Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: May 25, 2025
The want of which qualification in covenant-renewing, causes unsteadfastness and perfidy in covenant-performing Psal. lxxviii. 36, 37.
In answer to this objection, we shall only desire the gentlemen that made it to remember, That now for the space of 24 years they have been crying, the time is not come wherein we should set about covenant-renewing; one while they have pretended that the time was not seasonable, because such as were in authority were friends to the church; and it would look like a suspecting of their integrity, to enter into covenant for defence and reformation of religion, as if they would not show themselves active enough for these ends, and prove an irritation to them to turn enemies to Presbyterian government; it would cause them to think the Presbyterians to be a people of indiscreet and ungovernable zeal, and so disgust them at the establishment.
Whence all the people of God, who are called to be united and "perfectly joined together in the same spirit, and in the same mind;" and especially they who have been lamentably divided one from another, by their manifold defections from God, and from their covenant-engagements, ought to be strongly inclined, moved, and engaged to this duty; from this consideration, the upright covenant-renewing is a usual mean of land-uniting and church-uniting dispositions amongst the people of God.
So it was with covenant-renewing Israel and Judah, who were "weeping as they went to seek the Lord their God, and to make a covenant never to be forgotten."
Upright entering into, or renewing covenant with God, is a most sovereign medicine for healing a people's breaches, as well as their backslidings, the covenant being a cement, as well to join and unite the people of God one to another, as all of them in their duty to God; and, as it flows from the nature of the covenant to unite the friends of reformation, so it is observable as one of the peculiar fruits of covenant-renewing, that union in the Lord has followed thereupon: thus it was with Israel and Judah in the text, who united together in making a covenant with the Lord.
Well, you see we have a covenanting God, a covenant-making God, and a covenant-renewing God; be we "followers of God, as dear children:" let us be a covenanting people, a covenant making, a covenant-renewing people; and as our God, finding fault with the first, let us make a "new covenant, even a perpetual covenant, that shall never be forgotten."
This duty of covenant-renewing requires, as a qualification towards the right performing of it, that there be a due consideration, and some suitable impression of the solemnity and weightiness of the work: which ariseth, partly from the object or party covenanted with, the holy and jealous God, Joshua xxiv. 19 "He is a holy God, he is a jealous God, he will not forgive your transgressions, nor your sins," and partly from the subject matter covenanted, or engaged to.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking