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The sermon reads David’s final testimony as a confession of confidence in God’s everlasting covenant despite personal and familial sorrow. Spurgeon emphasizes that the covenant originates in God, satisfies justice through Christ’s blood, and is applied securely by the Holy Spirit. Salvation therefore cannot be grounded in morality, religious ceremony, or human effort, but in God’s gracious and completed work. The appropriate response is persevering prayer amid trials, rejection of self-righteousness, and wholehearted embrace of the everlasting Gospel.
Theological center: Salvation rests on God’s eternal, immutable covenant of grace, ordered through Christ’s atoning work and secured by God rather than by human merit.
Applications: Trust the everlasting covenant · Examine the basis of salvation · Receive the Gospel as revealed · Embrace the everlasting Gospel
Primary texts: 2 Samuel 23:5
“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 Samuel 23:5 THESE be the last words of David, so we read at the commencement of the chapter. Many have been the precious sentences which have fallen from his inspired lips. Seraphic has been the music which has dropped from his fingers when they flew along the strings of his harp. But now that sweet voice is to be hushed in death, and now the son of Jesse is to sleep with his fathers. Surely it were well to press around his bed to hear the dying monarch’s last testimony. Yea, we can conceive that angels themselves would for an instant check their rapid flight that they might visit the chamber of the dying mighty one and listen to his last death song. It is always blessed to hear the words of departing saints. How many choice thoughts have we gained in the bedchamber of the righteous, beloved? I remember one sweet idea, which I once won from a deathbed. A dying man desired to have one of the Psalms read to him and the seventeenth being chosen, he stopped at the sixth verse, “Incline thine ear unto me and hear my speech,” and faintly whispering, said, “Ah, Lord, I cannot speak, my voice fails me. Incline Thine ear, put it against my mouth, that Thou mayest hear me.” None but a weak and dying man, whose life was ebbing fast could have conceived such a thought. It is well to hear saints’ words when they are near heaven—when they stand upon the banks of Jordan. But here is a special case, for these be the last words of David. They are something more than human utterances, for we are told that the Spirit of the Lord spake by him and His word was in his tongue. These were his closing accents. Ah! methinks, lisping these words he rose from earth to join the chorus of the skies. He commenced the sentence upon earth and he finished it in heaven. He began, “Although my house be not so with God,” and as he winged his flight to heaven, he still sang, “yet hast thou made with me an everlasting covenant, ordered in all things and sure.” And now before the throne he constantly hymns the same strain, “yet hast thou made with me an everlasting covenant, ordered in all things and sure.” I hope, my friends, there are many of us who can join in this verse this morning and who hope to close our earthly pilgrimage with this upon our tongue. We shall notice first, that the psalmist had sorrow in his house, “Although my house be not so with God.” Secondly, he had confidence i…