Lev 26:45, 'But I will remember for them the covenant with their ancestors, whom I brought out of the land of Egypt in the sight of the nations, that I might be their God. I am the Lord.'" 
	We spent the last time that we were together looking at many of the Old Testament examples which showed that, despite the faithlessness of His Chosen people, God kept His promise and His covenant with them. He did permit times of tribulation and captivity when the people were so stubbornly turned against Him. However, there was never a setting aside of His commitment to His covenant with them. As well, there was always that remnant that would hold to the Lord no matter what. 
	Part of the whole issue that was exposed about mankind and his heart was that man most often tends to forget about God and the Lord’s ways and Holiness and Magnificence and Glory and Majesty when life seems to be going well. When man is experiencing prosperity and peace and things seem to be flowing on an even and steady course, the heart of man begins to think that he has done something to deserve and even to create this “good life”. Man begins to puff out his chest and strut around with the confidence to proclaim to all others that he has done something worth doing that is bringing forth the fruits of his labor. 
	So often, it is when there are issues and when there is poverty and when things seem to be falling apart that man remembers His Creator and cries out for salvation and for help. It is then that commitments and promises to God are made. It is in times of trial and tribulation that hearts begin to cherish the Omnipotence and the Supremacy and the Sovereignty of God to overrule all that man has gotten himself into. Frequently the distressed one, after deliverance, will join the chorus as in the passage so proclaimed by the Psalmist, in Ps 98:2+3. Ps 98:2+3, The Lord has made known His salvation; He has revealed His righteousness in the sight of the nations. He has remembered His lovingkindness and His faithfulness to the house of Israel; All the ends of the earth have seen the salvation of our God. 
	We will acknowledge God’s saving Hand upon us and even commit ourselves to honor Him for the remainder of our days, until our pleasant circumstances lull us back into our forgetfulness and our taking the Lord for granted once again. This is a cycle that repeated itself endlessly throughout the generations of humanity, and even to this day. 
With all honesty, if we were to search our hearts, we, too, might find ourselves less than candid with the Lord in the manner in which we consider His Hand upon our lives. We might find that we are lukewarm and complacent in our appreciation of Him and all that He has done for us through His saving right Hand in operation holding us close in His love and His grace and His mercy and His Forgiveness!
	This is what happened with the entire nation that God had rescued and called unto Himself. They eventually split apart and drifted away from honoring Him, Alone, as their Lord, Their King, and Their God. Even the tribe of Judah became lost in its arrogance of idolatry and unfaithfulness until the Lord had to do something to cause them, as He so causes us, to come back to Him in the splendor of His work of salvation. It cost God everything to bring this into place, as we read in the words of God through His prophet, Zechariah, in Zech 13:7-9. 
	Zech 13:7-9, "Awake, O sword, against My Shepherd, And against the man, My Associate," Declares the Lord of hosts. "Strike the Shepherd that the sheep may be scattered; And I will turn My hand against the little ones. "And it will come about in all the land," Declares the Lord, "That two parts in it will be cut off and perish; But the third will be left in it. "And I will bring the third part through the fire, Refine them as silver is refined, And test them as gold is tested. They will call on My name, And I will answer them; I will say, 'They are My people,' And they will say, 'The Lord is my God.'" 
	In this passage, we have the promise of God’s salvation detailed in the truth that His Shepherd, Our Lord Jesus Christ, the Only Begotten Son of God, would be struck down. That would cause a scattering of the people of God to the point that there would be that separation and sifting and refining of all. From the full course of this fiery testing, there would be a resultant remnant who would call upon God and who would become His True People. Having gone through everything that God put forth, these people, including many of the Jews, as well as a great number from the Gentile nations would be brought into the relationship with God that had always been His plan and His purpose.
	This could only be as God opened that door of salvation through the emptying of His heart of Love in the giving of His Only Begotten Son. Nothing else could work to this absolutely effective and eternal salvation. That is why mankind has always drifted away from God. There is that core essence of sin and that nature of defiant refusal to obey God that has infected mankind since the fall in the Garden of Eden. It took the willing sacrifice of Jesus Christ to completely do away with that old nature and to give us a completely new nature, His Own nature of desiring to only do that which pleased the Father. 
	This is the element which ushered in the fact that …They will call on My name, And I will answer them; I will say, 'They are My people,' And they will say, 'The Lord is my God.'" We now see God from a completely different vantage point, no longer separated by our sinful nature. All things are now made new in Christ and as the People of God, whether Jew or Greek, male or female, rich or poor, we are now brought into fellowship with God by the work of the Holy Spirit in us. 
This transcends any of those elements of seeing ourselves as the end and the means of all that is good in our lives. While we are besmirched by the residue of our old nature, sometimes losing our vision of the truth of Who God is, we are now more and more, day by day, brought into the full certainty and accuracy that all that we have and are and do must be to the glory of God, Alone. We are now enabled to live with eternity in view, an eternity that will encompass our adding to the glory of God because He is worthy of all praise and all adoration and all worship.
	This brings us into the New Testament, as we read the prophecy spoken in Luke 1:68-75, by Zacharias at the birth and naming of his son, John, later to be John the Baptist. Please open to it in order to read it together. 
Luke 1:68-75, "Blessed be the Lord God of Israel, For He has visited us and accomplished redemption for His people, And has raised up a horn of salvation for us In the house of David His servant — As He spoke by the mouth of His holy prophets from of old — Salvation from our enemies, And from the hand of all who hate us; To show mercy toward our fathers, And to remember His holy covenant, The oath which He swore to Abraham our father, To grant us that we, being delivered from the hand of our enemies, Might serve Him without fear, In holiness and righteousness before Him all our days. 
    	Please keep in mind the truth that Israel, at that point, was under the strict and cruel domination of the Roman Empire. The nation of the Jews had been battered for centuries by countries who overran and enslaved them and removed them from their homeland. The cities and the towns were under the constant and vicious control of others.
As well, there had been complete silence from God for hundreds of years, and generation after generation had been just holding onto those traditions and customs that had been handed down, and even somewhat muddled by the dictates of their subjugators. Now was given the prophecy, not of the hopeful possibility of relief, but of the accomplished truth of God’s work having been done. Blessed be the Lord God of Israel, For He has visited us and accomplished redemption for His people, And has raised up a horn of salvation for us In the house of David His servant…
	The Lord was declaring this, despite the continuing presence of those Roman garrisons, because He was stating the truth that the salvation of the totality of humanity was at hand. The every step was proceeding as was necessary in order for God to save humanity from man’s own sinful nature. The true enemy of man was his own heart and essence, and that was being dealt with in the sending forth of the Son of God, as to be heralded by John the Baptist. God was making known to that specific generation that the Kingdom of God was at hand, not in the future, not to some succeeding posterity, but to this people who were hearing the prophecy of God, at that precise moment.
	It would be later, after the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, that the Apostle Paul would make known, to the very heart of the Roman Empire and its conquered realms that God had opened up His salvation even to the nations of Gentiles. It would extremely evident that they had all been used by God to bring into place the exact and necessary environment to spread forth the Good News of the risen Lord Jesus Christ. 
The Apostle would also make known to the Gentile nations the truth that the Children of Israel had always been at the heart of the plan of God’s salvation for all mankind, as they had played their part in the purposes of God’s redemption even of the Gentile nations. In Rom 11:11-16, the Apostle proclaimed that the Jews were not to be persecuted for their role in Christ’s crucifixion, but that both Gentile and Jew were grafted together into the covenant of God’s eternal grace and salvation. Please open to Romans Chapter 11 and keep it open for a couple of readings.
	Rom 11:11-16, I say then, they did not stumble so as to fall, did they? May it never be! But by their transgression salvation has come to the Gentiles, to make them jealous. Now if their transgression be riches for the world and their failure be riches for the Gentiles, how much more will their fulfillment be! But I am speaking to you who are Gentiles. Inasmuch then as I am an apostle of Gentiles, I magnify my ministry, if somehow I might move to jealousy my fellow countrymen and save some of them. For if their rejection be the reconciliation of the world, what will their acceptance be but life from the dead? And if the first piece of dough be holy, the lump is also; and if the root be holy, the branches are too. 
    	He further detailed, in verses 22-33 of this 11th Chapter, how God ordained, from the eternal ages of ages, that His Chosen people would be the source of the Christ Who would save all who would call upon His name. Rom 11:22-33, Behold then the kindness and severity of God; to those who fell, severity, but to you, God's kindness, if you continue in His kindness; otherwise you also will be cut off. And they also, if they do not continue in their unbelief, will be grafted in; for God is able to graft them in again. For if you were cut off from what is by nature a wild olive tree, and were grafted contrary to nature into a cultivated olive tree, how much more shall these who are the natural branches be grafted into their own olive tree? For I do not want you, brethren, to be uninformed of this mystery, lest you be wise in your own estimation, that a partial hardening has happened to Israel until the fulness of the Gentiles has come in; and thus all Israel will be saved; just as it is written, "The Deliverer will come from Zion, He will remove ungodliness from Jacob." "And this is My covenant with them, When I take away their sins." From the standpoint of the gospel they are enemies for your sake, but from the standpoint of God's choice they are beloved for the sake of the fathers; for the gifts and the calling of God are irrevocable. For just as you once were disobedient to God, but now have been shown mercy because of their disobedience, so these also now have been disobedient, in order that because of the mercy shown to you they also may now be shown mercy. For God has shut up all in disobedience that He might show mercy to all. Oh, the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are His judgments and unfathomable His ways! Amen!
    	Oh, the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are His judgments and unfathomable His ways! This is the full description of the manner in which God has been so faithful and true to His covenant with mankind. As we will continue to read and to seek after His truth in the Old Testament, we will see that the Apostle understood some of the measure of the incalculable greatness and sovereignty and love of God in His ruling and overruling even for those adulterous and defiled men and women of humanity, including such as ourselves. 
	The Apostle, in 2 Cor 3:14-18, stipulated exactly why there is this veil over those who will not have their blindness removed until they see Jesus. God is mightily at work to reveal His Majesty and His Love and His Mercy and His Grace, but it is all through the life of His Only Begotten Son. 
2 Cor 3:14-18, But their minds were hardened; for until this very day at the reading of the old covenant the same veil remains unlifted, because it is removed in Christ. But to this day whenever Moses is read, a veil lies over their heart; but whenever a man turns to the Lord, the veil is taken away. Now the Lord is the Spirit; and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty. But we all, with unveiled face beholding as in a mirror the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from glory to glory, just as from the Lord, the Spirit. 
	This is the means of His continually bringing forth the reality that He is faithful and just to honor and to fulfill His covenant with His people, with us, with all who have believed upon and received His free gift of Salvation in Jesus Christ. It is in Christ that He has revealed Himself as Our God and Our Lord forevermore! So be it!
'But I will remember for them the covenant with their ancestors, whom I brought out of the land of Egypt in the sight of the nations, that I might be their God. I am the Lord.'" 

This morning’s benediction is Deut 10:17+18. For the Lord your God is the God of gods and the Lord of lords, the great, the mighty, and the awesome God who does not show partiality, nor take a bribe. He executes justice for the orphan and the widow, and shows His love for the alien by giving him food and clothing. Amen.