The plan is now to finish my part, having begun with the world and why it is in the kind of misery that it’s in, regarding both moral and physical evil. And then secondly, we considered Christ’s own misery and suffering. We asked, why did that happen and what is all that it achieved for us? And then thirdly, last night we considered Paul’s suffering and its application to us and why he suffered so much. And now tonight, we are zeroing in on you and your particular suffering that either you are in now or sooner or later will be in. Nobody will enter the kingdom of heaven except through afflictions (Acts 14:22), and that’s the way you’re going to walk. It is a narrow way and a hard way that leads to life, and few there be that find it (Matthew 7:13–14). But it is a joy-dominated way for those who know the truth of Scripture and entrust themselves to a sovereign creator. So that’s the plan for tonight and before I begin, I’d like to ask God’s help once more.

Sustaining Grace

Last night I ended with my illustrations, and tonight I’m going to begin with my illustrations and then do an exposition of Jeremiah 32:36–41. In 10 to 15 minutes we will arrive at the text and then we’ll close with the best news I know of in all the world.

Let’s put it first in a poem, this is the four line poem that I wrote to try to capture the meaning of sustaining grace. So that’s what I’m talking about tonight, sustaining grace. And by sustaining grace, I mean the power of God, undeserved by us, that moves into our lives and sustains us, keeps us, and preserves us through everything we experience so that we enter into final glory and do not make shipwreck of our faith and perish. That’s what sustaining grace is for me. So I’ll put it in a poem:

Not grace to bar what is not bliss,
     Nor flight from all distress, but this:
The grace that orders our trouble and pain,
     And then, in the darkness, is there to sustain.

God’s Grace in Car Crashes

Now let me tell you some stories to illustrate that and then we’ll find it in the Bible. Eleven years ago, Bob Ricker, the president of the Baptist General Conference at that time, came and preached at the 125th anniversary of Bethlehem Baptist Church where I’ve been these 26 years, and he told this story.

He said that his daughter, a teenager at the time, was driving and had a terrible car accident. She was thrown from the car onto the pavement and was not breathing. Behind her in a car was a doctor who pulled over, got out, went to her, and noticed that she was not able to breathe. And in his pocket, he had a device to perform an emergency tracheotomy. You thrust it into the windpipe, if you know where it is, and they can breathe so that they don’t die. He did that for her, risking malpractice suits, and she lived and was normal after that.

And then just a few years later he did her wedding, and there she was in front of him, her dad, the pastor standing in front of her, and she was beautiful as all brides are in her wedding gown. And she had several scars right on her neck, which were not hidden. And he looked down at her and at a point in the message commented to his daughter, “Those scars are memorials of sustaining grace.” When I heard him say that this message began to formulate. He said, “Those are memorials of sustaining grace.”

Now, here’s the catch. Bob Ricker is no dummy. In fact, he had quoted in the message at the 125th anniversary, Ephesians 1:11, where God works all things together according to the counsel of his will. He knows that. He knows that if the sovereignty of God could see to it that there was a doctor riding behind his daughter, and that this doctor would have a device in his pocket that could do an emergency tracheotomy, and that this doctor would be enabled to have the courage to risk his own practice, to thrust it into a throat and might have hit the jugular vein and been accused of killing her but actually save her life, then he could have prevented the accident. But sustaining grace is:

Not grace to bar what is not bliss,
     Nor flight from all distress, but this:
The grace that orders our trouble and pain,
     And then, in the darkness, is there to sustain.

God’s Grace in Broken Radiators

Here’s the second illustration. That same summer, a few weeks later, my wife and two of my sons, Abraham and Barnabas, and my little daughter, Talitha — who was just a few months old at the time — were traveling. You probably don’t know the geography of America well enough to know where this is, but they were traveling south from Minnesota to South Carolina through Indiana, just south of Indianapolis. On a Saturday evening, in the middle of nowhere, the radiator leaked and was ruined. It was rusted out and the car overheated. And there’s my wife and two sons, one 16 and one 12, with a little baby, and it’s Saturday evening and it’s on a freeway and there’s nobody in sight. It’s going to be Sunday tomorrow.

There’s nobody able to fix this. She has nobody to help. Her husband is who knows where. And she sits there pondering how God might handle this. And a man stops. This is risky, right? A man by himself stops. He gets out, sees the steam coming out of the car, and he sees this is a problem, and my wife says, “I think we’re going to need a motel and then we’ll get this fixed on Monday morning.” And he says, “Well, you’re sure welcome to stay with us at our farm nearby.”

Now what would you have done? My wife, shrewd as she is, says, “Well, could we go to church with you tomorrow morning?” That’s brilliant. And his answer was, “Can you take a Baptist church?” This is a Baptist pastor’s wife he’s talking to. She felt that was enough evidence, so she put herself and her children in his care, and went to their house and did go to church with them at the Baptist church the next morning.

Here’s the beauty of it all. He happened to be a retired airplane mechanic. Early Monday morning, almost before they were up, he drove back into Indianapolis, bought a radiator, came back, put it in before noon, and they were on their way that afternoon having enjoyed the fellowship of this family. And here’s the icing on the cake. My son Barnabas, who’s the only one of my sons who likes to fish, found a pond on the farm, took out his pole, threw in the line, and caught a 19-inch catfish. It made his whole summer. He thought it was the best detour he’d ever made.

I wonder if you know where I’m going. If God could arrange for a farmer who’s an airplane mechanic with a big heart and a farm nearby and the ability, not only to purchase but put in a radiator on Monday morning, and send my wife on her way rejoicing with a pond on his farm with a catfish swimming around at the bottom waiting for the worm that my son would throw in to make the best summer he’s ever had — if God can arrange that, he could have spared the radiator so easily. Sustaining grace is:

Not grace to bar what is not bliss,
     Nor flight from all distress, but this:
The grace that orders our trouble and pain,
     And then, in the darkness, is there to sustain.

God’s Grace in Persistent Pain

Here’s the third illustration. As I mentioned the first night, our church seems to have more than its share of parents with profoundly disabled children. I mentioned a baby born with no eyes. I didn’t mention the baby born with 40 percent of his brain. I didn’t mention the numerous stillbirths. I mentioned Michael, who has nothing but seizures in his brain, and will probably never get beyond the mentality of an 18 month old. And the list goes on. All of those illustrations, by the way, have parents who are mighty in the Spirit, mighty in the Scriptures, mighty in God, and who are trusting in the sovereign goodness of a God who says, “God meant it for good.” And they are discovering slowly and painfully what that is.

One of the fathers came to me and he said to me one time, “It would’ve been easier had Jesus not healed anybody and had just said to people that he would be enough for them.” And I said, “Well, Jesus did heal people. He heals people today. But he did in fact say what you just said you wished he had said.” And he asked me what I meant, and I just read to him the text that you’re thinking of right now, probably, which is 2 Corinthians 12:9.

Paul says to Jesus about his thorn in the flesh, whatever it was, “Please take it away.” And the answer is, “No.” Again, he says, “Please take it away. It hurts.” And the answer is, “No.” A third time he says, “Please, I ask a third time, please take it away.” And he says, No.” And then he says, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is perfected in weakness.” To which Paul then responds, as I’m watching people respond and I’m praying you’re going to respond when yours comes, “Therefore I will boast all the more gladly of my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may rest upon me. For the sake of Christ, then, I am content with weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions, and calamities. For when I am weak, then I am strong (2 Corinthians 12:10–11).

I simply said to him, “Jesus did say to some people, ‘I will not heal you, but I will be there for you in your darkness.’” Sustaining grace is:

Not grace to bar what is not bliss,
     Nor flight from all distress, but this:
The grace that orders our trouble and pain,
     And then, in the darkness, is there to sustain.

A Covenant of Grace

I have other illustrations but that’s enough. Let’s go to the text. If you have a Bible, turn to Jeremiah chapter 32. Some have asked — and I’ll just say it because I don’t have any shares in this company and you don’t even need to know the company — what version of the Bible I’m using. This is the English Standard Version, which is relatively new, about five years or so. It’s published in Britain as well as America. And so if you’re looking for a version, I find this version able to unify my church, while helping the children and aiding memorization, preaching, teaching, and liturgical use. I commend it to you for consideration. I don’t go around publicly criticizing versions usually, but I do like to commend this.

This is Jeremiah 32:36–41:

Now therefore thus says the Lord, the God of Israel, concerning this city of which you say, “It is given into the hand of the king of Babylon by sword, by famine, and by pestilence” (that’s a true statement): Behold, I will gather them from all the countries to which I drove them in my anger and my wrath and in great indignation. I will bring them back to this place, and I will make them dwell in safety. And they shall be my people, and I will be their God. I will give them one heart and one way, that they may fear me forever, for their own good and the good of their children after them. I will make with them an everlasting covenant, that I will not turn away from doing good to them. And I will put the fear of me in their hearts, that they may not turn from me. I will rejoice in doing them good, and I will plant them in this land in faithfulness, with all my heart and all my soul.

It doesn’t get any better than that in the Bible. So I want to spend the last minutes unfolding for you those words, and I hope that they’ll become among your favorites in all the Bible when you see what is taught there.

Calamity from the Almighty’s Hand

The first thing to notice is that these folks are in Babylon. They’re in exile, by God’s work. Jeremiah 32:36 says, “Now therefore thus says the LORD, the God of Israel, concerning this city of which you say, ‘It is given into the hand of the king of Babylon by sword, by famine, and by pestilence’ . . .” That’s true. But they don’t get the last word. Exile does not get the last word. Punishment does not get the last word.

Jeremiah 32:37 continues, “Behold, I will gather them from all the countries to which I drove them in my anger . . .” Now notice it says, “I drove them there.” In other words, “The radiator broke under my care. The daughter was thrown from the car under my surveillance. I was on watch when the baby was born.” This is not, “Oh, we have an exile situation here that didn’t have anything to do with God. God just rescues, he doesn’t discipline.” He says, “Behold, I will gather them from all the countries to which I drove them in my anger and my wrath and in great indignation. I will bring them back to this place, and I will make them dwell in safety.”

The rest of this text is going to describe the underlying heart of God at work in that rescue, but my question tonight is, can you appropriately apply this text to you as an individual, or does this just apply to Israel? This is a New Covenant promise. I don’t know if you’re familiar with the phrase New Covenant. It comes from the chapter before this one in Jeremiah 31. You might want to turn page back to Jeremiah 31:31–32. It says:

Behold, the days are coming, declares the Lord, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Judah, not like the covenant that I made with their fathers on the day when I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt, my covenant that they broke . . .

The old covenant was written on stone, and as it encountered a hard heart it was broken. It was powerless to bring about what it demanded. The New Covenant will not be like that. The New Covenant will be different:

For this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, declares the Lord: I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts. And I will be their God, and they shall be my people. And no longer shall each one teach his neighbor and each his brother, saying, “Know the Lord,” for they shall all know me, from the least of them to the greatest, declares the Lord. For I will forgive their iniquity, and I will remember their sin no more (Jeremiah 31:33–34).

The New Covenant succeeds. It captures a people, it redeems a people, it sanctifies a people. It writes law on the people’s hearts, and thus it produces the obedience required, and it keeps a people. Now that’s the same covenant being described in Jeremiah 32:38–41.

Promises Purchased by Christ’s Blood

The reason I point that out is that it helps me answer the question, does it apply to you? And my answer is that it does apply to you, and Jesus wants you to read this text with tremendous encouragement as applying to you for this reason. Let’s put it in two phases.

The first one is this. At the last supper, according to Luke, Jesus lifts up the cup and he says, “This cup is the New Covenant in (or by) my blood” (Luke 22:21). And what does that mean? It means that when he shed his blood he was purchasing all the New Covenant promises for all who are his, for all who will trust in him, for all whom his blood covers. And that applies to anyone in this room who will have it, who will have the blood covering you. If you say, “I receive that. I want the blood to cover me. I will have Jesus as this beautiful Lord and Savior over my life with all the benefits of the New Covenant that come with the purchase of the shed blood of Jesus,” then it’s yours if you will have it.

Here’s a second phase in the argument for why you should embrace this text as yours in Christ. Do you remember the argument of Paul in Galatians 3:7–9? He said that the seed of Abraham, to whom the promise is made, is Christ. And then he argued that if you are Christ’s, if you belong to Christ, you are an heir of Abraham. In other words, you’re a Jew. You’re a true Jew. And therefore, when I read the first two thirds of the Bible, I say, “Mine,” because I’m in the seed, I’m in the Messiah. And so, I encourage you to read the Old Testament that way. I encourage you to especially read these verses in Jeremiah 32:38–41, that they’re yours.

Goodness Like a Chain

That means that what I am trying to do for the next 10 minutes or so is to show you the most glorious sustaining promises for your life that will sustain not only your body and mind, but will sustain your faith and your obedience. And here’s the reason that matters to me. I don’t know if you sing this song:

O to grace how great a debtor Daily I’m constrained to be! Let thy goodness like a fetter Bind my wandering heart to thee: Prone to wander, Lord I feel it, Prone to leave the God I love; Here’s my heart, O, take and seal it; Seal it for thy courts above.

Tell me in English another word for fetter. Give me a word. That’s exactly right, chain. So this hymn-writer said, “O to grace how great a debtor, daily I’m constrained to be. Let thy goodness like a chain bind my wandering heart to thee.”

Do you pray like that or do you say, “I don’t need to pray like that, I’m eternally secure”? Now I believe in eternal security with all my heart because it says in Romans 8:30 that those who are justified are glorified. That just ends it for me. It’s clear as day. If you’re justified, you’re going to be glorified. But on the way to glorification what a warfare there is. And it matters how you fight it, whether you show yourself to be on your way to glorification.

I do not think any saint prays in vain. We pray, “Deliver me from temptation. Guard me from the evil one. Chain my soul to you. Guard me, Oh God. Keep me. Preserve me. Defeat every rebellion. Overcome every niggling doubt. Deliver me from every destructive temptation. Nullify every fatal allurement. Expose every demonic deception. Tear down every arrogant argument. Shape me. Incline me. Hold me. Master me. Do whatever you have to do to my body or my mind not to let me make shipwreck of my faith and be lost.” What I’m here to argue is that God will never let his saints be lost if they pray like that. Those who are justified will be glorified, and the evidence of whether or not you’re justified is whether you take seriously the warfare.

He Will Hold Me Fast

Therefore, the best news in all the world to me, as you can imagine, is this text. So let’s look at Jeremiah 32:38–41 carefully. This is you, if you trust Christ:

And they shall be my people, and I will be their God. I will give them one heart and one way, that they may fear me forever, for their own good and the good of their children after them. I will make with them an everlasting covenant, that I will not turn away from doing good to them. And I will put the fear of me in their hearts, that they may not turn from me.

It matters that he does that. That’s not icing on the cake. That must happen. He continues:

I will put the fear of me in their hearts, that they may not turn from me. I will rejoice in doing them good, and I will plant them in this land in faithfulness, with all my heart and all my soul (Jeremiah 32:40–41).

Now I’m going to make four, I think, patently obvious observations from this text.

1. God Will Be Our God

God promises to be our God in the New Covenant that is in Christ. Jeremiah 32:38 says, “They will be my people and I will be their God.” Have you ever paused to wonder what it means to have God say to you, “I am your God.” That’s worth several days of meditation. One way that I find help in saying it is all that God is — all of his omnipotence, all of his God-ness, all of his knowledge, all of his justice, all of his mercy, all of his grace, all of his truth, all of his power — he exercises on my behalf to keep me, hold me, write his law on my heart, and never let me go. He exercises omnipotent might on my behalf. He’s my God. His God-ness is for me.

2. God Will Change Our Hearts

God promises in the New Covenant to change our hearts and cause us to love and fear him. Jeremiah 32:39 says, “I will give them one heart and one way that they may fear me always.” And then in Jeremiah 32:40 near the end, it says, “I will put the fear of me in their hearts.” God will work to see to it that his elect, who believe in Jesus and are justified, fear him always.

Let me say a word about that word always here and what I think it means in terms of the imperfection and the ups and downs of the Christian life, because there are plenty of ups and downs in our lives, aren’t there? Some days we love him so much we can hardly stand it, and other days he seems very far away and the fear of him is in seed form like a mustard seed that you can barely detect.

I think one of the best expositions of God’s keeping power is Luke 22:32. Have you ever noticed this? Jesus is speaking to Peter and he says to him something reminiscent of Job. He says, “Peter, Satan has demanded to have you that he may sift to you like wheat.” Now, I think that means, “Satan wants to take you, and he has a very jagged sieve designed to squeeze faith out of people, and he’s going to push you through it. He wants to push you through it so that out comes Peter unbelieving on the other side.” That’s what Satan has asked. And then Jesus says, “I have prayed for you that your faith may not fail. And when you have turned (not if you turn, but when you have turned), strengthen your brothers” (Luke 22:33).

I love the sovereignty of Christ in that statement. But do you see what it implies? Peter is his own. He’s chosen him. He’s going to build his church with this man and the other gospel-preaching apostles. He’ll never let him go. But Satan has asked, “Can I sift him? Can I try my best to rip faith out of his life tonight when you go on trial?” And the Father, I suppose in this case, gives Satan permission to go at him.

And Jesus intercedes with the Father, saying, “Father, don’t let his faith fail.” And I think that means fail utterly, because in one sense his faith did fail. He didn’t trust God to help him over that temptation. He failed. He denied the master. A genuine believer can have moments like that in his life. So don’t hear that sentence or this one to be perfectionistic, okay? Is that clear? This is not a perfectionistic statement that you will fear me always. It is a direction. And God is saying, “When you waver off of it, I’m bringing you back because you’re mine.”

When a person is off of this track in a state of denying Jesus, I give them no warrant that they are saved. The warrant that we belong to Jesus is faith. If faith is absent as far as my eyes can see, I can give them no warrant. It may be there in seed form. I don’t think Peter stopped being a Christian when he denied Jesus, but what a failure he was. And if I talked to Peter that night before he wept bitterly, I would say to him, “Peter, you must return or you will perish. If you stay in a state of denying Jesus, you’re going to go to hell.” God would never let that happen, ever, for one of his own. That’s what this text is about. Jeremiah 32:39 says, “I will give them one heart and one way that they may fear me always.” That’s the mark of the people in the New Covenant.

3. God Will Not Turn Away or Let Us Turn Away

God promises that he will not turn away from doing us good and he will not let us turn away from him. Now we read Jeremiah 32:40 at the beginning:

I will make with them an everlasting covenant, that I will not turn away from doing good to them. And I will put the fear of me in their hearts, that they may not turn from me.

Sometimes I scare the living daylights out of people by asking them, “What makes you think you’re going to wake up a Christian in the morning? What makes you think you’re going to believe Jesus in the morning and not be a hellish unbeliever for the rest of your life, renouncing the Savior after having apparently walked with him for 10 years? What makes you think you’re going to wake up a believer tomorrow morning?” I wonder what your answer would be. I’ll tell you what it isn’t. It isn’t your free will. Left to yourself you won’t wake up a believer tomorrow morning. Oh to grace, how great a debtor daily I’m constrained to be. Take my heart, oh God, and bind me with a chain to you. This verse is saying, “You will wake up a believer tomorrow morning.”

People ask me, “So where do you get your security?” Answer: from that promise. My security is not in my six-year-old profession of faith. Believe me, I don’t even remember it. My mother told me I prayed to receive Jesus when I was six. I believe her, but I don’t even remember it. My security does not lie in my profession of faith however many years ago.

If you asked me tonight as I leave here, “How do you know you’re going to heaven?” I’ll say, “I trust Jesus. I look to the cross that paid all my sins, and I believe that I will keep on believing him because of this promise.” And if I ever made shipwreck of my faith and threw it all away, I would show I’ve been a hypocrite all my life. There are such people. It’s a frightening thing to make shipwreck of the Christian faith at age 25 or 55 and never return like Peter returned.

Wherein does our security lie? It lies objectively in the cross and the imputed righteousness of Christ, and it lies subjectively in God’s almighty promise. I’ll just read it:

I will make with them an everlasting covenant, that I will not turn away from doing good to [John Piper]. And I will put the fear of me in their hearts, that [John Piper] may not turn from me.

That’s my only hope to keep me saved the rest of my life. And I totally believe that I and every elect person, every justified person, will persevere to the end. I believe in the sovereignty of God so much that it not only gets me saved but that it keeps me saved by keeping me believing. That’s a mighty work of God, and it’s promised right there. Nobody has to go to bed tonight afraid that they won’t stay a believer for the rest of their life. It’s the living God over your life promising that in Christ you are his and he will keep you his forever.

4. God Will Do This with Infinite Intensity

I have one last observation. This is the best of all for me because it doesn’t go further in content, it goes further in divine intensity. The fourth observation from this text is God promises to do this for you and me with the greatest possible intensity imaginable. That is, God is on your side, he is for you and your perseverance and your glorification and your final salvation with an intensity of desire and devotion greater than which cannot be conceived. That is not a sermonic flourish. That is a precise restatement of this text. And I’ll try to close by showing you that so that you can revel in it all night long.

Read Jeremiah 32:41 again with me:

I will rejoice in doing them good (that’s great enough, but it’s going to get better), and I will plant them in this land in faithfulness, with all my heart and all my soul.

Collapse that down to read it in order to make the beginning part relate to the last part. It would say, “And I will rejoice over them with all my heart and with all my soul.” Now here’s my logical, rational, challenge to all you brainy people who like to think. I challenge you, can you even conceive — I mean even theoretically — of an intensity of desire or an intensity of joy greater than that which is spoken in the words, “all God’s heart and all God’s soul”? I’ll just pause while you entertain that possibility.

Can you even conceive, logically, theoretically, or experientially, of any energy, any intensity, any desire greater than that which is meant by a rejoicing with all the divine heart and all the divine soul? And my answer to that question is no. It is not possible to conceive of a greater joy, a greater energy, a greater intensity than what is implied in all of God’s heart and in all of God’s soul. Let’s just work on it for a minute.

The Strength of Omnipotent Desire

Let’s take all the desires of all the human hearts of all the world. There are about 6 billion plus people on planet earth, and they have a desire for food, a desire for sex, a desire for money, a desire for fame, a desire for power, a desire for meaning and significance, a desire for friends and family, and a desire for security and safety. Let’s take all those amazingly intense desires of all 6 billion people and gather them up and put them in a container. And then compare that container of passion, desire, intensity, joy, and longing with the container that holds the intensity of God’s joy over you to do you good, implied in the words “all God’s heart and all God’s soul”. How would those two containers compare to each other?

They would compare like a thimble to the Pacific Ocean, and that is an infinite understatement. The reason is that all God’s heart and all God’s soul is infinite. It’s infinite. It has no limits. Your soul, my soul, my heart, your heart, they’ve got limits. Angelic hearts have limits. When God says, “All my heart and all my soul,” he means, breathtakingly and unimaginably, that he is infinitely energetic about your good. This is what it means to be in Christ, what it means to be bought. You cannot be lost if you’re in the hands of such a God.

He will never ever cease expending infinite energy to keep you his. Even if Jesus has to pray, “Father, I pray for Peter that when he turns after denying me three times, he will strengthen his brothers.” Christ is always going to pray like that for his elect to stumble into some season of terrible sin. Coming back will be the evidence of his sovereign grace and choice over your life. What a great salvation.

Not grace to bar what is not bliss,
     Nor flight from all distress, but this:
The grace that orders our trouble and pain,
     And then, in the darkness, is there to sustain.

We can add to that our sin — Peter’s sin, my sin. He orders our trouble and grace and sin. And then, in the darkness of that awful night of walking away from his Savior and denying him three times, God is there to sustain and save. Let’s pray.