True and lasting VICTORY in Christ

Are you really experiencing the true VICTORY of Christ in your life? Are you bogged down by certain sins that rob you of your freedom? Are you stuck in the sin and confess merry-go-round? Have you rededicated your life over and over again to God but it does not seem to work? Have you broken all your promises to God? Are you tired of all your efforts to somehow get faith?

Good! This message is for you.

This message was transcribed from last part of David Wilkerson message "beware of Dogs". This is an accurate transcript of his message. I did not write this.

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I'm going to give you the key to understanding righteousness by faith. I'm going to try to do this in the next 15-20 minutes. Fasten your seat belts.

Oh hallelujah! Thank God for the New Covenant. The Old Covenant says: If you do what is right shall you not be accepted? If you do what is right, will God not accept you in his New Covenant? The New Covenant is not that New Covenant. God comes to you in your troubles and trials and sin and says I will, I will. I will do it. And I'm going to show that to you now.

Let me try to explain the New Covenant to you because you and I are under a New Covenant, a new agreement. I don't know when this happened. It could have happened when the foundation of the earth, it could have happened just prior to Christ agreeing to become mediator and come in the flesh. But God and His own Son Jesus made an agreement, They made a covenant. And the covenant was made, in fact the Scripture makes it clear that Christ was given as our covenant. Jesus made an agreement with the Father. In fact, the Father presented this to His Son. He said, if you will go and you become a mediator, you come in the flesh and take on human flesh, God says, I make an agreement with you, I covenant with you that I will hold you by the hand and I will carry you through. I'll never allow Satan to touch you, I will deliver you and I will hold you by the hand and I will keep you. Jesus on the other hand said, I will go Father, and this was His side of the agreement or the covenant. I will go Heavenly Father. And I will not do anything except what I see and hear from You. I will not do anything in my own human flesh. I will obey You exclusively. I will put my life…I will come. I'll take on human nature, but then I'm going to give that human nature back to You. And I'm going to put every confidence…I won't do anything. I'll go anywhere including the cross if You lead me. I will not do anything except what I see and hear You do.

Jesus said, as a part of this agreement, I'm going to obey You fully, I'm going to fulfill the law, every command of the law, I'm going to obey You perfectly. And I can only do that if You are holding my hand, and if I have in me this promise from You Heavenly Father, this covenant agreement that You will be with me and You will hold my hand. He said, the only condition ”” And this is the condition by which Christ accepted this, that not only do You hold my hand, not only do You carry me through all the powers of hell and darkness, but my seed goes with me. All my children get the same privilege. My obedience is going to be their obedience””not their own. My obedience will be offered You for my whole seed.

You understand why Jesus said to his disciples, I can do nothing on my own, he's under covenant. Folks, when you begin to see what the cross is about, when you understand this new covenant, you can never again be afraid of the devil. You can never again be afraid of sin. This covenant””I hear many Bible teachers say that it started at the cross. No, no, no, it started in the manger. Because it had to do with his obedience, this had to do with his whole life. It was in the very manger itself when he came born in human flesh. Now you say, I find that hard to believe. All right, let's go to it.

Here's the exact wording of God's agreement with his son. Go to Isaiah 42. We're going to go to the Scripture now and I'm going to prove this to you. And if you can't leave this church this morning absolutely changed by the Word your ears are closed. Ask God to give you an open ear now, and an open heart, and give you eyes to see.

Isaiah 42 verse 6: I the Lord have called thee in righteousness””this is speaking of Christ””and will hold thine hand and I will keep you. This is the covenant God is making with his own Son.
He said if you go in human flesh and you become the mediator for man, He said, I the Lord will hold thee in righteousness, I'm going to call you in righteousness, I'll hold your hand, I will keep thee and give thee for a covenant of the people, for a light of the gentiles, to open blind eyes, bring out the prisoners from the prison, and them that sit in darkness out of the prison house. Hallelujah to God!

This is the covenant God made with his Son. You go, I'll hold you, I'll keep you. Glory be to God! God said to His Son, if you go I'll be responsible for you, to keep you, and bring you back to glory. The whole time you're gone I'm responsible for you. I'll take full responsibility. No power in heaven or hell can touch you. And then He says, I'll do the same for your seed.

You don't believe that? Folks, do you know what the seed is? The children of faith.

You are the seed, I am the seed, by faith in Christ Jesus. You told everybody you belong to Jesus, didn't you? You sit here saying and believing in your heart, I am a child of God, I am the seed. Oh hallelujah!

Turn to Psalm 89. Here's where it gets real good. Starting verse 27. I'll wait till the leaves stop rustling. You have it? Psalms 89 verse 27, begin to read: Also I will make him my firstborn, higher than the kings of the earth. That's the Father”” I'm going to make you higher than the kings of the earth when you take on this call. My mercy will I keep for him for evermore, and my covenant shall stand fast with him. His seed also will I make to endure forever, and his throne as the days of heaven. If his children forsake my law, and walk not in my judgments, if they break my statutes, and keep not my commandments, I will visit the transgression with the rod, their iniquity with stripes.

Nevertheless””this is for you and me””this is the promise for the seed, He's making this to his Son, he's saying to his Son, nevertheless, my lovingkindness will I not utterly take from him, nor suffer my faithfulness to fail. My covenant I will not break nor alter the thing that is gone out of my lips. Glory be to God!

Folks, the Bible says we are to lay hold of the covenant, lay hold of the promises of God whereby we're made partakers of His Divine nature. Let this””jump into the stream and flow with it right now because this is the word of the living God. God said to his own son, I make a covenant with you, I will make you higher than all the kings of the earth. If my children sin against me, I'll put the rod to them, I'll chasten them.

And that's what happens, even Paul introduces the concept of destruction of the flesh that the soul may be saved. Oh yes, Christian, when you sin you'll be chastened. It'll be the rod of God but it'll be a rod of love. He said, I will never, no matter what you've done, if you will test me, if you'll come back to my love, I will never cast you away, never, never!

I can say to this woman who wrote this letter, with all of your problems””her 17-year old daughter's been raped, her 16-year old daughter's run off with a married man, she has all kinds of problems, her own husband's a drug addict. And I can say, hold on Sister, He will never take away his lovingkindness from you, never!

You see, you win the victory over the devil when you get rid of the fear. It's the fear that has the torment.

Not only will I hold your hand, my son, as long as you're in human flesh, not only will keep you from Satan and all of his devices, I make this same promise to every believer who trusts in you, I will count them as one party to this covenant. And folks, he doesn't make the covenant with me except as I am in Christ. It's a covenant between two partners, only between God and his son. And when I'm in his son, this is a corporate body, then I am in the covenant. I am in the covenant because I'm in Christ. He made it with Christ. He didn't make it with me. He made it with Christ but he made it with me because I am now in Christ. And everything of the covenant is now mine, I am in the covenant!

Oh I'll get chastened with the rod and some of you are being chastened now. I've known some young Christian young men and women who fell back into homosexuality and they picked up AIDS. And I have buried a few in this church. Fine young men, loving Jesus, went out repentant, but went out in victory because they came back to the lovingkindness of Jesus Christ. But they paid the price because the wages of sin is death. Doesn't say the wages of sin is hell alone, because you see, when you come back to the covenant, you come back to the mercy and the grace of God and repent before Him, you find out He's never left you, He's always there.

For His part, Christ promised the Father perfect obedience, first on his own behalf. I want you to go to Psalms 40, now turn left at Psalms 40. Now it gets even better. Psalms 40. Folks, look this way please. I want to show you now that Jesus says first of all, I am going to be obedient to you. Father, I'm going to be obedient. He's talking now here in this passage about his own personal obedience to the Heavenly Father. Verses 7 and 8 of Psalm 40: Then said I, Lo, I come: in the volume of the book it is written of me, I delight to do thy will, O my God, yea thy law is within my heart. I have preached righteousness in the great congregation, I have not refrained my lips. It says, Then said I, lo, I come: in the volume of the book it is written, I delight to do thy will O God.

Now look at me please. This is God's pledge, this is Christ's pledge, this is his part of the covenant, his part of the agreement. He said, I pledge to you Father, my Father, I, then promised I. It is written of me. He's talking about himself. Now I am going to be totally obedient.

Now folks, this is exactly what happened. Jesus totally obeyed his Father's will. It always has to do with the heart and the will. He said, I have completely surrendered my will. It's written of me, I am going to obey you, Heavenly Father. He gave the Father perfect obedience.

In fact, in John, well, let's hold up there just a minute.

But then, here's the wonderful part. When God began to open this to me and I saw it, I just broke down and wept, and I've had this inner weeping with joy ever since. Folks, it's only the revelation of His Word that can hold you in these days.

I want you to get a hold of this””I want you to stop for just a minute and ask the Holy Ghost to open your eyes on this because it can't be done except by the Holy Spirit. You have to see it by the Spirit of God.

Folks, I have been praying since I was 22 years old that God would show me the covenant, and it's taken years. And I'm only beginning to see glimpses of it now. But I want””you have to see this. That the Lord Jesus makes a pledge of total absolute obedience. This fulfills the law. Every command has been fulfilled. Everything that God required of his law, that's all fulfilled now in
Christ Jesus. But then he goes on to cover you and I our whole lifetime. He makes such an incredible deal for you and me! What an agreement he made on our behalf! What a deal! What a covenant! It's a better covenant than the Old Covenant. Made on better promises and here's that better promise. Psalm 16. Are you turning?

Listen to me. I'm going to make a statement now that on the first hearing you'll think it's error. You say it's too good to be true. I can't believe it. Nope.

Now folks, when Jesus was born in the manger what did they sing? Glad tidings. Glad tidings. This is glad tidings. God says, not only Father, am I going to obey, but I'm going to engage not only for my obedience, but for the obedience of all my seed, all my seed. I'm engaging myself not only to fulfill obedience, not only will I be totally obedient to You, but I am going to engage now for all my children.

Look at chapter 16, verses 2 and 3: O my soul, thou hast said unto the Lord, Thou art my Lord: my goodness extendeth not to thee. What he's saying, Lord, this obedience””this goodness, it's coming to you not just on my behalf alone. It's not just for me that I'm obedient.

Next verse. But for the saints that are in the earth and to the excellent in whom is all my delight. Jesus said, I sanctify myself that they may be sanctified. He's saying, from now on Lord, I am providing for the obedience of all my family.

Now hold still, folks. Don't get excited about, or don't get upset that I'm preaching error. Not at all. Remember what Jesus said to you and to me and to all his disciples? You can do nothing on your own. He said, without me you can't do anything. But with me you can do all things. He said, get into the covenant. Depend wholly on me. You just trust in me and you trust in my obedience that I've given to the Father was a perfect obedience.

You can never present to Him a perfect obedience on your own. Come simply by faith now and say, Jesus, you have promised no matter what I'm going through, I'm under covenant. You said you would take me by the hand. Father, I'm in trouble. Father, I've got a lust I can't handle.

Father, I've got problems in my home. The Lord said, reach out your hand, put out your hand, I'll hold your hand.

He said, I will put my fear into your hearts that you shall not depart from me because you're under covenant. I'll put my fear in your heart. Don't try to produce it. You just put your hand in mine, you trust my obedience, you trust my righteousness, you just believe, accept my promise. Reach out your hand, lay hold of the covenant. He said, I'll put my fear in your hearts, I will remember your sin no more. I'll write my law on your hearts, I will make you to know me from the greatest even unto the least.

God's saying, I know what you're going through but I made an agreement to be responsible for you. He said, and My Son ratified that covenant with his own blood. He can't break it because the one who made the covenant with the Father is already at the right hand of the Father. It's all finished. He can't lie.

Can't you get a hold of this now in your spirit? And hold this up before all the forces of hell and say, devil, I am in covenant, I have not yet arrived. I am still working. I know that if I sin I am going to be held responsible because he's going to put a rod to my back. He's going to do it in love though. Many, many times I've spanked my children, but then I hugged them and I spanked them because I love them.

Your very best obedience of the flesh is not acceptable to God, but faith gets you into the covenant. And once you're in covenant, you obey God not to be accepted but because you're accepted. And then the obedience you offer to Him is a gift of love because you're in covenant.

He said, if you love me you'll obey me. How can you not love a father who looks at your failure and your sin and your battle. He doesn't come to beat you down or cast you under the law. He said, I've made an agreement that's everlasting, I cannot lie. I made an oath to my Son. And when you're in Christ, I can no more cast you aside than I could cast my own Son aside who sits at my right hand. It's that sure. It's that sure. Hallelujah!

Now you go to Him and say, Father, this is what my despair brought me to in the first place. I just gave up and said””you either give up and run back to the old life because trying is going to get you into despair and you're going to give up.

But folks, that's what the Lord wants, He wants you just to give up instead of running.

He said, just reach out your hand. He said, I will hold you by your hand, and I will keep you. I will be responsible for you. And that's why Jesus died and he went into hell and the Lord said, it's covenant time.

I've made my son a promise, that no devil, no demon, nothing of sin or lust can destroy him, and he sent the Holy Ghost in and the Holy Ghost pulled him out of hell, out of the grave!

God kept covenant with his Son. And you know when you come by faith, you see, Jesus is in glory now. The covenant has been fulfilled, he's fulfilled his part of the covenant. But now you and I are seated with Christ in heavenly places. That means clearly that he is keeping covenant with you and me, the seed of Christ. I thank God, he isn't going to let you go. I don't care what you're going through.

Saul””murderer, persecutor””the Lord says, no, I'm not going to let you go. I'm going to get a hold of you and once I get a hold of you, Paul, I'll never let go.

Look at what Hudson Taylor wrote to his sister.
I pray you see what he saw.

All the time I felt assured that there was in Christ all I needed, but the practical question was how to get it out. He was rich, but I was poor; He was strong, but I was weak. I knew full well that there was in the vine, in the root, the stem, abundant fatness; but how to get it into my puny little branch was the question.

As gradually the light dawned on me, I saw that faith was the only prerequisite to laying hold of His fullness and making it my own. But I had not this faith . . . I strove for it, but it would not come; I tried to exercise it, but in vain. Seeing more and more the wondrous supply of grace laid up in Jesus, the fullness of our precious Savior - my helplessness and guilt seemed to increase. Sins committed appeared but as trifles compared with the sin of unbelief which was their cause, which could not or would not take God at His word, but rather made Him a liar! Unbelief was, I felt, the damning sin of the world - yet I indulged in it. I prayed for faith but it did not come. What was I to do?

When my agony of soul was at its height, a sentence in a letter from dear McCarthy was used to remove the scales from my eyes, and the Spirit of God revealed the truth of our oneness with Jesus as I had never seen it before. McCarthy, who had been much exercised by the same sense of failure, but saw the light before I did, wrote (I quote from memory): "But how to get faith strengthened? Not by striving after faith, but by resting on the Faithful One."

As I read I saw it all! "If we believe not, He remains faithful." I looked to Jesus and saw (and when I saw, oh, how joy flowed) that He had said, "I will never leave you." "Ah, here is rest!" I thought. "I have striven in vain to rest in Him. I'll strive no more. For has He not promised to abide with me - never to leave me, never to fail me?" And Dearie, He never will!

Look at these quotes from THE TWO COVENANTS by Andrew Murray

This is nothing but the restoration of the original relation between God and the man He had made in His likeness. He was on earth to be the very image of God, because God was to live and to work all in him, and he to find his glory and blessedness in thus owing all to God. This is the exceeding glory of the New Covenant, of the Pentecostal dispensation, that by the Holy Spirit God could now again be the indwelling life of His people, and so make the promise a reality: "I will cause you to walk in My statutes." With God's presence secured to us every moment of the day---"I will not turn away from them"; with God's "fear put into our heart " by His own Spirit, and our heart thus responding to His holy presence; with our hearts thus made right with God, we can, we shall walk in His statutes, and keep His judgments.

And this is indeed the glory of the New Covenant, the glory that excelleth, that this provision has been made. In a way that no human thought could have devised, by a stipulation that never entered into any human covenant, by an undertaking in which God's infinite condescension and power and faithfulness are to be most wonderfully exhibited, by a supernatural mystery of Divine wisdom and grace, the New Covenant provides a guarantee, not only for God's faithfulness, but for man's too! And this in no other way than by God Himself undertaking to secure man's part as well as His own. Do try and get hold of this.

Here is the inmost secret of the New Covenant. It deals with the heart of man in a way of Divine power. It not only appeals to the heart by every motive of fear or love, of duty or gratitude. That the law also did. But it reveals God Himself, cleansing our heart and making it new, changing it entirely from a stony heart into a heart of flesh, a tender, living, loving heart, putting His Spirit within it, and so, by His Almighty Power and Love, breathing and working in it, making the promise true, "I will cause you to walk in My statutes, and ye shall keep My judgments." A heart in perfect harmony with Himself, a life and walk in His way---God has engaged in Covenant to work this in us. He undertakes for our part in the Covenant as much as for His own.

WE have here four titles given to our Lord. Jesus in connection with the New Covenant. He is Himself called a Covenant. The union between God and man, which the Covenant aims at, was wrought out in Him personally; in Him the reconciliation between the human and Divine was perfectly effected; in Him His people find the Covenant with all its blessings; He is all that God has to give, and is the assurance that it is given . . . . He is called the Messenger of the Covenant, because He came to establish and to proclaim it . . . . He is the Surety of the Covenant, not only because He paid our debt, but as He is Surety to us for God, that God will fulfil His part; and Surety for us with God, that we will fulfil our part . . . . And He is Mediator of the Covenant, because as the Covenant was established in His atoning blood, is administered and applied by Him, is entered upon alone by faith in Him, so it is experimentally known only through the power of His resurrection life, and His never-ceasing intercession. All these names point to the one truth, that in the New Covenant Christ is all in all.

A SURETY is one who stands good for another, that a certain engagement will be faithfully performed. Jesus is the Surety of the New Covenant. He stands surety with us for God--- that God's part in the Covenant will faithfully be performed. And He stands surety with God for us, that our part will be faithfully performed too. If we are to live in covenant with God, everything depends upon our knowing aright what Jesus secures to us. The more we know and trust Him, the more assured will our faith be that its every promise and every demand will be fulfilled, that a life of faithful keeping of God's Covenant is indeed possible, because Jesus is the Surety of the Covenant. He makes God's faithfulness and ours equally sure.

If you would be delivered from all this, learn ever to read the Book of the New Covenant in the New Covenant Spirit. One of the very first articles of the New Covenant has reference to this matter. When God says, I will put My law in their inward parts, and write it in their hearts, He engages that the words of His Holy Book shall no longer be mere outward teaching, but that what they command shall be our very disposition and delight, wrought in us as a birth and a life by the Holy Spirit. Every word of the New Covenant then becomes a Divine assurance of what may be obtained by the Holy Spirit's working. The soul learns to see that the letter killeth, that the flesh profiteth nothing. The study, and knowledge of, the delight in, Bible words and thoughts, cannot profit, except as the Holy Spirit is waited on to make them life. The acceptance of Holy Scripture in the letter, the reception of it in the human understanding, is seen to be as fruitless as was Israel's at Sinai. But as the Word of God, spoken by the Living God through the Spirit into the heart that waits on Him, it is found to be quick and powerful. It then is a word that worketh effectually in them that believe, giving within the heart the actual possession of the very grace of which the Word has spoken.

If we have at all understood the teaching of God's word in regard to the New Covenant, we know what it reveals in regard to the two parties who meet in it. On God's side there is the promise to do for us and in us all that we need to serve and enjoy Him. He will rejoice in doing us good, with His whole heart. He will be our God, doing for us all that a God can do, giving Himself as God to be wholly ours. And on our side there is the prospect held out of our being able, in the power of what He engages to do, to "turn to Him with our whole heart," "to love Him with all our heart and all our strength." The first and great commandment, the only possible terms on which God can fully reveal Himself, or give Himself to His creature to enjoy, is," Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart." That law is unchangeable. The New Covenant comes and brings us the grace to obey, by lifting us into the love of God as the air we breathe, and enabling us, in the faith of that grace, to rise and be of good courage, and with our whole heart to yield ourselves to the God of the Covenant, and the life in His service.

So Murray makes it clear

The New Covenant provides a guarantee, not only for God's faithfulness, but for man's too!

God has engaged in Covenant to work this in us. He undertakes for our part in the Covenant as much as for His own.

And now, who is ready to enter into this New and Everlasting Covenant with his whole heart? Let each of us do it.

Begin by asking God very humbly to give you by the Spirit, who dwells in you, the vision of the heavenly life of wholehearted love and obedience, as it has actually been prepared for you in Christ. It is an existing reality, a spiritual endowment out of the life of God which can come upon you. It is secured to you in the Covenant, and in Christ Jesus, its Surety. Ask earnestly, definitely, believingly, that God reveal this to you. Rest not till you know fully what your Father means you to be, and has provided for your most certainly being.

When you begin to see why the New Covenant was given, and what it promises, and how divinely certain its promises are, offer yourself to God unreservedly to be taken yep into it. Offer, if He will take you in, to love Him with your whole heart, and to obey Him with all your strength. Hold not back, be not afraid. God has sworn to do you good with His whole heart: do say, do not hesitate to say, that into this Covenant, in which He promises to cause you to turn to Him and to love Him with your whole heart, you now with your whole heart enter. If there be any fear, just ask again and believingly for a vision of the Covenant life: God swearing to do you good with His whole heart; God undertaking to make and enable you to love and obey Him with your whole heart. The vision of this life will make you bold to say: Into this Covenant of a wholehearted love in God and in me I do with my whole heart now enter: here will I dwell.