The Balm of the Covenant in Modern English

Although my house be not so with God; yet he hath made with me an everlasting covenant, ordered in all things, and sure: for this is all my salvation, and all my desire, although he make it not to grow. (2 Sam 23:5)

These are part of David’s last words. The last words of dying saints, and especially of dying prophets, are weighty, memorable, and extraordinarily remarkable; and all expositors acknowledge these words to be such. It is a golden sentence, a divine oracle, fit to be the last words of every dying saint as well as of David.

They are called his last words, not simply and absolutely, as though he breathed them out with his last breath, for he spoke many things afterward. Rather, either they are the last he spoke as a prophet, by divine inspiration, or else they are so called because he had them often in his mouth up to his last and dying day. They were his funeral song, his sweet swan-like song, in which his soul found singular refreshment and strong support amid the manifold afflictions of his life, and against the fears of his approaching death.

The whole chapter is designed as a crowning conclusion, an honorable close to the life of David. It gives us an account both of the worthy sayings that fell from him and of the renowned worthies who were employed by him. But all the heroic achievements recorded to the honor of their memories in the following part of the chapter are trivial and inglorious things compared with this divine sentence recorded in my text. In it we have two things to consider: first, the preface, which is exceedingly solemn; and second, the speech itself, which is exceedingly weighty.

1. In the preface we have both the instrumental cause and the principal efficient cause of this divine sentence distinctly set down: the instrument in verse 1, and the efficient cause, or author, in verse 2.

The instrument or organ by which it was conveyed to us was David. He is described by his descent or lineage, “the son of Jesse”; by his eminent station, “the man that was raised up on high,” even to the top and highest point of civil and spiritual dignity and honor, both as a king and as a prophet; by his divine anointing, “the anointed of the God of Jacob”; and lastly, by the flowing sweetness of his spirit and style in the divine psalms that he wrote. From this he here receives the title “the sweet psalmist of Israel,” or, as some read it, “the pleasant one in the psalms of Israel” (2 Sam 23:1).

The principal efficient cause of this excellent passage is likewise noted here, and all to commend it the more to our special attention and acceptance: “The Spirit of God spake by me, and his word was in my tongue” (2 Sam 23:2). This stamps my text expressly with divine authority. The Spirit of God spoke by David; he was not the author of it, but only the scribe. Thus the discourse that follows is prefaced. Let us next look at the second thing.

2. The matter, or speech itself. Here we shall find the maxims and general rules of government prescribed, and the happiness of such a government elegantly described: “He that ruleth over men must be just, ruling in the fear of God” (2 Sam 23:3). Princes, being in God’s place, must exalt the righteousness of God in the government of men; and when they do so, they shall be “as the light of the morning when the sun riseth, even a morning without clouds…” (2 Sam 23:4). What halcyon days that happy people shall see whose lot is cast into such times and places!

All this is spoken, in the way of a type, of David and of the godly princes who succeeded him; but mystically and eminently it points to Christ, who was to rise out of David’s seed (Rom 1:3) and to sit upon his throne (Acts 2:30). So in this David was raised on high to a preeminence of glory and dignity indeed. He was so even in his ordinary natural seed: a royal race, descended from him, sat upon the throne in lineal succession until the Babylonian captivity, which was about four hundred and thirty years. And after that the Jews had governors of his line, or at least rightful heirs to that crown, until the promised Messiah came.

But the summit of David’s honor, the most sparkling jewel in his crown, was this: that the Lord Jesus was to descend from him according to the flesh, in whom all the glorious characters given before should be not only exactly answered but abundantly exceeded. And so you find the natural line of the Messiah drawn down by Matthew from David to the virgin Mary (Matt 1), and his legal line drawn by Luke from David to Joseph, his supposed father (Luke 3:23).

Now the illustrious marks and characters of such a righteous, serene, and happy government did not fully fit David’s own day, nor would they do so in the reigns of his ordinary natural successors; his day was not without many clouds, both of sin and of trouble. Yet he foresaw and rejoiced in such a blessed day, when Christ, the extraordinary seed of David, should arise and set up his kingdom in the world. With the expectation of it he greatly cheers and encourages himself: “Although my house be not so with God, yet hath he made with me an everlasting covenant…”

In these words four things are eminently remarkable: first, a sad concession of domestic evils; second, a singular relief from God’s covenant with him; third, the glorious properties of this covenant displayed; and fourth, the high esteem and dear regard he had for it.

1. Here is David’s sad and mournful concession of the evils of his house, both moral and penal: “Although my house be not so with God.” That is, it was neither so holy nor so happy as this description of a righteous and flourishing government implies; alas, it does not answer to it. He was eminent for godliness himself, and had solemnly dedicated his house to God as soon as it was built (Ps 30). Yes, he had piously resolved to walk in the midst of it with a perfect heart, and not to allow an immoral person within his walls (Ps 101:2-7). Yet great miscarriages were found even in David’s house and person, for which God chastised him by a thick succession of sharp and grievous afflictions.

Tamar was defiled by her brother Amnon (2 Sam 13:13). Amnon was barbarously murdered for it, by the advice of Absalom (2 Sam 13:28). Absalom unnaturally rebelled against his father David, drove him out of the royal city, and perished in that rebellion (2 Sam 15:1). Then Adonijah, another darling son, grasped at the crown that David had settled upon Solomon, and perished for that usurpation (1 Kgs 2:25). Oh, what a heap of mischiefs and calamities this good man lived to see within his own walls, besides the many foreign troubles that came from other hands! How many flourishing branches did God lop off from him, and that in their sins too! So his day was a day of clouds, from its morning to its evening: “Lord, remember David, and all his afflictions” (Ps 132:1). Well might he say that his house was not so with God.

But what then? Does he faint and lose heart under these manifold calamities? Does he refuse to be comforted because his children are gone and all things are wrapped up in trouble? No; instead you find this:

2. He finds relief in the covenant God had made with him: “Yet hath he made with me a covenant.” He looks to Christ. As the Chaldee paraphrase renders it, “There is more in the covenant than this my house before God.” This little word yet wraps up a great and sovereign cordial in it. Though Amnon, Absalom, and Adonijah are gone, and gone with many painful aggravations too, “yet hath he made with me a covenant.” Yet I have this sheet anchor left to secure me. God’s covenant with me, in relation to Christ, props up and shores up my heart.

This covenant was, beyond dispute, a gospel covenant. It was David’s gospel, for all his salvation and all his desire were in it; and that could never have been unless Christ had been in it, who is the salvation of all the ends of the earth and the desire of all nations.

It is true that it was a more obscure and imperfect edition of the covenant of faith. Yet it was clearer than those made before it, though it did not come up to the fullness and clearness of the revelations made by Jeremiah and Ezekiel. Still, in this covenant with David, God revealed more of Christ than had ever been revealed before; for the light of Christ, like that of the morning, increased more and more until it came to a perfect day.

It is worth our observing how God made a gradual revelation of Christ from Adam down to New Testament times. It was revealed to Adam that Christ should be “the seed of the woman” (Gen 3:15), but not of what nation until Abraham’s time; nor of what tribe until Jacob; nor of what sex and family until David; nor that he should be born of a virgin until Isaiah; nor in what town until Micah.

The first revelation of this covenant with David was by Nathan the prophet (2 Sam 7:12-14); it was afterward enlarged and confirmed (Ps 89). By it he knew much of Christ and wrote much of him. He speaks of his person (Ps 45:6, 11; Ps 8:4-6); of his offices, prophetical (Ps 40:8-10), priestly (Ps 110:4), and kingly (Ps 2:6); of his incarnation (Ps 8:5); of his death on the cross (Ps 22:16-17); of his burial (Ps 16:8-10); of his resurrection (Ps 2:7); and of his triumphant ascension (Ps 68:18). There the sum of the gospel was revealed, though in dark and typical terms and forms of expression.

But if David drew such strong support and consolation out of this covenant, obscure as its revelation was, amid such a heap of troubles, then the argument holds all the more strongly: what support and comfort may we not draw from it, we who live under the most full and perfect display of it in all its riches and glory? Enough has been said to prove it a gospel covenant; but if any doubt about that should remain, it will be fully removed by considering the third thing.

3. The excellent properties and characters of the covenant, as we find them placed in the text. They are three: it is everlasting; it is ordered in all things; and it is sure.

(1) It is “an everlasting covenant,” or a perpetual covenant, “a covenant of eternity.” This is not meant in the most strict, proper, and absolute sense, for that is the incommunicable property of God himself, who has neither beginning nor end. The meaning is that the benefits and mercies of the covenant are lasting and endless to the people of God. For since Christ is the principal matter and substance of the covenant, there must be in it an everlasting righteousness, as it is called (Dan 9:24), everlasting kindness (Isa 54:8), everlasting forgiveness (Jer 31:34), and, in consequence of all these, everlasting consolation (Isa 51:11). In all of these the riches and bounty of free grace shine forth in their greatest glory and splendor.

(2) It is a covenant “ordered in all things,” or orderly prepared, arranged, and set, as the word imports. Everything here is disposed and placed in the most fitting order; both persons and things keep their proper place. God the Father keeps the place of the most wise designer and bountiful giver of the priceless mercies of the covenant. Christ keeps his proper place, both as the purchaser and as the surety of the covenant and of all the mercies in it. And believers keep their place as the unworthy receivers of all its freely given mercies and rich benefits, and as the creatures most obliged to free grace in all the world, saying, “Although my house, yea, although my heart and my life be not so with God, yet he hath made with me an everlasting covenant.”

And as with persons, so with things: all things in this covenant stand in the most exquisite order and exact correspondence to each other. Oh, it is a ravishing sight to behold how the mercies in the covenant fit and answer to the sins and wants of all who are in it! Here are found full and suitable supplies for the wants of all God’s people. Here you may see pardon in the covenant for guilt in the soul; joy in the covenant for sorrow in the heart; strength in the covenant for all the defects and weaknesses in the creature; stability in the covenant for the changeableness in the creature. Never did the wisdom of God shine forth more in any contrivance in the world (except that of Christ, the surety and principal matter of the covenant) than it does in the orderly arranging of all things in their beautiful order and graceful proportions in this covenant of grace.

(3) It is a sure covenant, or a covenant safely laid up and kept, as the word imports. On this account its mercies are called “the sure mercies of David” (Isa 55:3). And so, speaking of this very covenant, God says, “My covenant shall stand fast with him” (Ps 89:28). There shall be no wavering, no shaking in this covenant. And again, “My covenant will I not break, nor alter the thing that is gone out of my lips” (Ps 89:34). Everything is as its foundation is. Now God’s covenant is founded in his unchangeable counsel and purpose, in which there can be no slipperiness, and Christ is its surety; so it must necessarily be, as the text calls it, a sure covenant. In it the faithfulness of God is as illustriously displayed as his bounty and wisdom are in its two former properties. And such a covenant as this, so everlasting, so aptly ordered, and so sure, must surely deserve that precious respect and high esteem from every believing soul which David here pays it.

4. The singular and high valuation he had of it, when he says, “This is all my salvation, and all my desire,” or, as some translate it, “all my delight or pleasure.” That is: here I find everything I have lost in created things repaired, with an infinite overplus. Here is life in death, fullness in wants, security in dangers, peace in troubles. It is “all my salvation,” for it leaves nothing in hazard that is essential to my happiness; and “all my desire,” for it repairs whatever I have lost or can lose. It is so full and complete a covenant that it leaves nothing to be desired outside it. Oh, it is a full fountain! Here I rest my weary soul with full satisfaction, and feed my hungry desires with the sweetest delights, so that my very soul is at rest and ease in the bosom of this blessed covenant.

Thus you have the parts and sense of the text. The observations drawn from it are three.

Observation 1. God’s covenant people may be exercised with many sharp afflictions in their persons and families.

Even David’s house was a house of mourning: “Although my house be not so with God, though he make it not to grow” (2 Sam 23:5). All sorts of outward afflictions can befall all sorts of people. “All things,” says Solomon, “come alike to all: there is one event to the righteous, and to the wicked; to the clean and unclean; to him that sacrificeth, and to him that sacrificeth not” (Eccl 9:2). The providences seem one and the same, though the people on whom they fall are vastly different. Estates and children, health and liberty, will still be what they are, vanishing comforts, whoever their owners may be. No one’s spiritual estate can be known by looking at his temporal estate. A godly family cannot be a miserable family, but it may be a mournful one. Religion secures us from the wrath of God, but it does not secure us from his rod. The Lord has chosen another way of expressing his love to his people than by temporal and external things; therefore “all things come alike to all.” The covenant excludes the curse, but it includes the cross: “If his children forsake my law … then will I visit their iniquity with the rod, and their sins with stripes: nevertheless my loving kindness will I not utterly take away” (Ps 89:30-33).

Nor indeed would it be a privilege for God’s covenant people to be exempt from the rod. A mark of illegitimacy can be no one’s happiness (Heb 12:8). To go without the chastening discipline of the rod would be to go without the needful instruction and the blessed fruits that accompany the rod and result from it (Ps 94:12).

Let us not, therefore, say what those irreligious people said in Malachi 3:14: “It is in vain to serve God, and what profit is it that we have kept his ordinances, and walked mournfully before him?” Surely no one serves him in vain except those who serve him vainly. Godliness cannot secure you from affliction, but it can and will secure you from hell, and sanctify your afflictions to help you to heaven. But I will not dwell on this here.

Observation 2. A declining family is a severe blow from the hand of God, and it should be acknowledged as such wherever it falls.

It was a growing sorrow to David that his house did not grow. And he saw the hand of God in it: “He made it not to grow,” as he says in the text (2 Sam 23:5). He felt as many deaths as he had dead children. It is God who builds families and destroys them; he enlarges them and narrows them again. A family may decline in two ways: either by death, or by the degeneracy of its offspring.

1. By their death. A family declines when God lops off its hopeful, springing branches, and especially when he takes away its last and only prop, the one in whom not only all the care and love of the parents, but all their hope and expectation too, is gathered up and bound. For the hearts of tender parents are usually bound up in the life of an only son; as Virgil says, “All the dear father’s care is fixed on Ascanius.” As a man’s wife is but himself divided, so his children are but himself multiplied. And when all love and delight, hope and expectation, are narrowed down to one, the affection is strong, and that makes the affliction strong too.

If this were not a grief without parallel among all earthly griefs and sorrows, the Spirit of God would never have chosen it and singled it out from all other sorrows to illustrate sorrow for sin. Yet he does exactly that, and uses it for sorrow over that special sin of piercing Christ: “They shall look upon him whom they have pierced, and shall mourn for him as one that mourneth for an only son” (Zech 12:10). How bare are those walls, and how unfurnished is that house, where the children, its best ornaments, are taken down and removed by death! It is natural to all people to desire the continuance of their names and families on the earth. Therefore, when God cuts off their expectations in that respect, they look upon themselves as dry trees, or as the withering stalks in the fields when the flowers have fallen off and blown away from them.

2. By the degeneracy of its offspring. Or, which is much worse still, a family may decline by the degeneracy of its offspring. When the piety, integrity, and virtues of the ancestors do not descend to their posterity along with their lands, then the true line of honor is cut off. The glory of a family dies even though its children live; the family is ruined even though it has numerous offspring. Surely it would be better to mourn for ten dead children than for one such living child.

How many such wretched families can England show today! How have atheism and debauchery ruined and overthrown many great and once famous families! Oh, it would have been better for the coats of arms of those families to have been reversed in disgrace and their lands to have passed to others. Yes, it would have been better for the succession to have failed and their names to have been blotted out, than for Satan to rule by ungodliness in the places where God was once so seriously and sweetly worshiped.

Whenever, therefore, God overthrows a family in either of these ways, it is fitting for those who are touched by the blow not only to own and acknowledge the hand of God in it, but also to search their hearts and their houses to find out the sins that have so provoked him. Yet they must not do this in a way that makes them fall into an unbecoming despondency of spirit. Together with it, they should draw relief for themselves from the covenant of God, as David does here: “Yet hath he made with me an everlasting covenant” (2 Sam 23:5). This brings us to the third and principal point I will dwell on.

Observation 3. The everlasting, well-ordered, and sure covenant of grace affords everlasting, well-ordered, and sure relief to all who are within its bond, however many or however great their personal or domestic trials and afflictions may be.

This point will be made clear to your understandings, and prepared for your use, by clearing and opening three propositions, which in their order take up its whole sum and substance.

Proposition 1. The minds of men, yes, of the best men, are weak and feeble things under the heavy pressures of affliction, and will reel and sink under them unless they are strongly relieved and propped up.

A bowing wall does not need a strong prop or buttress more than the mind of man needs a strong support and stay from heaven when the weight of affliction makes it incline and lean all one way. “Unless thy law had been my delight, I should then have perished in my affliction” (Ps 119:92). It is as if the psalmist said: How other men manage to stand the shock of their afflictions, I do not know; but this I know, that if God had not sent me the relief of a promise just in season, I would certainly have fainted away in a fit of despondency. Oh, how seasonably God administered the cordials of his word to my drooping, sinking soul!

This weakness in the mind to bear the burdens of affliction proceeds from a double cause:

1. From the sinking weight of the affliction.

2. From the irregular and inordinate workings of its thoughts.

1. From the sinking weight that is in affliction, especially in some sorts of afflictions. They are heavy pressures, ponderous burdens in themselves. So Job speaks: “O that my grief were thoroughly weighed, and my calamity laid in the balances together; for now it would be heavier than the sand of the sea, therefore my words are swallowed up” (Job 6:2-3). It is as if he said: If all the sand that lies upon all the shores in the world were shoveled up into one heap and cast into the one scale, and my sorrows into the other, my grief would outweigh it all. How heavy are the hearts of the afflicted! What unbearable sorrows they feel and groan under, especially when God strikes them in the dearest concerns they have in the world!

2. But the reelings and staggerings of the mind are occasioned especially by the inordinate and irregular workings of its own thoughts. If it were only possible to keep the mind in a serene, sedate, and well-ordered frame, our burdens would be light compared with what we now feel them to be. But the falling of the thoughts into confusion and great distraction spoils everything. This is why afflictions are compared to a stupefying dose, which casts the soul into bewilderment: “Thou hast showed thy people hard things, thou hast made us to drink the wine of astonishment” (Ps 60:3).

Afflictions are called the wine of astonishment from their effects upon the mind. For under a great and sudden stroke of God, the mind is like a watch wound up beyond its due height, so that for a time it stands still, and neither grace nor reason moves at all. And when it begins to move again, oh, how confused and irregular its motions are! It is full of murmurs, disputes, and quarrels, and these aggravate both our sin and our misery. It is our own thoughts that take the arrow God shot at us (which before had only stuck in our clothes, and was never intended to hurt us, but only to warn us) and thrust it into our very hearts.

For thoughts, as well as daggers, can pierce and wound the hearts of men. “A sword shall pierce through thine own soul” (Luke 2:35); that is, your thoughts will pierce you. They can shake the whole fabric of the body, and loosen the best-compacted and most strongly jointed parts of the body: “His thoughts troubled him, and the joints of his loins were loosed” (Dan 5:6). And so a man’s own mind becomes a rack of torment to him, a misery to which no creatures except men and devils are subject. Oh, how many bodies have been destroyed by the passions of the soul! They cut through the body as a keen knife cuts through a narrow sheath. Worldly sorrow works death (2 Cor 7:10).

Proposition 2. The merciful God, in condescension to the weakness of his people, has provided the best supports and reliefs for their feeble and afflicted spirits.

“In the multitude of my thoughts within me thy comforts delight my soul” (Ps 94:19). Worldly people seek relief in their troubles from worldly things. When one created thing forsakes them, they retreat to another that is still left to them, until they are beaten out of everything. Then their hearts fail, because they have no acquaintance with God and no special interest in him; for created things will quickly spend all the allowance of comfort they have to spend on us. Some try what relief the rules of philosophy can give them, supposing that a neat sentence of Seneca may be as good a remedy as a text of David or Paul. But alas, it will not do. A submission that comes from bowing to fatal necessity will never ease the afflicted mind the way Christian resignation will. It is not rooting out the affections but regulating them that calms a burdened and distracted soul. One word of God will mean more to our peace than all the famous and admired precepts of men.

To neglect God and seek relief from the creature is to forsake the fountain of living waters and go to the broken cisterns that can hold no water (Jer 2:13). The best created thing is only a cistern, not a fountain; and our dependence on it makes it a broken cistern and strikes a hole through its bottom, so that it can hold no water. “I, even I,” says God, “am he that comforteth you” (Isa 51:12). The same hand that wounds you must heal you, or you can never be healed. Our compassionate Savior, to soothe our sorrows, has promised that “he will not leave us comfortless” (John 14:18). Our God will not contend forever, lest the spirit fail before him (Isa 57:16). He knew how ineffective all other comforts and comforters would be, even physicians of no value; and therefore he has graciously prepared comforts for his distressed ones that will achieve their end.

Proposition 3. God has gathered all the materials and principles of our relief into the covenant of grace, and he expects us to betake ourselves to it in times of distress, as to our sure, sufficient, and only remedy.

As all the rivers run into the sea, and there all the waters meet together, so all the promises and comforts of the gospel are gathered into the covenant of grace, and there all the sweet streams of refreshment that are scattered throughout the Scriptures meet together. The covenant is the storehouse of promises, the shop of cordials and rare elixirs to revive us in all our faintings. Yet, alas, most people know no more what the virtues of these cordials and elixirs are, or where to find them, than an illiterate rustic set down in an apothecary’s shop.

What was the cordial God prepared to revive the hearts of his poor captives, groaning under hard and grievous bondage both in Egypt and in Babylon? Was it not his covenant with Abraham? And why did he give it the solemn confirmation of an oath, except so that it might yield to Abraham and all his believing seed “strong consolation” (Heb 6:17-18), the very spirit of joy amid all their sorrows?

And what was the relief God gave to the believing eunuchs who kept his Sabbaths, took hold of his covenant, and chose the things in which he delighted? “To them,” he says, “will I give in my house, and within my walls, a place, and a name better than that of sons or of daughters” (Isa 56:4-5). Though they were deprived of the comforts other people have in their descendants, he would not have them look on themselves as dry trees. An interest in the covenant would answer for everything, and abundantly make up for the lack of children or of any other earthly comfort.

Certainly, then, David was at the right door of relief and comfort when he turned to the covenant, as here in the text: “Yet hath he made with me an everlasting covenant” (2 Sam 23:5). There, or nowhere, the relief of God’s afflicted is to be found.

Now, for anything to become a complete and perfect relief to an afflicted spirit, these three properties must come together and meet in it; otherwise it can never effectively relieve anyone:

1. It must be able to remove all the causes and grounds of trouble.

2. It must be able to do so at all times.

3. It must be capable of giving us good personal security.

For if it only diverts our troubles (as creature-comforts usually do) and does not remove the ground and cause of our trouble, it is only a painkiller, not a cure or remedy. And if it can remove the very ground and cause of our trouble for a time, but not forever, then it is only a temporary relief. Our troubles may return, and we may be left in as bad a condition as we were before. And if it is able in itself to remove all the causes and grounds of our trouble, and to do so at all times, but is not capable of giving us personal security, that is, a well-established interest of our own in it, then it all means nothing for our relief.

But open your eyes and see, you afflicted saints, all these properties of a complete relief meeting together in the covenant as it is displayed in the text. Here is a covenant able to remove all the grounds and causes of your trouble, for it is “ordered in all things”; that is, it is fitly arranged by the wisdom and design of God to answer every cause and ground of trouble and sorrow in our hearts. It is able to do this at all times, in our day as well as in David’s or Abraham’s day, for it is an “everlasting covenant”; its virtue and power are not worn away by time. And lastly, it is capable of giving good personal security, or assurance, to all God’s afflicted people, for it is a “sure covenant.”

The meeting of these three properties in the covenant makes it a complete relief and a perfect remedy, lacking nothing that belongs to the kind and nature of a remedy. These three glorious properties of the covenant are my proper task to open and confirm, for your support and comfort in this day of trouble.

1. The covenant of grace is able to remove all the causes and grounds of a believer’s trouble, however great or many they may be. I do not doubt that this will be convincingly shown and proved by the following arguments, or undeniable reasons.

Argument 1. Whatever disarms afflictions of the only sting by which they wound us must necessarily be a complete relief and remedy to the afflicted soul.

But the covenant of grace does this: it disarms afflictions of the only sting by which they wound us.

Therefore the covenant of grace must necessarily be a complete relief and remedy to the afflicted soul.

The sting of all afflictions is the guilt of sin. When God strikes, conscience usually strikes too, and this is what causes all the pain and anguish in the afflicted. It is plainly so in the example of the widow of Zarephath. When her son, her only son and probably her only child, died, how that stroke of God revived guilt in her conscience and made the affliction piercing and intolerable! This appears in her passionate protest to Elijah, who was then staying in her house: “What have I to do with thee, O man of God? art thou come unto me to call my sins to remembrance, and to slay my son?” (1 Kgs 17:18). It is as if she said, “What wrong have I done you? Did you come here to observe my sins and pray down this judgment on my child for them?” The death of her son revived her guilt, and so it generally does, even in the holiest of men.

When Job looked on his wasted body under his afflictions, every wrinkle he saw on it seemed to him like a witness rising up to testify against him: “Thou hast filled me with many wrinkles, which is a witness against me, and my leanness rising up in me beareth witness to my face” (Job 16:8).

Affliction is like a hue and cry raised after sin in the ear of conscience, and this is the envenomed, poisonous sting of affliction. Pluck this out, and the afflicted man is eased at once, even though the matter of the affliction still remains with him and lies on him. He is afflicted still, but not cast down by affliction. The anguish and burden are gone, though the matter of the trouble remains.

This is plain both in Scripture and in experience. In keeping with it is that strange but sweet expression: “The inhabitants shall not say, I am sick: the people that dwell therein shall be forgiven their iniquities” (Isa 33:24). We are not to imagine that these people had found some fortunate island or fine climate where no disease could touch or invade their bodies. No, sickness will find out the bodies of the best people wherever they live; wherever sin has been, sickness and death will follow. Heaven is the only place exempt from these miseries. But the meaning is that though they are sick, they will not feel the pains and burdens of sickness: “they shall not say they are sick.” And why not? Because their iniquities are forgiven. This plainly confirms what was asserted before, that the anguish of an affliction is gone as soon as ever the sting of guilt is plucked out.

And so the pardoning of the soul and the healing of the body are put together as paired mercies: “Bless the Lord, O my soul, who forgiveth all thine iniquities, and healeth all thy diseases” (Ps 103:1, 3). When the soul is at ease, the pains of the body are next to nothing. Sickness can cloud all natural joys, but not the joy of a pardon.

Indeed, what is more, pluck out only the sting of sin, and there is no horror in death, the king of terrors and the worst of all outward evils. See how the pardoned believer triumphs over it: “O death, where is thy sting? O grave, where is thy victory? The sting of death is sin” (1 Cor 15:55-56). These are words of defiance, the way people used to mock and scorn a boasting, insulting enemy when they saw him thrown on his back and his sword broken over his head. As Ovid has it, “Where’s now thy threats? See there thy fury laid.”

Where are your boasts and threats now? O Death, you have lost your sting and your terror together! So the pardoned believer, with a holy gallantry of spirit, mocks and scorns his disarmed enemy, death. It is clear, then, that whatever plucks out the poisonous sting of affliction must necessarily be an effective remedy and cure for the afflicted person.

But this is what the covenant of grace does: it reveals and applies gospel forgiveness to those who are within its blessed bond. “This shall be the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel: I will forgive their iniquity, and I will remember their sin no more” (Jer 31:33-34). See here a gracious, full, and irrevocable pardon! “I will forgive,” or “I will be propitiously merciful,” as that word means, pointing plainly to Christ our propitiation; our sins are forgiven us for his name’s sake.

And it is a pardon as full as it is free. Iniquity and sin, smaller and greater, are forgiven here. For God, in forgiving his people’s sins, has regard to the propitiating blood of Christ, and so he pardons all as well as some, since that blood deserves and purchases the fullest and most complete pardon for his people: “The blood of Christ cleanseth us from all sin” (1 John 1:7).

And this covenant pardon is as firm as it is free and full. So run the words of the grant: “I will remember their sin no more”; or, in the apostle’s words, “I will not remember them again” (Heb 8:12). That is, I will not remember them so as to impute them, or to condemn my pardoned ones for them. For pardoned people never again come into condemnation (John 5:24). Their sins are cast into the depths of the sea (Mic 7:19). The east and the west, the two opposite points of heaven, will sooner meet than the pardoned soul and its sins will meet again in condemnation (Ps 103:12).

Now, since this is the case with all God’s covenant people, all their sins being graciously, fully, and irrevocably forgiven them, how convincingly and sweetly this conclusion follows: the covenant is a complete remedy for all afflicted believers! Just as, before Christ and pardon are ours, nothing that can befall us is sufficient to raise us up, so afterward nothing that can befall us should cast us down and sink us. This is the first benefit afflicted believers receive from the covenant, and this alone is enough to heal all our sorrows.

Argument 2. The covenant of grace disarms all the afflictions of believers of the only sting by which they wound them. In the same way, it alters the very nature and property of their afflictions and turns them from a curse into a blessing to them. And in doing so it becomes more than a remedy; it becomes a choice benefit and advantage to them.

All afflictions, in their own nature, are a part of the curse. They are the consequence and punishments of sin, and they work naturally against our good. But once they are taken into the covenant, their nature and property is altered. Waters flowing through underground passages meet some potent mineral in their course, and they are thereby impregnated with it and endowed with a rare healing property for the body. In the same way, afflictions passing through the covenant receive from it a healing virtue for our souls. In themselves they are sour and harsh, like wild hedge-fruits; but once they are grafted into this stock, they yield the pleasant fruits of righteousness. “If his children break my statutes, and keep not my commandments, then will I visit their iniquity with the rod, and their sins with stripes: Nevertheless my loving kindness will I not utterly take away, nor suffer my faithfulness to fail” (Ps 89:30-33). Here you may see all the rods of affliction put into the covenant, as Aaron’s rod was put into the ark. And from this two things necessarily follow.

1. Such afflictions can do the children of God no hurt. They may frighten them, but they cannot hurt them. We may meet them with fear, but we shall part from them with joy. An unsanctified rod never did anyone any good, and a sanctified rod never did anyone any hurt. God may afflict our bodies with sickness. He may deny us comfort in children, or cut it off. He may impoverish our estates and let persecutors loose upon us. Yet in all this he really does us no hurt, as he speaks in Jeremiah 25:6. He does us no more hurt than a skillful surgeon does when he saves his patient’s life by cutting off a dead, gangrened limb. He does us no more hurt than frost and snow do to the earth when they kill the rank weeds that drained its sap and strength, and so prepare and mellow it to produce a fruitful crop of grain. By these afflictions he calls our minds back from vanity and weans our fond and ensnaring affections from the world. By them he exposes and puts to death those lusts that gentler methods and attempts could not reach. And is this for our hurt?

I confess that God’s thoughts and ours often differ on this matter. We measure the good and evil of providences by how they bear on the ease and pleasure of our flesh. But God sees that this ease and pleasure is the very way to cast our spirits into a dead formality. In removing them he only deprives us of the occasions and instruments of spiritual harms and miseries, and in that he certainly does us no hurt.

2. But that is not all. Afflictions, once put into the covenant, must promote the good of the saints. They are beneficial things as well as harmless ones. “We know,” says the apostle, “that all things work together for good to them that love God” (Rom 8:28). This promise is the compass that sets the course and directs the motion of all the afflictions of the people of God. No ship at sea obeys its rudder so exactly as the troubles of the righteous obey the directions of this promise. Perhaps we cannot discern this at present. Instead we judge the works of God too soon, and say that all these things are against us. But hereafter we shall see it, and with joy acknowledge them to be the happy instruments of our salvation.

How often has affliction sent the people of God to their knees with words like these! “O my God, how vain and sensual this heart of mine has been under prosperity! How the love of the creature, like a sluice cut in the bank of a river, drew away the stream of my affections from you! I had gotten a soft pillow of creature-comforts under my head. I easily fell asleep and dreamed of nothing but rest and pleasure, in a state of absence from you. But now your rod has awakened me and brought me back to a right sense of my condition. I was negligent or dead-hearted in the course of my duty, but now I can pray more fervently, feelingly, and frequently than before. Oh, it was good for me that I have been afflicted.”

“Oh,” says God, “how well that rod was bestowed which has done my poor child so much good! Now I have more of his heart, and more of his time and company, than ever. Now I hear the voice and see the gracious workings of my child’s spirit reaching after me again, as in the days of his first love.”

The sum of all this you may see in the tender, open-hearted meltings of Ephraim under a sanctified rod (Jer 31:19-20), and in the yearning of God’s heart of mercy over him. Ephraim mourns at God’s feet, and God falls upon Ephraim’s neck. “I have been like a beast,” says Ephraim. “You are a dear son, a pleasant child,” says God. “My heart is troubled and pained for sin,” says Ephraim. “And my heart is troubled for you, and my compassions are rolled together within me,” says God. O blessed fruits of sanctified rods! Such precious effects as these richly repay you for all the pains and anguish you feel. And so, just as the wound of a scorpion is healed by applying its oil, the evil of affliction is cured by the sanctified fruits it produces, once it is put into the covenant.

Argument 3. The covenant does not only change the nature and character of the saints’ afflictions. It also arranges them in order and sets them fitly in the frame of providence, among the other means and instruments of our salvation, so that the counsel of angels could never have placed them, or the least circumstance belonging to them, more fitly and to better advantage than it has done. The knowledge of this must surely quiet and fully relieve the afflicted soul. And who can doubt it, who believes it to be a covenant “ordered in all things,” as the text says (2 Sam 23:5)? Here all things, yes, even the most minute circumstances that happen to you, are brought into their proper class and place of service. They are so exactly ordered that all the wisdom of men and angels does not know how to mend or alter anything to your advantage.

If a small pin is taken out of the frame of a watch and placed anywhere else, the motion is either stopped at once or made irregular. And Galen observes of the intricate fabric of the human body that if the greatest naturalists should study a hundred years to find a more fitting position or arrangement for any part of it, it could never be done. So it is here. No one can come after God and say, “This or that would have been better placed or timed than it is. If this affliction had been spared, and such an enjoyment had stood in its place, it would have been better.” All God’s providences are the results and outcomes of his infinite wisdom, for “he works all things according to the counsel of his own will” (Eph 1:11). The wheels, that is, the motions and revolutions of providence, are full of eyes (Ezek 1:18). They are well-advised and judicious motions; they do not run at random. The most regular and excellent working must follow from the deepest and most perfect counsel: “He is deep in counsel, and excellent in working” (Isa 28:29).

Now every affliction that befalls God’s covenant people has been placed by the most wise and infinite counsel of God in the very order, time, and manner in which it befalls them. It is this very affliction, and not that one. It comes at this very time, and not at another, for it is always a time of need (1 Pet 1:6). And it is ushered in by just such forerunning occasions and circumstances. It must follow, then, that they all take their proper places and come at exactly the fittest seasons, and that if one of them were missing, something would be lacking in the frame of your happiness. As they now stand, they work together for your good, which they would not do if they were displaced.

It is said in Jeremiah 18:11, “Behold I frame evil, and I devise a device.” This is spoken of the contriving and framing of affliction as the proper works of God. The design of it is laid for his glory and for the eternal good of his people. It turns to their salvation (Phil 1:19). But oh, how gladly we would have this or that affliction screwed out of the frame of providence, thinking it would be far better out than in! “Oh, if God had spared my child, or my health, it would have been better for me than it is now.” But this is nothing other than a presumptuous correcting and controlling of the wisdom of God, and so he interprets it: “He that reproveth God, let him answer it” (Job 40:2).

God has put every affliction upon your persons, estates, and relations just where you find and feel it, and he has put that whole frame into the covenant, by virtue of which it works for your salvation. Therefore let all disputings and reasonings, all murmurs and discontents, cease. Nothing can be better for you than the way God has laid it, and this, one would think, should heal and quiet everything. You yourselves would mar it all by presuming to mend anything. “Who hath directed the Spirit of the Lord, or being his counselor, hath taught him? With whom took he counsel, and who instructed him, and taught him in the path of judgment? and taught him knowledge, and showed him the way of understanding?” (Isa 40:13-14). Well then, be satisfied that it is best as it is. Nothing can be so advantageous to you as God’s designs and contrivance, which you are so uneasy under and so dissatisfied about.

Argument 4. As the covenant sorts and ranks all your troubles into their proper classes and places of service, so it secures the special, gracious presence of God with you in the deepest plunges of distress that can befall you. That presence is a full relief for all your troubles, or else nothing in the world is, or can be.

The very heathen thought themselves well secured against all evils and dangers if they had their petty household gods with them on their journeys. But the great God of heaven and earth has pledged himself to be with his people in all their afflictions and distresses. A tender father sits up himself with his sick child and will not leave him to the care of a servant only. In the same way, God does not think it enough to leave his children to the guardianship and charge of angels; he will be with them himself, and that in a special and peculiar way. So run the express words of the covenant: “I will not turn away from them to do them good, but I will put my fear into their hearts: and they shall not depart from me” (Jer 32:40). Here he undertakes for both parties, himself and them: “I will not,” and “they shall not.”

Here is the saints’ security for the gracious presence of God with them, a presence that disperses all the clouds of affliction and sorrow as the sun scatters the morning mists. The God of all consolation is with you. O poor, dejected believers, will not such a presence turn the darkness into light all around you? There is a threefold presence of God with his creatures:

1. Essential, which is common and necessary to all.

2. Gracious, which is peculiar to some on earth.

3. Glorious, which is the happiness of heaven.

The first is not the privilege secured here, for it is necessary to all, good and bad: in him we all live and move and have our being (Acts 17:28). The vilest men on earth, yes, the beasts of the field and the very devils in hell, are always in this presence of God; but it is their torment rather than their privilege. The last belongs to the glorified saints and angels; saints still in the body cannot bear such a presence now. But it is his special, gracious presence that is made over and secured to them in the covenant of grace, and this presence of God is shown to them in two ways:

1. Internally, by the Spirit.

2. Externally, by providence.

1. Internally, by the Spirit of grace dwelling and acting in them. This is a choice privilege to them in the day of affliction, for by it they are instructed and taught the meaning of the rod: “Blessed is the man whom thou chastenest, and teachest him out of thy law” (Ps 94:12). Oh, it is a blessed thing to be taught as many lessons by the rod as the Spirit teaches them! Surely they count it an abundant repayment for all that they suffer: “It is good for me that I have been afflicted, that I might learn thy statutes” (Ps 119:71). Yes, he refreshes as well as teaches, and no heart-restoring medicine revives like his: “In the multitude of the thoughts I had within me, thy comforts delight my soul” (Ps 94:19).

Yes, by the presence and blessing of his Spirit our afflictions are sanctified to subdue and purge out our corruptions: “By this shall the iniquity of Jacob be purged, and this is all the fruit to take away sin” (Isa 27:9). Now suppose a man is instructed in the ends and purposes of the rod, refreshed and comforted under every stroke of the rod, and has his sins mortified and purged by the Spirit’s sanctifying work upon his afflictions. Then both the burdensomeness and the bitterness of his afflictions are removed and healed by the internal presence of the Spirit of God with his afflicted ones.

2. But besides this, God is providentially present with his people in all their troubles in a more external way, ordering all the circumstances of their troubles to their advantage. He orders the degree and extent of our afflictions, always leaving us some mercies and comforts to support and refresh us when others are cut off. He contends with his covenant people in measure, staying the rough wind in the day of the east wind (Isa 27:8). He might justly strike all our outward comforts at once, so that affliction should not rise up a second time; for whatever comfort has been abused by sin is by that very fact forfeited into the hand of judgment. But the Lord knows how unable we are to bear such strokes, and therefore he proportions them to our strength. We have some living relatives to minister comfort to us while we mourn over our dead; he does not make a full end of all at once. Yes, and his providence upholds our frail bodies, enabling them to endure the shocks and storms of so many afflictions without being ruined. Surely there is as much of the care of providence shown in this as there is in preserving poor, battered, leaking boats and weather-beaten vessels at sea, when the waves not only cover them but break into them, and they are ready to founder in the midst of them.

Oh, what a singular mercy is the gracious presence of God with men! It is the special presence of that God “who is above all, and through all, and in you all,” as the apostle says (Eph 4:6). He is “above all” in majesty and dominion, “through all” in his most effectual providence, and “in you all” by his grace and Spirit. As he is above all, he is able to command any mercy you need with a word of his mouth. As he is through all, he must be intimately acquainted with all your wants, straits, and fears. And as he is in you all, he is committed to your support and supply, since you are the dear members of Christ’s mystical body.

Objection. But I think I hear Gideon’s objection rolled into the way of this sovereign consolation: “If God be with us, why is all this evil befallen us?” (Judg 6:13).

Answer. All what? If it had been all this rebellion and rage against God, all this apostasy and revolting more and more, and this stubbornness and hardness of heart under the rod, then it would have been a weighty and stumbling objection indeed. But to say, “If God is with us, why have all these chastening corrections and temporal crosses befallen us? Why does he strike our bodies, our children, or our estates?” is an objection in no way fit to be urged by anyone acquainted with the Scriptures, or with the nature and tenor of the covenant of grace. Are afflicting and forsaking all one to you? Must God necessarily hate you because he scourges you? I question whether Satan himself has impudence enough to set such a note or comment upon Hebrews 12:6: “For whom the Lord loveth, he chasteneth, and scourgeth every son whom he receiveth.”

No, no, Christian, it is not a chastening rod that marks a man as rejected. It is the denying of such a favor, and the allowing of men to sin with impunity and go on prosperously in the way of their own hearts, as the next words inform you (Heb 12:7). As he never loved you the better for your prosperity, so you may be confident he loves you never the less for your adversity. And will not this close and heal the wounds made by affliction? What, not such a promise as this: “I will be with him in trouble” (Ps 91:15)? Will not such a presence revive you? What then can do it? Moses reckoned that a wilderness with God was better than a Canaan without him: “If thy presence go not with me” (he says), “then carry us not hence” (Exod 33:15). And if there is the spirit of a Christian in you, and God should give you your own choice, you would rather choose to be in the midst of all these afflictions with your God than back again in all your prosperity, among your children and former comforts, without him.

Argument 5. As this covenant assures you of God’s gracious and special presence, so it fully secures all the essentials and substantials of your happiness against all hazards and contingencies. In that security lies your full relief and complete remedy against all your troubles for the loss of other things.

There are two sorts of things that belong to all God’s people: first, essentials; second, accidentals.

They have some things that are essential to their happiness. Such are the loving kindness of God, the pardon of sin, union with Christ, and eternal salvation. And they have other things that are accidentals. These come and go, live and die, without affecting or altering their happiness. Such are health, estate, children, and all sorts of relations and earthly comforts. These are to our happiness what leaves are to the tree: they fade and fall away without endangering the tree. But the other things are as the vital sap, without which the tree withers and dies at the very root.

Now if it can be shown that the covenant fully secures the former, then it will strongly follow that in doing so it abundantly relieves us under all our sorrows for the latter. And that it does so will plainly appear if we review the covenant. There you will find all these substantial and essential mercies of believers fully secured against all hazards and contingencies whatsoever.

There the loving kindness of God is secured to their souls, whatever afflictions he lays upon their bodies: “Nevertheless my loving kindness will I not take away” (Ps 89:33). And their pardon is as safe as the favor of God is. It is safely locked up in that promise, “I will remember their sins no more” (Jer 31:34). Yes, heaven, together with our perseverance in the way to it, are both put out of hazard by that invaluable promise, “They shall never perish, neither shall any man pluck them out of my hand” (John 10:28).

So all the essentials of a believer’s happiness are secured in the covenant. And since these are safe, the loss of other enjoyments should not much affect or wound believers. For if a believer enjoys those other things, they add nothing to his happiness; and if he loses them, he is still happy in God without them. And this unriddles that puzzling expression of the apostle, “As having nothing, and yet possessing all things” (2 Cor 6:10). That is, the removal of all external things cannot make us miserable, who have Christ for our portion and all our happiness entire in him.

Suppose a man traveling on the road falls into the hands of thieves who rob him of a few shillings. Why, this does not much affect him. Though he has lost his spending money, his stock is safe at home and his estate secure, and that will yield him more. Or suppose a man has been at court and there obtained a pardon for his life, or a grant of a thousand pounds a year, and on his way home happens to lose his gloves or his handkerchief. Surely, if the man is in his right mind, he will not fret and mourn for the loss of these trifles while the pardon or the grant is safe. Such things are not worth mentioning.

It is true that the loss of outward, earthly things is a real trial to a believer, yet such things are only seeming losses. And therefore the apostle expresses them in his phrase with an “as,” an “as it were”: “As chastened and not killed; as sorrowful yet always rejoicing” (2 Cor 6:9-10). And if your losses are only, as it were, losses, your sorrows should be only, as it were, sorrows. It is much like the sickness that a dose of medicine brings on. We do not call that a real sickness, but only, as it were, a sickness, because it serves the health of the person and not his hurt. And so do all God’s medicinal afflictions on his people.

Indeed, if God’s stroke were aimed at our souls, to cut them off from Christ and heaven, to erase our names from the covenant, or to revoke the pardon of sin, then we would have cause enough to justify the extremity of sorrow. We would have cause enough to weep out our eyes and break our hearts over so dismal a blow as that would be. But blessed be God, you stand out of the way of such strokes as these. Let God strike all around you, or lay his hand on any other comforts you possess; he will never strike you in these essential things. And that is certainly enough to calm and relieve all your other sorrows.

So the afflicted believer may say: My name is blotted out of the earth, but it is still written in heaven. God has taken my only son from me, but he has given his only Son for me and to me. He has broken off my hopes and expectations in this world, but my hopes of heaven are fixed, sure, and immovable forever. My house and my heart are both in confusion and great disorder, but I still have “an everlasting covenant, ordered in all things, and sure” (2 Sam 23:5). I cannot say my son lives, but I can still say, “I know that my Redeemer liveth” (Job 19:25). “The grass withereth, and the flower fadeth; but the word of the Lord abideth for ever” (Isa 40:8).

Argument 6. God strikes none of the substantial mercies of his covenant people. And when he does strike their external, accidental comforts, the covenant of grace assures them that even those strokes are the strokes of love and not of wrath, the wounds of a friend and not of an enemy. This is another singular relief to the afflicted soul.

The most frightful thing in any affliction is the mark or character of God’s wrath that it seems to bear. Take that away, and the affliction is nothing. “O Lord, rebuke me not in thine anger, neither chasten me in thy hot displeasure” (Ps 6:1). David does not plead against the rebukes of God, but against his anger; not against his chastening, but against his hot displeasure. God’s anger is much more terrible than his rebuking, and his hot displeasure more terrible than his chastening. Therefore David begs that whatever God did to him in the way of affliction, he would do nothing in the way of wrath; and then he could bear anything from him. A mark of divine anger engraved on any affliction makes that affliction dreadful to a gracious soul.

But if a man is well satisfied that, whatever anguish there may be, there is still no anger, and that the rod is in the hand of love, oh, how it eases the soul and lightens the burden! Now this desirable point is abundantly cleared in the covenant. There we find a clear consistency, yes, a necessary connection, between the love and the rod of God (Ps 89:31; Heb 12:6). Indeed, so far are the afflictions of the saints from being marks of his wrath that they are the fruits and evidences of his fatherly love.

Two men walking through the streets see a company of boys fighting. One of the men steps forward, singles out one of those boys, and carries him home to correct him. Which of the two, do you think, is that child’s father? Since the case stands this way with all God’s people, surely there is no reason for them to despond, whatever their afflictions may be.

Argument 7. Lastly, the covenant does not only show the consistency and connection between the love of God and the rod of God. It also gives the saints full satisfaction on this point: whatever temporary mercy they are deprived of, if it was within the bond of the covenant when they enjoyed it, is not lost. It shall certainly be restored to them again, richly improved, and they shall enjoy it again to all eternity.

What a rare pattern, what a framework of comforting arguments, the apostle has laid down to counter our excessive sorrow for the death of our dear relatives who died with an interest in Christ and the covenant (1 Thess 4:13-18)! “I would not have you ignorant, brethren, concerning them which are asleep” (1 Thess 4:13).

They are not dead, but asleep. Sleep is only a parenthesis in the labors and toils of this life. It is only a partial loss: it takes away, not the power of reason itself, but only its acts, and upon waking the soul soon returns to them again. Just such a thing is what is commonly called death in believers. We are not in the habit of mourning for our friends because they have fallen asleep. Therefore it is in no way fitting for us to sorrow as those who have no hope, or to look upon them as lost. For, as the apostle strongly argues and concludes in 1 Thessalonians 4:14, their restoration to their bodies, yes, and to our enjoyment of them again, is fully secured, both to them and to all of us, by the resurrection of Jesus from the dead.

The prophet Isaiah compares the influence of Christ’s resurrection to the morning dew (Isa 26:19). He does this to show that whatever power there is in the morning dew to make the languishing plants of the earth revive and flourish, that power, and much more, is in the resurrection of Christ to revive and quicken the dead bodies of these saints. Their bodies shall be restored by the power of the warm, life-giving dew, or influence, of his resurrection.

Objection. But the marvelous change that the resurrection makes in glorified bodies, and the long separation of many ages between us and them, seem to make it impossible for us to know them as the people who were once related to us on earth. And if so, then the comfort that came to us from them, in their relation to us, has perished with them at death.

Answer. Whatever change the resurrection shall make in their bodies, and however long the time between our parting with them on earth and our meeting them again in heaven, neither the one nor the other seems enough to destroy the grounds of our hope that we shall know them to be the very persons who were once so dear to us on earth. There may remain some feature or mark of their individual identity by which the keen glorified eye may possibly discover who they were. Or if not, no one can doubt that it may be made known to us by revelation from God. And that it will be made known one way or another is highly probable, because nothing will be denied to that perfect state which may contribute to or complete its joy and happiness, as we cannot help thinking this knowledge will do.

Adam, in the state of innocence, knew Eve to be flesh of his flesh and bone of his bone. The apostles knew Moses and Elijah on the mount. Yes, Dives in hell knew Abraham and Lazarus in heaven. If all this is so, surely we may allow the glorified saints in heaven the same knowledge that we find in the state of innocence, in the sinful state on earth, and in the state of the damned in hell.

And if so, then on that day covenanted parents shall be able to say, “This was our child, for whom we prayed and labored in birth again until Christ was formed in him. This is the one we brought up for God and trained in the nurture and admonition of the Lord. And now we see the fruit of our prayers, counsels, and catechizing: a child of so many prayers has not perished.” And the covenanted child shall say, “This was my godly father, who took such care for my soul, and this my tender mother, who, like another Monica, was zealously concerned for my eternal happiness. These are the ones who sowed so many fervent prayers. God did not give them time to reap their fruit on earth, but now they shall reap the fruit and comfort of them forever.” O joyful meeting in the kingdom of God! The joy of such a meeting abundantly makes up for all the tears and groans of a sorrowful parting.

Now put all this together, and weigh the arguments brought forward to establish the first thing proposed, namely, that the covenant is sufficient to relieve and remedy all the sorrows and losses of believers, however many or however great they may be. This cannot be doubted, since it has been proved that the covenant disarms all their afflictions of the only sting by which they wound. It alters the very nature and character of their afflictions, turning them from curses into blessings. It ranks and arranges them in their proper class and place of service, so that the counsel of men and angels could never place them better for our advantage. It engages the gracious and special presence of God with you in all your troubles. It secures all your essential and substantial mercies from every hazard and chance. It shows a consistency, yes, a connection, between the rod and the love of God. And it assures you that whatever temporal mercy you ever enjoyed in and by virtue of the covenant shall be restored to you again, wonderfully improved and to your singular advantage.

By all this, I say, it is abundantly proved that the covenant is a sovereign and effective remedy for all the sorrows of God’s people, and that it was no exaggeration in David’s praise of it when he called it his salvation and all his desire.

But then, as I hinted before:

2. It must be able to do these things at all times and in all ages, or else it will be only a temporary relief to some, and not to all. Now, that the covenant has this ability in all ages, and is as able to relieve us now as it was to relieve David in his day, fully appears from the epithet given to it in the text: it is an everlasting covenant. “Yet hath he made with me an everlasting covenant” (2 Sam 23:5).

Time is the measure of other things, but everlastingness is the measure of the covenant. When the Lord weds a people to himself in covenant, he betroths them to himself forever (Hos 2:19). From that day forward they may say, on good grounds, “This God is our God for ever and ever: he will be our guide even unto death,” as it is in Psalm 48:14. Nothing in nature is as firmly established as the covenant is. Hills and mountains will sooner start from their bases and centers and fly up and down in the air like wandering atoms than this covenant will start from its sure and steadfast foundation (Isa 54:10).

The causes and reasons of the immutability of the new covenant are these:

(1) The unchangeable purpose of God, which is a true and steadfast foundation (2 Tim 2:19): “Nevertheless, the foundation of God standeth sure, having this seal, The Lord knoweth who are his.” The first act of God’s love to the creature is the act by which he chooses such a one to be his. It is therefore called the foundation of God, since it is the ground on which he lays the superstructure of all other mercies. And this stands sure. There can be no wavering or slipperiness in such a foundation, for he knows who are his. He knows them as his creatures, and as his new creatures in covenant with him; as his by election, and as his by covenant transaction and compact. The purpose of his grace before time gave being to the covenant of grace in time, and it is the foundation of that covenant.

(2) The free grace of God in Christ is what gives immutability to his covenant. It is not built upon works, but upon grace: “Therefore it is of faith, that it might be by grace; to the end the promise might be sure to all the seed” (Rom 4:16). This covenant is not founded, as the first one was, upon the variable and inconsistent obedience of man, but upon grace, which is a steady and firm foundation.

(3) The suretyship of Christ gives everlasting stability to this covenant. “He was made the surety of a better testament” (Heb 7:22), or covenant, for the original word signifies both. He struck hands; that is, he pledged himself for the whole covenant and for every condition in it, on God’s part as well as on ours. He engaged to undergo all our punishments, to pay all our debts, and to work in us all that God required of us in the covenant of grace. And he took all this upon himself under the very penalty that we ourselves were liable to undergo. Nor is this as with other sureties, who enter into one and the same bond with the principal debtor, so that the creditor may come upon whichever of them he pleases. Rather, God lays all upon Christ and relies wholly upon him for satisfaction, knowing that he was able to perform it. And so, under the type of God’s covenant with David, Christ is brought in (Ps 89:19): “Thou speakest in vision to thy holy one, and saidst, I have laid help on one who is mighty.” It is as if God said, “I know your ability, my Son. You are able to pay me, and therefore I lay all upon you.”

It follows strongly from what has been said that the virtue of the covenant does not decay with time, as other things do. It is at this day, and will be to the end of the world, as potent and efficacious a relief to all God’s people as it ever was to David or to any of the believers of the first ages.

And if so, then certainly nothing can be more strongly supporting, or more sweetly relieving, in such a changeable world than this: “He hath made with me an everlasting covenant.” What David speaks of the natural heavens will be found true of the things they overspread and cover (Ps 102:26-27): “They shall perish, but thou shalt endure, and all of them shall wax old like a garment: And as a vesture shalt thou change them, and they shall be changed. But thou art the same, and thy years shall have no end.” The creature was, and is not; but my covenant God is the same. His name is I AM, and his covenant is the same as it ever was. This is the second property, or ingredient, of this complete remedy for the saints’ afflictions. The covenant not only has all power, virtue, and efficacy in itself to relieve a distressed Christian, but it has this power in all ages, for one as well as for another.

The third and last follows, namely:

3. That it is a sure covenant. So David calls it in my text. The certainty of the covenant is the glory of the covenant, and the comfort of all who are in it. The certainty of it in itself is beyond all doubt from what has already been said. It is certain that God did make such an everlasting covenant with his people in Christ, and it must remain an eternal truth that such a covenant exists between God and them. It is as impossible that this everlasting covenant should not have been made with them as it is impossible for God to lie (Heb 6:18). Suppose he could make himself not to have covenanted everlastingly with them once he had so covenanted. Such a supposition would destroy the foundation of all faith and certainty, and overthrow the apostle’s inference on which the faith and comfort of believers is built. Nor is it any infringement of the Almighty’s power to say that God himself cannot do what implies a plain contradiction, such as making what was done not to have been done.

But there is no doubt of this: it is a sure covenant in itself. What serves my purpose here is to prove that it can give personal security and certainty to us. David had, and all who are in covenant with God may have as well as he, a subjective or personal certainty also. He speaks categorically and positively in the text: “Yet hath he made with me an everlasting covenant.”

Objection. But someone may say, “David might have a personal certainty of it, because it was revealed to him in an extraordinary way by the prophet Nathan (2 Sam 7:12-14). And extraordinary cases are not to be taken as examples. This was a peculiar favor, which we may not expect.”

Answer. I reply, and why may we not know it with as full a certainty, we to whom God is pleased to make it known in his ordinary way? Do you think his Word and Spirit cannot ratify it as fully and firmly to our souls as Nathan’s revelation of it did to David’s soul? Let God give me only such a seal of it in his ordinary method and way of confirmation, and I will desire no more of him in this world for my relief and comfort, whatever afflictions it may please him to lay upon me.

And so you see all the properties of a complete remedy in the covenant. Of it every believer may say, “This is all my salvation, and all my desire, though he make not my house to grow” (2 Sam 23:5). And now what hinders all God’s afflicted ones from saying from now on, “Return unto thy rest, O my soul, for the Lord hath dealt bountifully with thee” (Ps 116:7)? I have all the desires of my heart in the covenant of God, though he takes away the desire of my eyes upon earth with his stroke. In this covenant my soul is at rest, and my very heart is centered. No affliction can be great enough to make the consolations of the Almighty seem small in my eyes. Worldly sorrows may swallow up worldly comforts, but no sorrows upon earth can swallow up the consolations of the covenant.

I know that many Christians droop and are dejected under the rod, even though such sovereign cordials are prepared for them in the covenant. But this is not for want of efficacy in the covenant. It is for want of faith to make their interest in it clear and to draw out its virtue for their relief. Some are ignorant of their privileges, and others are doubtful about their interest. It is with many of God’s children as it is with our children in their infancy: they do not know their father, nor the inheritance they are born to.

What remains is to put this truth to work for our actual comfort and relief in the day of trouble. I will help you with this, as God helps me, by way of information, exhortation, examination, and consolation.

Use 1. For information, in three corollaries.

Corollary 1. By what has been discussed from this text, it appears that God governs the spiritual part of the world by faith, and not by sense. He will have his people live upon his covenant and promises, and draw their relief and comfort from there, under all their sorrows and distresses in this life.

God never intended temporal things to be his people’s portion, and therefore they must not expect their relief from them in time of trouble. He will have us read his love to us by things within us, not by things outside us. He has other ways of expressing his love to his people than by the smiles of his providence upon them. How earthly things would be overvalued and idolized if, besides their usefulness to our bodies, they were also the marks and evidences of God’s love to our souls!

A Christian is to value himself as the merchant or the farmer does. The merchant values himself by his bills and goods abroad, not by the ready cash he has on hand. And the farmer values himself by his deeds and leases, and by the many acres of grain he has in the ground, and he knows he has a good estate, even though at times he cannot lay his hands on twenty shillings. Christian, your estate also lies in good promises and new-covenant securities, whether you have more or less of earthly comforts in your hands.

Every creature feeds according to its nature. The same plant gives food to several kinds of creatures: the bee feeds on the flower, the sheep on the branch, the bird on the seed, and the swine on the root. One cannot live on what the other lives on. So it is here. A Christian can feed upon the promises and make a sweet meal of the covenant, which the carnal mind cannot relish. “The life that I now live, I live by the faith of the Son of God,” says the apostle (Gal 2:20).

This is the mysterious and excellent life of faith, and the test of true Christianity: to relieve ourselves against present evils by our hopes of things to come, and to balance the sorrows and losses of this life with the promises and expectations of the next. This is what the renowned believers of the first age did. Whenever they felt a faint pang or a sinking upon their hearts under their trials or sorrows from the world, they would at once run to their cordial, the promises, and by faith they would refresh and invigorate their souls from there with new life and power. “We faint not whilst we look not at the things which are seen, for they are temporal; but at the things which are not seen, for they are eternal” (2 Cor 4:16-18). And truly, so must we also do when our hearts are faint within us in days of affliction, or our spirits will fail, and we will faint away in a fit of despondency.

Corollary 2. Learn from this the sovereign efficacy of the word, and what a choice privilege it is to have these living oracles of God in our hands in a day of distress and trouble.

It is no ordinary mercy to be born in a land of Bibles and ministers, and to have these choice supports and reliefs at hand in all our fainting hours. “This is my comfort in my affliction, for thy word hath quickened me” (Ps 119:50). It was no small mercy gained by the Reformation that it put the oracles of God into our hands. This gives us many cordials for the support of our souls. For this, among other great and excellent purposes, the Scriptures were written: “That we, through patience, and comfort of the scriptures, might have hope” (Rom 15:4). In other parts of the world it is a sealed book; bless God, it is not so for you.

All creature-comforts have a double defect: they are neither suitable nor lasting. But the word is both. Compare the arguments that have been urged from the covenant with such comforts as these: that it is useless to trouble ourselves about what we cannot help, or that we are not alone in trouble, since others have their losses and afflictions as well as we do. Alas, what dry and ineffectual comforts these are! They do not reach the heart, as pardon of sin, peace with God, and the sanctifying of our troubles to our salvation do.

No less to be prized is the mercy of an able New Testament ministry, to open, apply, and press home the consolation of the Scripture. It is no common favor for an afflicted soul to have with him, or near him, an “interpreter, one among a thousand, to show unto him his uprightness” (Job 33:23). O England, prize these mercies and make good use of them, and do not provoke your God to bereave you of them.

I can find no place or people on whom the gospel and ministry have been so settled that God may not remove both if they abuse them. And if he does, sad will be the case of such a people, especially when a day of distress and trouble comes upon them. It is a sad thing to be in a storm at sea without a compass or a pilot to direct and advise the distressed passengers. Much the same is the case of the afflicted when they are deprived of the word and ministry.

So make it your care to hide the word in your hearts and to seek the teaching of the Spirit, so that whatever changes of providence come upon the world, you may have the light and comfort of the Scriptures to direct and cheer your souls. Sanctification is the writing of God’s law in your hearts, and what is written there is secure and safe. The word within you is more secure, sweet, and effectual than the word outside you. Jerome says of Nepotian that by long and diligent meditation on the Scriptures his breast had at last become the library of Christ. Oh, that the breast of every Christian were so too!

Corollary 3. How sad and deplorably miserable is the condition of those who have no title to the covenant of God, nor comfort from it, when a day of affliction and great distress is upon them!

Unrelieved miseries are the most intolerable miseries. To be weighed down with troubles on earth and to lack support and comfort from heaven is a dismal state indeed; yet this is the case of multitudes in the world. If a believer is in trouble, his God bears his burden for him; yes, he bears up both him and his burden too. But anyone who has no covenant interest in God must say, as it is in Jeremiah 10:19, “This is my affliction, and I alone must bear it.”

There are only two ways such people can take for relief: either to divert their troubles by something that will inflame them, or to rest their burdened spirits upon something that will fail them. To run to the tavern or alehouse instead of to the closet of prayer is to quench the fire by pouring in oil. And to run from one creature-comfort that has been struck down and withered to another that still remains with us is to lean upon a broken reed, which not only deceives us but wounds and pierces us. What a miserable plight Saul was in, and how doleful was his cry and complaint to Samuel: “I am sore distressed, for the Philistines make war against me, and God is departed from me, and answereth me no more” (1 Sam 28:15). Heaven and earth forsook him at once.

Reader, if this is your case, I urge you not to remain any longer in so miserable a condition. Your very distress seems, by a happy necessity, to cast you upon God and drive you to him for refuge. And it seems to be the very aim and design of God, in blasting all your earthly comforts, to compel you to come to him, which you would never have been persuaded to do while you had any creature prop to lean and rest upon. And do not think you will be rejected because plain necessity has brought you to him. Come sincerely, and you will not be reproached because necessity threw you upon him.

Use 2. Since, then, the covenant of God is the great relief and support of all his afflicted people, let the afflicted soul go to his blessed covenant. Study it and apply it in every distress. In itself it is a sovereign cordial, able to revive a gracious spirit at its lowest ebb; but it must be studied and applied, or it will never give out its consolations to refresh us. Extreme sorrows are apt to deafen our ears to every voice of comfort. The loud cries of affliction too often drown out the sweet, still voice of spiritual consolation. Yet either here or nowhere is our relief to be found. Why do we seek the living among the dead? Why look for comfort from things that cannot yield it? The covenant can show us two things that are able to calm the most troubled heart: the good of affliction, and the end of affliction.

1. It will show us the good of affliction, and so correct our mistaken judgments about it. In all these dealings God is not undoing our interest and happiness, but looking after them. It will satisfy us that in all these things he does no more than what we ourselves allow and approve in other cases. It is not merely for his pleasure, but for our profit, that these breaches are made in our families and comforts (Heb 12:10). Who blames the mariner for throwing the cargo overboard to save ship and life in a storm? Or the surgeon for lancing, yes, or even cutting off a leg or an arm to preserve the life of his patient? Or soldiers for burning or beating down the suburbs to save the city in a siege? Then why must God alone be blamed for cutting off from us those things which he knows will endanger us in the day of temptation? He sees that the less entanglement we have, the more readiness and fitness we shall have to go through the trials that are coming upon us, and that all the comforts he cuts off from our bodies are for the profit and advantage of our souls.

2. Here you gain a sight not only of the good of affliction, but also of its comfortable end and outcome. This cloudy and stormy morning will close in a serene and pleasant evening. There is a vast difference between our meeting with afflictions and our parting from them. “You have heard of the patience of Job, and have seen the end of the Lord” (Jas 5:11). Oh, only get Job’s spirit under affliction, and you may see as happy an end of them as he did.

Had Naomi seen the end of the Lord in taking away her husband and starving her out of Moab, she would not have changed her name, or said that the Lord had dealt bitterly with her. For by that providence he was grafting her daughter-in-law into the noble line out of which the Savior of the world was to rise. And could you but see the good toward which this whole train of troubles is laid, you would not murmur or lose heart as you do.

Objection 1. Oh, but this is a grievous blow! God has struck me in the apple of my eye and written bitter things against me. No sorrow is like my sorrow; it is a mourning for an only son. I have lost my all in one.

Answer. (1) You can never lose your all in one, unless that one is Christ; and he, being yours in covenant, can never be lost. But what you mean is that you have lost all of that kind in one: no more sons to build up your house and carry on your name.

(2) Yet religion will not allow you to say that your dead children are a lost generation. They are sent on before, not lost. For they are a covenant seed, dedicated by you to the Lord. They were children of many prayers; a great stock of prayers was laid up for them. In them, too, you and all who knew them saw a teachable spirit, godly inclinations, and a conscientious care for secret duties, some good things toward the Lord God of Israel, as was said of young Abijah (1 Kgs 14:13). So you parted from them on far easier terms than good David parted from his Amnon, Absalom, or Adonijah, who died in their sins and open rebellions. There was a sting in his troubles which you do not feel. And if he nevertheless comforted himself in the covenant of his God, then in this respect you may do so much more.

Objection 2. Oh, but my son was cut off in the very bud, just when the fruits of his education were ready to unfold and open.

Answer. Do not let that thought so inflame your sorrows. God knows the fittest time both to give and to take away our comforts. And since you have good grounds to hope that your child died with an interest in the covenant of God, you have the less reason to dwell on that afflicting circumstance of an early death. He who dies in Christ has lived long enough, both for himself and for us. That mariner has sailed long enough who has reached his port; that soldier has fought long enough who has won the victory; and that child has lived long enough who has won heaven, however early he died.

Besides, the sooner he died, the less sin he committed, and the less misery he saw and felt in this wretched world, which we are left to see and feel. And it is only an empty fancy to imagine that the parting pull with him would have been easier if the enjoyment of him had been longer. For long enjoyment of desirable comforts does not usually weaken the ties of affection; it greatly strengthens and fastens them.

Submit your reason, therefore, as is fitting, to the wisdom of God, who certainly chose the fittest season for this affliction.

“Oh, but…” No more buts and objections, I beg you. Enough has been offered from the covenant of your God to silence all your objections, and to give you the ease and pleasure of a resigned will. And what are all our buts and objections but a spurning of divine sovereignty, and a thrusting of the affliction deeper into your own hearts, which are wounded only too deeply already?

I am not urging you to put off your natural affections, but to regulate them. To be without them would deservedly rank us among the worst of heathens; but to bound and manage them rightly would set you among the best of Christians.

I cannot imagine what ease or advantage holy Basil gained by such a detailed and heart-piercing account as he gave of an affliction like this one: “I once had a son,” he said, “who was a young man, my only successor, the solace of my age, the glory of his kind, the prop of my family, arrived at the endearing age…” Nor can I see to what purpose it can be for you to recall and recount the things that only inflame and aggravate your troubles. Surely your better way would be to turn your thoughts from such subjects as these to your God in covenant, as David did in the text, and to recount the many great and inestimable mercies that are secured to you in it. Death shall never strike these or cut them off from you, as it does your other enjoyments.

Question. But unless we can in some measure make our covenant interest clear, all these excellent cordials you have prepared will mean no more for our relief than water spilled on the ground. Help us, therefore, to do that, or else all that has been said is in vain. How may a person discern his covenant right and interest?

Answer. This indeed is worthy of all consideration and deserves a serious answer, since it is fundamental to your comfort and to all real refreshment in times of trouble. And it will bring us to the next use, which is for the testing of our covenant interest.

Use 3. The great question to be decided is whether God is our covenant God, and we his people. It is a question of the most solemn nature, and one that requires our most reverent attention.

We cannot expect satisfaction in this matter in such an extraordinary way as David had it, but we may know it by three things: first, our covenant engagements; second, our covenant impressions; and third, our covenant conduct.

First, we may know it by our covenant engagements, that is, our dedications of ourselves to God. This is sometimes called our joining ourselves to the Lord (Zech 2:11), our yielding ourselves to him (Rom 6:19), and our giving ourselves to him (2 Cor 8:5). Whoever freely and deliberately consents to take, or choose, the Lord to be his God may safely conclude that the Lord has taken, or chosen, him. For our choice of God is only the result of his choice of us: “You have not chosen me, but I have chosen you” (John 15:16). That is, you could never have chosen me except as a consequence of, and by virtue of, my first choice of you.

Well then, let it be seriously considered whether you have duly consented to take the Lord for your God and Christ for your Redeemer. This includes two things: your relinquishing of all things inconsistent with him, and your acceptance of all that promotes his glory and the enjoyment of him.

1. Your relinquishing of all things that are inconsistent with an interest in him. Unless we let these go, God cannot be our God, nor Christ our Redeemer. The things to be relinquished for Christ are, in short, both our sinful self and our righteous self. The sinful self must be disowned and renounced, for we cannot be the servants of sin and the servants of Christ too (Rom 6:14, 18). And the righteous self must be renounced also, or else we can have no part or interest in his righteousness (Rom 10:3). These are two difficult points of self-denial: to part with every beloved lust, and to give up our own righteousness. Thousands would rather be damned forever than do either of these.

2. Your acceptance and embracing of all things that promote his glory and further the enjoyment of him. This takes in all the painful ways of duty: hearing, praying, and meditating, and all this with the earnest bent of the inner man, offering up the soul to God in these duties. It takes in also the more painful ways of suffering for God, and enduring all losses, reproaches, torments, and death for him, if his glory requires it and you should be called to it. All this is included in your choosing God to be your God. And upon our understanding of these articles, our free consent to them, and our setting our seal to them, we have the right to call him our God: “If any man will come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me” (Matt 16:24).

Now, have you considered the good terms of the covenant? Have you weighed and balanced all the advantages and disadvantages of godliness, and then decided for Christ and holiness, let the cost be what it will? Then you have chosen him rightly for your God. Many think they have chosen God for their God who never understood or deliberated on these terms. But no one consents to what he does not perceive: whoever neither knows nor ponders these terms is not capable of giving a due consent.

Second, we may discern our covenant interest in the covenant impressions that are made upon our souls. All God’s covenant people have a double mark or impression made upon them: upon their minds, and upon their hearts.

1. Upon their minds, in a more spiritual and effectual knowledge of God: “They shall all know me, from the greatest of them, even to the least of them” (Jer 31:34). This knowledge is said to be given, not acquired by the mere strength of natural abilities and human aids. It is “given us in the face of Christ,” as the apostle says (2 Cor 4:6), and not by the footsteps of the creatures only. It is the choice teaching of the anointing (1 John 2:27). It is a knowledge springing from inward experience and spiritual sense, just as we know the sweetness of honey better by tasting it than by all the descriptions and reports that can be made of it.

2. Upon their hearts, in that gracious tenderness and melting of the heart over sin, or over the revelations of free grace in its pardon. So you read in Ezekiel 36:26: “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 as easy to melt the hardened rocks into sweet syrup as it is to melt the natural heart into a penitent and tender melting for sin. But now there is a principle or habit of tenderness planted in the soul, by which it is disposed and inclined to relent and thaw, freely and sincerely, upon any just occasion.

Third, our covenant interest may be shown in and by our covenant conduct. All the knowledge communicated to our minds, and all the tenderness given to our hearts, look toward this and tend to it: “I will put my spirit within you, and cause you to walk in my statutes” (Ezek 36:27). Habits and principles are for action and practice; grace in the heart is for obedience and holiness of life.

It is true that as our graces are imperfect, so is our obedience also. Perfect working is not to be expected from imperfect creatures. God’s own covenant people often grieve him, and provoke him to bring them under the rod of affliction. But those infirmities of theirs do not break the bond of the covenant (Ps 89:30-32). Care and watchfulness ordinarily go before them, conflicts and resistance accompany them, and shame, grief, and renewed care usually follow them (2 Cor 7:11). By these things (which deserve a fuller discussion than my present design can allow) we may be helped to clear our interest in the covenant of grace. And once that is done, it should be beyond the power of all the afflictions in the world to sink your spirits. Let me therefore, in the last place, add the following.

Use 4. A word of consolation to your dejected and drooping hearts on this sad and mournful occasion. Why are you so troubled? And why do thoughts arise in your hearts? It seems to me that so much support and comfort has already been shown to you in this blessed covenant that, if your faith could only once fix upon it, and realize it, and apply it, I might lay down my pen at this point and say, “The work is done; nothing more is needed.” But knowing how obstinate deep sorrows are, and how difficult a task it is to comfort an afflicted mind, I will, in closing, add a few more considerations to all that has been urged and argued before.

Consideration 1. Consider how small and trivial the comforts whose loss you mourn are in comparison with Jesus Christ, who is still your own under the bond of a sure covenant. A son, an only and a promising son, is a great thing when he stands in comparison with other creature-comforts. But surely he will seem a small thing, and next to nothing, when set beside or compared with Jesus Christ. Behold the Father, Son, and Spirit! Pardon and eternal salvation are this day presented before your souls in the covenant of grace as your own. “God, even our own God, shall bless us” (Ps 67:6). When your hearts are wounded by such a thought as this, “I cannot embrace my children in my arms; they are now out of my reach,” then bless and admire God that the arm of your faith can embrace so great, so glorious a Savior, and that you can say, “My beloved is mine, and I am his” (Song 2:16).

Consideration 2. Consider what evil days are coming on, and what a mercy it is to your dead that God has taken them away from the evil to come (Isa 57:1-2). There are two sorts of evil to come: the evils of sin and the evils of suffering. And it is no small favor to be set out of the way of both. The grave is the hiding place where God secures some from the great dangers of both.

We are apt to promise ourselves a time of tranquility, and then it cuts us to think that our dear ones will not share that happiness with us. But if we wisely consider the sins or the signs of the times, we have more cause to rejoice that God has set them out of harm’s way.

All things seem to conspire and work toward a day of great redemption and very great tribulation. Christ told his disciples, who were so dejected because he was to leave them, “If ye loved me, ye would rejoice, because I said I go to the Father” (John 14:28). So, truly, you would express and show your love to your children much better by your satisfaction in the will and appointment of God in taking them into rest and safety than by your dejection and sorrow over their removal. Surely they are better where they are than where they were, these whom God has thought fit to take and house in heaven, out of the many storms and tempests that this life is subject to. And if your loved ones who have died and are with Christ could have any more contact with this world, and see your flowing tears, and hear your deep sighs for them, they would say to you what Christ said to those who followed him wailing and mourning (Luke 23:27-28): “Do not weep for us, but for yourselves, and for those who remain in the world with you to see and feel the calamities that are coming upon it.”

Consideration 3. Consider, my brothers and sisters, how near you all are yourselves to that blessed state where “God shall be all in all” (1 Cor 15:28), and you may be sure you will feel no lack of creature-comforts.

Creature-comforts are, in general, only comforts suited to this bodily life that we now live, but in a little while we will have no need of them, for “God will be all in all.” That is, all the saints will be abundantly satisfied in and with God alone, with whom there is fullness of joy forevermore. There is water enough in one sea to fill all the rivers, lakes, streams, and springs in the world, and light enough in one sun to give light to the countless inhabitants of the world. So there is enough in one God to fill and satisfy eternally all the blessed souls who will dwell in the mansions of heaven, without the least addition of any creature-comforts. God is complete satisfaction to all the saints in the absence (I cannot say the want) of wives and children, food and drink, estates and the pleasures of the senses. There will be no more need of these things than of candles at noonday. You will be as the angels of God, who have no concern for family relationships.

Your fullness of years, your bodily infirmities, and (I hope I may add) your improvements in grace show that you are not far short of this blessed state. And though you may seem to need these comforts along the way of life, your God will supply all your wants.

Consideration 4. To conclude, whatever your troubles, wants, fears, or dangers are, or may be, on your passage to this blessed state, the covenant of grace is your security. By virtue of it your troubles will open and divide, as the Jordan did, to give you a safe passage into your eternal rest.

When the Israelites came near the land of promise, there was a swelling in the Jordan between it and them, which seemed to forbid their further passage and progress. But it is said, “The priests that bore the ark of the covenant of the Lord, stood firm on the ground in the midst of Jordan; and all the Israelites passed over on dry ground, until all the people were passed clear over Jordan” (Josh 3:17). Just so it is here. The covenant of grace stands on firm ground in the midst of all the deep waters of tribulation you have to pass through, to secure you a safe passage through them all. Rejoice, therefore, and triumph in the fullness and firmness of this covenant. Whatever affliction your God is pleased to lay upon you, and whatever comfort he is pleased to remove from you, still comfort and encourage yourselves as David does here: “Yet hath he made with me an everlasting covenant, ordered in all things, and sure: for this is all my salvation, and all my desire; although he make it not to grow” (2 Sam 23:5).