Twelve Covenant Mercies

Twelve Covenant Mercies

(No. 2316)

INTENDED FOR READING ON LORD'S-DAY, JULY 9, 1893.

DELIVERED BY C. H. SPURGEON,

AT THE METROPOLITAN TABERNACLE, NEWINGTON, ON LORD'S-DAY EVENING, JUNE
30, 1889.

"Incline your ear, and come unto Me: hear, and your soul shall live:
and I will make an everlasting Covenant with you, even the sure mercies
of David." Isaiah 55:3.

I GOT so far this morning [Sermon #2092, Volume 35–God's Own Gospel
Call.] as to plead with men to come to God to hear what He had to say,
to give diligent and earnest heed to His teaching about their souls and
about salvation. And while I pleaded, I can truly say, with all the
strength I had, I made this one of the master arguments that, in
hearing, their soul would live–and in coming to God, they would find
Him ready to enter into Covenant with them, "an everlasting Covenant,
even the sure mercies of David."

That seemed to me to be one of the most astonishing Truths of God that
was ever given to man to preach, that God would be a high contracting
party with poor insignificant and guilty man, that He would make a
Covenant with man! Yes, with you and with me–that He would bind
Himself by a solemn promise, give His sacred pledge–and enter into a
holy contract of mercy with the guilty sons of Adam! I thought that if
men were in their right minds and God had taught their reason to be
reasonable, they would be drawn to the Lord by such a wonderful promise
as this, "I will make an everlasting Covenant with you, even the sure
mercies of David."

Remember that there was a Covenant of old, which men broke–the
Covenant of works, "This do, and you shall live." Keep such and such
commands, and you shall be rewarded. That Covenant failed because man
did not keep God's commands and so did not earn the promised reward. We
broke the terms of that contract and it is no longer valid, except that
we come under penalty for the breach of it, and that penalty is that we
are to be cast away from God's Presence and to perish without hope, so
far as that broken Covenant is concerned.

Now, rolling up that old Covenant as a useless thing out of which no
salvation can ever come, God comes to us in another way and He says, "I
will make a new Covenant with you, not like the old one at all." It is
a Covenant of Grace– a Covenant made, not with the worthy, but with
the unworthy! A Covenant not made upon conditions, but unconditionally,
every supposed condition having been fulfilled by our great
Representative and Surety, the Lord Jesus Christ! A Covenant without
an, "if," or a, "but," in it, "ordered in all things, and sure." A
Covenant of shalls and wills in which God says, "I will, and you
shall!" A Covenant just suited to our broken-down and helpless
condition. A Covenant which will land everyone who is interested in it
in Heaven! No other Covenant will ever do this. I tried to expatiate
upon that Covenant this morning and I thought that I would close the
day by showing to any who desire to be in this Covenant of Grace what
the blessings are that God promises to give to guilty men when they
come to Him, when they accept His love and His mercy. What are these
blessings?

I have little else to do, tonight, but to refer you, again, as I did
this morning, to God's Word. Beloved, if you had met together, after
the death of some wealthy relative, and his will was about to be read
to you, you would not require an eloquent lawyer–you would all be very
attentive–and some of you who are a little deaf would recover your
hearing! An important question would be, "What has he left?" A still
more important enquiry would be, "What has he left to me?" Well, I want
you to feel, tonight, that you do not need an eloquent preacher–I am
only going to read God's will to you, His Covenant, which is virtually
the testament or will of Christ. And all that you have to do is to
listen and say, "What has He left? What has He bequeathed to me? What
does He Covenant to give to me?"

And remember that whoever you may be, if you are willing to be saved by
Grace, you may be saved by Grace! If you give up all hope of being
saved anyway else, you may be saved by the free mercy and love of God!
"If you are willing and obedient, you shall eat the good of the land."
If you come and take Christ to be your Savior, then all the promises of
God, which in Him are, yes, and in Him, Amen, are made to you! If you
take Him, you take all that is in the Covenant, for He is the Covenant.
Embodied in Himself is the whole Covenant of Grace and He who has
Christ has all it contains!

I am going to point you to some of the passages in which we have this
Covenant written out at length. I shall not say much upon any item, but
I shall refer you to 12 wonderful mercies of the Covenant of Grace.
Will you kindly look in your Bibles at the prophecy of Jeremiah,
chapter 31, verse thirty-four? There is no music more sweet to me than
the rustle of your Bibles. I sometimes preach, no, I frequently preach
when I may read what I like and nobody follows me to see if I quote
correctly. I have been inclined to buy you wheelbarrows, so that you
may bring your Bibles to Chapel in them, since many of you do not seem
to have any here. What is the best way of hearing the Word? Is it not
to search and see whether what the preacher says is really according to
the Word of God?

I. One of the first mercies of the Covenant is SAVING KNOWLEDGE. Turn
to Jeremiah 31, and let us begin to read at verse thirty-one–"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." There
is one of the first blessings of the Covenant of Grace–saving
knowledge.

Man by nature knows not God. He does not want to know God and when he
is awakened to think of God at all, God seems a great mystery, a Being
invisible, unreachable–and the man says, "Who shall make me to know
God?" He reads his Bible, it may be, and even that he does not
understand. He hears the preacher, but the Lord's servant seems to talk
a jargon which the unconverted man cannot comprehend! Brothers and
Sisters, there is no knowing God except through God! The man's neighbor
cannot teach him, even though he may attempt it. Though he may say,
"Know the Lord," yet he cannot give knowledge of God. By nature our
eyes are blinded–we cannot see. You may hold, even, the electric light
to a blind man's sightless orbs, but it will not give him sight. Blind
Bartimaeus saw no light till Jesus spoke to him. Saul of Tarsus was
blind enough, by his bigotry and self-righteousness, until God gave him
a glorious light to shine into his soul.

Now, here is a Covenant that God will give the knowledge of Himself to
the lost, the guilty and the ruined–to those who have provoked Him and
gone astray from Him. Where are those to whom this Covenant shall be
fulfilled tonight? I cannot tell you, save by marks and tokens, and
this is one of the marks. Do you know that you are blind? Do you know
that you cannot see apart from Divine Grace? Do you long to see? He is
not totally blind, in a spiritual sense, who knows that he is so. He is
not in the dark who feels that he is in the dark–there is already some
degree of the Light of God that makes him perceive the darkness
visible. O Soul, if you desire to know God, here is the Covenant, "They
shall all know Me, from the least of them unto the greatest of them"!
All God's chosen shall know Him! They shall not abide in ignorance.
They shall not die in ignorance. They shall come to know the Lord and
they shall grow in the Grace and in the knowledge of their Lord and
Savior Jesus Christ!

Oh, what a privilege this is! "If any of you lack wisdom, let him ask
of God." If any man is ignorant of his God, let him hear the Word of
the Lord and let him seek the Lord, and God will give him instruction
concerning Himself, and make him to know the great Jehovah, the Father
of our spirits, who passes by iniquity, transgression, and sin.

II. But I must not linger on any one blessing. The first Covenant mercy
is saving knowledge. The next is, GOD'S LAW WRITTEN IN THE HEART. Let
me read you verse 33, again–"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." You know that the Law
of Moses was written on two tablets of stone. Wonderfully precious
those two slabs of marble must have been when the Divine finger had
traced the solemn lines. Moses had a great charge to keep when he had
those two Di-

vinely written tablets, but he destroyed them because the people had,
in spirit, broken them. It could not be that such Divine writing should
ever be handled or looked at by such an unholy people!

Now, Brothers and Sisters, it was of no use writing the Law on tablets
of stone except for the condemnation of the people! But when God comes
in the Covenant of Grace, He does not merely give us the Law in a Book,
the Law written in legible characters, but He comes and writes on the
fleshy tablets of our heart. Then the man knows the Law by heart! What
is better, he loves the Law. That Law accuses him, but he would not
have it altered. He bows and confesses the truthfulness of the
accusation. He cries, "Lord, have mercy upon us, and incline our hearts
to keep Your Law." And this is the Covenant blessing–God makes men to
love His Commandments and to delight themselves in the Truth of God,
righteousness and holiness!

A very wonderful thing is this writing in our heart. Nobody but God can
write in human hearts. We can write certain thoughts upon your minds as
we appeal to your ears, but to get at the heart is another thing! He
that has the keys of Heaven, He that has the keys of the heart, He that
shuts and no man opens, or opens and no man shuts, can really get at
the human heart! And He does so get at it that He writes, there, His
Commandments, and this He does to men who formerly hated those
Commandments! He makes them love them. Men who despised His
Commandments, He makes to honor them. As for men who forgot His
commandments, He writes them in their hearts, so that they cannot get
away from them. As for men who would have changed the Commandments, He
changes their hearts, instead, and then their hearts and the
Commandments agree together.

This is a second Covenant blessing. Do any of you want these blessings?
Would you like to know the Lord? Do you wish to have the Law written on
your hearts? Be it unto you according to your faith! Believe that God
can do this for you–trust in Christ that it may be done unto you–and
even so shall it be!

III. The third Covenant mercy (we cannot dwell long on any item) is,
FREE PARDON. You will find this at the end of the 34th verse–"For I
will forgive their iniquity, and I will remember their sin no more."
Oh, this is a great blessing of the Covenant! You people who have never
sinned, or who think that you have not. You who believe yourselves to
have always been good, or at least as good as you could be, and far
above the average of mankind! You exceedingly excellent people who have
never done anything that you need to repent of very greatly, well, I
have nothing for you here! Only remember what Mary sang, "He has filled
the hungry with good things; and the rich" (that is you) "He has sent
empty away." But if there is a soul here that feels the burden of its
guilt, one bowed down with grief because of the heavy load of past
iniquity that lies upon it, why, surely you, if you have the faith,
will jump for joy as you read these words, "I will forgive their
iniquity, and I will remember their sin no more." First, He will
forgive it, blot it right out. "Be," says He, "as if you had never
offended. Come to Me, come to My heart, as if you had always loved Me.
Guilty though you are, I will not impute iniquity to your charge, I
will forgive it." The great Judge will put on the white gloves and not
the black cap! You shall be forgiven!

And then the Lord says, "I will remember their sin no more." It is a
wonderful thing when Omnipotence overcomes Omniscience, when Omnipotent
Love will not allow Omniscience to remember–"I will remember their sin
no more." Satan comes and pleads against the sinner, "Lord, he did so
and so." God says, "I do not remember it." Nor does He remember it, for
He laid it all on Christ and Christ suffered the penalty due for it
and, therefore, it is gone! It is never to be recalled! It stands not
in the Book of Remembrance and, as the Lord looks over this man's life,
when He comes to the black pages, there is a blank–not a line of it is
left–for He who died has made the scarlet sins as white as snow! "I
will remember their sin no more."

Oh, what a precious Covenant mercy is this! I do not feel as if I need
to elaborate or garnish it in any way, or give you any illustrations,
or tell you any anecdotes. Was there ever set before you such a
glorious gift? Will you not have it–the perfect pardon of every sin
and a Divine act of amnesty and oblivion for every crime, of every
sort–as promised in the Covenant of Grace to every soul that is
willing to receive it through Christ Jesus the Savior?

IV. Let us look a little farther and see if there is not something
more. Look to the next chapter, Jeremiah 32, at the 38th verse–"And
they shall be My people, and I will be their God." That is the next
Covenant mercy, RECONCILIATION. The offense is put away, the sin is
pardoned. "Now," says God, "they shall be My people." "Lord, they are
the people who worshipped Baal! They are the horrid wretches who gave
their children up to be burned in the red-hot arms of Molech." "They
shall be My people," says the Lord. "But, Lord, these are the men and
women who committed adul-

tery and fornication and were even guilty of murder!" "They shall be My
people," says the Lord. "But, Lord, they provoked You to anger year
after year, and would not hearken to Your Prophets." "They shall be My
people," says the Lord, "and I will be their God."

Did you ever think how much there is involved in that expression, "I
will be their God"? God is everything and when God gives Himself to us,
He gives us more than all time and all eternity, all earth and all
Heaven! "Fear not, Abram," said the Lord to the Patriarch, "I am your
shield, and your exceedingly great reward," as if it was reward enough
for any man to have God to be his God–and so it is! More riches than
Croesus, more honor than the greatest conqueror, has that man who has
this God to be his God forever and ever! "I will be their God, and they
shall be My people." The young people might look that text up, and find
how many times it occurs in the Word of God. I remember many times that
God puts it, "I will be their God, and they shall be My people."

This is another grand Covenant blessing! Are you willing to be the
people of God? Are you willing to take Him, even this God, to be yours
forever and ever? If so, then the text is true concerning you, "I will
make an everlasting Covenant with you, even the sure mercies of David."

V. Will you follow me to the next verse for a fifth Covenant mercy, the
blessing of TRUE GODLINESS? "And I will give them one heart, and one
way, that they may fear Me forever, for the good of them, and of their
children after them." See here, that the fear of God is the beginning
of wisdom! "The fear of God" is a description of true godliness and God
says that He will give this to men. He might have asked it of you, and
rightly, too, but you would never have yielded it. But when He says
that He will give it, that is a very different thing! He is willing to
give you His fear, to give you true religion, to bestow upon you that
veneration of His sacred name which lies at the bottom of all
godliness! He will give you that, give that to you who never had it,
and even despised it, to any of you who have lived all your lives
without it, but who are willing to come and take it, this night, as the
gift of His Grace through Jesus Christ our Lord! May the Lord make you
willing in this, the day of His power, for that is a part of the
Covenant blessing! The willingness, itself, is His gift and this He
gives freely to His own.

VI. Now look, dear Friends, to the next verse, which is more wonderful
than anything that I have yet read. The sixth Covenant mercy is,
CONTINUANCE IN GRACE–"And I will make an everlasting Covenant with
them, that I will not turn away from them, to do them good; but I will
put My fear in their hearts, that they shall not depart from Me." Talk
about Final Perseverance–is it not taught here? "I will not turn away
from them, and they shall not depart from Me." What a Covenant blessing
this is! It reminds us of the words of the Lord Jesus concerning His
sheep–"I give unto them eternal life and they shall never perish,
neither shall any man pluck them out of My hand." "Yes," I heard a man
say, who did not believe what that verse teaches, "No man shall pluck
them out of His hand, but they may crawl away from between His
fingers."

No, they shall not! See how this text secures them both ways. "I will
not turn away from them, to do them good: but I will put My fear in
their hearts, that they shall not depart from Me." Here are both gaps
blocked–there is no getting out either way. God will not leave you and
He will not let you leave Him! This is a Covenant blessing, indeed. Oh,
for faith to grip it! The soul that comes to Christ and rests itself
wholly upon Him, shall find two hands to grasp it, even these two
gracious words, "I will not turn away from them," and, "they shall not
depart from Me." And this is spoken of the guilty, of the very men who
provoked God!–

"Wonders of Grace to God belong, Repeat His mercies in your song." If
God saved the good, the meritorious and the righteous, then the proud
Pharisees would swarm in every street in Heaven and God would have no
Glory! But when He saves the vilest of the vile–then the publicans,
who are afraid to lift their eyes to Heaven when they think of their
own unworthiness–will get near the Throne of God and sing! Oh, how
they will sing of Free Grace and dying love! This Covenant would be
great enough if there were nothing more in it than the six blessings
that I have mentioned!

VII. I must trouble you to turn in your Bibles to another prophecy, to
read about another of the mercies of His Covenant, namely, CLEANSING.
Some poor soul says, "Well, I can see that God is going to do great
things, but I feel myself so unclean, I dare not come near to God. Why,
Sir, I am polluted all over, inside and out, I am altogether like a
leprous man!" Come then, let me read this verse to you, the 25th verse
of the 36th chapter of Ezekiel–"Then will I sprin-

kle clean water upon you, and you shall be clean: from all your
filthiness, and from all your idols, will I cleanse you." God's Word
elsewhere says, "Wash you, make you clean." That is your duty–but here
you are told that the Lord will wash you, and make you clean. This is
your privilege. "You are clean," said Christ to His disciples, "through
the Word which I have spoken unto you." That is "the washing of water
by the Word" of which Paul wrote to the Ephesians. The Lord sprinkles
this "clean water" upon the leprous and the polluted sinner, upon him
who lies covered with his own blood, a filthy thing in the sight of God
and loathsome to himself. The Free-Grace Covenant runs, "Then will I
sprinkle clean water upon you, and you shall be clean." When God
Himself says, "You shall be clean," I know that we are clean, for He is
the best judge of true cleanliness! His pure and holy eyes detect every
spot of sin and every latent trace of disease. Though it is deep within
the heart, He can spy it out, but He says, "I will sprinkle you, and
you shall be clean." Blessed be His name!

And then He goes on to enumerate that from which He will cleanse
us–"From all your idols will I cleanse you." Is drink your idol? Is
some lust of the flesh your idol? "Oh!" you say, "I cannot get rid of
these things." No, but the Lord can cleanse you from them! Only come to
Him, listen diligently to Him, trust Him, yield yourself up, surrender
yourself to Him and He will dash your idols in pieces and tear them
from their thrones! He will also cleanse you from whatever else there
may be that is unmentionable, "from all your filthiness"–things not to
be spoken of, not even to be mentioned–those things that are done in
secret, "I will cleanse you from them," says the Lord.

I may be speaking to somebody here who, as he listens to me, thinks
that I am talking some novel, some romance. "Why," he says, "I am a
filthy creature. I am a great sinner. Can God bless me?" Yes, He can
bless even you! Did you never hear of Colonel Gardiner? On the very
night on which he had made an appointment to commit a filthy sin,
Christ appeared to Him and he thought that he heard Him say, "I have
done all this for you; will you never turn to Me?" He did turn to Jesus
and he became noted as an eminent Christian–more noted than he had
formerly been as a debauched officer in the army! The Lord Jesus Christ
still works these wonders of Grace! He meets men often when they are
desperately set on mischief, just as a horse might be rushing into the
battle, and He comes and lays His hand on the rein and turns it, and
leads it back wherever He wills! Such is the power of His almighty
love! I pray Him to do the same, tonight, according to this wondrous
promise, "Then will I sprinkle clean water upon you, and you shall be
clean: from all your filthi-ness, and from all your idols, will I
cleanse you."

VIII. Nor is that all, for, if a man should be made clean once, he
would soon get foul again if left to himself, so here follows the next
astounding Covenant mercy of RENEWAL OF NATURE. Listen–"A new heart
also will I give you, and a new spirit will I put within you: and I
will take away the stony heart out of your flesh, and I will give you
an heart of flesh." It is not said, "I will help you to this," but, "I
will do it." Not, "I will help you to make yourself a new heart." No,
nothing of the kind, but, "I will give you a new heart." You know that
if you cut off the branches of a tree, it will grow fresh ones, but if
you could tear out its heart, it would never grow a new one. There are
some creatures, like the lobster, that will shed their claws and the
claws will grow again–but a lobster never grows a new heart.

If the center of animal or vegetable life is once destroyed, there is
no renewing it. But God can work this miracle in human hearts, He can
strike at the very center of man's nature and change it! It is little
to render pure the streams, but it is a great marvel to cleanse an
impure spring so that a spring of bitter water suddenly turns sweet.
This is a miracle that can only be worked by the finger of God and
there is nothing short of this renewal of nature that is worth having!
I know that some people fancy that Christians, when they do not go into
such and such worldly amusements, deny themselves very much. Nothing of
the kind! It would be an awful denial to us if we had to go with the
worldlings. Those who frequent the theater and places of loose
amusement perhaps think that it is a denial to us not to go with them.
Oh, dear, dear, dear, they little know us!

When I go down to a friend's farm, I see a man carrying to the pigs a
couple of pails full of food, but I never envy the pigs! I like them to
have all that they can, and to enjoy themselves, but do not suppose
that I am denying myself in not wanting their food! My taste does not
lie that way. But suppose that a man has a hog's heart–what is the way
to deal with him? To deny him his swill? Certainly not! Let him have it
while he is like the hogs. The thing that is needed is a change of
heart, and when his heart is turned into a renewed man's heart, and is
made to be a God-like heart, then it is no denial to him to loathe the
things which once gave him so much pleasure! His tastes are entirely
changed and that is according to the promise of the Covenant, "A new
heart also will I give you, and a new spirit will I put within you."

The old heart is very hard in some. It seems to be altogether
petrified–you cannot make any impression upon it. You are received
with ridicule, however earnest you may be in your pleadings for God.
But the Lord can change the stony heart–

"Our heart, that flinty, stubborn thing, That terrors cannot move, That
fears no threatening of His wrath, Shall be dissolved by love! Or He
can take the flint away, That would not be refined; And from the
treasures of His Grace, Bestow a softer mind."

Then the man, who was just now as hard as flint, sits and weeps over
his sins. See how watchful he is in the presence of all kinds of
temptations. He is half afraid to put one foot before another! The very
man who was called, "Devil-may-care," is now the one who does care and
who trembles lest he should in any way grieve the living God! What a
blessed Covenant mercy is this!

IX. But I must hurry on. The ninth Covenant mercy is, HOLY
CONVERSATION. Let me read verse twenty-seven– "And I will put My
spirit within you, and cause you to walk in My statutes, and you shall
keep My judgments, and do them." When God deals with a man in the way
of Grace, He not only calls him to holiness, but He gives him holiness!
He not only bids him walk in His way, but He makes him walk in His
way–not by compulsion, not by any kind of physical force–but by the
sweet influences of Infinite Love. The man's entire life is changed
externally, just as I have shown you that his heart is changed
internally. "Oh!" says one, "this is very wonderful." It is. It is the
standing wonder of the Gospel. Certain miracles have ceased, but the
miracles of turning men from darkness to light, and from the power of
Satan unto God, are being worked every day! I rejoice that they are
constantly being worked in this very House of Prayer and I believe that
they are going to be worked tonight on some who are listening to me! If
this miracle is worked, you will not attribute it to me–I know you
will not, for you will remember how feeble I am–but you will
understand that there is the power of God working through the preaching
of the Gospel making dry bones to live and turning black sinners into
bright saints, to the praise of the glory of His Grace!

X. Once again, will you kindly look at the 31st verse? This will be the
10th Covenant mercy, HAPPY SELF-LOATHING. Perhaps you will wonder that
I called this a mercy. Listen–"Then shall you remember your own evil
ways, and your doings that were not good, and shall loathe yourselves
in your own sight for your iniquities and for your abominations." Free
Grace makes men loathe themselves! After God has done so much for them,
they feel so ashamed that they do not know what to do. "O Lord," says
the saint, "to think that ever I should have sinned against One who
loved me so much! That I, the elect of God, should have acted like the
elect of Hell! That I, who was God's own, should have called myself the
devil's own! That I, who was chosen unto holiness and eternal life,
should have passed it all by as if it were no concern of mine!" Oh, may
God grant us this holy loathing, as He will do when we have once tasted
of His Infinite Love!

XI. The next Covenant mercy, mentioned in the 37th chapter, verses 26
to 28, is the blessing of COMMUNION WITH God–"Moreover I will make a
Covenant of peace with them; it shall be an everlasting Covenant with
them: and I will place them, and multiply them, and will set My
sanctuary in the midst of them forevermore. My tabernacle also shall be
with them: yes, I will be their God, and they shall be My people. And
the heathen shall know that I the Lord do sanctify Israel, when My
sanctuary shall be in the midst of them forevermore." God promises to
set up His tabernacle and His Temple in the midst of His people, and to
make them His priests, His servants, His children, His friends. God
will be no longer absent from you when this Covenant work shall have
been worked in you; but you shall be brought to dwell in His Presence,
to abide in His house, and to go no more out forever, until the day
when He shall take you to His palace home above, to be forever in His
Presence, and to serve Him day and night in His Temple.

And all this is promised to the worthless, to the vilest of the vile!
All this without asking of you anything but that you will be willing to
receive Him! All this without requiring of you anything but just your
emptiness that He may fill it, your sinfulness that He may cleanse it!
Only you must surrender to Him. What have you to surrender? Nothing but
a lot

of rubbish of your own your self-righteousness, especially, which is
but filthy rags! The Lord bring you to this surrender even now!

XII. There is only one more Covenant mercy for me to mention and I put
it last because you will be surprised, perhaps, when I read it. It is
about NECESSARY CHASTISEMENT. For that I must ask you to turn to Psalm
89 and verse thirty–"If his children forsake My law, and walk not in
My judgments; if they break My statutes, and keep not My Commandments;
then will I visit their transgression with the rod, and their iniquity
with stripes. Nevertheless My loving kindness will I not utterly take
from him, nor allow My faithfulness to fail." There is a rod in the
Covenant. Children of God, you do not like it–it were not a rod if you
did–but it is good for you when you come under the fatherly discipline
of God. Though He will never take His everlasting love from you, nor
suffer His faithfulness to fail, yet, when you transgress, the rod
shall be sure to fall upon you, and sometimes its strokes shall come
upon you before you transgress, to keep you from sinning!

I often hear of some of God's dearest servants suffering. I heard of
one whom I am sure God loves very much. He is very useful. He spends
himself in his Master's work. He is also very prosperous–God gives to
him great wealth, which he discreetly and wisely uses, but he has had a
very sharp affliction come upon him, lately, which is enough to break
his heart. And when I heard it, I said, "Yes, yes, God loves him. God
loves him." If you are a child of God, note this Truth of God and
accept it with joy–our heavenly Father never pampers His children! We
may spoil our girls and boys, but our Father never spoils His children.
If He gives you great happiness, great success and makes you useful, He
will, every now and then, give you a whipping behind the door. You
think, sometimes, "That man is very happy. he has great blessing
resting on his work." Yes, this man is very happy to tell you that he
has not all sweets to drink, to make him sick and ill, but there are
bitter tonics, sharp blows of the rod, to keep him right. If we have to
bless God more for any one thing than for everything else, it is to
thank Him that we have not escaped the rod.

Sickness is a choice blessing from God! I cannot measure the
unutterable good that comes to us full often in that way–and losses in
business, and crosses, and bereavements, and depressions of spirit are
all, when we see them in the light eternal, so many Covenant mercies.
The true-born child of God cannot escape the rod and would not if he
might. He gets afraid when he does not sometimes feel it. He will not
long have to be afraid about it, for it will come in due time. I think
that I hear somebody say, "I do not want that." No, just so–you want
worldly pleasure. Perhaps God will let you have it till you have spent
all your substance on it, as the prodigal did–and then you will find
that it is all weariness and sorrow–and you will want something
better.

But if tonight you will say, "I will take the Covenant of Grace, rod
and all, for if I can be God's child, I will very gladly take the rod
as part of the mercies of the Covenant," come along, and you shall have
it! Seek the Lord tonight! Give not sleep to your eyes, nor slumber to
your eyelids till you have found Him! God grant you all the mercies of
the Everlasting Covenant, for Jesus' sake! Amen.

EXPOSITION BY C. H. SPURGEON. JEREMIAH32:30-42.

Verse 30. For the children of Israel and the children of Judah have
only done evil before Me from, their youth: for the children of Israel
have only provoked Me to anger with the work of their hands, says the
LORD. Here were people who had done nothing else but evil. God had been
very good to them, but they had been very bad to Him. From their youth,
and without a break, they bad continued to rebel.

31. For this city has been to Me as a provocation of My anger and of My
fury from the day that they built it even unto this day; that I should
remove it from before My face. Jerusalem, which ought to have been a
holy city, had been so impure that it had been a standing provocation
to God from the day it was built.

32. Because of all the evil of the children of Israel and of the
children of Judah, which they have done to provoke Me to anger, they,
their kings, their princes, their priests, and their prophets, and the
men of Judah, and the inhabitants of Jerusalem. They seem to have been
all alike. With scarcely an exception, from the highest class to the
lowest, they were always disobeying God.

33. And they have turned unto Me the back, and not the face: though I
taught them, rising up early and teaching them, yet they have not
hearkened to receive instruction. This is a fearful indictment! When
men refuse to learn better, turn their back upon the King of kings, and
will have nothing to do with Him, surely the time for vengeance has
come.

34, 35. But they set their abominations in the house, which is called
by My name, to defile it. And they built the high places of Baal, which
are in the valley of the son of Hinnom, to cause their sons and their
daughters to pass through the fire unto Molech. There was nothing so
terribly bad but they would do it. There was nothing so unnatural, so
detestable, but they must practice it.

35-38. Which I commanded them not, neither came it into My mind, that
they should do this abomination, to cause Judah to sin. And now
therefore thus says the LORD, the God of Israel, concerning this city,
of which you say, It shall be delivered into the hand of the king of
Babylon by the sword, and by the famine, and by the pestilence; behold,
I will gather them out of all countries, where I have driven them in My
anger, and in My fury, and in great wrath; and I will bring them again
unto this place, and I will cause them to dwell safely: and they shall
be My people, and I will be their God. Is not this a wonderful passage?
After all this sin, and all this provocation, when we expect the
thunder and lightning of Divine judgment, behold, there is nothing but
the sweet voice of pitying love–"They shall be My people, and I will
be their God." Oh, the wonders of Divine Grace! See what the Covenant
of Grace does for guilty men.

39, 40. And I will give them one heart, and one way, that they may fear
Me forever, for the good of them, and of their children after them: and
I will make an everlasting Covenant with them, "With them"–with these
very people who had provoked Him, and served Molech, and bowed before
idol gods, and put the Lord to shame, and angered Him!

40, 41. That I will not turn away from them, to do them good; but I
will put My fear in their hearts, that they shall not depart from Me.
Yes, I will rejoice over them to do them good, and I will plant them in
this land assuredly with My whole heart and with My whole soul. A
whole-hearted God, blessing those upon whom He looks with an eye of
Grace! It is a wonderful thing. If He had set His whole heart to
destroy them, it would have seemed natural, but God is far above any
conception of ours and so, in the midst of extraordinary and almost
immeasurable guilt, behold Love equally extraordinary and Grace
altogether measureless!

42. For thus says the LORD; Like as I have brought all this great evil
upon this people, so will I bring upon them all the good that I have
promised them. Oh, for Grace to lay hold upon this Everlasting
Covenant, even the sure mercies of David, and to be saved thereby!