God says I will help you, I will help you, I'll be with you, I'll take care of you and strengthen you.

I will provide all your needs according to the riches of

my son in glory. You don't need to abandon your commitments and your covenants in order to make

it in this life.

What enables us to keep the covenants we make?

John Piper turns to Malachai 2, 10 to 16 to answer that question in this episode of Light and Truth. The sermon was originally preached at Bethlehem Baptist Church

on November 22nd, 1987.

You remember that a little over a year ago, a high school friend of mine that I hadn't seen for 20 years came to the Twin Cities for

back surgery. She had severe scoliosis and Fairview downtown here is one of the best places

in the country to get an operation of that kind.

They put two steel rods right at her back.

And the goals, of course, were one, to enable her to have upright posture and two to relieve some of the pain and three

to make her back stronger.

Now that's the kind of back surgery I want to do this morning. I've got

some steel rods in this text. They're called the word of God or the truth of God. The

will of God and its reasons are like steel rods.

And I don't intend them to be spears this morning, okay? Can we settle that from the outset?

I don't intend them to be spears.

I intend them to be rods that I would like to engage in whatever surgical skill God

is given me to insert them right up your moral backbone.

To accomplish three things.

To accomplish the alleviation of pangs, of guilt, past, and even more so in the future through disobedience

...