4. Application
William Bridge
Sixthly, if I am not in covenant with God, what shall I do to get into covenant with Him? And if I am in covenant with God, how shall I walk in a way that is suited to one who is in covenant with the great God? Here are two questions: Do you ask what you shall do to get into covenant? Are any of you afraid that you are not yet in covenant with the Lord, and do you wish to be in covenant with the Lord? I shall speak briefly to them.
Then be sure that, on a right understanding of the nature of this covenant, you go to God and make choice of this covenant of grace, to stand and fall by it. Some think that the Hebrew word for covenant comes from a root that signifies to choose; a man is in the covenant that he chooses, and every man is indeed as his choice is.
But then go and renounce the other covenant, that of works. As the way to have a part in Christ’s righteousness is to renounce all your own righteousness; so the way to have a share in this covenant of grace is to renounce the covenant of works. Then go to Christ as the Mediator of the covenant, and desire Him to put you into this covenant. He struck the covenant with God
1Taken with editing from a sermon entitled, “Christ and the Covenant”, on: “And to Jesus the mediator of the new covenant, and to the blood of sprinkling, that speaketh better things than that of Abel” (Heb 12:24). It comes from The Works of William Bridge, vol 3. Last month’s article was on “the importance of the covenant”. This is the final article.
the Father at the first, and He must put you into this covenant, for He is the Mediator of the covenant. Go then to Him, as the Mediator of the covenant, to put you into covenant. Then leave the weight and stress of your guilty soul upon this covenant of grace; bear upon this stream of grace; here lay the weight of all, for the promise is made ours by resting on it. And what is this covenant but an absolute promise? Rest there and leave there the weight of your souls.
To say no more but this: Go to the Lord and give your hand to God and give yourself up to God as one willing to be led by Him into all the things that the covenant shall require. In Old Testament times, when they made a covenant, they struck hands together. In Ezra 10:19, it is said they “gave their hands” to put away their wives; and in verse 3, they spoke of making a covenant to do it: “Let us make a covenant with our God to put away all the wives”. And we find in 1 Chronicles that, when David was dead, all the people came together “and all the princes, and the mighty men, and all the sons likewise of King David, submitted themselves unto Solomon the king” (29:24). In the Hebrew it is, “They gave the hand under King Solomon”; they gave their hand by way of covenant, and they gave their hand under King Solomon in a way of submission. So when we enter into covenant with the Lord, we give our hand under God, and therefore if you desire to get into covenant, do these things.
But suppose I am in covenant with God, as I hope I am, what should I do that I may walk as is appropriate for someone that is in covenant with the great God? I answer, If you are in covenant indeed with the Lord, then God has exalted you and honoured you greatly; and if God has honoured you, why should you not honour God?
Now the more you fall down at the feet of the fullness of Christ, in a sense of your own unworthiness, inability and insufficiency, the more you honour God. John the Baptist says, “One mightier than I cometh, the latchet of whose shoes I am not worthy to unloose”.
The more you cry up those ordinances and ways of God that are decried by the world, the more you honour God. The more you keep close to God in declining times, the more you honour God. The more you trust God at a dead lift, when all means fail, and when the sentence of death is on all the means, the more you honour God. The more you serve God, contrary to your own disposition, and reach the services of God over the head of your own dispositions, the more you honour God. And the more that you prefer the things of God above other things in time of competition with them, the more you honour God.
And the more you part with your much for God’s lesser things, the more
you honour God. What is honour? Honour is a testimony to another’s excellence. Now when I can part with my much for God’s little, His little truths and things, I do testify to excellence in God. I say, the more you can part with your much for God’s little, the more you honour God. And the more you keep close to the name and faith of God in Christ, even where Satan’s throne is, the more you honour God. Now then, has the Lord honoured you and taken you into covenant with Himself? Then surely it is your duty to honour God, and by these several particulars you may honour God.
If the Lord has made a covenant with you, give me leave to say to you, Why should you be solicitous for your own things? If you are in covenant with the Lord, and God in covenant with you, He will take care of your things; therefore why should you be solicitous about your own things? God is in covenant with you; He will take care of yours.
Thus, if there is any loss upon the things of God, why should you not be as much affected for that loss as for your own losses? For if you are in covenant with God, and God with you, God’s things are yours, and your things are God’s. God’s things are yours; why then should you not be as much touched with the loss of anything that concerns God, as with anything that concerns yourselves?
Indeed, why should God not have the use of all that is yours? God is in covenant with you and you have the use of God’s things: His wisdom, His power, His mercy. Why? Because He is in covenant with you, and you are in covenant with Him. Why then should God not have the use of your things also, your name and your estate and your body and your time? If you are in covenant with God, and God is in covenant with you, your things are God’s and God’s are yours; why should God not have the use of your things, as you think to have the use of God’s.
If God is in covenant with you, and you are in covenant with God, why should you not live at a higher rate than the best of the Jews did in Old Testament times? You are in a better covenant than the Jews were, though for substance the same, as you heard, yet you are in a better covenant, and shall your lives not be better? You have a better Mediator, and shall your lives not be better? You have better promises, and shall your lives not be better?
Your state now is called grace. “The law was given by Moses, but grace and truth came by Christ” (Jn 1:17). Look therefore on the Jews; look into the Old Testament and look at the best of them. Think with yourselves, Am I in a better covenant? Then how I am engaged to live better! O that our lives were more exalted on this account! Why should our lives not be better? Why should we not live at a higher rate?