Secrets are shared between friends and lovers. The very word secret refers to a loveseat where two lovers sit reclined together in each other’s embrace. Reclining on that loveseat, it is part of their relationship that they speak and commune with one another in sweet fellowship. It is part of their relationship that they know things about each other that no others know.

Jehovah has a secret.

The divine secret of Jehovah is his covenant. We know that because David says, “The secret of the Lord is with them that fear him; and he will shew them his covenant.” It is as if I would say to you that the sun is on fire, and the red orb blazes. The sun is the red orb. When David speaks about the covenant, he is explaining to us what Jehovah’s secret is. The secret of Jehovah is his covenant. The Hebrew word for covenant comes from the root that means to clasp or embrace. And therein is revealed the nature of a covenant. A covenant is a relationship between two lovers. In that relationship there is a depth and an intimacy that oftentimes is beyond the power of words to express.

Jehovah has a secret.

The secret is, first, Jehovah’s own covenant life as the triune God. God dwells forever unmoved and unchanged as the eternal God, in light that no man can approach unto, and as the God whom no man has seen nor can see. He lives. Ever God is active. What is the life and activity of God but the covenant communion between Father, Son, and Holy Spirit? That is the glorious secret of God. What does John say? “The only begotten Son, which is in the bosom of the Father, he hath declared him” (John 1:18). We would not know that unless God told us what his life is like. Fathers and sons have an objective relationship, but it is possible that there is between them no love or fellowship. Not so in God. There in John 1 by the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, John gives to us a glimpse into the glorious secret of Jehovah’s own covenant life. That is the life of God; that is his secret. Never does God become toward his people what he is not first and eternally in himself. And the secret of Jehovah is that he is the covenant God. He is the covenant God because he is the triune God—Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, three persons subsisting in the one being of God. One, only, true God, yet an utterly unique and mysterious oneness—the oneness of three persons who are all God, yet not three Gods but one, and in the one being there is perfect harmony, fellowship, and love.

Who can know it?

Who can discover this secret?

The Father eternally begets a Son in love, and the Son eternally presses himself in love toward his Father. Sweet communion. Ineffable fellowship. The holy family. God with God in God. Father breathing the Spirit of love to his Son. The Son returning the Spirit of love to his Father. The secret really is Jehovah himself, as he is the covenant God. When he causes his secret to be with us, he himself is with us. When he shows us his covenant, then he shows us himself. And when we come to know his secret, then we also come to know what the covenant is. The covenant is an intimate relationship of fellowship and friendship between lovers.

And wonder of wonders, there is another part to Jehovah’s secret. It is a secret because it was hidden in God. In the eternal and infinite life of God, always this secret was with him. He willed this. He decreed this. He sovereignly determined this. The secret was what God would do to reveal himself as the only good and ever-blessed covenant God in his own being. That we might know him; that we might taste that the Lord is good; that we might be taken up into his family and experience his fellowship and friendship; that God might be our God; and that we might be his people, he determined to reveal himself as the covenant God in Jesus Christ.

Jesus Christ is Jehovah’s secret—Jesus Christ as the mystery of godliness. Jesus Christ is God come in the flesh—God who remains God—and he presses himself ever tighter into the bosom of the Father, assumes to himself human flesh, and unites that flesh to the Godhead in order that in that man dwells all the fullness of the Godhead bodily, in order that in Christ God would unite all things to himself.

Who can know it? Who can discover that wonder of wonders that God became flesh and dwelt among us, and we beheld his glory—the glory as of the only-begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth?

And still more marvelous in the secret of Jehovah is that God beheld a people in Jesus Christ, that God loved them, and that God determined in Jesus Christ to establish with them his covenant and to take them as his own and that along the way of sin and grace and death and resurrection.

Oh, the depth of the wisdom and knowledge of God!

That God chose a people from among the mass of humanity to be his people and that in distinction from those whom he reprobated. God’s chosen people were a people of his love, whom he ever beheld in Christ as the Lamb slain from before the foundation of the world. So God ever beheld his people as redeemed, as covered in the blood of Christ, as justified before God, and as perfectly righteous in his sight. He never beheld iniquity in Jacob! Eternally, for the sake of the Lamb slain, there was no condemnation to God’s people! Always they were his covenant people, precious and dear to him. Toward them his thoughts are thoughts of love. For them God purposed that they would dwell with him forever in the perfection of his covenant in the new heavens and new earth, walking before him in righteousness and holiness in the blood of the Lamb, that they might be forever in that new Jerusalem with God in the midst of her, to enjoy God as their covenant God and to give glory to him, the covenant God.

Oh, who could conceive such a secret? Who could know it?

Ever was this secret with Jehovah. It is as eternal as God is. Never was he without his secret, so that ever his people were with him in his counsel in Jesus Christ. Ever Jehovah’s secret is perfect in God from eternity to eternity. Never was there a question of the fulfillment of his secret or the possibility of its failure; Jehovah ever has his secret before him as perfectly fulfilled. Ever was his secret the object of his delight, the purpose of his mind, and the desire of his heart.

And you understand, then, that we do not become God’s people in time merely, but we were his people from all eternity. We do not become righteous in time apart from the eternal reality of that in God’s counsel. From eternity to eternity, in his eternal counsel, God had us with him as perfect in Christ. We were with God, were in his bosom, and were his delight. We were the apple of his eye and the delight of his heart. His people! To be called the people of Jehovah is salvation; it is blessedness; it is eternal life. It is that which the gospel promises: “You shall be my people, and I will be your God.” That is the very essence of the promise of the gospel. That is what God purposed from all eternity. That is what is perfect in God from all eternity, what was hidden in God. His secret.

A secret that is with those who fear God: he will shew them his covenant. It was not God’s will that this secret remain hidden in him, but it was God’s will that it be revealed, that he carry out what he had purposed, and that he show what he had decreed. For us this means that God takes us up into his covenant in our own minds, consciences, experiences, and lives. He takes us to himself in the most intimate way. If I can explain to you what it is to know God in Christ, to have the secret of God, and to know his covenant, I can appeal to your experiences. The secret of Jehovah is a husband curled up with his wife and a wife with her husband; it is two lovers, sitting close together on a loveseat and talking about their hopes, their fears, their troubles, and their passions; it is a little boy, sitting on his mother’s lap, leaning into her as she rubs his head; it is two friends who talk together: perhaps one of them is in trouble, and he opens himself up to the other one about his trouble. All that is delightful, pleasant, and good in human relationships are but a dim picture of our relationship with Jehovah.

The secret of Jehovah is with those who fear him—his most intimate friendship and fellowship. He takes us into his very life and tells us of Christ and of God’s purpose for all things—his secret and deep things. He takes us into his bosom, under his wing, and into the shadow of his almighty power. He becomes to us a shield and a reward. That is the secret of Jehovah with those who fear him. And everything that we experience is what he has decreed to give to us and is his eternal secret shown to us!

To be taken into God’s intimate fellowship is the work of Jehovah. It is absolutely of him. He causes his people to know it. The covenant is his. The covenant is who Jehovah is. The covenant is given to man. It is given to man as man’s glory. It was Adam’s glory to be created in covenant fellowship with God. It was Adam’s excellence, and that fellowship lifted Adam up and set him in a lofty place. But being in honor and having that which there can be no better—life with God—and despising that life, Adam departed from God, who was Adam’s life. God’s covenant Adam broke. And God maintained that covenant. Not only did God maintain his covenant, but he revealed his covenant in a higher and more glorious sense as a covenant of grace in Christ. And that covenant, the covenant of Jehovah’s secret, his secret in Christ, Jehovah causes his people to know.

Jehovah causes his people to know his covenant because by nature, of themselves, they are utterly ignorant of it. That is who man is by nature; that is who all men are by nature; they are strangers from the covenant of promise. They are lost in darkness and are far from God, which is their death and their misery. That is us too by nature. No one discovers Jehovah’s covenant; no one can search out Jehovah’s secret; no one comes to the knowledge of it; no one enters into it by his strength or remains in it by his power or experiences it by his activities.

Absolutely unconditionally, Jehovah shows his people his covenant, and he causes his secret—his own precious, intimate fellowship—to be with them.

And so, this showing of Jehovah’s covenant to his people is pure grace; from beginning to end it is pure grace. It is the result of Jehovah’s love for his people because he desires them, because he desires that they be blessed in him by knowing him. Understand that: if you know God, you are blessed with eternal life. There is no higher and no more glorious thing that you can say of human beings than that they know God, that they are his covenant people, and that he reveals to them his secret.

God himself, according to his own determinate purpose, according to his election of grace, must cause his people to know Jehovah’s secret. That is his very purpose that they come to know, that they come to understand, and that they come to experience him as the covenant God, to know his fellowship and to know the joy and pleasure that they are ever before him. He causes them to know.

Jehovah causes his people to know his covenant by causing them to know Christ. Christ is the covenant that God gave to his people. To know Christ is to know God as your covenant God, as your friend, and as your sovereign. Christ is Jehovah’s secret, so that to know Christ is to enter into fellowship with the living God and to understand the things hidden in God. In Jesus Christ God draws near to his people. Christ took their very flesh and their very blood; in Jesus Christ God was touched with the feelings of their infirmities; in Jesus Christ God draws near to them and draws them near to himself in the tightest embrace. God reveals himself to them and speaks of his secret to them—his one, great, grand, and glorious plan to redeem all things and to lift them up to heavenly glory in Christ, to whom all things are subservient. And thus Jehovah speaks to his people of their salvation and of their blessedness and tells them that all things that happen to them do not happen by chance but come by his fatherly hand, as those things are decreed by God as the necessary way to their glory.

The secret of Jehovah is that he makes his people one flesh with Christ. God joins them unto Christ, and they become bone of Christ’s bone and flesh of his flesh; they are married to the risen Lord; they partake of his goodness, his grace, and his mercy; they eat him, and they drink him; and they understand what that means. It means not only that God’s people get some benefits as those benefits come from Christ, but it also means that God’s people receive those benefits as Christ comes unto them and fills them with himself, teaches them divine things, and guides and directs them, as he forgives their sins, imputes to them his righteousness, and imparts unto them his life, his blessedness, his grace, and his glory. The secret of Jehovah is Christ, and to know Christ is to know that secret; to be ignorant of Christ is to be damningly ignorant of that secret. To be one with Christ, to be of his flesh and of his bones, is to sit on Jehovah’s loveseat, to be embraced within his fellowship, and to have God as your God and to be his people.

Jehovah’s secret is with those who fear him. Of course, the secret is with God, or they would never fear him. Of course, the secret is with them, or they would only ever be blind to his working and would never see his covenant. Jehovah loved them. He included them in his secret according to his eternal purpose. He brought them into his secret. And as a fruit, they fear him.

Beautiful fruit, that they fear Jehovah. Surely not the terror of the ungodly. Surely not the slavish fear of the cowed servant. But the fear of Jehovah is an inner trembling of the heart that is the fruit of faith. That fear is really the manifestation of love. And I say that to fear Jehovah means to stand before God, in the tribunal of God, and in the judgment of God, as a sinner without sin—as a sinner without sin—because you are justified apart from your obedience to the law. That is the heart of it.

You enter into Jehovah’s fellowship; you enter into the intimacy, the secrecy, of that fellowship; you come into his embrace; you sit on his loveseat, being justified by faith without obedience to the law.

Such a one by faith, first, has trembled before Jehovah God and his requirement for perfection. Such a one has been undone by the holiness, the righteousness, the sovereignty, and the power of Jehovah God. Such a one has been impressed by the awesome grandeur and glorious excellence of God. God as God has impressed himself upon that man’s heart.

Second, that man fears Jehovah God as a sinner whose sin has been exposed before God. There is no hiding who he is before God. God knows who that sinner is; God knows all of the sinner’s thoughts, all his intentions, and all his purposes. God knows the innermost heart of that man.

Third, that man fears Jehovah as the one whom Jehovah has justified, to whom Jehovah has said, “For Christ’s sake I forgive you all your trespasses; all your trespasses are covered because Christ took the curse upon himself.”

Fourth, as the one whom Jehovah has justified, that man trembles in love for Jehovah as the merciful and gracious God.

See if that is not what Psalm 25 says. In thee do I trust; let none that wait on thee be ashamed; lead me in thy truth; for thou art the God of my salvation; remember thy tender mercies and thy ancient loving-kindnesses; remember not my sins!

A confident pleading on Jehovah’s mercy. That is faith, the faith of the one who fears Jehovah God. Jehovah’s secret is with that one, to show unto him Jehovah’s covenant. Jehovah draws that one into his fellowship and blesses that one with his grace and hears that one’s pleading.

In their afflictions. It is this to which I want to draw to your attention. I asked myself, why in this psalm is there this wonderful revelation of the intimacy of the covenant? It is because of afflictions, troubles, pains, and sorrows caused by the enemies of our souls. These afflictions are many; they are fierce, cruel, strong, and deceitful as the devil. And it is particularly in those circumstances that our sins rise up to testify against us that we have no right to come to God, to be heard of God, to be saved by God, or to be blessed by God. And it is exactly in those circumstances that Jehovah God draws near to those who fear him to show them his covenant, in order that the secret of Jehovah—his intimate fellowship and the assurance of that fellowship—be theirs, not for their own sakes but for Christ’s sake.