conception of Jehovah as entering into a covenant with Israel, the Old
Testament presents Him to our trust as having bound Himself to a known
line of action. Thereby He becomes, if we may so phrase it, a
constitutional monarch.

That conception of a Covenant is the negation of caprice, of arbitrary
sovereignty, of mystery. We know the principles of His government. His
majestic 'I wills' cover the whole ground of human life and needs for
the present and the future. We can go into no region of life but we
find that God has defined His conduct to us there by some word spoken
to our heart and binding Him.

4. Obligations from His new Covenant and highest word in Jesus Christ.

'He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins.'

II. God as recognising and discharging these obligations.

That He will do so comes from His very nature. With Him there is no
change of disposition, no emergence of unseen circumstances, no failure
or exhaustion of power.

That He does so is matter of fact. Moses in the preceding context had
pointed to facts of history, on which he built the 'know therefore' of
the text. On the broad scale the whole world's history is full of
illustrations of God's faithfulness to His promises and His threats.
The history of Judaism, the sorrows of nations, and the complications
of national events, all illustrate this fact.

The personal history of each of us. The experience of all Christian