I'll turn again in God's word to 2 Chronicles and chapter 15. We're continuing here our study in the life of Asa. Last week we saw that he was the first reformer king. There had been good kings before him, David, even Solomon. Solomon had gone astray towards the end of his reign and the kings that followed after Solomon had allowed and tolerated idolatry. And so by the time Asa comes to the throne, there was work to be done in reforming the religious life and the civil life of society. Asa is this first reforming king and he reigns for 41 years. His reign was one of stability and the Lord was well pleased. with what Asa did. We see that in chapter 14, that he did what was right in the eyes of the Lord. He sought God early at the start of his reign. He didn't wait until late in his reign to begin to make reformation. No, he began right from the start to suppress all false religion and to do what was right in God's eyes. And so that meant that later on, when a million Ethiopians came in to invade, to destroy, to conquer the nation of Judah, Asa knew what to do. And he cried out in faith, we saw last week, chapter 14, verse 11. Asa cried to the Lord his God, O Lord, there is none like you to help between the mighty and the weak. Help us, O Lord, our God, for we rely on you. And in your name we have come against this multitude. Oh Lord, you are our God. Let not man prevail against you. That's the way Asa saw it. That's the terms he saw it in. Yes, the Ethiopians were mighty. Yes, Judah was comparatively weak. But their help was in the Lord. They were named after him. They were his people. They have come out in the name of God. They represent God. Therefore, let us not be put to shame. but vindicate us, stand for us, and save us. Don't allow man to prevail against God. Don't allow any mere man to say we have conquered the people of God." And God answered that prayer, and they had an astounding victory. And so we saw that Asa led national reformation, but also nationally led in faith and relying upon God. Chapter 15 comes, and I think the sense of it is that Asa is returning from the battlefield. It doesn't specifically say that, but I think we see here that Azariah, the son of Ubed, a prophet, comes out to meet Asa. There are no chapter divisions, remember, in the Bible. These have been inserted to help us find our way, and we're thankful that we can find our way. But passages just continue into one another. And so we see at the end of chapter 14, they return to Jerusalem and at the start of chapter 15, Azariah coming out to meet Asa. I want you to think for a minute about coming back from a day of work. Maybe you've been slogging away, it's been hard work and you're absolutely exhausted. And you come back ready just to sit in your house and relax. That's how we feel, isn't it? Well, think about Asa being a king leading an army, fighting against a million Ethiopians, and you're coming back from the battlefield. What do you want? You want simply to return to your homes and to relax, to settle back into national life with rest and peace. But on the way home, Asa is met with a prophet, Azariah. And what does Azariah say to him? He exhorts him to go further than what he has done to date. See, he says there in verse two, the Lord is with you while you're with him. If you seek him, he will be found by you. But if you forsake him, he will forsake you. It's an interesting thing, isn't it, to say? Maybe we can understand a prophet coming to a wicked king. and saying this, listen, you're doing what is wrong. You're breaking God's law. The Lord is not with you while you're breaking God's law. If you're against him, he will be against you. So repent and be with him and he will be with you. Perhaps we could understand that, but that's not the context. Here we have Asa, a good man, a good king who had done right in God's eyes, who had begun a work of reformation, who had led his people in national faith in fighting a battle. You cannot fault anything Asa has done. And yet what does God say to him? God says, I want you to go further. I want you to do more. I don't want you to rest. I don't want you to take it easy. There is a greater work of reformation to be done. And you see down in verse seven at the end of what Azariah says, but you take courage. Do not let your hands be weak for your work shall be rewarded. There's more to be done. But if you're to do this work, you must take courage in the Lord. And you must not allow your hands to grow weak in doing it. The Lord's going to reward. He will reward you. If you honor me, I will honor you. That's the biblical principle, isn't it? And so Azariah is calling Asa, the good king, to go even further in Reformation. And he gave us the example, doesn't he, and we'll come back to it, but the example of the days of the judges. For a long time, there was chaos. Why? Because Israel was without the true God, without a teaching preacher, and without the law. They were going their own way. And that was not a good thing because it led to nation being crushed by nation and city being destroyed by city. God allowed affliction and trouble. That's what happened in the days of the judges. That is not the way it is to be among you today. Asa, take courage and do the work of reformation. Don't be weak in it, but be strong. in the Lord. There's a need for courage and we'll see that and we know that, don't we? In the day and age that we live in, there is a need for us to take courage because there's everything in culture round about us to scare us and to keep us quiet and to cause us to put our heads down and take an easy life. You want an easy life? I want an easy life. We don't want people laughing at us or people calling We don't want people slandering us. We don't want mockery. And so just keep your head down and be quiet and all will be well. That is not what God calls us to do. Take courage and do the work of reformation. So that's the context. Coming back from the battlefield, there is more work to be done. And Asa, I'm not going to focus on this today, but just to say, What does Asa do? How does he take courage? Well, he immediately, verse eight, takes courage and does a further work of reformation in putting away the detestable idols. So there's an immediate result, isn't it? There's some idolatry to be put away. He also repairs the altar at the end of verse eight there. The altar of God, that bronze altar, nine meters by nine meters. Remember, it was huge, almost the length of this building. That had been allowed to get into disrepair. It should have been repaired every year. I thought they should have been looking at it and thinking, does that need to be repaired? But it had been allowed to get into a bad state. Eisa repairs it. But then what we're really focusing on today is that Eisa takes courage to make a covenant with the Lord, a national covenant, or to be more specific, to renew the national covenant that already bind the people of God. And that's really our theme, to see that the work that God had for Asa to do was not simply the work of reformation, but it was the covenanted work of reformation. First, I want us to see, ask the question, who renews the covenant? renews the covenant. We see quite clearly in the passage that Asa is the one that initiates this. It's not that God has specifically told him to do it. Azariah has simply told him that the Lord would be with him if he remains with the Lord and therefore take courage and do. Don't let your hands grow weak. But Asa himself as king has initiated this renewal of the covenant. He has shown leadership in this regard. But he's not simply making a covenant by himself as an individual, which is a good and a right thing to do. It is good and right and proper, and Christians through various ages of the church have chosen to enter into covenants with God, to pledge themselves to God wholeheartedly. That's a good thing to do. Asa could have done that. He could have heard what Azariah said, and he could have thought, I need personally to take things up a level. I need personally to fight this fight. I need personally to seek reformation in my life and in the life of the nation. And so I am going to make a covenant with the Lord. That would have been good. That would have been right. But Asa goes further. He institutes a national renewal of the covenant. Look at verse nine, and you see there, he gathers all of Judah and Benjamin. Remember, those are the Southern tribes that had not left the throne of David with the Northern kingdom in the days of Rehoboam. So he gathers Judah and Benjamin, that is his nation, those that he's over, but he also gathers, verse nine, Those from Ephraim, Manasseh, and Simeon who were residing with them. For great numbers had deserted to him from Israel when they saw that the Lord his God was with him. These were God's people. Yes, I suppose they belonged to the north. That's where their tribal allotment was. But they had been willing to leave their land. to leave their cities and villages to come to the place that God was because they saw that Asa was with God and that God was with Asa. And so these people are also included in renewing the covenant. And so what we have is all the people gathered together, the nation as a whole, those who belonged to that territory and those who had come in a sense almost like refugees coming down in to that area also. It truly is a national covenant. And this is not the first time that a national covenant had been made. At Mount Sinai, God's people enter in to a national covenant with God. That as a whole, as a nation, Israel will do what the Lord has spoken. What you have said, that we will do. And they took vows to do it. At the end of the 40 years of wilderness wandering, the national covenant was renewed in the days of Moses. That's what the book of Deuteronomy is showing us. And it's maybe a little bit more specific. And I think it shows us what Asa's renewal of the national covenant would have been like. He would have followed the pattern from the book of Moses in Deuteronomy. And there, In Judah 29, Moses says, you are standing here, all of you, before the Lord your God, the heads of your tribes, your elders, and your officers, all the men of Israel, your little ones, your wives, and the sojourner who is in your camp, that you may enter into the sworn covenant of the Lord your God. Who was there engaging in covenant renewal in the days of Moses. Not just Moses as the national leader, but the tribes, their heads, their elders, their officers, religious leaders, civil leaders, man, woman, children, the whole nation. You can't really get any other terms to make it more national than what is included there. In the days of Joshua, the covenant is again renewed nationally. God's people are entering in to the promised land and they renew the covenant. And now we have a new renewal of the covenant, nationally, in the days of Asa. And this is important. We'll see it further in 2 Chronicles. There are other times in which the covenant is renewed nationally. Friends, This is something that we believe as a church. It says it right here on this blue banner. It's something that we must never allow to slip out of our theology. It's part of our identity. It's not simply that historically we're descended from the Covenanters and we just want to remember the stories. It's nice to remember where you come from. Each one of you has an ancestry. I don't know what countries you all come from, probably just from the East parts, but perhaps some of you have got an interesting part of ancestry. It's nice to think part of my family comes from this country or that country. This isn't just our ancestry that's a nice story to remember. This is part of what we believe is biblical and that we testify for, that every nation in the world is to nationally covenant before the Lord, to take him as their God, to submit themselves to him as their people. Remember that the things that are written in the scripture are written for our instruction. Why does God include here in chapter 15 of 2 Chronicles, a chapter with a renewal of the national covenant? He includes it because he wants us in the New Testament church to follow the examples of those who went before us. What was appropriate then is appropriate today. And we see that, I'm not gonna go into this today, but there are evidences of that in the Old Testament prophets, which show us that in the days of Christ, in the New Testament days, that Gentile nations will covenant with the Lord, swearing oaths to him. And so we believe that it is a moral principle, it is a biblical principle, that all nations should covenant to the Lord. That's what the National Covenant and Solemn League and Covenant were. And we believe also that nations should renew their voice to the Lord. In one sense, Asa, it's not that the people were not bound by covenant, and he has to fix that and remedy that and make them bound by covenant to the Lord. They were bound by covenant as a nation since the days of Moses. but it was appropriate and it was right to renew the covenant, to take fresh courage, to allow their hands not to be weakened, but rather to arise and to do this work of reformation. I think we're well past the time in this nation where our covenant should be renewed, but we're not in the right state to do it because our nation has apostatized from God. So we have here, Who is it that's renewing the covenants? It's not just Asa as a private individual. It is he as the leader, as the king, gathering the whole nation together to renew this covenant. The second thing I want us to ask is what is the basis for the renewal of the covenant? What's the basis for it? First of all, we've got God's word as the basis for it. It's God's word given to Asa through the prophet Azariah in verse two. He makes it very clear that God is with those who are with God. God is against those who are against God. And he calls upon Asa to take courage and to do this work of reformation. Don't let your hands be weak, for your work shall be rewarded. It's in the word of God. that we are called to dedicate ourselves fully to him. And that's a call upon every one of us here today. God's word is calling you, whether we formally enter into a covenant, whether we renew a covenant or not, God's word is still calling on you to take courage and not to allow your hands to be weak in doing the law of God. Seek him. with all your heart and with all your soul. And we have to confess, don't we, that that word comes as a rebuke to us, that we have not been seeking him fully with all our heart and our soul in all areas of life. And therefore we're to repent of that and to take fresh courage today. God's word was calling Asa to see the urgency of the situation. Because naturally, humanly speaking, you don't see the urgency, do you? Remember, he's already done a bit of reformation. He's already fought a battle. It would be all too easy to come home and sit back and rest and relax and to enjoy the peace that there would be in the kingdom. There's no sense here of urgency because the big national sins, in a sense, had been dealt with to a degree. You could argue there's not much more to be done, but that's not what God says. God says, go further, go deeper, more reformation, more complete, more full. God's word is calling him to see the urgency of this task. And to see, I think here, that the work of reformation cannot be done by one man alone. Asa could not do it in his own strength. He could not do it by himself. Yes, he was to trust in the Lord, but that others were to be included with him. And Asa gets that point. That's why he gathers all these tribes together to make a national covenant, that every person must do their part. So the first basis we see for the renewal of the covenant is from God's word, a call upon Asa to do a greater work of reformation. The second part of the basis that we see is that this covenant is based upon God's grace, Don't think of this as Asa thinking, I can earn a bit more favor with God. This covenant will get us some brownie points with God. That's not what he's doing. The whole basis of it is relying upon the grace of God through Christ. There is no time that the covenant is renewed in the Bible. The national covenant is not renewed as in the spirit of works or slavish fear to the law of God. It's always based upon grace. And that is what national covenants are. This covenant, the national covenant of our land and the Solemn League and covenant are founded upon the covenant of grace, that God will be our God and we are to be his people through Jesus Christ, through the blood of the cross of Christ. At Mount Sinai, God's people were not entering into a covenant of works. And that's important because many people say that Mount Sinai was a covenant of works. It wasn't. The covenant of works had already been broken in the Garden of Eden. Mount Sinai was a covenant of grace. We see that in the preface to the Ten Commandments. I am the Lord your God, which has brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage. I am the Lord who has been gracious to you. I am the Lord who has saved you. Therefore you are to keep my commandments. as a response to my grace. And so it is here, Asa is not making a covenant of works, but a covenant of grace. We see that grace, don't we? Verse 11, they sacrificed to the Lord on that day from the spoil they had brought 700 oxen and 7,000 sheep. See, the altar has been repaired and they're able to sacrifice these sheep and oxen. Why is that? Because at the bronze altar we see Christ. Each sacrifice is a picture of Christ in his substitution, being wholly consumed in fire as a sacrifice to satisfy divine justice and reconcile us to God. Sacrifices are not given out of works. They are given to show us the covenant of grace, to show us Christ, to show us our need of repentance and faith, looking to the one mediator between God and men. This is grace, isn't it? Esau is not here trying to earn merit with God. He is responding in grace in the only way nations should respond, by pledging themselves to serve the Lord, for Christ is king. So we see these basis for the renewal of the covenant, the word of God that calls Asa to do it and the grace of God that enables us to do it. The third thing to ask is what is the purpose of this covenant renewal? I said already that in one sense Asa did not need to do it. In one sense, that's not the complete sense, In one sense, he didn't have to do it, because whether he did it or not, they were still covenantally bound. Because at Mount Sinai, they had said, whatever your word says, that we will do. As a nation, they were bound, because the covenant had been entered into. Each generation does not have to renew the covenant in order for the covenant to still be binding. God's word shows us that quite clearly. because even generations that do not renew the covenant are charged with breaking the covenant. And so each generation does not have to formally renew the covenant in order for them to be considered covenantally bind to serve the Lord. However, what Asa does is a good thing. In one sense, he didn't need to do it, but in another sense, he did need to do it because he realized that what God was calling for was a greater consecration to service, greater dedication, that the work of reformation can't be haphazard. It must be a full and complete work of reformation. And that's why verse 12, it shows you what the purpose of the covenant was, that they would seek the Lord, the God of their fathers, with all their heart and with all their soul. And Asa doing this, Renewing the national covenant takes it away from it just being him as one person making the decisions. Him as one person having a desire for reformation. And it impresses it upon others. We are all in this together. Whatever our job is, whatever station we have in life, whether we're high up or we're low down, we're all together seeking the Lord with all our heart. and with all of our soul. And so they covenant in this. There are various covenants you see in the Bible that aren't good ones. For example, remember when Paul had been arrested in Jerusalem and how people bound themselves by oath, the Jews bound themselves by oath not to eat until they had put him to death. People can covenant together, they can band together, they can make a confederacy together to do whatever they want to do. But here Asa is banding the people together to do something that is good and right and proper, to seek God with all their heart and with all their soul. There's a recognition that to this point, they have not been seeking him as much as they could and as much as they should. So let us together go further. It doesn't show us this in this passage, but if we see that this is a national covenant, we have to recognize that there are various people who are renewing that covenant in their own situations. So the king, for example, King Asa, renewing this covenant. He is saying as a person, but also as a king, I am going to seek God with all my heart and all my soul. But there were also the priests and the Levites who were renewing this covenant. And they are saying, as individuals, but also in our religious duties as Levites and priests and the responsibilities God has uniquely given to us, we are going to consecrate ourselves further, to go deeper, to seek God with all our heart and with all our soul. There were ordinary people there. Some of them were leaders in their tribes. Some of them were heads of their households. Some of them were just simply men, women, and children. And yet the covenant bans them all together. That in our work, whether it's in the field or in the city, wherever it is, we are seeking the Lord with all our heart and with all our soul. We don't have the responsibilities of the king. We don't have the responsibility of the Levites and the priests, but we are responsible in the places that God has placed us to seek him with our all and all. And so in this renewing of the National Covenant, we have people in all different stations of life, different callings, and yet they're committing themselves fully to God, to all the judice in his law. And friends, it's exactly the same with the covenants that were signed in our nation in the 17th century. The National Covenant and the Solemn League and Covenant, they're long documents. I think you should read them. I think everyone should read them. I hope you've read them. If you've not read them, read them because these bind us as a nation and as a church before God. But if you do read them, there'll be words perhaps that you won't understand. And there'll be words that you might have to look up on a dictionary or ask someone, what does this mean? We recognize that they were signed a long time ago, but in a sense, if you were to summarize these documents, you could say it's exactly the same as this. We're pledging ourselves as a nation and as a church to seek the Lord with all our heart and with all our soul, that the work of reformation will go deeper and deeper and deeper than it's gone before. And so to use some of the language of the document itself, we're pledging ourselves to the one true reform faith and to seek uniformity in that reform doctrine, worship, government, and discipline. Those four things. Doctrine, what we believe as a church. We want uniformity in that. We want reformation in that, that we would believe what the word of God says. Worship, we want reformation in worship, that we would worship God in the way his word tells us to worship. Government, how is the church structured? Is it Presbyterian, Congregational, Episcopalian? We want to see the church reformed according to the word of God, recognizing Christ alone, King and head of his church, and discipline, that there would be church discipline, that we would do what God's word tells us to do in that regard, because often there's laxity. And so these covenants are pledging us to seek the Lord fully in these regards. and not to say it doesn't really matter. We've got our doctrine 90% right, what does it matter? Or at least we've got the right doctrine, it doesn't matter what the rest of the church believes, we just need to focus on ourselves. Or to say our worship, at least we're worshiping God in the right way, it doesn't matter about others. That's not what these covenants call us to do, but that each one of us would seek in whatever setting we are, to seek God with all our heart and with all our soul. And just like Asa's covenant, and just like all the renewals of the covenants in the Bible, there's a recognition, isn't there, that we're not all kings. We cannot do what Asa does here. Asa is able to go with civil power and tear down altars. Asa is able to, depose, and we'll think about this in a minute, he's able to depose the Queen Mother from her official duties because of her idolatry. Asa is able to say that those who are enemies of this covenant will be put to death. Not one of us is able to do these things because we're not kings. We're not in civil power. But we do have our own stations and our own callings in life. Some of us are ministers or elders. And we've got a higher responsibility, a greater responsibility to keep these covenants that have been signed nationally. We've got a duty to ensure that the church and the people under our care are instructed in these things and that the worship and discipline and government and doctrine of this church is founded only upon the word of God. We've got a responsibility to that and to seek to spread that beyond the binds of our congregation. Most of you are just members of the church, but some of you are heads of your household. Some of you have responsibility in this regard. And so it's your duty to seek to do what you can in the place that God has called you, to seek God with all your heart and with all your soul. And even the children are bind by that, to seek God with their all. We're bind by that with our baptism, which engages us to be the Lord. to be the Lord's. We're not called to be private Christians. We're not called to be Sunday only Christians. That we can have a little bit of faith and that's it. And it's locked away in a little box over here. And it doesn't impact the rest of my life. That is not what God calls any one of us to do. If you're one of Christ's people, then your whole life is dedicated to him. Heart and soul. And we cannot simply say, well, a little bit, a token gesture here and there is enough to please him. No, we're bound to serve him fully. And in this nation, we are covenantally bound to that too. We're doubly bound to it, if you like. We're bound by God's law to do that, but we're bound further by the covenants that we have signed as church and state. And everyone out there is bound by this. to seek God with all their heart and soul. And if we are with the Lord, the Lord is with us as a nation, verse two. But if we forsake him, he will forsake us. And that's a message that we declare, isn't it, to the world around us. We see also here in answer to this question what the purpose of the National Covenant was, it was seeking God fully. We recognize that there were some who would not seek God fully. You look at verse 13. But that whoever would not seek the Lord, the God of Israel, should be put to death, whether young or old, man or woman. I'm not calling here for any one of us to put people to death who break the covenants, because we are not civil rulers at all. There is a recognition here that there is a biblical principle in the law of God that in Israel, Deuteronomy 13, those who were idolaters and who led others astray, those who made proselytes, who took people away from the true faith to false religions, that such people were worthy of death. It was a capital crime because what they recognized is that soul murder, is an incredibly serious thing. That's what heresy and idolatry is. It murders the soul. Do you think about that? Do you think about that, that there are buildings in our time here that promote falsehood and heresy and idolatry, and they are actually murdering souls? That's a very solemn thought to think of that, that by teaching that Jesus is not the Christ, that he is not the son of God, that he didn't rise from the dead, that there is no hell, all these things that are taught by the cults and false churches. This is soul murder. It's soul murder. And if the law of God were followed in this land, if we had a ruler like Asa, such people, according to Deuteronomy 13, would be put to death because they are murdering souls. It's a very solemn thing to think of that. And it shows that we should seek to witness and to spread the truth. The truth is the only thing that will set people free from these lies. At the very least, isn't it true that in the church of Jesus Christ, there should be biblical discipline for heresy and idolatry? I was reading yesterday about something historically where there was heresy tolerated in a church, and there wasn't that faithfulness of church discipline. But we are bound, and we're covenantally bound, and in a sense, we're doubly bound in our church to use church discipline to put out heresy and idolatry and that which would murder souls. The civil magistrate is bound to deal with heresy and blasphemy and idolatry too. The Westminster Confession of Faith shows us that, that he's to suppress false religion and to promote the true religion. It's a biblical principle. And Asa seeks to do it. That's how he, as he signs this covenant, as they swear it before the Lord, that they will not tolerate enemies of the true faith spreading false gospels and falsehood. And Asa's willing to put that into practice. Verse 16, his mother, it's particularly here, his grandmother, The Queen Mother, she had made a detestable image for herself, for Asherah. And there were all sorts of obscene things that we won't go into that occurred with these things. She had made this, she had set it up, and she had been allowed to have an official position in the kingdom. Whatever it was, we don't know exactly. Queen Mother, she had some duties and some responsibilities. And Asa shows no partiality. It doesn't matter that she's his grandmother. He deals with it and he destroys her image, crushes it, burns it at the Brook Kidron. And that shows he was willing to practice what he preached. Enemies of the National Covenant and the Solemn League and Covenant should not be in positions of authority and responsibility. It's not a popular truth, but it is what those covenants teach us I wish we didn't have enemies of the covenants in positions of authority in the land. But sadly, that's the state we're in. And we have to mourn that, that we have rulers, king, prime minister, first minister, ministers in government that have very little knowledge of Christ at all, how far we have fallen. But we have to agree what God's word says, that enemies of the Christian faith should not be. in positions of authority in a nation that has covenanted itself to the Lord. And so too in the church. There should not be enemies of the covenanted work of reformation in leadership in the church. I think that's why, when we've had our various elections, a comment has been made about the voy about the covenants, believing in the continuing obligation of the national covenant and the solemn deacon covenant. Some people think that that is going over and beyond what the scripture tells us to do. You look at the qualifications of deacons, you look at the qualifications of elders, and there's nowhere in that that they must believe these things and teach these things and hold to these things. But yet we see something of that here in this covenant. Those who are enemies of the covenant, those who do not hold to this covenant, those who are not pledging themselves nationally with the nation to seek the Lord with all their heart and soul are not allowed in the positions of public office. Indeed, even by the civil magistrate, they can be put to death for being enemies of the covenant. And I think there is an application there to the church, and it's something we stand by and something that Certainly, I willingly took in my vows for ordination and at my induction, and I stand by them, that we should uphold these covenants. And we should never rely a day where people don't hold those and come into pulpits. Because what will they teach? They will teach against the covenants. And so we should uphold these things. Isa is pledging the nation to seeking God wholeheartedly. And friends, we have to ask, why? Why? Well, it's because Christ is King, and he is worthy of the preeminence. Should we at all be half-hearted in seeking the covenant at work of reformation? Should we allow ourselves to be lukewarm? Should we say, it doesn't really matter? These are historical niceties or oddities, perhaps. very forward. Should we not just be content with a church that is evangelical, trying to reach society? Should we not be content simply with a church that is reformed, concerned about how we worship and how we're governed here? Is that not enough? Can we not be like the other churches in the land that are good churches, some of them? Can we not just be like that? Is that not enough? Well, no, because God's word is showing us here that these covenants bind us as a nation and as a church. Christ is worthy of the honor of us holding to these covenants. To dishonor the covenants is to dishonor Christ, who is king, and our head. And so a simple faith, a simple gospel service is not enough. It needs to go further than that, for Christ must be enthroned over all areas of life, over the civil life, over the king, over the religious life, over all the churches, and over family life, over all the people. Well then, fourthly, what are the results of this covenant renewal? Well, verse 15, all Judah rejoiced over the oath, for they had sworn with all their heart, and had sought him with their whole desire, and he was found by them, and the Lord gave them rest all around. First thing to say here is for you as individuals, if you're not seeking the Lord with all your heart and with all your soul, this passage as a whole has told us that when we're not with God, God will be against us. But it has shown us, verse four, that at times when we seek the Lord, he will be found by us. Seek the Lord and he shall be found. Call upon him when he is near. And that's what happens here. In taking this covenant, the Lord was found by them. They find grace, they find help, they find strength. And so as they come to dedicate themselves to the Lord, they are blessed and they find help. And so I encourage you as individuals, if you're not seeking the Lord, seek Him and He will be found by you. Seek His grace. Seek Him at the cross. and you will find rest for your souls. But nationally here, Asa leading this nation leads them in renewing this covenant and as a nation they find rest. As a nation there is joy, there is peace, there's prosperity. Exactly as God had promised. The Lord is with you while you are with him. Take courage, do not let your hands be weak for your work shall be rewarded. Well, here we have rewards for the work of renewing the covenant. And our nation would be blessed if it returned to its covenants. If it returned to the covenanted work of reformation, we would see greater peace, prosperity, and joy and rest. And the troubles that we've had as a nation stem from the fact that we've rejected the God of our fathers. We've apostatized from the true faith, that we've rejected him. All we can expect as we continue in this state is what happened in the period of the judges, where there was no king recognized in Israel, where God was not recognized as king. People did what was right in their own eyes. And there was utter chaos. And God brought chastisement and discipline upon them. And it was sore, and it was heavy, and it was hard. And friends, there have been things that have happened to us in our lifetime. should lead us to think God is against us, that he's bringing the sword of the covenant against us. I'm not saying he's against us as Christians, because he's for us. And nothing can separate us from the love of God in Christ. And I think God has blessed us as a congregation even. He is not against us as a congregation. He is for us and with us and blessing us. But as a nation who has rejected him and his covenants, he brings the sword of the covenant against us. Think about COVID. and the chaos that that brought. Think about the cost of living crisis. Think about the number of prime ministers that have come and gone and the instability in government. Think about the crime on our streets, the lawlessness. Think of how people are suffering. Think about how, despite all these grand ideas from politicians, nothing ever seems to get better. We go from worse to worse. Think about how Romans 1 is being played out, that God is giving us over to all sorts of vile passions, and this nation is turning towards chaos. It's all part of God's judgment upon us as a nation. We have rejected the God of our fathers. And as long as we continue against God, God will continue against us. I repeat the fact that as a church, we can see blessings even in the midst of that. As Isaiah shows us, we are the remnant. And God does bless, and there are tangible blessings that we have by his grace. And even as we seek to keep ourselves apart from the sin of the world around us, the Lord can bless. Asa entered into this covenant, but even his covenanted work of reformation was imperfect. You see that at the end, verse 17, although he did a good work, the high places were not taken. out of Israel. You can't just blame this all, Asa didn't do enough. Asa's only one man. Asa can't go around and try to police absolutely everything. There would have been people who, despite all that God had done for them, would have held onto their idols, perhaps keeping them secretly, perhaps having them in high places. It was imperfect. We're going to see in a couple of weeks' time that Jehoshaphat continues. this work of reformation. But friends, if it was imperfect in the day of Asa, when he did so much for God, what would God say about the work of reformation in our day? And perhaps even we need to ask ourselves, what about us who are covenantally bound to promote reformation in society and church? How imperfect is our work? And how little have we done? There's so much still to do. Friends, I think we as a church must not lose this emphasis of a covenanted work of reformation. It's not enough just to preach the gospel. That must be at the heart of it. It's not enough simply to seek that the church is always reforming. That's good, but not enough. It's the church and the nation covenantally bind to a complete and full reformation, to seek God with all our heart and with all our soul. We're not simply the Church of the Covenanters because we're descended from men and women who died for their faith. We're the Church of the Covenanters because we believe these covenants are binding on us and the nation as a whole, and it's our duty to maintain them and call out for them. We need to teach and be reminded that this is hugely important. We need to testify and bear witness for them. We ourselves need to seek God with all our heart and all our soul. Imagine the sadness and the hypocrisy of being a covenanter, of saying we've got a blue banner at the front of our church, of being proud of the fact that we're descended from the martyrs, and yet we ourselves are not doing anything in our life to seek him with a greater heart and a greater soul. No, we must seek him in this way. And we need to seek to bring others in who can come to understand these things too. First of all, of course, people need to be brought in to see their own need of Christ. We need to preach the gospel, to call on those in the world to seek him with all their heart and soul, that they'll enter into a personal covenant that the Lord is their God and they will be his people. But then also to see that the nation as a whole needs it. We need to be a church that maintains its witness for these things, the witness of our forefathers. We need to be willing as a church to be different from other churches, not just for the sake of being different, but because we believe we should be different for the glory of Christ. We need to try to make this covenanted work of reformation winsome to other churches, to other reformed churches who do not hold to it, and to churches that have apostatized. We need to call on them to come back to this steady grind, this safe grind, this right grind of seeking God with all our heart and all our soul. We need to maintain our witness for the Covenanters and what they did, because history teaches us lessons for our own day. That's why I think the work of Reformation Tours is such an incredible and important work, and I'm glad as a congregation as well as a denomination that we can support that. And that each person that comes on those tours has an opportunity to show them the importance of these things. Let us not forget them. Let's not just have Americans coming in excited about learning these things. Let us be excited about them also, for we need to teach these things. We must be willing to separate ourselves from those who are not seeking God with all their heart. and with all their soul." Here in this passage, when the whole nation was covenanted, there was a sense that enemies would be dealt with. Well, we can't deal with them in that sense, but we can separate ourselves from those who are not seeking Christ with all heart and soul. And that's one of the reasons why, as a church, we bear our witness against oaths of allegiance. to an uncovenanted king who is apostatized from the faith. We cannot pledge ourselves to serve him and to be loyal to him when he is breaking these covenants that bind us as a nation. Why does all this matter? It all matters because Christ is the higher king, the greater king. He is king, and he shall reign until all enemies are put under his feet. But this is the way he reigns, and this is the way he wants to be acknowledged as king. through national covenanting. It is so important. Would you, and I know the answer to this, would you reach up into heaven to the throne of Christ and steal a jewel from his crown? Would you say, let's deface his crown a little bit? He's got a lovely crown. He doesn't really have a crown, but just metaphorically, if we can take a jewel here or a jewel there off the crown, you wouldn't dare to do that because you love Christ so much you want him to be enthroned with all glory. And so friends, to take away the jewel of national covenanting is to dishonor Christ our King. But to maintain it, to advocate for it, to teach it, to promote it, to stand for it, even in a day of defection and apostasy, is to acknowledge the honor of Christ. These things matter. They're not just historic niceties. They're not just simply things as a church we like to hold on to to be different. We believe they are right and we believe they are biblical. And sadly, the church has strayed from them. Let's bring them back. Let's bring back the king to his place of order as Asa did. Let us as individuals, as a church, and let us as much as we can for our nation, seek the Lord with all our heart and with all our soul. And may Christ's name endure always. May he last as long as the sun lasts. And may man be blessed in him. And may all nations call him blessed. Amen.