Observation 1. That God's covenant people may be exercised with many sharp afflictions
(3.) It is a sure covenant, or a covenant safely laid up and kept, as the word imports*; and upon this account the mercies of it are called,
"The sure mercies of David," Isa. 55:3. And so Psal. 89:28. speaking of this very covenant, God saith, "My covenant shall stand fast with him;" there shall be no vacillancy, nor shaking in this covenant: and ver. 34. "My covenant will I not break, nor alter the thing that is gone out of my lips." Every thing is as its foundation is. Now, God's covenant being founded in his unchangeable counsel and purpose, wherein there can be no lubricity, and Christ being the surety of it, it must needs be, as the text calls it, a sure covenant, wherein the faithfulness of God is as illustriously displayed, as his bounty and wisdom are in the two properties of it. And such a covenant as this, so everlastingly, aptly disposed, and sure, must needs deserve that precious respect and high esteem from every believing soul, which David here doth pay it in.
4. The singular and high valuation he had of it, when he saith, "This is all my salvation, and all my desire," or as some translate† all my delight, or pleasure;" i.e. here I find all repaired with an infinite overplus, that I have lost in the creature: Here is a life in death, fulness in wants, security in dangers, peace in troubles. It is all my salvation; for it leaves nothing in hazard that is essential to my hapiness; and all my desire for it repairs whatever I have lost, or can loose: It is so full and complete a covenant, that it leaves nothing to be desired out of it. O it is a full fountain! Here I repose my weary soul with full satisfaction, and feed my hungry desires with 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 notes from it are three.
Observations
Observation 1. That God's covenant people may be exercised with many sharp afflictions in their persons and families, Eccl. 9:9.
Even David's house was the house of mourning; "Although my house be not so with God, though he make it not to grow." All sorts of outward afflictions are incident to all sorts of men, "All things (saith
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." The providences seem one and the same, though the subject on whom they fall be vastly different. Estates and children, health and liberty will still be like themselves, vanishing comforts, whoever be the owners of them. No man's spiritual estate can be known by the view of his temporal estate. A godly family cannot be a miserable, but it may be a mournful family. Religion secures us from the wrath, but it does not secure us from the rod of God. The Lord hath 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 includes the cross, "If his children forsake my law, &c. then will I visit their iniquity with the rod, and their sin with stripes: nevertheless my loving-kindness will I not utterly take away."
Nor indeed would it be the privilege of God's covenanted people, to be exempt from the rod; a mark of bastardy can be no man's felicity,
Heb. 12:8 to go without the chastising discipline of the rod, were to go without the needful instructions and blessed fruits that accompany and result from the rod, Psalm 94:12.
Let us not therefore say as those irreligious persons did in Mal. 3:14.
"It is in vain to serve God, and what profit is it that we have kept his ordinances, and walked monrnfully before him?" Surely none serve