The everlasting covenant.
God's relations with his people are repeatedly described as determined by covenants. Adam, Noah, Abraham, and the nation of Israel, all had their covenants with God, and Christ established a new covenant.
I. THE COVENANT RELATION.
1. It originates in God. The covenant is not an agreement made by two parties who meet on equal terms. It cannot be compared to the bond which seals a bargain after mutual concessions. It is rather an institution of God which man accepts. We cannot determine or in any way modify the conditions of God's covenant. As the Giver of blessing and the Lord of service, God offers us his settled covenant.
2. It must be accepted by man. The covenant relation has two sides. When we desire to share its privileges we must ourselves enter into it. We must freely accept it.
3. It involves mutual obligations.
II. THE OLD COVENANT. God had covenant relations with Israel in ancient days. The sinful people had violated the conditions of the covenant, and so, while excluding themselves from its privileges, they had brought its penalties down upon their heads (Ezekiel 16:59). God might therefore only remember his covenant in order to carry out its penal clauses. But he is seen to remember it on its gracious side. This could not be because he held himself bound to its promises, for the Jews had forfeit, d all rights in those promises. Therefore God's remembrance of the covenant is his merciful calling to mind of previous happy relations. God is not ready to forsake his people with whom he made a covenant in the olden times. It may be the same with the individual souls. There are men who followed God in their childhood, perhaps learning to love him from a mother's teaching, and entering into solemn promises to live for him in the hopeful days of youth. They may have forgotten those fair times of the long deal past. But God remembers them, and in his wonderful, enduring love he delights to revive them, and therefore he calls his erring children back to the forsaken paths.
III. THE NEW COVENANT.
1. Its necessity.
2. Its origin. It is based on the old covenant. God remembers that old covenant in granting a new one. The New Testament rests on the foundation of the Old Testament. Christ came to fulfil the Law by establishing the gospel (Matthew 5:17). The same Divine grace, which in its dawn shone through the earlier dispensation, in its noon glorifies the later one.
3. Its stability. It is to be an everlasting covenant. The old covenant was local, temporary, and fragile on the human side, though firm as adamant on God's side. The new covenant must have other characteristics to make it more enduring.