crying for His blood. Human nature does not change of itself. Men still love the world more than they love the Lord; they prefer treaties with unbelievers rather than agreements with the Almighty.

Today, therefore, as we ask you who, up to this time, have lived without Jesus to make a covenant with Christ, we cry out in the Redeemer’s name.

ALLIANCE WITH GOD—NOT WITH THE GODLESS!

         Come over to the Savior’s side, separate yourself from sin and thus bring blessings on your country, your home, and especially your own soul! To this end, study the Scripture in the Second Book of Chronicles, chapter nineteen, verse two: “Shouldest thou help the ungodly and love them that hate the Lord? Therefore is wrath upon thee from before the Lord.”

AN APPEAL TO THE AMERICAN NATION

This text is taken from that part of the Old Testament which describes an unholy alliance between Jehoshaphat, God-fearing king of Judah, and Ahab, godless king of the northern tribes. Like many men in our own times, Ahab was ruined by his wife Jezebel. Not only was she an unbeliever, the daughter of a heathen king, but she also made her husband, who knew the true God, worship Baal, the hideous idol of immorality. So great was the hatred of the Lord in the heart of blood-lusting Jezebel that she also sought to bring all Israel, if necessary by force, on its knees before Baal.

Our twentieth century has many Jezebels. While it is woman’s God-given privilege, in her softer, more sympathetic nature, to help and heal, soothe and strengthen, comfort and cheer; and while wives, devoted to Jesus, have served suffering humanity as human angels of mercy, how hard, cruel, satanic women become when they shake their fists at God and blaspheme His blessed name! You men who want to walk with the Lord should make up your minds that with the Spirit’s help you will not give in to any woman, even your own wife, mother, daughter, who wants you to join her in rebellion against the Almighty! Save yourself now from the doom of Ahab, who lacked the courage to resist and rebuke his wicked wife!

Completely domineering her husband, Jezebel started one of the worst persecutions even the gory pages of ancient history contain. She sent killers to find the Lord’s prophets throughout the land and to cut them down in cold blood. You see, despite all our scientific progress, human nature remains the same. Scarlet unbelief killed God’s servants in that ninth century before Christ, and Red atheism across the seas massacres men of God in our twentieth century after Christ, with this difference, that today the Savior’s enemies have destroyed far more martyrs then hate-filled Jezebel could. As the years have advanced, men’s mania for blood has steadily led them to discover new means of slaughtering more widely and more rapidly. You understand this when you see the evidences of Nazi massacre in Germany. But if you think that only Hitler’s men destroyed multitudes, then read Stanislaw Mikolajczyk’s own story when he, the former prime minister of Poland, in the Saint Louis Past-Dispatch tells us how in 1941 the Reds systemically murdered 11,000 Polish officers! He writes: “Believing they were going home, the [se 11,000] were led to Katlyn Forest and, in what must have been a scene that sickened heaven, were murdered. Each man was shot through the back of the head, after his hands had been tied behind him by fence wire. The Russians threw the bodies into a long, single grave, but they made one mistake. The ground into which they placed the dead officers was of peculiar composition which virtually mummified dead objects placed in it. What might have become unidentifiable skeletons in a few months remained almost perfectly preserved corpses, with papers and other means of identification intact.”

Jezebel, too, made one mistake. She thought that she could kill all of God’s prophets, but she could not. A small number escaped, hid in a cave and later came out to proclaim divine truth. Their warnings were sorely needed, for one day Ahab, enemy of the Lord and persecutor of His prophets that he was, sent to Jehoshaphat, asking this God-fearing king’s alliance in waging war against Damascus. While Scripture says of Jehoshaphat that he “walked in the way of...the Lord,” here he made a serious misstep; he quickly agreed to ally himself with godless Ahab and to fight against Damascus. What main is perfect? Even the best make heavy errors; and each of you who knows the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ should “take heed lest he fall.” No country should declare war quickly. It costs too much in human blood, particularly of young men, who ought to have a chance to live. The people who talk of a third world struggle as though it were necessary and unavoidable in our generation, ought to have their mouths shut. No war is unavoidable. When we are in danger of being attacked, prayer to God and trust in His mighty power can protect us and help avoid the frightful cruelty of conflict.

Besides, the campaign against Damascus, which Ahab himself started and for which Jehoshaphat pledged his help, was a war of aggression. True, Ahab claimed that he wanted to recover his territory in Ramoth-Gilead, pasture land about as large as one of our smaller western counties. It was the old cry: Restore the boundaries! Guarantee territorial rights! Yet Ahab’s war failed in regaining the areas he wanted just as the last war, fought to give Poland the land which the Nazis took, ended with that poor, devastated country robbed of much of its domain by its own ally. This former prime minister, Mikolajczyk, tells us that when he approached leading world figures in America, pleading that they work with him to save postwar Poland, they turned away in silence and agreed to the tragic dismemberment of that country. The second global struggle is over, tens of millions have been killed: hundreds of billions lost, yet the purpose for which the conflict began has not been realized. Can you not see, then, that we must pray and work to stop world war III before it starts?

In this unholy alliance, smart, unbelieving Ahab wanted to shift the burden of battle on Jehosaphat. Shrewdly Ahab disguises himself while he requests his own ally, the king of Judah, to go into battle wearing his royal robes, knowing that thus he would be an open target for every enemy arrow and javelin. You cannot trust a scoffing atheist, even if he has pledged himself with an oath. When George Washington suffered freezing weather at Valley Forge, atheist Tom Paine, in sheltered warmth at Philadelphia, was writing libelous attacks on the Father of our Country. Survey our own relations with enemies of Christian faith, and see the same evidence of a desire to use us. Only thirty years ago we made a treaty with the Japanese war lords, sworn enemies of our Christian faith. In the intervening years we sent them machinery, supplies, and until 1941 large scrap-metal stocks at top prices, which made American dealers millions. What was the reward of our alliance? The treachery at Pearl Harbor and thereafter the slaughter of American boys by shrapnel filled with American metal!

Ahab, despite his plans for safety, was killed in the battle, while Jehoshaphat, thanks to divine grace, escaped. How merciful the Almighty is when, with our thankless neglect of His Word, He spares us and leads us safely from the dangers into which our sins have plunged us! When Jehosphathat returns to Jerusalem, the prophet Jehu, son of Hanani, showing the courage which all of God’s leaders should have today, goes out to meet his king. Without kowtowing or compromising, Jehu comes straight to the point, asks Jehoshaphat in the words of our text, “Shouldest thou help the ungodly and love them that hate the Lord? And before the king can answer, continues, “Therefore is wrath upon thee from before the Lord.”

It must be evident, then, that God does not want His people allied with unbelief. Repeatedly His Word proclaims, “Enter not into the path of the wicked, and go not in the way of evil men.” Not politics, but Scripture requires of this nation or any nation which would be blessed by His bounty, that its people do not “help the ungodly” nor “love them that hate the Lord.”

Thus the Christian citizenry of the United States, by the mandate of the Almighty, has the duty to work and pray that this nation be kept free from entangling alliances with countries which champion atheism, and such opposition to Christ’s Church as that waged by Communist Reds, who declare in the words of a leader: “The campaign of the godless is financed by our [the U.S.S.R.] government, and the campaign includes many antireligous films, posters, newspapers, and magazines.” Never has a covenant with crass denial truly built any nation. A sure quick way to aid in destroying the preeminence of the United States is to have our money and our products sent to support those who seek to wipe out God’s Church. Such entangling alliances enlist us against the Almighty and bring on ourselves, as Jehosphat did, “wrath... from before the Lord”

As believers we must pray for anti-Christian forces and atheist world powers; we should eagerly give them an example of sacrificial devotion as we feed their starving, send medicine to their sick, assist in keeping their children alive; we should zealously bring them Christ’s Gospel with its assurance of forgiveness and its promise of a new life. However to strengthen them in their unbelief, make them more brazen in their uprising against the Almighty, more cruel in their persecution of believers, clearly contradicts God’s Word, which today reminds us that we are not to “help the ungodly” in their assaults on His Church, nor “love them that hate the Lord.”

It is high time for the United States to realize that our strongest alliance is with the Lord, not with any earthly power. Three hundred years ago the faith and the independence of Holland were at stake. When the enemy, overwhelming in size, drew near, one of the generals asked William, Prince of Orange, the God-fearing champion of his nation’s cause, whether he had succeeded in making a treaty with any foreign power, for example, France. Courageously the prince replied, “Before I undertook the cause of the oppressed Christians in these provinces, I undertook a close alliance with the King of Kings; and I doubt not that He will give us the victory.” We need that spirit in America, not the fear expressed by a man recently revealed as a candidate for the presidency, who stated that our country will lose world war III “because we have no great allies,” Yet Scripture says, “If God be for us, who can be against us?”

Must you not agree, then, that we should strain every effort to keep our land allied with the Lord and to remove the ruinous, rebellious spirit which can drive the Almighty beyond our borders? His divine truth declares, “Righteousness exalteth a nation but sin is a reproach to any people”; and as you contrast righteousness and sin in the United States, the land blessed above all others by divine bounty, listen to these facts submitted by reliable public-opinion investigations and scientific studies:

1 of every 37 births in the United States is illegitimate.

1 of every 25 Americans is an atheist.

1 of every 23 persons in the United States has been finger-printed in connection with crime

1 of every 22 American young people continues Sunday school after reaching 15.

1 of every 4 Americans does not believe in life after death.

Less than 1 in 3 American families says grace at meals.

Between 1 of every 3 and 1 of every 2 husbands is unfaithful to his wife at one time or another.

1 of every 3 marriages ends unhappily.

Less than 1 of every 2 Americans is a church member.

Here are only ten tendencies which show trends in America; and in each instance during the recent years these figures have increased, revealing the steady, sinister growth of unbelief and crime. Therefore the call re-echoing throughout the United States is the urgent appeal for repentance, return to God in Christ, an obedient rededication to His Word. If Jesus wept over Jerusalem, surely His tears would flow over American cities, were He present in the body to survey the sin in those centers which should be closest to Him because they have been farthest from war’s sorrows. America’s No. 1 need is a covenant with Christ in the souls of many more millions. If our money says, “In God We Trust,” let our hearts restate this faith and our lives re-echo it! Allied with the Almighty in Jesus, we have the strongest protection, the surest defense of our liberties, the greatest bulwark for our blessings, the most powerful guarantee against the gruesomeness of war, a divine shield to ward off the horrors of atomic destruction. Therefore with the cry, “Alliance with God—not with the godless!” proclaimed by churches dedicated to preach the sin-removing atonement, His life-giving death, and the guarantee of eternity by His resurrection, the United States, with the Almighty on its side, can go forward into a fear-free future. If the Most High has to rebuke this country, unto which much has been given and from which much will also be required, and ask, “Shouldest thou help the ungodly and love them that hate the Lord?! We must be ready to hear Him continue, “Therefore is wrath upon thee from before the Lord.” America, ally yourself with God!

II

AN APPEAL TO THE AMERICAN HOME

To this send our homes, vital for the nation’s welfare, should be allied with our heavenly Father. The prophet’s question, “Shouldest thou help the ungodly and love them that hate the Lord?” has a direct bearing on Christian and American family life. Jehosphaphat, good as he was otherwise, also failed to recognize this; and perhaps to strengthen his alliance with the north he had his own son, Jehoram, marry Athaliah, the daughter of Ahab and Jezebel. Scripture tells us, “As is the mother, so is her daughter”; and if Jezebel was a fiend in human flesh, Athaliah was no less brutal and bloody. She, too, turned her own husband from the Lord and helped make him a murderer. All this is written for our learning, to teach us the danger of religiously mixed unions in which one life partner loves the Savior and the other rejects Him.

Marriage should be the most harmonious and joyous of earthly blessings; but how can it be when either husband or wife is devoted to Jesus while the other questions the existence of the Almighty, refuses to accept Christ, stubbornly stays away from church, an never finds time for the Bible or prayer? Divorce-court judges and experts in domestic questions will tell you that difference in creed is among the most frequent factor in wrecking homes. If some of you young people, disobedient to God’s expressed command, “Be ye not unequally yoked together with unbelievers,” and unwilling to accept the warnings of churchmen in practically all denominations, still think your case is the exception and that you can be happily married with the person of your choice despite such disagreement of faith, then listen to a few of the thousands of letters like these sent us fro peace-robbed families:

Massachusetts – ”My husband (we have been married for sixteen years) is a non-Christian and has no sympathy for my views… Because of my Christian convictions he is pursuing a social life of his own, which includes drinking, women, and staying out all night two or three times a week… sometimes not returning until the next afternoon. My life suddenly has become so empty and lacking in joy that I long for but one thing, and that is to end it all.”

Michigan--”My husband doesn’t believe that there is a God. He also claims that there is no heaven nor hell. He often says that when a person dies, he is put into a hole, cofered up, and that’s all. When John and I sit down to eat, I have to pray silently and alone. I thought I could change him after were married, but instead of my changing his ideas and helping him, I have gradually stropped praying. Please help us, for we can’t go on this way!”

Minnesota--”My husband is an unbeliever. He doesn’t want me to use the car to go to church or even to ride with the neighbors. He says the Bible isn’t true and talks bad terms of anyone who goes to church. I know it is impossible to live as a Christian should and stay with a man like that. Would it be better to separate and go to church, as I know the Lord wants me to do, or to keep on living the life of misery I have had all these years?”

South Dakota—I knew before I married my husband,, that he did not care for church or religion of any kind, but I thought there would be no trouble about my influencing him to change his mind. However, I am now paying heavily for my foolishness. If I would obey my husband, I would never read or study the Bible, go to church, listen to sermons, or read books about Christianity. When I turn on a Christian broadcast, my husband either turns it off, makes so much noise that I cannot hear it, or swears at the speaker. He says that all preachers tell lies. He claims the entire Bible is falsehood and that all churchgoers are hypocrites. He has refused to let me drive the auto to church, although the car is half mine, and when I drove it against his will a few times, he was terribly angry and told me to get out if I didn’t want to do as he says and forget ‘that foolishness’ – his idea of church. Years ago he did promise he would go to church, at least now and then, but he has not kept his word.”

California – ”My husband has a beautiful voice. He has an artistic temperament, and how he can play the violin! Everything is so very perfect, except the one and only thing necessary: that is, belief in God and faith in Christ. My husband has studied the religions of the world, oriental philosophies included. He gets great pleasure from Omar Khayyam, but he is dissatisfied and cynical. His refusal to believe is such a blank wall between us. My heart bleeds for him. What can I do?

In these half-dozen letters I have taken you across the country to show you that when a home is a “house divided against itself” religiously, husband and wife cannot pray, whorship, nor attend Communion together. Besides, they face separation in eternity, since after death believers and unbelievers part forever, the faithful to be blessed by the joys of heaven and he faithless to be cursed by the horrors of hell. If you love the Lord Jesus, don’t pledge yourself to anyone who hates Him! Don’t try to console yourself by saying, “Well, my husband can go to his church and I’ll go to mine”! How about the children? Too often, as experience sows, they attend no church.

Mixed marriages are among the most destructive of all forces assailing our Christian Life. It was the rash intermarriage of God’s children with infidels which helped so completely to demoralize the world that the Almighty sent the flood to wipe out a wicked, godless generation. Keep the Savior out of the home – unless the Lord mercifully intervenes, most mixed marriages work to this end – and you have built on the quicksands. Perhaps for the first time in the history of the United States a Government leader has officially appealed for faith in the family. Recently FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover declared: “The godless home is an inviting breeding ground for moral decay and crime. If there is to be hope for the future of America, if there is to be peace and happiness in our homes, then we, as a nation, must return to God and to the practice of daily family prayer.” How can the family unite in such petition if father or mother, sons or daughters, do not know the Lord, reject His blood-bought mercies?

Nor should you young folks object that if you marry only a true believer of your own faith, you may have to wait too long and perhaps remain single. The Almighty can provide for you, and when you fully trust Him, whatever happens is for your best.

If, as these words are broadcast into your home, your family is divided by this cleavage between devotion and denial, you who are Christ’s work and pray for the conversion of our loved one. Many an unbeliever has been brought to Jesus through the Holy Spirit by the example, the influence, the prayers of a believing life partner. Joy has come to a Defiance, Ohio, family during the past days. Several years ago the mother, concerned about her soul’s salvation, heard our message and wrote us that she wanted her whole household to accept the Savior. One of the pastors cooperating with us visited the home, gave the members thorough instruction in the Biblical faith, and had the blessed privilege of bringing the five children and the mother to Christ. Only the father stayed away from church. However, his wife continued to plead earnestly that he might see the light. Can you imagine what joy it brought us when last this consecrated woman wrote: “Ever since we have known the Lord, I have kept on praying for my husband that he would learn to believe the Savior’s love. For a long time nothing happened, despite my prayers. Words cannot begin to tell you how happy I am to write you that starting next Friday evening, he will take instructions to become a member of our Church. We attend services every Sunday and listen to your messages and pray and worship the Lord together. My husband has accepted our Savior Jesus Christ as his Savior. What a difference this makes in our home life! Thank God and the broadcasts for this blessing!”

If you really want a covenant between the Son of God and your household, which will stifle quarrel and strife, bring comforting guidance in the hours of sickness and bereavement, then follow this simple but short program: 1. Have the whole family, young and old, accept the Lord Jesus as their all-sufficient Redeemer! 2. Let parents and children be baptized, join a true church, and attend services regularly! 3. Have regular daily family Scripture reading and prayer! 4. Let each member pray personally and faithfully for everyone else in the family! 5. See that the children are trained in Scripture, if possible in a Christian day school! 6. Have the family move in church circles, engage in church work, and associate with true followers of the Savior! 7. Remove from the home all anti-Christian and atheistic books, questionable pictures and decorations! 8. Pledge the Lord that in all personal, private, domestic issues, the truth laid down in His Word will rule! 9. Keep the interest of the family uppermost among earthly concerns in the minds of both parents and children so that neither employment, entertainment, nor selfish interest outweighs mutual concern! 10. Let the Spirit of Jesus thoroughly permeate the dwelling, particularly His forgiving and forbearing love, His eagerness to serve rather than to be served!

A household which has this covenant with Christ making Him the Head and Hope for the family, will not escape afflictions and difficulties; but it will always be blessed with the Redeemer’s love, which can make “all things,” even crushing burdens, “work together for good.” The home allied with the atoning Son of God may not heap up much money, but it will have a happiness unknown in many mansions. Robert Newton, beloved English pastor, and his bride began their married life by kneeling twice each day to pray for and with each other. They kept that prayer alliance until his death. When their golden anniversary approached, Newton told a friend: “In the course of a short time my wife and I will celebrate the jubilee of our marriage; and I know that during the fifty years of our union an unkind look or an unkind word has never passed between us.” You, too, can still have the love which spurns mean words and mean looks, no matter how quarrel marked the past has been; but for this joy you need a covenant with Jesus. The Holy Spirit lead you on this Sunday to ally your self with the all-sufficient Savior by making Him the Head of your home!

III

AN APPEAL TO YOU

Above everything else you yourself need an alliance with the Almighty, a covenant of grace between God and our own soul. Far more important for you than these weighty issues of the nation and the family is your own salvation. Therefore, I ask you in the question of our text, “Do you ‘help the ungodly’ and love the unbelief of ‘them that hate the Lord?” Is your life directed to Christ or away from Him? Are you headed toward heaven or toward hell? Is your Bible shut, while you find plenty of time to read sex stories and murder novels? Do you swell the crowds in attendance at public entertainment, but by your absence from worship keep church attendance disastrously small. Do you run around with people who make fun of our faith, profanely abuse the precious name above all other names, Jesus, glorify sin, live for lust, liquor, and the lure of the flesh? Despite your church membership and pretended piety, are you a hypocrite, carrying on secret affairs, congratulating yourself that you are smart enough to keep your crimes concealed? Then in these moments during which, I pray, the Holy Spirit will bring many of you over to Heaven’s side, He can ask you, “Shouldest thou help the ungodly and love them that hate the Lord?” impressing on you the warning that God knows those who are against Him and penetrates the false front which their hypocrisy may invent.

A recent report shows that in 95 percent of the trials instituted in Federal courts last year the Government was successful in securing a conviction; but the Almighty and All-knowing has a 100 percent record in revealing guilt. If you ally yourself with Christ’s enemies, the time is irresistibly approaching when you must stand before the Lord to receive the sentence pronounced on your rebelion against the Redeemer. If you have never realized that every unforgiven sin sentences you to hell; if you have laughed at Scripture when it warns, “It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God,” may the Holy Spirit mercifully open your mind’s eye today and make you understand the awful doom contained in this sentence of seven short words, “He that believeth not shall be damned.” Jesus, the Mediator of mercy, spoke this awful sentence; He cannot make a mistake; this must be true. Stop making common cause with those who oppose the Savior! Come over to His side! Make a soul-covenant today with Christ!

Praise the Lord of love with me today that the blessed Savior wants us to ally ourselves with Him! We are sinful, selfish, sordid, but instead of casting us away forever, He yearns for us and offers us a treaty with the Triune God, a covenant with His compassion, an agreement with His unfailing grace. If you feel despair over the crimson botches which stain your life, and you ask for the Heaven-given assurance that you will not be damned to hell but have the pledge of Christ’s grace, if you want to begin life over again, wholly dedicated to your divine Deliverer then turn to Isaiah’s prophecy, read, believe, and memorize this peerless guarantee: “the mountains shall depart, and the hills be removed; but My kindness shall not depart from thee, neither shall the covenant of My peace be removed, saith the Lord that hath mercy on thee.” Then, when you want to know more about this pact of peace, peace with your Maker and peace with your own conscience, turn to the last chapter of Hebrews and read, “The God of peace, that brought again from the dead our Lord Jesus, that great Shepherd of the sheep, through the blood of the everlasting covenant,” can make you perfect!

How marvelously merciful is this league with the Lord! It is open to you, no matter how selfish men may have persecuted you because of your color or your nationality. It is an unchanging covenant; for, while human pledges are altered, your Redeemer is ‘the same yesterday and today and forever.” This alliance with the atoning Savior is sure, for it is sealed with “the blood” He shed on the accursed cross at Calvary to pay the punishment for your sins; “the blood” by which the stain of your guilt is washed away forever; “the blood” which can “purge your conscience” and reconciles you to God. This eternal covenant is the gift of grace. Whenever, if ever, the peace treaty to conclude the Second World War is signed, it will impose conditions, payments, and penalties on the defeated nations, yet the peace pledge between Heaven and earth, in “the blood” of Christ, is granted you freely by the purest compassion which even the Lord of love could grant.

This alliance is a benediction of endless bounty; it puts the Almighty on your side, with His angels ready to protect and sustain you; it makes you who up to this time may have been rank unbelievers, children of God, so that everything which happens to you comes from your heavenly Father’s mercy, marvelously designed for your good.

This oneness with God grants you His power to defeat the devil and despair, to resist and reject temptation, to triumph over sorrows and hardships. Not long ago a middle-aged man, or rather merely the shadow of a man, returned to the city of Wittenberg in Saxony; his home there was gone. He had been away for almost three years in the hell of a war-prison camp. Now, a victim of malnutrition, less than half his normal weight, he was released by the Russians as unproductive. Who was he? Can’t you see why we question whether our age is civilized when we tell you that this man is a minister of the Gospel, the pastor of the Castle Church in Wittenberg, where Martin Luther preached, a servant of God who – and the Red Cross a few days ago again protested against such violation of International Law – almost met death in protracted imprisonment? His room is only 150 steps from his church, but he cannot walk that distance; friends have to carry him to worship. The doctor says that, perhaps after a year’s recuperation, with good food, he may be able to return to his pulpit and proclaim the Savior’s love. Yet how can he secure the necessary nourishment? While some churchmen of that neighborhood fled to other zones, this pastor wants to remain and show his trust in the Lord. He has made a covenant with Christ in which the Son of God has promised him, “I will never leave thee nor forsake thee.” He has the joy of salvation in his heart, weak and crippled as he is, which millionaires who “help the ungodly and love them that hate the Lord” can never know. He has the alliance with the atoning Redeemer which you need, a guarantee for morning, noon, night and midnight, for peace and war, health and sickness, joy and sorrow, life and death, earth and heaven itself, where those who believe will experience the climax of the covenant, the triumph of Calvary’s Peace Treaty, the everlasting, face-to-face, never-to be broken fellowship with the Lord Jesus.

Christ’s pledge in His everlasting covenant is signed and sealed by His own blood. Accept this mercy! Give yourself to Him this Lord’s Day! Better, ask the members of your family now to gather with you! See to it that the entire household, especially those who have kept their distance from Jesus or whose loyalty to Him has steadily been lowered, are brought together! In His saving name, I now beg you ally yourselves, everyone in the family with the Savior! Join us in giving Joshua’s vow of allegiance to the Almighty: “As for me and my house, we will serve the Lord”! The Holy Spirit help you to keep that covenant for Christ’s sake! Amen!

Note: this sermon first aired on the last Sunday in January 1948. From the book “One Thousand Radio Voices for Christ”