Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit · Sermon No. 3261
“He will ever be mindful of His Covenant.” Psalm 111:5.
[Another Sermon by C. H. Spurgeon upon the same text, is #2681, Volume 56—Covenant Blessings.]
IT is an amazing thing that God should enter into gracious Covenant with men. That He should make man and be gracious to man is easily to be conceived, but that He should strike hands with his nature and put His august majesty under bond to him by His own promise is marvelous! Once let me know that God has made a Covenant and I do not think it amazing that He should be mindful of it, for He is “God that cannot lie.” “Has He said, and shall He not do it?” Has He once given His pledge? It is inconceivable that He should ever desert from it. The doctrine of the text commends itself to every reasonable and thoughtful man—if God has made a Covenant, He will ever be faithful of it. It is to that point that I would now call your attention with the desire to use it practically.
For God to make a gracious Covenant with us is so great a gift that I hope everyone here is saying within his heart, “Oh, that the Lord had entered into Covenant with me!”
We shall practically look into this matter, first, by answering the question, What is this Covenant? Secondly, by putting the enquiry, Have I any portion in it? And, thirdly, by bidding each one say, “If, indeed, I am in Covenant with God, then every part of that Covenant will be carried out, for God is ever mindful of it.”
I. First, then, WHAT IS THIS COVENANT?
If you go to a lawyer and enquire how a deed runs, he may reply, “I can give you an abstract, but I had better read it to you.” He can tell you the sum and substance of it, but if you want to be very accurate—and it is a very important business—you will say, “I would like to hear it read.” We will now read certain parts of Scripture which contain the Covenant of Grace, or an abstract of it. Turn to Jeremiah 31:31-34—“Behold, the days come, says the Lord, that I will make a new Covenant with the house of Israel, and with the house of Judah: not according to the Covenant that I made with their fathers in the day that I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt; which My Covenant they broke, although I was an Husband unto them, says the Lord. But this shall be the Covenant that I will make with the house of Israel. After those days, says the Lord, I will put My Law in their inward parts and write it in their hearts; and will be their God and they shall be My people. And they shall teach no more every man his neighbor, and every man his brother, saying, Know the Lord: for they shall all know Me, from the least of them unto the greatest of them, says the Lord; for I will forgive their iniquity, and I will remember their sin no more.”
Print every word of that in diamonds, for the sense is inconceivably precious! God in Covenant promises to His people that instead of writing His law upon tablets of stone, He will write it on the tablets of their hearts. Instead of the Law of God coming on a hard, crushing command, it shall be placed within themas the object of love and delight, written on the transformed nature of the beloved objects of God’s choice! “I will put My Law in their inward parts, and write it in their hearts”—what a Covenant privilege this is! “And I will be their God.” Therefore all that there is in God shall belong to them. “And they shall be My people.” They shall belong to Me. I will love them as Mine. I will keep them, bless them, honor them and provide for them as My people. I will be their portion and they shall be My portion.
Note the next privilege. They shall all receive heavenly instruction upon the most vital point—“They shall all know Me.” There may be some things they do not know, but “they shall all know Me.” They shall know Me as their Father. They shall know Jesus Christ as their Brother. They shall know the Holy Spirit as their Comforter. They shall have com-
munion and fellowship with God! What a Covenant privilege is this! Hence comes pardon, “For I will forgive their iniquity, and I will remember their sin no more.” What a clean sweep of sin! God will forgive and forget—the two go together. “I will forgive their iniquity and I will remember their sin no more.” All gone—all their transgression blotted out, never to be mentioned against you again, forever! What an unutterable favor! This is the Covenant of Grace! I call your attention to the fact that there is no, “if,” in it! There is no, “but,” in it—there is no requirement made by it of man. It is all, “I will,” and, “they shall.” “I will be their God, and they shall be My people.” It is a charter written in a royal tone and the majestic straining not marred by a “perhaps” or a “maybe”—but dwells always on, “shall,” and, “will.” These are two prerogative words of the Divine Majesty and in this wondrous deed of gift in which the Lord bestows a Heaven of Grace upon guilty sinners, He bestows it after the Sovereignty of His own will without anything to put the gift in jeopardy, or to make the promise insecure! Thus I have read the Covenant to you in one form.