Well, like Jeff, I want to express my appreciation also for your attendance and for the hospitality and for the great organization, for the wonderful fellowship that you've provided so many occasions for. It's been a great experience and it's really been a really wonderful encouragement to me. I want us to look at Charles Spurgeon and his views of the covenant. What I intend to do is try to look at four different messages. I didn't really count the number of messages he preaches on the covenant. He preached one during his first year at New Park Street. just I think the blood of the covenant, another one entitled The Covenant. I'm going to look at four different sermons on the covenant today and try to highlight something of the comprehensive nature of his understanding of the covenant, but also have the same vocabulary, the same theological ideas come through and penetrate through these different sermons. Still in the book of Hebrews, let's look at Hebrews chapter 13. verses 20-21 one of the sermons we are going to look at is based upon that entitled, The Blood of the Everlasting Covenant. So in Hebrews 13, 20 and 21 we read, Now may the God of peace who brought again from the dead our Lord Jesus, the great shepherd of the sheep, by the blood of the eternal covenant, equip you with everything good that you may do His will, working in us that which is pleasing in His sight through Jesus Christ to whom be glory forever and ever. Another message that we will look at is called Pleading the Covenant. It's based on Psalm 74. So if you turn with me to Psalm 74, I want to read that psalm also. This is a psalm of Asaph. Oh God, will you cast us off forever? Why does your anger smoke against the sheep of your pasture? Remember your congregation, which you have purchased of old, which you have redeemed to be the tribe of your heritage. Remember Mount Zion, where you have dwelt. Direct your steps to the perpetual ruins. The enemy has destroyed everything in the sanctuary. Your foes have roared in the midst of your meeting place. They set up their own signs for signs. They were like those who swing axes in a forest of trees. In all of its carved wood, they broke down with hatchets and hammers. They set your sanctuary on fire. They profaned the dwelling place of your name, bringing it down to the ground. They said to themselves, we will utterly subdue them. They burned all the meeting places of God in the land. We do not see our signs. There's no longer any prophet. And there is none among us who knows how long. How long, oh God, is the foe to scoff? Is the enemy to revile your name forever? Why do you hold back your hand, your right hand? Take it from the fold of your garment and destroy them. Yet God my King is from old, working salvation in the midst of the earth. You divided the sea by your might. You broke the heads of the sea monsters on the waters. You crushed the heads of Leviathan. You gave him as food for the creatures of the wilderness. You split open springs and brooks. You dried up the everlasting streams. Yours is the day and yours also the night. You have established the heavenly lights and the sun. You have fixed all the boundaries of the earth. You have made summer and winter. Remember this, O Lord, how the enemy scoffs and a foolish people reviles your name. Do not deliver the soul of your dove to the wild beasts. Do not forget the life of your poor forever. Have regard for the covenant, for the dark places of the land are full of the habitations of violence. Let not the downtrodden turn back in shame. Let the poor and needy praise your name. Arise, O God, defend your cause. Remember how the foolish scoff at you all the day. Do not forget the clamor of your foes, the uproar of those who rise against you, which goes up continually. So in all of these things, as he was reminded of how God controls all of nature, how he controls all events, yet it is as it was to Habakkuk as it was prophesied, so it has now happened as was prophesied to Habakkuk. And the psalmist is asking how long will this last? and in all of his understanding of how God has been good to them, how they have had this place of worship, how the sanctuary has been there, how they should have been reminded of God's covenant faithfulness to them. All of these things have happened and yet the plea, the basic plea is have regard for the covenant. Appealing to the covenantal faithfulness of God as the thing that will give an explanation as to why all of these things have happened. In the year 1856, Charles Spurgeon preached a sermon on the place of the Holy Spirit in the covenant. In that particular sermon, he listed seven different things that the Spirit did in the covenant. This is a part of a three-sermon series that he did on the work of the triune God in the covenant, and I just want to quickly look at how he divided up his understanding of the work of the Spirit in the covenant. He's very strong and effectual calling has a very marvelous passage on that and I'm sure all of you who read Spurgeon sermons realize that as you're reading some of the things you're reading will just be like, okay, I know that. I know that it's doing a good job of that and then there will be a paragraph or there'll be a page where it just sort of leaps off the page. It becomes one of these things that is so immediately powerful and breathtaking and you just wonder how in the world Did he do that? How did he take something that I've heard so many times and make it to be so powerfully relevant, so beautiful, so wonderful in its expression? And his section on effectual calling in this is like that. It's like, okay, I know what the doctrine of effectual calling is. the confession on that. I've memorized the catechism on that. I've preached about it, but I've never seen it dealt with in this way. It's just one of those powerful presentations that comes. But very quickly, he lists seven things in the light of that that the Holy Spirit does. One, the Holy Spirit serves as a quickening spirit. You have be quickened who are dead in trespasses and sins. This is a specific work of the Holy Spirit to give life. Of the flesh profits nothing, Jesus said. It is the Spirit who gives life. You won't understand these things, Jesus said, unless you are quickened by the Spirit. This is a covenantal responsibility, a covenantal grace of the Spirit. A second thing is to assist in the duties we have to perform. The mandates of Scripture, the things that just day by day, how we're to love our neighbor, how we seek out ways in which we love our neighbor. Who is it that gives us strength to do this? Who causes us to persevere in this? Spurgeon in the sermon says he assists us day by day in the duties that we have to perform. The Spirit also gives revelation and instruction. It was the providence of the Spirit to come and take the things of Christ and show them to us to give revelation to the apostles, to give revelation to the New Testament of prophets as they gave new covenant truth within these congregations that did not have access immediately to an apostle. And so he gives revelation and he gives instruction of various sort and particular things. When the apostles needed immediately instruction about something, the spirit would quicken them when they needed to understand where to go. We know Paul was prohibited from going to two places and then he has the dream, come over to Macedonia and help us. Spurgeon would say that's immediate instruction of the spirit. He is a spirit of application. We take biblical truth. and that there is a particular query we have about how does this apply to certain lives? There are times in our life as we grow, as we mature, sometimes scriptures that seem foggy to us, that do not seem to really fit in in any relevant way, we will see the relevance of it, it speaks to us in a certain way, we see how it applies to our sanctification, we see how it applies to a relationship, and that is the illuminating work of the Spirit in applying scripture to specific situations. Spurgeon also talked about the sanctifying spirit, that there is a secret work going on within us in which we're being sanctified, we're being made more holy. The irony of it is, is we may not be aware of being made more holy because being made more holy also we begin to realize how deeply embedded the flesh is within us and how sinful we continue to be. And yet if we are able to take an objective look and step back and examine what we used to be like and what we are like, we recognize, praise the Lord, that there has been a work of sanctification going on, though at the same time we're much more deeply aware of the subtlety and devastating nature of our sin. So he works as a sanctifying spirit that's ironically making us holy while he makes us feel unholy. There's a directing spirit. There are times in which we simply need direction. A church has talked to us. We want to know if we should leave our present ministry and go to this church. How do we know that? Do we have a special revelation? Or how does the Spirit direct us? And we're taught to look at providential situations, to look at gifts, to look at the situation. We pray about this. We pray for clarity of thought. And then there are things that happen that lead us. Sometimes it may be a providential arrangement in which we cannot do anything else than that. Sometimes it may be more subtle in which we have to simply become aware of how our present stage of growth and our present gifts make more sense in one particular place than another. All of this is the work of the Spirit in directing us. And then there's the comforting spirit. The spirit comforts us in times of trial, in times of loss, in times of tension. The Holy Spirit is the one who ministers to us. He applies the word of God to us. He applies the promises to us. He applies the certainty of our salvation because it is secured by Christ. He continues to take the things of Christ and show them to us for our comfort. And so Spurgeon takes this specific area of how does the Spirit operate in accord with the covenant. And in that sermon in 1856, the Holy Spirit and the covenant, he dealt with those issues. 1859, he preached, excuse me, he preached the message called the Blood of the Everlasting Covenant built upon this passage in Hebrews 13. Here he gives perhaps his most systematic presentation of the doctrine of the covenant. He takes it step by step. He deals with it from the standpoint of each person of the triune God. He distinguishes between different types of covenants. And it's a very instructive and at the same time a very encouraging sermon. He says that God always deals with man through the covenant. He dealt with Adam through a covenant even in the threat, the day you eat thereof you shall surely die. This was a provision that was made, a promise made for guilt of death if they disobeyed with the implication that if they continued to obey then there would be the bestowal of eternal life. There's the covenant with Moses, a covenant on the one hand that there would be a prophet like him that would come. The covenant with Moses also, the covenant of the law, the covenant in which you have all the civil and the ceremonial aspects of the covenant with Israel, all of these things administered through Moses. You have a covenant with David that there would be one from his loins, one that would sit on his throne forever and ever. There would be others in between, but there would be one that would eternally reign. And then there is the covenant, the new covenant in Ezekiel 36 and in Jeremiah 31. And then there is a covenant that He makes in a sense with we ourselves. that when we become when we're saved we we embrace the reality of the covenant of the great wills of God I will do this and I will do that and as a result of my doing this you shall do that he says if we do not know how to discriminate between different covenants, we're not theologians. The thing that makes a person a theologian is that they know how to distinguish between the covenants and particularly they know how to distinguish between the covenant of works and the covenant of redemption or the covenant of grace that includes the covenant of redemption. So this covenant, this blood of the everlasting covenant, what covenant is it? He says, well it is the covenant of grace. It's not the covenant of works. The covenant of works was made in Eden. The covenant of works in one sense, it continues to be operative because the threat made in the covenant of works continues to be operative and the implied promise. that true righteousness is the only thing that will gain eternal life, that continues to operate. But as far as it applies to us, it has only condemnation for us. We will never commend ourselves to God through the covenant of works. Humanity as a whole broke the covenant of works in the disobedience of Adam. Adam and Eve were the entire humanity. Eve became the transgressor through being deceived. Though Adam was not deceived, nevertheless, he broke because of a misjudgment he made about, perhaps about the influence of Eve on his life. But nevertheless, all of humanity fell. He talks about this covenant of works from the standpoint, if they had kept it all, then all would have been preserved. All of the posterity would have been preserved. But if they broke it, then all of humanity has fallen, all of humanity has become corrupt, all of humanity is under condemnation. He's very clear about those issues. So the covenant of the everlasting covenant, the blood of the everlasting covenant, that is not the covenant of works, although it implies that the covenant of works is, through another covenant, made complete. And then he has this thing that it's not the covenant of gratitude. He talks about a covenant of gratitude that we had that on February the 1st, after just a few days, actually a couple of weeks after his conversion, he felt placed upon his heart a special sense of gratitude, a special sense of how it was that he had been included in the covenant. He was clear on the various stipulations of the covenant. Even at this time, he had heard preaching all of his life. His mind was made alive. His understanding of scripture began to become mature and full during these early days and so within a couple of weeks after he had been converted he took upon himself, he embraced the covenant, he embraced Christ's covenant with him and it became for him a covenant of gratitude that he had been included within the everlasting covenant. He says, this is when on our own we make our devotion. We know that he has claimed us as his own. He has given us to his son. And so we say, I am his. We belong to no one else. And so arising out of that, Spurgeon talked about this covenant of gratitude. But he says that's not the everlasting covenant that's being talked about here in Hebrews 13. What is it? Well, it is the covenant of grace. What is this covenant of grace? Spurgeon says the covenant of grace is a covenant that was made in eternity. And he talks about the high contracting parties in eternity that made this covenant. He speaks of the Trinity and of each part that the Trinity places. Now he's deeply aware that we cannot treat the doctrine of the Trinity as if it were a real conversation in which people are deciding things one by one and taking upon themselves stipulations in light of what another has said. He says, I know this is an ineffable thing. We cannot understand how these dispositions of the covenant exist within God eternally. But in order for us to understand what the fitting partitioning of the different aspects of the covenant is, though there's an inner penetration. Spurgeon makes this point also in other sermons on the covenant. There's an inner penetration of every person in everything that is most fittingly set forth by one person. The Father elects, but that does not mean that there's no operation or no consent or no kind of involvement of the Spirit and the Son in election. And the Son is the one who provides redemption in dying, but that does not mean there's no participation of both the Spirit and the Father in that. And it is the Spirit who illuminates, the Spirit who converts, the Spirit who quickens, the Spirit who causes us to persevere, but that does not mean that there is no participation in fitting activity of the Father and the Son in the work of the Spirit. But for us to understand that there are really three persons in the Trinity and that there's something that is most fitting and most appropriate for them to do, he sets forth this idea of some sort of a conversation that's going on. in which the various stipulations of the covenant. The overall purpose of it, of course, is the glory of God, but the central way in which this is done is through the restoration of a chosen people. Now in this sermon he appears to be superlapsarian in his understanding of this because he says they were already chosen, that the decree to choose was first and then the decree to permit the fall was subsequent to the decree to choose certain ones. Those that were chosen would then be rescued and those that were not chosen would be left in their fallen condition. So Spurgeon puts these speeches then into the mouths of what he calls the contracting persons. And he has the father saying that he will elect a particular people, to draw them to Himself. He will give these particular people to His Son and as a result of the work of His Son they will be presented before My throne without spot or wrinkle or any such thing. I covenant by oath and swear by Myself because I can swear by no greater that these whom I now give to Christ shall be forever the objects of My eternal love. Them I will forgive through the merit of His blood. To these I will give a perfect righteousness. These I will adopt and make my sons and daughters, and these shall reign with me through Christ eternally." Thus runs this glorious side, Spurgeon says, of the everlasting covenant. Then the Holy Spirit, also one of the high contracting parties on this side of the covenant, gave His declaration, "'I hear by covenant,' He said, "'that all whom the Father gives to the Son, "'I will in due time quicken. "'I will show them their need of redemption. "'I will cut off from them all groundless hope "'and destroy their refuges of lies. "'I will bring them to the blood of sprinkling. "'I will give them faith whereby this blood "'shall be applied to them. I will work in them every grace. I will keep their faith alive. I will cleanse them and drive out all depravity from them. And they shall be presented at last spotless and faultless. This was one side of the everlasting covenant, Spurgeon says, which is at this very day being fulfilled and scrupulously kept. Now as for the other side of the covenant this is the part engaged and covenanted by Christ. He thus declared and covenanted with His Father. My Father on my part I covenant that in the fullness of time I will become man. I will take upon myself the form and nature of the fallen race. I will live in the wretched world for my people and I will keep the law perfectly. I will work out a spotless righteousness which shall be acceptable to the demands of your just and holy law. In due time I will bear the sins of all My people. You shall exact their debts on Me. The chastisement of their peace I will endure, and by My stripes they shall be healed. My Father, I covenant and promise that I will be obedient unto death, even the death of the cross. I will magnify Your law and make it honorable. I will suffer all they ought to have suffered. I will endure the curse of your law and all the vials of your wrath shall be emptied and spent upon my head. I will then rise again. I will ascend into heaven. I will intercede for them at your right hand. I will make myself responsible for every one of them and not one of those whom you have given me shall ever be lost. And I will bring all of my sheep of whom by my blood you have constituted me the shepherd. I will bring everyone safe to you at last. You see how he takes passages of Scripture from all over the Bible to place them into this, that whole biblical framework of covenantal Christocentric preaching. Then Spurgeon goes on, thus ran the covenant of grace. And now I think you have a clear idea of what it was and how it stands. The covenant between God and Christ, between God the Father and God the Spirit, and God the Son, as the covenant head and representative of all of God's elect. I've told you as briefly as I could what were the stipulations of it. You will please remember, my dear friends, that the covenant is on one side perfectly fulfilled. God the Son has paid the debts of all of the elect. He has for us men and for our redemption suffered the whole of divine wrath. Nothing remains now on this side of the question except that He shall continue to intercede that He may safely bring all His redeemed to glory. On the side of the Father, this part of the covenant has been fulfilled to countless myriads. God the Father and God the Spirit have not been behind hand in their divine contract. And mark you, this side shall be as fully and as completely finished and carried out as the other. Christ can say of what He promised to do, it is finished and the like shall be said by all the glorious covenanters. All for whom Christ died shall be pardoned, and justified, and adopted. The Spirit shall quicken them all, shall give them all faith, shall bring them all to heaven, and they shall, every one of them, without obstruction or hindrance, stand accepted in the Beloved in the day when the people shall be numbered and Jesus shall be glorified. And so these were the ways in which the high contracting parties, as it were, agreed with each other in the specific things that they were to accomplish within the covenant. So then he asked in this sermon, who were the objects of the covenant? He says, well, it was not every man. He sees men every day He preaches to them. He pleads with them. He sees them going on in sin and suffering. He knows, as Fuller said, that they should repent, they should believe. God is no less holy, and God is no less worthy of their worship to these men than He is to others. But no matter how He pleads with them, no matter how He sets these things before them, He sees them scoffing. He sees them ignorant. He sees them coming to death. He sees them die. He sees people who had been in His congregation nevertheless going to death without ever having come to a saving knowledge of Christ. He sees them defiant and impenitent. He says, these have no part, no lot in the sacred covenant of grace. It is therefore, this is the reason that there are some that are called the elect. And it is only the elect, it is only that God places His grace on beforehand. It is only them that the Spirit has covenanted to quicken them and to bring them to saving faith. Only these will come and none besides. Well, then what is the motive of the covenant? Why did God do this? Well, he looks at it and says, it is not in us. God has power over all that He has made to make them for His own purposes. So there's no obligation He has to destine any person to live with Him forever. There are perhaps a variety of ways in which God could have done this, but the way He's done it is the wisest. And so in one sense, the way He did it was necessary because it is the wisest way, and God could not do anything that was not the wisest. But this lets us know that it is not in us, that it is all in Him. He does the things that He does, not because we deserve it, not because we have any kind of necessarily compelling reason of divinity within us. It is all as a result of His sovereignty and His grace. In fact, the effect of all of it, as it will be in the end, is that which was intended from the beginning. The effect of all of it will be that Christ is praised as the Redeemer, the Father is praised as the one who has chosen, the Spirit is praised as the one who has quickened and calls to persevere. And so these effects of the covenant were the intent Therefore, it was His own glory. It was for the restoration of praise to God. Ephesians 1, we see this chorus that recurs of praise. And there's a praise to the Father in the first seven verses. There's then a praise to the Son, verses that go up through around verse 12 or 13. And then there's a praise to the Spirit. And each one of these is to the praise of the glory of His grace, or to the praise of His glory, that we might be, that we might exist to the praise of His glory. So that is the reason He did it. He did it because there is a certain aspect of praise that could not be accomplished in any other way, and He establishes this eternal covenant in order to have an ever-flowing and ever-increasing, as it were, a manifestation of praise in eternity. Therefore, He finds His motives for the covenant of grace, the everlasting covenant within Himself. Next, he deals with the everlasting character of this. He talks about its antiquity. It's older than the covenant of works. And it lasts beyond the covenant of works. Though the effect of the covenant of works in righteousness for the persons is something that is necessary, all of that arises out of the eternal covenant of redemption. So in antiquity, it has greater integrity both for its ancient-ness and also for its ever-present results in eternity. It's sureness. There are no uncertainties in it. There are no human ifs, ands, or buts, but only the divine I shall, I will. And then as a result of this, it is they shall. There is a difference between a covenant that depends on the faithfulness of man and one that secures the faithfulness of man. So all the passages that relate to if you continue in the faith, if you continue, this means that that is an evidence that indeed God has placed His eternal love upon you because you would not continue if it were not for His effectual grace. And so continuing is not the condition in which the faithfulness of man secures the covenant, faithfulness is the evidence by which we see that God has secured covenant faithfulness for himself. He says the Armenian covenant depends on the faithfulness of man, and they surely will fail. He says about this, out upon such blasphemy. He calls the covenant immutable, it cannot be changed. The changing God, he says, this God who can justify and then take away justification, this God who could give the Spirit and take away the Spirit. Depending upon the attitudes and depending on the deportment of men this God can give forgiveness and take away forgiveness. This God can promise heaven and then take it away. This God can give eternal life and then make sure that it was not eternal life, it was only temporal. He said that is a God that is similar to the devil. We've heard others say that about the Calvinist God, that kind of God would be my devil. Well, Spurgeon had returned the favor before anyone else ever said that. This is a covenant that will never run itself out. It will come to consummation in heaven, but it will not come to conclusion. The purposes of it will abide forever and ever. Then he talks about the relationship it bears to the blood, since it is talking about the blood of the eternal covenant. Well, the blood is the fulfillment of all It is a word that includes in it the fulfillment of every moral demand that God makes. The blood is the representative of the perfect obedience of Christ. And without his perfect obedience and his obedience even to this last positive command to die for the just for the unjust, a thing for which he had no real moral responsibility to die, the just for the unjust, but nevertheless it was a positive command that God had given him. He follows that and so the shedding of his blood is the completion of his righteousness. And the shedding of His blood also is the gaining of forgiveness. So both parts of justification, both forgiveness and eternal life by completed righteousness come as a result of the blood. And so to Christ, this blood of the eternal covenant is the fulfillment of everything that is needed for man. To God the Father, it is the bond of the covenant. none of it could come to pass, none of the praise could come to pass, none of the eternal life could come to pass, none of the fellowship, none of the increase of holiness, none of the manifestation of the wisdom of God, none of this could have come to pass without the blood of the everlasting covenant. So God certainly will perform all that Christ has died to attain. He who spared not his own son But according to the covenant of grace, the Father delivered Him up for us all. If He spared not His own Son, if He's done the greatest thing, how shall He not also along with Him freely give us all things? If He's given us His beloved Son, He will certainly give us all things. And so for the Father, the blood of the eternal covenant is the certainty that God will perform everything that Christ has died to attain. and then to the spirit. It is that which sets forth the Spirit to do His work of conversion, to bring those for whom the price has been paid to saving faith, where they justly can be included within the family of God, where He will dwell to root out their indwelling sin, because the purpose is to be conformed to Christ, whose blood is the manifestation of His perfect righteousness. And if His people are to be conformed to Christ, there must be the work of the Spirit to continue to move them into godliness. And then to its objects, the blood of the eternal covenant serves as an evidence of God's determination to accomplish what He intended to accomplish. His Son died for this purpose. It is that which gives knowledge of election. If we have believed in the blood, if we have embraced the blood, if we have seen that the blood is our only hope, this then is a grounds of assurance that we have indeed not only embraced the blood, but have been embraced by the blood. Then He asked the people, do you believe? Do you believe that this is the truth? Do you believe the blood is your only hope? Are you in the covenant to all three persons? The blood is the glory of everything and it is the common glory of all three persons of the Trinity. And it is the common boast of all three persons of the Trinity. So it is the only thing in which we can boast. As Paul said, God forbid that I should glory about anything except the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ. It is the boast of the triune God. It is the statement of His absolute, utter faithfulness to this covenant. And how much more should it be our only boast? So, he asks, are you in the covenant? The gospel should be freely preached to all. When people come, it is because they are elect, they have been bought. He applies election to the present quest for salvation. He says, I believe the man who is not willing to submit to the electing love and the sovereign grace of God has great reason to question whether he is a Christian. at all. That was in 1859. Then, in 1879, he preached a message called, The Covenant Pleaded, which is based upon Psalm 74. Have respect unto the covenant. He says there, I need not tell you, for you are our trust, well grounded in that matter, that the covenant here spoken of is the covenant of grace. Even as Asaph was pleading the covenant of grace. He knew that there are other covenants had been broken. That's the reason God's punishment was coming upon them. And so what he's pleading here is the covenant of grace. Have regard to the covenant. I need not tell you that this is the covenant of grace. There is a covenant which we could not plead in prayer, the covenant of works, the covenant which destroys us, for we have broken it. Our first father sinned and the covenant was broken. We have continued in his perverseness and that covenant condemns us." So what is meant by the word, have regard to your covenant? Well, he says Asaph meant fulfill all the promises of your covenant, even in the midst of this distressing time, even when it seems like God's enemies are overcoming us, even when God's place is being destroyed. Nevertheless, we have confidence you're the creator of all things, you're the controller of all things, and so have regard to your covenant. Where does this derive its force? Well, this plea to have regard to the covenant derives its force from the veracity of God, the truthfulness of God, which has already been set forth in the Psalm. It derives force from God's sacred jealousy for His honor. He will not allow the ungodly to triumph over Him, but this will be a means for demonstrating His greater power and His greater glory. So God's jealousy for His own honor is a way in which we plead the covenant. The venerable character of the covenant, the age of it, the venerable character related to the promises that are made to the patriarchs which arise out of the eternal grace and purpose of God. The solemn endorsement that is given, the stamp of God's oath upon it that God Himself will do it. God Himself has established these things. God Himself has chosen those as His people. God Himself has said that it is through you the Messiah will come. So we can plead that, the solemn endorsement of it because of the stamp of God's oath. And He says, now we can plead it because it is sealed with blood. It is a covenant now which the just must keep. Jesus has fulfilled our side of it. He has executed to the letter all the demands of God upon man. Our surety and our substitute has at once kept the law and suffered all that was due by His people on account of their breach of it. And now shall not the Lord be true and the everlasting Father be faithful to His own Son? How can He refuse to His Son? the joy which he set before him, and the reward which he promised him." Referring, of course, there to Hebrews 12, who for the joy that was set before him, despised the cross, enduring its shame, and is set down at the right hand of the throne on high. Then he asks, when may the covenant be pleaded? Very quickly, you can plead the covenant under a sense of sin because He says there are iniquities, I will remember no more. When you're labored to overcome inward corruption because He says I will put my law in their inward parts. When you desire to be upheld in strong temptations, I will put my fear in their hearts and they shall not depart from me. For all the various needs of God's people, He will equip you with everything good for doing His will. What are the practical inferences from all of this? Well, as we ask of God, we too should have respect unto the covenant, even as Asaph asked God to do. We should have a grateful respect for it, thankful that we've been included in it and that it shows all the glory of God and the power of God and the grace of God. We should have a joyful respect for it because of our promise to live in the presence of God forever where our joy will be made full. We should have a jealous respect for it. He says, never suffer the covenant of works to be mixed with it. Hate that preaching. I say not less than that. Hate that preaching, which does not discriminate between the covenant of works and the covenant of grace, for it is deadly preaching and damning preaching. A strict line between what is of man and what is of God. And then have a special respect for it. Let all see that the covenant of grace, while it is your reliance, also is your delight." And then, don't you hate it when preachers say, briefly, Spurgeon, in his preaching, he says, don't be a person who can never end. I said, I've heard a person say lastly, and then lastly and finally, and then lastly and finally in conclusion, and then now one more blessed word. And it says, all the blessing had gone out of it by that time. So I hope the blessing hadn't gone out of it by the earth's time. But this is the last one. We've looked at 1856, 1859, 1879. Now this is 1889. And he's preached a message in the morning on the covenant of grace. And he was so bound up in it, he couldn't quit. And so he, on June 30, 1889, He closes with these 12 covenant mercies, 12 applications. All the encouragement went out of your face when I said that. So he says, we've broken the covenant of works. We wrote the terms of that covenant. It's no longer valid, except we come under the penalty for the breach of it. That penalty is that we're to be cast away from God's presence to perish without hope. And this is like 1859. This is 1889. I mean, the covenant was so deeply embedded with him, he just could hardly preach without seeing it throughout all of scripture. And he never changed his mind about what it meant. We're to be cast away from God's presence to perish without hope so far as that broken covenant is concerned. Now rolling up that old covenant is 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 any if or and or but in it. but it is 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. Now here's the evangelistic appeal which is so amazing. Spurgeon after preaching these things in such an absolute sense nevertheless he knows the means by which people come into this existentially is because their urge to do this by God's messengers and the promises that he gives. If you come into this covenant look at what you're gonna get. So he has these 12 blessings. What are these blessings? Well, first of all there is saving knowledge. Man by nature knows not God. He does not want to know God. And when he is awakened to thinking of God at all, God seems a great mystery and so forth. But here, this covenant of 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? Second, God's law is written on the heart, tables of stone, broken. 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. When He comes and writes on the fleshly 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. This is the covenantal blessing. God makes men to love his commandments and to delight themselves in the truth of God, righteousness, and holiness. 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. Third, we get free pardon. This is for sinners. It's not for those who are good. The rich he hath sent empty away. Oh, what a precious covenant and 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 anything set before you of 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. Fourth, reconciliation. Jeremiah 32, 38, they shall be my people and I will be their God. Then he goes on and talks about this, and then at the end he says, 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. Fifth, true godliness. He will give the fear of God, which is true godliness, but when he says that he will give it, that is a very different, 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 the 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 this is a part of the covenant. Blessing. More wonderful than anything I've yet read, the six covenant mercy, I will not turn away from them and they shall not depart from me. And then he reminds us of John 10, that no man can take them out of my hand. The seventh one is cleansing from Ezekiel 36. Cleansing from all impurity and from all idolatry, I will sprinkle clean water on you and make you clean. The eighth one is a renewal of nature. A new heart I will give you and a new spirit I will put within you. The pig may eat as much swill as he wants, and we will not envy him." We want better food than that. A renewal of nature. The ninth covenant is holy conversation. We're not only called to holiness, but we're made to walk in the way of holiness. He says, if this miracle has 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 a power of God working through the, working, let me get the right page up here. working through the spirit of the gospel, making dry bones to live, and turning black sinners into bright saints, to the praise of the glory of his grace. Tenth, he gives us a happy self-loathing. Free grace makes men loathe themselves. We had this earlier about the sanctifying influences of the Spirit where we see more and more unholiness and all the time He's making us more holy. Happy self-loathing. 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. blessing of communion with God, Ezekiel 37, God promises to set up His tabernacle and His temple in the midst of His people to make them 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, to go no more out forever until the day when He shall take you to His place, to His home above to be forever in His presence and to serve Him day and night in His temple. and the 12th is needful chastisement. Psalm 89 to 30. There is a rod in the covenant. Children of God, you do not like it. It were not a rod if you did like it, 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, when you transgress the rod shall be sure to fall upon you, and sometimes its stroke shall come upon you before you transgress to keep you from sinning. You think sometimes. That man is very happy. He has a 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 anything 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 depressings of spirit are all when we see them in the light eternal. So many covenant. Well, what a contrast of the blessings of the covenant to what many times we are led to believe will be true of those who come into fellowship with God through His Son. Let's pray together. Father, we thank You that we do have all the promises of the covenant. We thank You that they are fulfilled in Christ. We thank You that they are determined to make us repentant sinners, to make us believing sinners, to make us holy sinners, and that you will employ all the means that you need to employ, all the means that are provided in the covenant of grace to make us holy, even when there is fatherly displeasure and fatherly chastening. We are to rejoice. We know that we're not illegitimate children when we are chastened by our father, that we might be more like him, that we might obey him more fully and readily, and that we might be conformed to the son he has that is absolutely perfect and holy and filled with unutterable and infinite joy because of having finished his course Lord, help us to finish the course according to your covenant intentions. In Jesus' name we pray. Amen.