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Ezekiel Chapter
Two
Ezekiel 2
Chapter Contents
The prophet is directed what he is to do. (1-5) And
encouraged to be resolute, faithful, and devoted. (6-10)
Commentary on Ezekiel 2:1-5
(Read Ezekiel 2:1-5)
Lest Ezekiel should be lifted up with the abundance of
the revelations, he is put in mind that still he is a son of man, a weak,
mortal creature. As Christ usually called himself the Son of man, it was also
an honourable distinction. Ezekiel's posture showed reverence, but his standing
up would be a posture of greater readiness and fitness for business. God will
speak to us, when we stand ready to do what he commands us. As Ezekiel had not
strength of his own, the Spirit entered into him. God is graciously pleased to
work in us whatever he requires of us. The Holy Spirit sets us upon our feet,
by inclining our wills to our duty. Thus, when the Lord calls upon the sinner
to awake, and attend to the concerns of his soul, the Spirit of life and grace
comes with the call. Ezekiel is sent with a message to the children of Israel.
Many might treat his message with contempt, yet they should know by the event
that a prophet had been sent to them. God will be glorified, and his word made
honourable, whether it be a savour of life unto life, or of death unto death.
Commentary on Ezekiel 2:6-10
(Read Ezekiel 2:6-10)
Those who will do any thing to purpose in the service of
God, must not fear men. Wicked men are as briers and thorns; but they are nigh
unto cursing, and their end is to be burned. The prophet must be faithful to
the souls of those to whom he was sent. All who speak from God to others, must
obey his voice. The discoveries of sin, and the warnings of wrath, should be
matter of lamentation. And those acquainted with the word of God, will clearly
perceive it is filled with woe to impenitent sinners; and that all the precious
promises of the gospel are for the repenting, believing servants of the Lord.
── Matthew Henry《Concise Commentary on Ezekiel》
Ezekiel 2
Verse 1
[1] And he said unto me, Son of man, stand upon thy feet,
and I will speak unto thee.
And — He that sat upon the throne, Jesus Christ.
Son of man — A phrase which is ninety-five
times, at least, used in this prophecy to keep him humble who had such great
revelations.
Stand — Arise, fear not. And with this command God sent forth
a power enabling him to rise and stand.
Verse 2
[2] And the spirit entered into me when he spake unto me,
and set me upon my feet, that I heard him that spake unto me.
The spirit — The same spirit which actuated
the living creatures.
Verse 5
[5] And they, whether they will hear, or whether they will
forbear, (for they are a rebellious house,) yet shall know that there hath been
a prophet among them.
Shall know — They that obey shall know by the
good I will do them, those that will not, by the evil which I will bring upon
them.
Verse 6
[6] And thou, son of man, be not afraid of them, neither be
afraid of their words, though briers and thorns be with thee, and thou dost
dwell among scorpions: be not afraid of their words, nor be dismayed at their
looks, though they be a rebellious house.
Words — Accusations, threats, or whatever else a malicious
heart can suggest to the tongue.
Briars — Which usually run up among thorns, are a very fit
emblem of the frowardness and keenness of sinners against God and his prophet.
Scorpious — Malicious, revengeful men. They
that will do any thing to purpose in the service of God, must not fear the
faces of men.
Verse 8
[8] But thou, son of man, hear what I say unto thee; Be not
thou rebellious like that rebellious house: open thy mouth, and eat that I give
thee.
Hear — Obey.
Open — This was done only in a vision.
Verse 9
[9] And when I looked, behold, an hand was sent unto me;
and, lo, a roll of a book was therein;
Roll — Their books were not like ours, but written in
parchment and in the length of it, and so one piece fastened to another, 'till
the whole would contain what was to be written, and then it was wrapped or
rolled about a round piece of wood, fashioned for that purpose.
Verse 10
[10] And he spread it before me; and it was written within
and without: and there was written therein lamentations, and mourning, and woe.
And — The person, who held out his hand.
Spread — Unrolled it.
Within … — On both sides, on that side which was inward when
rolled, and on that side also that was outward.
── John Wesley《Explanatory Notes on Ezekiel》
Ezekiel 2
Son of man, stand upon thy feet, and I will speak unto thee.
The full stature of a man
Men often speak, and more frequently act, as if the religion of
Christ paralysed manhood and cut the sinews of life. This is the reason, I
believe, why so many give a reluctant ear to the religion of Christ. Now I
concede the premise that determines this attitude to Christ; the premise that a
man is entitled to the rounded fulfilment and the highest reach of the nature
which God has given him. Our nature is a parchment on which God has written His
will concerning us. The difficulty is that the original writing of God is so
blotted and interlined with the writing of the devil that men misread their
nature, and take it at the devil’s interpretation instead of God’s
interpretation. In the measurement of ourself, any value below the highest is a
mistake. It defeats God’s intention regarding us. It flings us at once on an
inferior plane of life. It produces a manhood mutilated at the top,
impoverished in its deepest centres of power and joy. Now let us glance at the
religion of Christ. It is to feed these centres of power and joy in our nature,
to enlarge them, to quicken them to their keenest energy, that that religion
comes to us with its claim and appeal. So far from paralysing manhood and
cutting the sinews of life, it is something which God has put on this earth to
nourish the essential traits of manhood and thrust life upward to its highest
levels of force and happiness. Christ Himself is the only true measure of His
religion. We must take it in its original features and accents, with the large,
grand truths which He revealed as its lines of structure, and the institutions
which He founded to shelter those truths and bring them into living touch with
men. What did He tell us of His religion? Nay, what did He tell us of
Himself?--for Christ is Christianity. He said: “The Son of Man is not come to
destroy men’s lives, but to save them.” “I have come that they might have life,
and that they might have it more abundantly.” “I am the Light of the world. He
that followeth Me shall not walk in darkness, but shall have the light of
life.” These are crucial words. They sweep the whole horizon of Christ’s truth
and work. The purpose of His religion is not to impoverish and mutilate life,
but to show us the values of life as they stand in the light of God; and, in
the downward pull of our nature and the sharp stress of the world, to help us
to realise the highest values. Thus it comes to us. Thus it addresses us. It
says, as God said to the prophet: “Son of man, stand upon thy feet, and I will
speak unto thee.” You must meet it, as a man meets a friend, standing on your
feet, looking into his eyes, grasping his hand. And more than this; as its
spirit enters into you, it will set you upon your feet. It comes to uplift your
nature, enrich your life, to give it reach and vision, to keep you on your feet
in your fight with sin. But it makes demands, you say. Yes, but all its demands
are needful for the training of our manhood to its highest fruition; and it
helps us to meet its demands. For instance, it demands faith. But do you expect
to go through life without faith? Then you will miss the best and richest
things of life. It is like a man drawing the curtains of his windows when the
sunshine is making holiday on the earth. Again, it demands worship. But surely
no thoughtful man would give much for a life that had not the element of
worship in it. It is when faith in unseen things is faint, and worship dies out
of life, that men ask, “Is life worth living?” An empty heaven overarches an
empty heart. Lastly, it demands the curbing of the lower forces of our nature.
This, after all, is the demand that excites the most angry and determined
revolt. But life itself, outside of Christ, if it be carried to any high issue,
makes the same demand. Even to be the shadow of a man, even to be respectable
and keep our place in the world, we must chain the brute within us. It is a
difficult task, and men who essay it without the aid of God ofttimes find that
the wild beast has escaped his cage, and is devouring the beauty and dignify of
their life. Christ, it is true, goes beyond the demands of the world. He asks
us to sacrifice, if the need come, natural appetite and innocent joy in the
behoof of our soul. Life itself finds its meaning only by the soul working out
with pain and battle its supremacy. To accomplish this, the world has its
methods; but Christ’s method, after all, is the easiest method, the only
effective method. Starve the evil in your nature by feeding the good that is in
it. Conquer the strong man that has taken possession of your house by bringing
in a stronger than he. The Church of Christ, with its revealed truth, its
sacraments and its worships, is the Divine porch which God has built in the
world, through which we may come to Him, and draw into our life, for help in
our struggle and the healing of our wounds, the forces of His Divine life. (W.
W. Battershall, D. D.)
Self-possession
The man who is great by gift, office, or opportunity, and at the
same time of unfeigned goodness, will shrink back from the idea of
incapacitating by oblique terrorism those who come within the field of his
influence. He will wish them to employ their powers for the common weal to the
best possible advantage, and will therefore seek to put them at their case, to
encourage them to intellectual self-command, to build them up and not to cast
them down. God’s dealings with His servants of all ages correspond to our
conception of His gentle and gracious character. The vision of His presence and
power is not meant to permanently depress, overawe, and incapacitate. His glory
is overwhelming, but it is not His will to annihilate reason and all that
constitutes personality by the manifestations of His majesty.
I. Self-possession
is necessary for the highest forms of intercourse with God. A man cannot be a
recipient of the Divine revelations till he has made some little progress in
the art of collecting and commanding his own faculties. Now and again God makes
Himself known in vivid and stupendous ways which smite mortals with fear and
trembling. For the time being, He strips them of their manliness. The
characteristic attributes of the human personality are numbed, stifled,
half-destroyed, and the man who is the subject of these manifestations might
well think himself in the throes of a process intended to dissolve the elements
which make up the unity of his being, and merge him irrecoverably into the
terrible Infinite. Now this paralysing sense of the supernatural, which appears
to threaten the obliteration of the individual, is only temporary. God does not
wish to subtract anything from the personality, or to make us less than that
which He created us to be. But, after all, the only thing God wants to drive
out of the personality is the taint of selfishness, affinity for wrong, soft
complaisance towards transgression. Indeed, it is the sin latent in us which
produces collapse before His presence, and when that is gone serene
self-possession is recovered. He does not wish to blight, or repress and
destroy a single element in the constituent sum of a man’s identity.
1. This lack of quiet self-possession is sometimes the reason why
stricken, conquered, storm-tossed souls cannot enter into the quiet of saving
faith. A temptation to keep back the obedient response to God’s solicitation of
human confidence may come in two opposite ways. Many a man persuades himself
that his heart is not so profoundly stirred that he can exercise the faith that
will save him. The psychological atmosphere, he is tempted to think, is far too
normal and commonplace. And, on the other hand, those most profoundly wrought upon
by a sense of their guilt, and the vision of the Divine holiness, exercised to
the point of distraction by some force which has seized upon their emotions,
find it difficult to collect their minds into an intelligent and purposeful act
of faith. Their natures are almost stupefied by the mighty supernatural arrest
that has come to them. The power of thought and emotion is for the moment
frozen up or has almost passed away. They cannot collect themselves for the
transaction which is required at their hands. Saul, the blinded persecutor,
must have been in some such condition, as he lay prone at the gate of Damascus,
for he could not there and then put forth the faith by which he was healed,
built up, sanctified. The nature prostrate and helpless through a cataclysm of
overwhelming conviction must be brought out of its paralysing amazement. Faith
is an act which demands collectedness of mind, a rational and reflective
attitude, modest self-possession. True it is that faith is God’s gift, but the
hand that receives is not the hand clutched with terror or folded in sleep, but
the hand which is heedfully and unfalteringly held out.
2. Whilst reverence in God’s presence is a duty from which there can
be no release, that sacred emotion of the soul is not meant to dumfound and
transfix us, however mighty the revelations to which it is a tribute. Indeed,
the reverence that is allied to helplessness and maimed perception is
manifestly a sentiment of inferior quality. The man who wishes to dazzle the
supporters he is rallying to his side brings some kind of reproach upon
himself. He who seeks to lull his admirers into dreaminess or to fascinate them
into stupor, and so disarm their judgments, confesses thereby the meagreness of
his own power to captivate by reason and by love. If, as God comes forth to
conquer us, His revelations put the larger part of our mental life to sleep or
obscure a single faculty or perception, that would be practically a confession
of weakness on His part. It would imply He had not adequate moral and spiritual
reserve forces wherewith to subdue our souls into adoration of His attributes
and homage to His great behests. When God sees fit to disclose His majesty and
abase our pride, He does not intend to permanently weaken, discourage,
paralyse. That would be to surround Himself with worshippers of meaner capacity
and servants of inferior fitness for His tasks. He desires to call forth,
train, and perfect the undivided powers of those whom He seals and sends.
3. The largest and the loftiest service of God is that which is
rational in the best sense of the word. Those disclosures of His being,
character, and operation which God will make both in this life and in that
which is to come, are intended to stimulate and not to depress that group of
faculties of which the brain is the symbol. He has created us all that which we
find ourselves, so that we may be better able to comprehend Him than beings
less richly endowed, and we cannot think that this special capacity will be
overborne and destroyed as soon as the goal comes into view. Every mental power
must be healthy, well-mastered, on the alert, so that we lose nothing from His
many-sided revelations. We cannot apprehend God and assimilate His truth and
life in states of feeling which are not far removed from trance conditions. The
highest intercourse with God attainable by a human soul is that in which the
soul is perfectly at ease, competent to command its own powers and apply its
own discernments.
4. Men may pass into mental states in which we describe them as
possessed--possessed either by the Spirit of God for good, or by an unclean
spirit for evil. But possession represents only a half-way stage towards a
final goat of holiness or sin. In possession, both for evil and good, the
personality becomes more or less veiled, overborne, suppressed. Manifestations
of the Divine glory that confound and disable through their momentary
intenseness, unfit for the truest and most comprehensive communion with God. In
our own, as well as in earlier times, Christianity has fallen under the spell
of Oriental philosophies which assume that the basis of human personality is
evil, and its duration therefore fleeting; and that reabsorption into the
infinite and universal life is the goal of all aspiration and progress. The unexpressed
idea seems to be that the infinite cannot tolerate the finite, that it is
always thirsting to draw every attribute of manhood out of us, and that it will
leave at last the mere husk and shell of an effete personality behind,
bleaching into final invisibility, or perhaps not even so much as that. Such a
view credits God with predatory instincts rather than pays Him the glory due to
His absolute and eternal love. God wishes to take out of our personalities
nothing but what is hateful--selfishness, folly, moral blemish and defect. In
Christ’s high-priestly prayer we find the charter which pledges the permanence
of all those elements which constitute personality. His own relation to the
Father, which presupposed the essentials of personality, was to be the standard
looked to in the perfecting of the disciples. “As Thou, Father, art in Me and I
in Thee, that they also may be one in us.” The branch which is grafted into the
stock of a tree still produces its own specific flowers, in spite of its union with
the tree, and produces them more nobly because of the reinforcement of life it
receives from the tree. Our Lord’s union with the Father accentuated rather
than obscured the properties of His personality. The Father was ever dwelling
in the Son, but the personality of the Father was not lost in the mystery of
intercommunion; and the Son was ever dwelling in the Father, but He remained a
perfectly conscious and clearly defined Son, and His personality was neither
volatilised nor swallowed up by the mystic relation. The union which entirely
abstracts and absorbs makes communion a fixed impossibility. And His own
age-long fellowship with the Father, Jesus Christ presents as the type and
consummation of all human excellence and blessedness. Ages await, us in which
the revelations of God will transcend the grandest disclosures of the past; but
even then these, revelations will be attempered to our capacity to receive and
assimilate, Man’s intellectual grasp, far from being overtaxed and palsied by
the strange secrets of the future, will only be stimulated and enlarged. We are
not children of the mist, freaks of cloudscape, broken shadows, iridescent vat,
ours, whose destiny it is to confront the sunlight and be irretrievably
dissolved. In the maturity of an all-round, unshrinking, indefectible
personality, we shall be summoned into the presence of His glory to receive,
without error or distraction, the nobler teaching of the hereafter. He will ask
us then to be self-possessed, and He is teaching us the alphabet of that duty
now. “Son of man, stand upon thy feet, and I will speak unto thee.”
II. A serene and
undisturbed temper is necessary not only for the man who is an elect recipient
of Divine revelations, but for the man also who is to be a messenger of these
revelations to others. Courage before men is a characteristic of the genuine
prophet; a timid, blushing, disconcerted herald from God’s throne is an
incongruous compound. The first apostles did much to prove their place in the
holy succession by the firmness with which they spake under circumstances which
would have abashed men with a less convincing religious history behind them. In
the chapters to which the vision of Ezekiel is a prelude, the prophetic office
is illustrated by the duty laid upon the sentinel or watchman. For such work
the power of calm, unerring discernment is indispensable. He must be master of
himself, able to see with his own eyes, to trust the correctness of his own
judgments, to hold his own in the world. Unless a man has self-command, or can
at least acquire it by discipline, he is unfit to be God’s watchman. The
nervous prophet, the self-deprecating herald, the apostle who allows himself to
be overborne by the clamour of the world, stultifies his own mission and does
not a little to discredit his message.
1. Self-possession is often a secret of success in common things. In
not a few pursuits the cool head and uniform self-command are essential to life
itself. A man must have confidence in the art he has assumed, and in his own
aptitude for applying the principles of his art, and above all in the truths to
the promulgation of which his art is contributory. He who has a modest faith in
his own resources, be they natural or spiritual, will inspire some degree of
that same faith into others. The man who cannot command his own faculties at
the moment, never inspires confidence, however vast the stores of knowledge and
power with which popular rumour may credit him. It is the working capital in
actual view which assures the onlookers rather than the unrealisable assets. We
cannot persuade others till we are so absorbed by the subject matter of that
persuasion that all the powers of the mind rise up to emphasise it. The duty of
self-command implies very much more than subjecting our bad passions to the
control of the will; and if we do not learn self-command in the widest possible
sense of the term, we inevitably weaken our effectiveness for good. By
fluttered moods and weak, indeterminate accents, the wisest man is just as much
disqualified from swaying others as the ignorant or the imbecile. Nervous
embarrassment, inability to bring our best gifts into use at the call of a
providential opportunity, palpitations, strikings of spirit, hesitancies, seem
to turn our message into farce and dumb show. One faculty which we can quietly
use at will for practical ends is better than a brilliant host of faculties
which are not under perfect control.
2. Self-possession is a sign of the quietness of faith. When attained
by spiritual processes it becomes a Voucher for that trust in God which, once
learned in His immediate presence, extends to the daily fulfilment of the tasks
He has fixed. Without this tranquillity which grows from faith we can have no
power. There can be no confusion or embarrassment where this fixed persuasion
exists. The man who is bold at God’s command is bold because authority is
behind him, and authority means the mighty grace which will not suffer its
obedient instruments to be confounded or brought to shame. A true faith should
enable us to wield our finest powers for God and His service. Respect for the
opinions of others should never lead us to cancel ourselves and the contents of
our own consciences. The strength and boldness we need in speaking for God
must, in many cases, be built up from their very foundations on religious
principles and experiences. The man whom nature does not help, and who through
superhuman influence alone grows bold and at ease, will far surpass the other
in effectual service for God. It may sometimes happen that in the physical life
there is a barrier to their self-possession which is a prime condition of
usefulness, and in one case out of a hundred the barrier may be insurmountable.
Excellent and high-principled men and women assume too readily that they are the
victims of nervous disorder, weak circulation, faintness. Let God’s imperative
“Stand upon thy feet” help us. It is a Divine voice which calls us to mental
collectedness, to the quiet use and control of all our hidden gifts. He would
fain rescue us from our frailties, from proneness to mental confusion, from
undue awe of the face of our fellows, from that nervous paralysis which so
often has its roots in a morbid or a defective religious life. It is not His
will to have servants who lack the note of courage, competence, effectuality.
By contact with God we shall gain steadiness, confidence of touch, impressive
self-mastery for our work. “Now when they beheld the boldness of Peter and John
. . . they took knowledge of them that they had been with Jesus.” If we learn
presence of mind before God we shall find little difficulty in maintaining it
before men. “Wait on the Lord, be of good courage, and He shall strengthen
thine heart; wait, I say, on the Lord.” (T. G. Selby.)
The prophet’s commission
I. The attitude of
the prophet in the presence of God. Jonathan Edwards, who has been called the
Isaiah of the Christian Dispensation; was often carried in the chariot of his
imagination into the very highest heaven of ecstasy to behold the greatness and
the glory of the Lord. And during those seasons of seraphic communion he
realised his utter weakness, and his very body seemed to faint and fail.
Pascal, too, had no less exalted experience when he was visited with the
presence and power of God, and saw visions so unutterable that he could only
fall on his face and weep tears of joy. But God does not mean that His servants
should be overmastered with the majesty of its glory. God is not like an
Eastern sovereign who wishes his subjects to be impressed with his distant greatness,
and would extinguish the sense of noble manhood within their breast. The
relation which God sustains to His people is that of a father to his children,
who would impress them with the conviction of his absolute authority, and yet,
at the same time, would endeavour to awaken within them the sense of their
nobility and dignity as his children.
II. The attitude of
the prophet in the presence of man. We may bend our knees in the presence of
God, but we must stand upon our feet in the presence of man. It is in this
attitude that we receive strength. Bunyan’s picture of the prophet is the ideal
for all time. “He had eyes lifted up to heaven, the best of books was in his
hand, the law of truth was written upon his lips, the world was behind his
back. He stood as if he pleaded with men; and a crown of glory did hang over
his head.”
1. The first quality or attribute of the true prophet is that of
conviction. The prophets of science have emerged out of their caves of
prejudice, of tradition, of authority, and have gazed at nature with the clear
eye of truth, and under the open canopy of heaven. And so it must be with the
prophets of Scripture; they must be prepared to dismiss all the idols of
prejudice and passion, and study the Bible in the light of open day, and thus
arrive at a firm, immovable conviction of its truth. We have no business to
preach our doubts; it is the grand realities that we are to proclaim in the
presence of an unbelieving world. A lady once, examining Turner’s pictures,
said, “But, Mr. Turner, I don’t see these things in nature.” “Madam,” replied
the artist, with pardonable pride, “don’t you wish you could?” Thus the true
prophet must be a seer, and being a seer, the whole breadth of nature and
Scripture will be open to him, and he will see things that others wot not of.
2. The second quality which distinguishes the true prophet is that of
courage. The apostles after the day of Pentecost were full of courage. The fear
of man was completely taken away, so that they testified with boldness the truths
of the Gospel concerning the death, burial, and resurrection of Christ. So it
was with Luther, with Knox, with Savonarola, and all the great prophets of old;
they were bold and uncompromising in their utterance of the truth.
3. The third quality of the faithful prophet is character. The staff
of the prophet must be in the hands of a pure and upright man. Gehazi was a bad
man; and hence, although he had the wand of Elisha in his hand, it failed to
work enchantment. He passed the staff over the face of the dead child, the son
of the Shunamite woman, but there was no voice, nor any that answered. But when
Elisha took the staff in his hand, then the boy was raised to life again. Thus
will it always be. (J. C. Shanks.)
Human progress a preparation for the fuller knowledge of God
I. The will of God
is the uplifting of man. Ezekiel thought that he honoured God by falling
prostrate on the ground. Be learnt that God was rather honoured by his standing
on his feet. Salvation is the uplifting of man. It must be so because God is
love. His aim is to lift the objects of His love into free fellowship with
Himself. His glory and their exaltation are one. And the liker to Himself they
are, the greater His joy. And this is true with reference to all man’s powers.
To stand upright is the outward sign of self-possession and of power in full
development and exercise--first of all, the highest powers of faith and
aspiration and conscience, but then all the powers which go together to make
the man. Every human faculty has its place in the kingdom of God, and is sought
out by the redemption of Christ Jesus.
II. The text makes
this uplifting not only compatible with, but necessary to, the reception of
Divine truth. “Stand upon thy feet, and I will speak unto thee.” Character can only
be understood by corresponding character. If the lesser is to have fellowship
with the greater, it must always be because the lesser grows until an answering
faculty apprehends the greater. Take away the faculty in the receiver, and you
destroy the power of the revealer to reveal himself. If the musician is to
utter his soul, his instrument must sufficiently combine melodiousness,
harmony, and delicacy to express his conception and to call forth all his
skill. Had Mendelssohn known only the tom-tom of an African savage, we could
never have had the Elijah and the Songs without Words. So we
could never have had the dialogues of Plato had the philosopher had in view no
audience more intellectual than a Sunday school class. And this is no mere
human limitation. God can only reveal Himself to man and in man as human nature
becomes lofty and deep and broad enough to apprehend and to express His mind.
Further, each new power developed in man is a new point of contact with God.
The world is so full of God that it is impossible to establish any new
connection with it without its becoming a way of approach to some part of the
mind of God, which is waiting to be revealed, when the means of receiving it
are found.
III. We have in the
text a special message from God to the men of our times. From every side the
call is being heard--“Stand upon thy feet.” Orders have been called to
political and economical influence, which never exerted it before. Men are
pressing forward to claim their share in the higher life of science,
literature, and art, who but a generation ago were not sufficiently awakened
even mournfully to say, “Such joys are not for us.” What is the true prophet to
say to this many-sided movement? Is he to ban it as secular and worldly? Nay,
rather, he must proclaim that so long as moral earnestness is behind it, it is
the inspiration of God bidding men stand upon their feet, that He may speak to
them. (J. S. Lidgett, M. A.)
Optimism and pessimism; or, the true dignity of man
(with Psalms 8:4-5):--It is most important that
man should recognise his high origin, the nobility of his powers, and the
glorious destiny that is possible to him, and that invites his noblest efforts
and ambition. The first attitude of the soul toward God must always be that of
profound reverence and deep humility. Still God will not allow His chosen ones
to crouch at His feet. First, the lowly penitent pleading for mercy; after
that, the servant, obeying the commandments of God because he must obey or lose
his place; but then, the son and friend, standing up beside his God, listening
with rapturous delight to the voice of the loving Father. God is ever ready to
draw near to those who love Him, and to speak with them as friend speaketh with
friend. “Son of man, stand upon thy feet, and I will speak to thee.” I think we
may learn from these words that it is possible for us to miss the voice of God,
and to lose much of the comfort of His presence, by failing to claim the privilege
of coming to God at all times, in the fullest confidence of love and
friendship. Man must recognise his true dignity, and maintain his self-respect,
before he can receive the highest revelation of God. It is worthy of note that
God put dignity and honour upon man by creating him in His own image. He also
showed His great regard for man by giving His Son to redeem him, and lift him
up from the low condition into which he had been brought by sin and
transgression. And especially does He assert the dignity and worth of man,
regenerated and purified, by making his body the temple of His Holy Spirit, and
by providing for him a glorious, happy home, where no sin, nor sorrow, nor
suffering can ever enter. There are pessimists in our day who boldly proclaim
that human life is a failure--that the world is going from bad to Worse--that
there is nothing in human life to be thankful for, but much to be deplored. The
explanation of pessimism is found in the fact that men are living Without God
and without hope in the world. There are, I think, three different views of
human life. First, the superficial view of life, indulged in by the young and
inexperienced. Life is not looked at in all its sober reality. Its
responsibilities and trials are not duly weighed. The brightness on the surface
is all that is seen. This is the optimist view. Then comes the second view of
life, held, perhaps, by disappointed, unsuccessful men. Life is a burden and a
toil; and yet the desire to live is strong in them; and they are puzzled and
perplexed beyond measure. This is the view of the pessimist. Then there is the
third view of life, deeper, truer, and more hopeful--bright with a more sober
and abiding light than that of the optimist--and happy with a calm confidence
in God, that cannot be shaken. This is the Christian view of life. The
pessimist and the optimist are both in error. The pessimist opens the windows
of the soul outward, and lets out upon the world the darkness of his own
morbid, melancholy, and darkens the brightness of the world with his own
darkness. That is bad--an evil that ought to be carefully avoided. The optimist
opens the windows of the soul inward, letting in the world’s bright sunlight,
so that he sees only the brightness, and thinks nothing of the misery and wretchedness
that are around; and hence he puts forth no effort to make the world brighter
and better. But the true Christian philosopher opens the windows of the soul
upward, and lets the light of heaven stream in. He sees everything in the light
of God’s providence and God’s purposes, and has his mind enlightened by God’s
Spirit. (S. Macnaughton, M. A.)
The assertion of manhood
Ezekiel was overwhelmed by the vastness of the universe and the
great range of God’s sovereignty. He could no longer--like the earlier
prophets--limit his thoughts of Divine providence to the fatherly care and
protection of a handful of Jews. It was something much vaster. In the
government of the world there was wheel within wheel, there were forces at work
that seemed to take little heed of individual or even national interests; there
was the terrible impartiality of a universal Power dispensing equal laws to all
peoples of the earth. To himself he suddenly appeared of no account in this
universe of law and force, and in utter abasement he grovelled on the ground.
But he was not permitted long to abase himself. God had a work for him to do, a
message to deliver. And before the work could be done or the message revealed,
the prophet must rise from his grovelling attitude, and reassert his manhood
and recover his self-respect. He must recover his belief in the true position
of man; he must assert his liberty of action; he must believe in the
possibility of leading a holy, a Divine life, and when he had thus shown his
sense of the true dignity of man and his respect of self, he could be made a
prophet and servant of the Most High.
1. The first element in the self-abasement and prostration, the sense
of insignificance in presence of the great forces of nature, and of the
vastness of the universe, is finely described in the 8th Psalm: “When I
consider Thy heavens,” etc. However we explain it, there is a failure to
realise the true dignity of man, to value aright the purpose of life, to
understand the issues that depend upon our thoughts, and words, and actions. We
get into the way of looking on ourselves simply as atoms, inconsiderable parts
of a world which contains much that is more worthy of securing God and man’s
attention than a human soul; and we are content, with the lowest level for our
character and conduct. But if we are tempted to feel in this way, the voice of
God says to us: “Son of man, stand upon thy feet, and I will speak unto thee.”
It tells us how the Creator, after He had framed the earth and designed the
heavens, made man in His own image, endowed him with reason, that he might know
and judge himself; with conscience, that he might discern between right and
wrong; and imagination, that he might purify his affections; with a principle
of life, that he might live forever. It commands us to measure the superiority
thus conferred upon us as children of the living God.
2. The second element in Ezekiel’s abasement was a sense of
helplessness. If his vision were a first glimpse of the reign of law, his fear
may have contained the first shadow of a feeling that has shed its deepest
gloom, on the paths of so many in these later days. The question, What is man?
is answered by a large number of the thoughtful and the unthinking alike in the
language of sheer fatalism. In effect, they say: “I am what I am, and need not
be expected to change; God and man must take me as they find me. Another, with
different parentage, and brought up in different circumstances from mine, may
be a better, a more amiable man than I am. But he need not plume himself upon
that. Had our places been reversed, so would our characters, and I for my part
must be content to remain as I am.” The same feeling is shown in reference to
our mission in the world. The same man who blames fate for what he is, denies,
in practice, if not in words, the possibility of his doing any work for good.
He reasons for ethers as he reasons for himself--they are, and will be, what
the struggle for existence, the advantages or disadvantages of their lot have
made them; and as circumstances have neither fitted him to do anything for
them, nor brought him into contact with them, he must leave them alone. He and
they are fixed alike in this great wheel of fate, and although they all move,
it is by no conscious effort on their part. All alike are poor, helpless
creatures, whirled round in the great machine. I cannot doubt that this feeling
was in the mind of Ezekiel as it was in the mind of his contemporary Jeremiah.
Nor can I doubt that it was to rouse him out of his helplessness that God told
him to stand upon his feet. And neither can I doubt that God calls upon us all
to assert our dignity as men by claiming our liberty.
3. The third element in the abasement of Ezekiel must have been a
sense of sinfulness. We need not try to analyse this feeling or show how it
acted upon him. The emotions that flooded the soul of the prophet can hardly be
dissected and tabulated. The knowledge that he had himself sinned, had been
guilty of transgressing, or, at least, of failing to carry out with anything
like perfection those laws whose power had just been revealed to him, was the
last drop in his cup of humiliation. It would have been strange if it had been
otherwise. If we ever obtain a glimpse of the majesty of the law and of the
Lawgiver, we can hardly fail to be humiliated by the recollection of our own
past lives. We have known the right and the good, and we have not chosen them;
we have seen the path of safety for health of body, health of mind, health of
soul; and we have wilfully forsaken it. We are not the men we might have been,
we have not done the good we ought to have done; our prospects for time and
eternity are overclouded, and the splendour which ought to have shone around
them has become dim. And when we see the appearance in the likeness of a man on
the sapphire throne--should I not say on the cross?--we will not fail to fall
prone and abase ourselves if we have retained any of the better feelings God
gave us at our birth. But our text reminds us that it is not good to remain too
long in this abject state. We are not forever to be confessing that we are
miserable sinners. The voice calls to us even when we are abased under a sense
of sin: “Son of man, stand upon thy feet.” Escape at once from the humiliation
and the sin that has caused it. Look up to the bright heaven of a new ideal.
Set your affection on things that are above. Prepare to move in the service
that hitherto has been neglected, and God will teach you by higher training for
a nobler life. (J. Millar, B. D.)
The importance of self-respect
Ezekiel was to be the bearer of a Divine message for the
correction and moral rousing of his countrymen, and in order that Heaven may
impart to him its secret, and inspire and instruct him for the work to which he
has been chosen, he is called to rise and stand upon his feet. Here, then, in
the very Book in which we are always meeting with injunctions to bend and bow,
if we would be Divinely visited, are instances of men summoned to get up from
the dust of conscious littleness and unworthiness, that they might be Divinely
spoken with--of men, prone upon their faces in the presence of God, who were
required to place themselves upon their feet before He could say anything to
them, or make any use of them. Yet we may be quite sure, at the same time, that
their prior prostration was equally indispensable. When Jehovah would charge
Moses with the task of delivering Israel, the word to him was not, “Stand upon
thy feet, that thou mayest hear and be invested from above,” but, “Fall upon
thy face.” When, however, he had been deeply awed and humbled, to begin with,
then he was bidden to uplift his head and believe in himself. It was needful,
that as Saul and Daniel and Ezekiel were, he should first be deeply awed and
humbled; but like them also, he needed to become erect after depression for the
Heavens to be intimate with him, and to make him their mouthpiece and organ.
And for healthy living, for beautiful action and endurance in our place,
whatever it may be, we all require to have these two united in us--awe and assurance--prostration
and erectness--the recognition of our insignificance--our dependence--and the
recognition of our worth and dignity. We need to be both lying down in felt
emptiness and helplessness, and rising up in brave self-sufficiency; and while
it may be the fact that Heaven will reveal nothing to those who are not humble
and lowly, it is equally the fact that Heaven never has anything to reveal to
those who are not duly reverencing, and manfully leaning upon themselves.
Coming to the New Testament, we meet continually in its pages with the same
recognition of the importance of self-respect. Jesus Christ was always saying
something in aid of it--something to encourage and support it. When He would
strengthen His apostles for cleaving to their convictions against the
opposition of the world, for brave and fearless prosecution of the work to
which they were called, He talked to them of their worth in the eyes of the
Almighty Father, telling them that the hairs of their head were all numbered,
and that they were of more value than many sparrows. When Simon Peter,
overwhelmed for a moment with the feeling of his manifold imperfections, fell
down at the Master’s feet, crying, “Depart from me, for I am a sinful man, O
Lord,” how was he treated? The Master dropped at once a hint of the great
capacity which He saw latent in him, and waiting to be developed, of the great
use which he was destined to be in the service of the kingdom--“Fear not,
Simon; from henceforth thou shalt catch men.” When, again, Christ mingled with
the degraded outcasts of Judea, of what did He speak to them? of their worth,
of how Heaven missed them and wanted them. They heard from His blessed lips of
the shepherd’s concern for the lost sheep, of the housewife’s eager search for
the lost piece of silver. There is nothing more conducive to healthy
self-reverence against the influence of felt poor quality and low desert, than
the assurance that we are dear to someone who is superior--that someone who is
superior cares for us, and clings to us, and considers us capable of much
better and greater things. And this was the strength which Christ brought to
the weak--the Gospel with which He raised the self-despairing. You are the
child of a God who thinks on you, and yearns over you, and to whom, in your
worst vileness, you are a prince in bondage, worthy of being sought after and
redeemed. Then look at the Epistles--the Pauline epistles especially: in them,
how constantly are the readers reminded of their high estate, or of the great
things that were imputed to them, of the great things that were assumed with
regard to them; of the lofty idea of their condition and character, which His
perfect manhood involved, whose members and brethren they were. “Ye are bought
with a price” - “Ye are all children of the light, and of the day”--“Know ye
not that your body is the temple of the Holy Ghost?”--“Reckon ye yourselves to
be dead indeed unto sin, but alive unto God, through Jesus Christ our Lord.”
But you will say, “When are we not self-respecting?” Well, he is not, for one,
who craves and courts the approbation of others, and sets himself to gain
it--who wants it, wants it to comfort and uphold him--who can be strong and
happy enough while others are praising or smiling on him, but when they are
not, waxes feeble and melancholy. Again, he is wanting in self-reverence who
gives himself at all to imitate another, who, in any work which may be laid
upon him, tries to repeat the greatness of another, to copy his distinctions
rather than to evoke and cultivate his own, to strain after his dimensions,
rather than to be as perfect as he can within his own. Then, again, he is not
self-respecting who hesitates at all to go with his convictions, who fears to
trust and follow the light within him, when the many are moving in the opposite
direction; who, when careful and honest inquiry seems to be carrying him to
conclusions that will separate him from the multitude, and perchance from those
who are deemed great and wise, becomes afraid--afraid to abide with what commends
itself to him as good and true. Beware of losing self-respect through living
dramatically--with a daily appearance put on, which is not true to the
reality--with the frequent assumption before spectators of that which does not
belong to you. Beware of losing it through leading an idle, aimless, useless
life, a life without any high or worthy purpose. Beware of losing it,
especially, through forever failing to obey your higher promptings, and forever
regretting and bemoaning the failure, while never seriously endeavouring to
improve. (S. A. Tipple.)
Standing before God
For all true and worthy service of God--which simply means all
true and worthy living of the lives God hath here given us--this word reminds
us that there is a necessity--a falling and a rising before God. For this man
whom God bids to rise and stand upon his feet had been down, down low and in
the dust. Ah! there is too little of this prostration before God--too little
vision of the glory and majesty of Him with whom we have to do. Yet this must
precede and be the source of all powerful rising and service. We must get down
before we can get up. And the humiliation that is blessed is the humiliation
that comes from realising God. Our Lord Himself spent memorable hours of His
life bowed in communion before God. He found there the secret of power and
strength to fulfil His Father’s will. Much more must we. There is, then, first
of all the lowly abasement. But there follows also, as surely, the rising
again. And this is the second condition under which God will speak to us and
use us--“Stand upon thy feet.”
I. God calls us to
a true dignity when He calls us to His service. It is a very false view of
religion which holds that it tends to make a man poor spirited and lachrymose.
The true self-respect, the self-respect that springs from humility before God,
and not from pride before man, has its roots in religion. And there is no man
who will carry himself with truer dignity through the world than the man who
believes in God, who has the fear of God before his eyes, and has heard the
voice of God in his own soul. And, if we think of it, there are many men who
are laid low whom God would rather have to stand up; and many, on the contrary,
who stand up whom God would rather see abased. The despairing and the doubting,
for example, are often on their faces on the earth. They wander in the grounds
of Giant Despair, and he punishes them sorely and without pity. Now, God would
rather that they arose, that they made effort to stand upon their feet, and to
set them on the rock that is higher than they. On the other hand, there are
some who stand whom God would rather see abased. We have many types of them in
the Scriptures. The self-reliant is one. Peter points many a moral, but none
more surely than this--“Let him that thinketh he standeth take heed lest he
fall.” Again, the Pharisee of Christ’s parable is another type. The rich fool
of the parable, too, was a man who stood up very proudly, planting his foot
confidently on his sure income, his fine houses, and stores. “Thou fool!” What
an awful irony is here. “Thou fool, this night” thy soul, thy soul shall be
required of thee. Very far, then, is the dignity and self-respect of a deeply
religious man from such foolish pride and vain self-confidence as this. He stands
as Christ stood (and never was there dignity more regal than His), rooted in
humility, yet conscious of the Divinest relations, that, like golden chains,
bind him to his God.
II. When God says,
“Son of man, stand upon thy feet,” it also means that He requires courage in
the souls that would serve Him. Ezekiel needed it. “Be not afraid of them,”
etc. And it is needed as much by us as by others who have borne witness before
us. The temptations that try our courage, though neither briers nor scorpions, are
very real and powerful, and many a quaking there is before them. We need
courage to do the right thing in spite of looks of enmity and glances of scorn,
in spite of the alienation and misunderstanding of men. God knows we may find
that our enemies are they of our own house, and much courage and standing on
the feet is needed then. I read lately the story of the lives of two brothers.
The one was a soldier who had won great distinction abroad. In a moment of
crisis, in the heat of battle, at the peril of his own life, he dashed forward
and saved a fallen comrade from the death that surrounded him. It was bravely
and well done. He was decorated and gazetted, feted and lionised. But at home
was a father, a drunkard, an old man whose life was a disgrace to himself and a
burden to his friends. It did not suit the gallant soldier to know this father
much, or to live in his neighbourhood. He preferred to enjoy his honours at a
distance, away where the breath of this loathsome scandal would not reach him
or mar his pleasures. But by this father stood the other son. He was a highly
educated, sensitive man, whose life was dedicated to noble work, and who was
already gaining for himself the first sweet distinctions of his profession. His
father’s life was a keen and bitter shame to him. He could easier have borne
the knife plunged into his flesh. Yet, at the call of duty--the highest and
most sacred duty, in his eyes--he bowed his neck to this shame and sorrow, gave
up his bright prospects, lived alone, apart, with this wretched maniac of
drink, did the work of a menial, and bore more than a meniars share of cruel
blows and insulting words. The one gained the laurels of men, because, under
the impulse of the moment, in the heat and excitement of battle, he did a
courageous thing; yet in the moral trial, brave soldier as he was, he proved
cowardly and ignoble, and left to the shoulders of one, whom he counted a fool
for his pains, the cross that should at least have been shared by both. The
other got no laurels--was nowhere noticed or spoken of with any distinction;
but who can read the story of his self-sacrifice, of his humility, of his
patience, without feeling that here, in the sight of God, was the true
hero--here the true courage that faced worse than the bullet or the steel, and
that endured longer than the swift, exciting hour?
III. The call to
stand upon the feet indicates also the uprightness that God would have in all
His servants. It is vain to think we can serve God, or be witnesses to Him in
the world, if we are still harbouring the sins that tend to keep us low. Never
was there greater need than today for the people of God to stand in uprightness
and integrity. Christ has suffered too much and too long in the open
unworthiness of many lives. There are things--habits of life, practices of
trade, indulgences of temper and passion and lust, both open and secret--that,
if we are to serve Him truly, must be over and ended, past and gone forever.
Let us examine ourselves, and let each see what are the things he must cast
from him, and must struggle to leave behind--those dead, crucified selves, on
which alone we can rise to higher things.
IV. When God calls
us to stand, He means He would have in us a readiness to act. Ah! God would
oftener speak to us, brethren, but He sees we are not very ready to do
anything. Why should He speak? We are indolent. We are too comfortable in our
chairs of ease, or too much engrossed with other things. Oh, the hesitancy and
reluctance of our obedience! How we need to be persuaded and pled with! Oh,
shake yourself from this fatal spirit of indifference and indolence, for many
are suffering from it, and losing their lives in it. Stand upon your feet.
Offer yourself to God, as if you meant it. And “I will speak to you,” saith the
Lord. “I will direct your path, and open for you the way of a blessed life.” (R.
D. Shaw, B. D.)
02 Chapter 2
Verses 1-10
Verse 2
And the Spirit entered into me.
God helping His ministers
Mark the course of a river like the Thames; how it winds and
twists according to its own sweet will. Yet there is a reason for every bend
and curve; the geologist, studying the soil and marking the conformation of the
rock, sees a reason why the river’s bed diverges to the right or to the left;
and so, though the Spirit of God blesses one preacher more than another, and
the reason cannot be such that any man could congratulate himself upon his own
goodness, yet there are certain things about Christian ministers which God
blesses, and certain other things which hinder success. (C. H. Spurgeon.)
The power behind the preacher
The Rev. F.B. Meyer has a firewood factory in connection with his
church, where employment is provided for men and boys. A circular saw is used
for cutting through beams of solid timber. Until recently, this saw was worked
by a crank, turned by twelve or fifteen men. But it was slow, hard, and
expensive work. At last, says Mr. Meyer, we were driven to something more
expeditious, and bought a gas engine. And now, the saw, driven by this engine,
does in two or three hours as much work as it did formerly in a day, and at
less than a tenth of the cost. It is the same saw; but the difference lies in
the power that drives it. It used to be driven by hand power, now it is driven
by an equivalent for steam, and the only thing we need to do is to keep the
connecting band tight. “It is not a question,” continues Mr. Meyer, “as to our
abilities or qualifications, but of the power behind us. If that is nothing
more than human, it is not surprising that the results are miserably poor. But
if we link ourselves to the eternal power of God, nothing will be impossible to
us. ‘All things are possible to him that believeth.’”
Verses 3-5
I send thee to the children of Israel.
The commission of Ezekiel
I. The commission.
Is it not an act of infinite condescension, that God should take any notice of
us? For what are we? Poor finite creatures; of limited capacities, with
tendencies to evil, tendencies to the very thing that God Almighty hates,
detests, and abhors. Not only with tendencies to these things; but in the
actual perpetration of sin; committing crime upon crime. And yet God sends His
message to us. Why? Because He knows the original dignity of the soul of man;
He knows what it was before he fell; He knows what it was capable of then; and
He knows what the soul of man can yet be made through the blood of the Cross
and through the power of the Holy Ghost: and, therefore, God sends messages to
man. “I do send”; “thou shalt say.” We have no business to go and preach unless
God send the outward call of the Church and the inward call of the Spirit. And
hence our own Church asks all its candidates for holy orders--the bishop puts
the question--“Dost thou believe that thou art inwardly moved by the Holy Ghost
to take upon thee this office?” Oh, solemn question! But what shall they speak?
They shall speak, “Thus saith the Lord.” The authority for the message is “I do
send”; the nature of the message is what the Lord hath said.
II. The way in
which this message, which the prophet had been commissioned to deliver, is
treated. A twofold way: some receive it; others reject it. Concerning the
apostolical ministry, concerning the word preached by the apostles, some
believed the thing spoken, and some believed not.
III. They who
receive this message, and they who reject it, shall both know at last that it
came from the Lord. They who receive it, knew it long before. The indwelling
Spirit of the living God testifies with your spirits that these things are
true. But take the case of those who reject the Gospel. Oh, they find out also
that it was all true. I appeal from the present to the future. You know there
is a story in history of a poor woman who considered herself aggrieved, and
applied to Philip, King of Macedon. She found him in a state of intoxication: I
appeal, said she, “from Philip, under the influence of wine, to Philip, sober
and able to judge.” And so I say, if the world, with its allurements, enchant
and ensnare you now, and intoxicate your spirit. I appeal from that state to
the hour when you shall turn your pale face to the waft, when friends and
kindred and medical men shall whisper, “It will soon be all over”: then you
shall find, as true as that there is a God, that the Bible is a Divine
revelation, that the things which we said to you, concerning which you thought
us too much in earnest, are all perfectly true. (T. Mortimer, B. D.)
Proximity not identification.
He was a prophet though the house was rebellious. Can the Lord
find no better place for His prophets? Can He not make them a second garden? He
made one: can He not make two? Can He not cause His prophet to stand in some
high tower where he will be untainted by the pollution of place and time, and
whence he can thunder out the Divine word? Has the prophet to mingle with the
people, to live with them, to touch their corruptness, to feel the contagion of
their evil manners? Might he not have a pedestal to himself? No. The Son of Man
when He comes will go on eating and drinking, a social reformer, a brother, a
fellow guest at tables; He will take the cup after we have partaken of it, and
we may cut Him what morsel of bread He may eat, or He will hand them to us; He
will be one of His fellowcreatures. And yet Ezekiel was a prophet. So is the
Son of Man. Nothing could mingle Ezekiel with the rebellious house, so as to be
unable to distinguish between the one and the other. Proximity is not
identification. We may sit close to a murderer, and be quite distinct from him
as to all our proclivities, and desires, and aspirations. We need not be
corrupt because we live in a corrupt age; we need not go down because the neighbourhood
is bad. It is poor pleading, it is irreligious and inexcusable defence, which
says it could not resist atmospheric pressure, the subtle influence of social
custom and habitude. It is the business of a prophet to stand right up from
them, apart from them, and yet to be so near as to be able to teach them,
exhort them, rebuke them, and comfort them, when they turn their face but a
point towards the throne, the Cross, and the promised heaven. (J. Parker, D.
D.)
Commission given to ministers
1. To declare God’s will;
2. To assert His authority;
3. To seek, notwithstanding all our discouragements, the salvation of
their souls.
Learn hence--
1. The importance of the ministry;
2. The duty of those who are ministered unto. (G. Simeon, M. A.)
Sin a treason
How does any man know but the very oath he is swearing, the
lewdness he is committing, may be scored up by God as one item for a new
rebellion? We may be rebels, and yet neither vote in Parliament, sit in
committees, or fight in armies. Every sin is virtually a treason, and we may be
guilty of murder by breaking other commandments besides the sixth. (R South.)
Rebellion against God
“There is as much felony in coming pence as shillings and pounds”
(Manton). The principle is the same, whatever the value of the coin may be: the
prerogative of the Crown is trenched upon by the counterfeiter, even if he only
imitates and utters the smallest coin of the realm. He has set the royal sign
to his base metal, and the small money value of his coinage is no excuse for
his offence. Anyone sin wilfully indulged and persevered in is quite sufficient
to prove a man to be a traitor to his God. The spirit of rebellion is the same
whatever be the manner of displaying it. A giant may look out through a very
small window, and so may great obstinacy of rebellion manifest itself in a
little act of wilfulness. (C. H. Spurgeon.)
The preacher’s duty
Like as the fountain, though no man draw of it, doth still send
forth his springs; or as a river, though no man drink of it, yet doth it keep his
course, and flow nevertheless; even so it behoveth him that preacheth the word
of God, to do what lieth in his power, though no man give any attentiveness, or
have any care to follow the same. (J. Spencer.)
Impudent children and
stiff-hearted.
Impudence and stiff-heartedness
1. Progress in sin makes impudent. It is an exceeding evil to be past
shame, to be impudent in sinning. If ever God show mercy to such sinners, they
must be ashamed.
2. Where there is an impudent face there is a hard, stiff heart. And
this is one of the greatest evils.
3. God sends His prophets and ministers about hard services, such as
are full of discouragements when looked upon with a carnal eye.
4. Ministers should not so much look at the persons they are sent to,
or the event of their ministry, as at their call. God’s will and command must
content us, support us. What if we be scoffed at, reviled, made the offscouring
and filth of the world; yet here is the comfort of a true prophet, of a true
minister, Christ sent him; and He that set him to work will pay him his wages,
whether they hear or hear not to whom he is sent.
5. Those who are sent of God must deliver, not their own, but God’s
message. (W. Greenhill, M. A.)
A ministry to the unresponsive
“We may preach and preach,” said a great bishop once to his
ordinands, “and our words will seem to fall upon a stone, and not upon a man’s
heart.” Under any such trials of patience and hopefulness, Ezekiel’s experience
will prove helpful. How awful is the reason assigned! They “will not hearken
unto thee, for they will not hearken unto Me.” As our Lord said long afterwards
(John 15:18), the servant could not expect
to be welcomed when the Lord had been in effect rejected, The exiles’ hearts
were not right with God; therefore, of course, they could not appreciate God’s
envoy. What they said, as he reports it, exhibits human perversity in some very
advanced forms, which are by no means obsolete; it is only too easy to translate
their objections into language which is anything but dead. Hear some of them
complain that the fathers have eaten sour grapes, and the children’s teeth are
set on edge. “We are punished because our fathers sinned; is that fair? Can the
way of the Lord be called straight: It is not straight, but twisted, contorted,
and our sense of justice is shocked”: as many nowadays declare that the
inequalities of human condition, or other natural facts which “cannot be
smoothed over or explained away,” have made them incapable of believing that
the world is governed by a righteous Providence. Or there are these who openly
say, “We will be as the heathen”: it is the cry of that wild impatience which
would fain get rid of the responsibilities avowedly involved in the profession
of religion. Or if the mood is not so distinctly rebellious, it is that of a
sullen despair which masks itself under an apparent acknowledgment of sin: “Our
hope is lost, we are cut off, we pine away in our transgressions,--how then
should we live?” The gloom, we see, is faithless, even if it does not reach the
point of revolt. Again, there are others who reject, as we might say, on the
grounds of “common sense and common experience,” the supernatural character of
prophecy; “every vision faileth” predictions are disproved, or, to quote a
modern dictum, “miracles do not happen.” Ezekiel is, in effect, bluntly told
that “facts are against him.” Or even, say others, “if there is something in
his prophecies, the vision is of times far off”: things will last our time we
need not disturb ourselves--as a comfortable selfishness has often persuaded
itself before some great “Day of the Son of Man,” e.g., in the years
that ushered in the French Revolution. Or others have their own prophets, much
better worth hearing than Ezekiel, who tell them what is pleasant to think of,
with no austere requirements, no rigid prohibitions, no croaking “bodements” of
a dismal, intolerable future; the result of which is, that “the hands of the
wicked are strengthened to go on in their evil way” by “visions of a peace that
is no peace.” Or the style and contents of Ezekiel’s preaching are cavilled at:
the misgivings which it secretly awakens are silenced by critical remarks on
its obscurity: “They say of me. Doth he not speak parables?” Practical men,
they assume, may web dispense with attending to a voice that cannot put plain
meaning into plain words. Or there are others, probably among the younger sort,
who at first sight seem more promising; they listen to the prophet with real
enjoyment, as they might to one who can sing pleasantly and “play well”; only
it is a mere aesthetic pleasure, a gratification of the sense of beauty for its
own sake, with no moral movement of the will: “they hear thy words, but they do
them not.” Or, lastly, there are men grave and “highly respectable,” who come
with all appearance of seriousness to sit before Ezekiel as pupils, and
inquire, through him of the Lord; but he is bidden to repel them as
self-deceivers who have set up, and retain, “their idols in their hearts”:
favourite sins with them prove stumbling blocks to bar all progress upward;
therefore on them shall come the doom of being “answered according to their
idols.” Ezekiel’s ministry was, as we thus see, preeminently a ministry of penetration
into character. Its leading feature is a close, severe, persistent dealing with
conscience; he has been truly called “the prophet of personal responsibility.”
He shows that if, to some extent, heredity involves very real disadvantage, if
children suffer because parents or ancestors have sinned, yet in the last
resort no one soul will be spiritually rejected from the mercies and blessings
of the Divine covenant simply on account of the sins of other persons, which he
has not personally shared in or made his own. So does Ezekiel prepare the way
for that Saviour who, while He built up His Church as a spiritual home for all
believers, conferred a new dignity, sacredness, preciousness, on each
individual soul for whom He died. What a thought it is, the interest that the
Most High God takes in each one of us singly! That fact has a twofold bearing:
it imposes on us the obligation of walking in the fear of the Lord, of standing
in awe and striving not to sin, of recognising that the revelation of a true God,
as culminating in the incarnation of a Son of God who gave Himself up for us
all, must needs have a stern side. But the other aspect of our personal
relation to God is that in which the Gospel mainly presents Him--that which was
illuminated by the Cross and summarised in St. John’s assertion that He is
Love. (Canon Bright.)
Shall know that there hath
been a prophet among them.--
Wicked men left without excuse
God will leave wicked men without excuse. It is God’s intention;
they shall never be able to challenge Me, nor to justify themselves. God’s
primary intentions, where He sends prophets and means of grace, are the good of
His elect, their comfort, sanctification, and salvation; but His secondary
intentions are the iuexeusableness of the wicked, and their just damnation.
When God sends His word to any place, it shall and must prosper in the thing
whereunto He sends it (Isaiah 55:11); be it to win and draw, or
to harden and make inexcusable. See Isaiah 6:9-10. (W. Greenhill, M. A.)
Prophets are witnesses for or against their hearers
“They shall know there hath been a prophet amongst them”; his
person, his pains, his truths, his life, his sufferings, his death, will all
come in for witnesses one day. Every prophet, every preacher that Christ sends,
is a witness, as well as an officer or a minister; I have made “thee a minister
and a witness” (Acts 26:16). All faithfnl ministers are
Christ’s witnesses (Acts 1:8). They bear witness of Christ
and His doctrine; and if we receive not Him and His doctrine, they will be
Christ’s witnesses against us. As for Me and My prophets, My ministers, you
despised, or only gave the hearing, and that was all: and My charge is not
false; here are My witnesses. What say you to it? Speak, you ministers of such
a city, and such a place. What, did you not preach many a sermon, shed many a
tear, sweat many a drop, make many a prayer for them? did ye not early and late
watch for the good of their souls? etc. Yea, Lord, but they would not receive us,
they would not believe our report we made of Thee, they would not take Thy yoke
upon them, etc.; we shook off the dust of our feet against them. This will be
dreadful, when such witness of the prophets comes in against hearers. (W.
Greenhill, M. A.)
The preacher a correcter of consciences
The verification of the compass is a matter of serious importance
in navigation.” The vessel is moored, and by means of warps to certain
government buoys, she is placed with her head toward the various points of the
compass, one after another. The bearing of her compass on board, influenced as
that is by the attraction of the iron she carries, is taken accurately by one
observer in the vessel, and the true bearing is signalled to him by another
observer on shore, who has a compass out of reach of the local attraction of
the ship. The error in each position is thus ascertained, and the necessary
corrections are made. Now in the Church your people are like that observer on
board ship. Their consciences have been all the week affected by the influence
of things immediately around them, so that they are in danger of making serious
mistakes even in their reading of the Book of God. But in the pulpit, you are
like the observer on shore. You are away from the magnetic agencies--mostly
metallic--which so seriously affect them; therefore you can signalise to them
their ‘true bearings,’ and thus prepare them for the voyage of the week which
is to follow.” (W. M. Taylor.)
Be not afraid of them.
Endurance of the world’s censure
What is here implied, as the trial of the prophet Ezekiel, was
fulfilled more or less in the case of all the prophets. They were not teachers
merely, but confessors. This world is a scene of conflict between good and
evil. The evil not only avoids, but persecutes the good; the good cannot
conquer, except by suffering. When was it that this conflict, and this
character and issue of it, have not been fulfilled? Cain, for instance, was
envious of his brother Abel, and slew him. Ishmael mocked at Isaac; Esau was
full of wrath with Jacob, and resolved to kill him. Joseph’s brethren were
filled with bitter hatred of him, debated about killing him, cast him into a
pit, and at last sold him into Egypt. Saul persecuted David; and Ahab and
Jezebel, Elijah; and the priests and the prophets the prophet Jeremiah. Lastly,
not to dwell on other instances, the chief priests and the Pharisees, full of
envy, rose up against our Lord Jesus Christ, and delivered Him to the heathen
governor Pontius Pilate, to be crucified. So the apostles, after Him, and
especially St. Paul, were persecuted by their fierce and revengeful countrymen.
The case seems to be this:--those who do not serve God with a single heart,
know they ought to do so, and they do not like to be reminded that they ought.
And when they fall in with anyone who does live to God, he serves to remind
them of it, and that is unpleasant to them, and that is the first reason why
they are angry with a religious man; the sight of him disturbs them and makes
them uneasy. And, in the next place, they feel in their hearts that he is in
much better case than they are. They cannot help wishing, though they are
hardly conscious of their own wish, they cannot help wishing that they were
like him; yet they have no intention of imitating him, and this makes men
jealous and envious. Instead of being angry with themselves, they are angry
with him. These are their first feelings: what follows? Next they are very much
tempted to deny that he is religious. They wish to get the thought of him out
of their minds. Nothing would so relieve their minds as to find that there were
no religious persons in the world, none better than themselves. Accordingly,
they do all they can to believe that he is making a pretence of religion; they
do their utmost to find out what looks like inconsistency in him. They call him
a hypocrite and other names. And all this, if the truth must be spoken, because
they hate the things of God and therefore they hate His servants. Accordingly,
as far as they have power to do it, they persecute him, either, as the text
implies, with cruel, untrue words, or with cold, or fierce, or jealous looks,
or in some worse ways. A good man is an offence to a bad man. The sight of him
is a sort of insult; and he is irritated at him, and does him what harm he can.
Thus Christians, in former times, were put to death by the heathen. Even now,
no one can give his mind to God, and show by his actions that he fears God, but
he will incur the dislike and opposition of the world; and it is important he
should be aware of this, and be prepared for it. He must not mind it, he must
bear it, and in time (if God so will) he will overcome it. There are a number
of lesser ways in which careless, ungodly persons may annoy and inconvenience
those who desire to do their duty humbly and fully. Such, especially, are
those, which seem intended in the text, unkind censure, carping, slander,
ridicule, cold looks, rude language, insult, and, in some cases, oppression and
tyranny. Whoever, therefore, sets about a religious life, must be prepared for
these--must be thankful if they do not befall him; but must not be put out,
must not think it a strange thing, if they do. For instance, persons may press
you to do something which you know to be wrong--to tell an untruth, or to do
what is not quite honest, or to go to companies whither you should not go; and
they may show that they are vexed at the notion of your not complying. Still
you must not comply. You must not do what you feel to be wrong, though you
should thereby displease even those whom you would most wish to please. Again:
you must not be surprised, should you find that you are called a hypocrite, and
other hard names; you must not mind it. Again: you may be jeered at and mocked
by your acquaintance, for being strict and religious, for carefully coming to
church, keeping from bad language, and the like: you must not care for it.
Again, you may, perhaps, discover, to your great vexation, that untruths are
told of you by careless persons behind your backs, that what you do has been
misrepresented, and that in consequence a number of evil things are believed
about you by the world at large. Hard though it be, you must not care for it; remembering
that more untruths were told of our Saviour and His apostles than can possibly
be told of you. Again, you may find that not only the common run of men believe
what is said against you, but even those with whom you wish to stand well. But
if this happens through your conscientiousness, you must not mind it, but must
be cheerful, leaving your case in the hand of God, and knowing that He will
bring it out into the light one day or another, in His own good time. Again:
persons may try to threaten or frighten you into doing something wrong, but you
must not mind that; you must be firm. In conclusion, I will call your attention
to two points--First, do not be too eager to suppose you are ill-treated for
your religion’s sake. Make as light of matters as you can. And beware of being
severe on those who lead careless lives, or whom you think or know to be
ill-treating you. Be kind and gentle to those who are perverse, and you will
very often, please God, gain them over. Pray for those who lead careless lives,
and especially if they are unkind to you. Secondly, recollect you cannot do any
one thing of all the duties I have been speaking of without God’s help. When
brought into temptation of any kind, we Should lift up our hearts to God. We
should say to Him, “Good Lord deliver us.” (Plain Sermons by Contributors to
the “Tracts for the Times.”)
Reasons against the fear of men
1. Fears are prejudicial: they take away our liberty; they put
halters about our necks, and strangle our comforts; they multiply and prolong
our miseries; they wound and disable us.
2. They are to be men of courage who are in public place.
3. God is with His, those He calls and employs in public service.
This should put life into us.
4. Those who are in public place are in God’s place, and they must be
like unto God, fearless of men, but dreadful unto men.
5. They that are godly, true Christians, their godliness, their
cause, suffer by their fearfulness.
6. There is not that in wicked men that should make us to fear them,
if we consider they are briers, thorns, scorpions, contemptible things, rather
to be despised than feared.
7. God will dismay and confound us if we fear men (Jeremiah 1:17). (W. Greenhill, M. A.)
Helps against the fear of men
1. Let your fear be exercised about God; He is an object fit to be
feared. When the dictator ruled at Rome, then all other officers ceased; and
when this fear of God rules, all other fears will be hushed. And that is not
all; if God be sanctified by us, he will be a sanctuary unto us.
2. Set faith to work. Men in public places should have their hands at
work on earth, and their faith in heaven. The just live by faith, and will not
die by fear.
3. Labour for purity and holiness. The most holy men are the least
fearing men.
4. Value not life too much. Be willing to spend and be spent for God.
(W. Greenhill, M. A.)
A burdensome ministry
We are not to suppose that a faithful ministry is an easy task. No
man can continually rebuke his age, and yet be living a luxurious life, unless
indeed he be the victim of hypocrisy, or the tool of some vicious
hallucination. The prophets of the Lord have always been opposed to the age in
which they lived. Whenever the ministry has fallen into accord with the age, it
is not the age that has gone up, it is the ministry that has gone down. A
reproachful, corrective, stimulating voice should always be characteristic of a
spiritual ministry. No evil shall be able to live in its presence, and no
custom, how fashionable or popular soever, should be able to lift up its head
without condemnation in the presence of a man who is filled with the burden or
doctrine of the Lord. We should have persecution revive were we to revive the
highest type of godliness. Sin has not altered, but righteousness may have
modified its terms; the earth remains as it was from the beginning, but they
who represent the kingdom of heaven may have committed themselves to an
unworthy and degrading compromise. Evermore shall the wicked hate the godly,
unless the godly take down their banners and are contented to live in dumbness
and in traitorous suppression of the truth. (J. Parker, D. D.)
Boldness in preaching
The Rev. Styleman Herring of Clerkenwell, London, could say that
there was not a street or court in the whole of his parish in which he had not
preached. When he first commenced this work, some of his parishioners
threatened what they would do if he came to preach in their streets. But he
persevered until he was not only allowed to preach in peace, but was invited to
do so by some of the inhabitants of the worst streets.
A fearless preacher
It is said that when a Roundhead in St. Andrew’s, Holborn,
levelled a musket at the breast of the venerable prelate Hacker, and bade him
desist from preaching, he never hesitated for one moment, but simply said,
“Soldier, do your duty; I shall continue to do mine.” (W. Denton.)
Fearless speaking
During the Chartist agitation many of Kingsley’s friends and
relations tried to withdraw him from the people’s cause, fearful lest his
prospects in life might be seriously prejudiced; but to all of them he turned a
deaf ear, and in writing to his wife on the subject, he says: “I will not be a
liar. I will speak in season and out of season. I will not shun to declare the
whole counsel of God. My path is clear, and I will follow in it.” (A. Bell,
B. A.)
Fearfulness in the preacher
We were sitting under the shade of an oak tree comparing notes and
conferring one with another as to the best methods of service, especially in
reference to effective preaching. “I always write my sermons,” said my friend,
“and then carefully revise them, so that if anything is written calculated to
offend any of my hearers, I may at once erase it.” This was said by a young
clergyman who was evidently anxious to make his mark as a preacher. Desirous to
know that I heard correctly, I replied, “Do you mean that forcible statements,
either of your own writing or from Scripture, concerning sin, and the terrors
of the judgment to come, are either toned down or avoided?” “Yes,” was the
reply; “if I think they will offend anyone, I do so.” I fear this candid
testimony, indicates the reason why so many ministers are powerless amongst
their fellows. “The fear of man bringeth a snare indeed.” (Henry Varley.)
Thou shalt speak My words unto them.
The ministerial commission
I. The parties
concerned in this commission. These are, first, the Eternal God, our King and
Creator and Judge, who issued this commission; secondly, the preachers of the
Gospel who are appointed to execute it; thirdly, the hearers of the word, or,
more generally, all who are within the sound of the Gospel, for whose behoof
the commission was issued. We stand before you as the commissioned servant of
the God with whom you have to do, invested with the office of conveying
instrumentally His proclamation to your ears, telling you what He requires you
to be and to do, and pointing out to you, and pressing upon your attention, His
general mind and will regarding you. Do not mistake the messenger for a
mediator. We stand to speak to you of God, and commissioned by Him, as we
trust, but it is simply in the former of these capacities, and not at all in the
latter. We stand, as it were, between the living and the dead; but it is as the
golden channel through which spiritual life is conveyed from the one to the
other.
II. The nature of
the commission which is intrusted to us. “Thou shalt speak My words unto them.”
What we are to declare unto you is the counsel of God, not of man; but of this
whole counsel we are to be careful to keep nothing back. He has given us a
written record of His mind and will, and we are to look for no further
revelation. Our message is of a twofold character. To a certain extent it is
such a message as a natural man, endowed with a conscience, and conscious of
guilt, might have expected to issue from the holy sanctuary above. It speaks to
him of the holiness and justice and omnipotence of Jehovah, and of his own
guilt and depravity, and the fearful doom impending over him, as his own
conscience speaks, but in language much more clear and explicit, and a
thousandfold more loud and appalling. All this the foreboding and sin-laden spirit
of man might have anticipated in a communication from heaven. But could it ever
have entered into the heart of man or angel to conceive that this communication
should also exhibit the amazing spectacle of a holy and offended God beseeching
hell-deserving sinners to be reconciled, offering to the very guiltiest among
them a full and free salvation, a salvation purchased by the blood of His own
beloved Son?
III. The way in
which this message is to be delivered and this commission to be executed. “Thou
shalt speak My words unto them, whether they will hear, or whether they will
forbear.” Is the ambassador of an earthly potentate at liberty to decline the
duty which he has deliberately undertaken, and with which he has been
intrusted, on account of obloquy or even danger attending the faithful
performance of it? or is he at liberty to alter or modify the terms of his
instructions in order to shield himself from reproach or from peril? Assuredly
not. And shall the ambassadors of the King of kings venture to tamper with and
distort the message which they were commissioned to deliver? Shall they
presumptuously attempt to amend the terms on which the Lord of heaven and earth
declares that He will treat with His rebellious subjects? or shall they leave
out of the proclamation whatever it may be unpleasant to these subjects to
hear? But then, again, thanks be to God, we are to preach the Gospel, the good
news, among you; and the same obligation rests upon us to preach it faithfully
and fully. After denouncing, as we are bound to do, every refuge of lies, we
are eagerly to point you to the refuge set before you in the Gospel. And we
must faithfully tell you, though we can but speak of it faintly, of the glory,
and the excellence, and the suitableness of the salvation of the Gospel, of all
that it is in itself, and of all that it brings along with it, of the grace
here and the glory hereafter which it confers, and of its perfect accommodation
to the case of every sinner among you, whether pardoned or unpardoned, whether born
again or yet dead in trespasses and sins.
IV. The duty of
those for whose behoof this commission has been issued. It will profit you
nothing to attend upon a Gospel ministry, even though the word should there be
spoken as never man spake it, if you do not receive that word with faith and
love, lay it up in your hearts, and practise it in your lives. But oh! when you
consider what is the nature of the message which we bear, can you help seeing
that it is a glorious and blessed privilege, as well as a bounden duty, to
attend to it? Do you not see that God commands nothing but what it will promote
your own best interests to perform? and is not this a mighty additional motive
for yielding obedience? (P. Hope, B. D.)
A prophet’s Commission
I. The minister of
God receives his commission from the Lord.
II. The duty of the
minister of God is to speak God’s words to the people.
1. First by study to understand, and then to proclaim the truths of
the Bible.
2. This duty is--
Learn--
1. To honour God’s ministers.
2. To listen to their message as from God.
3. To beware of rebellion. (Homiletic Magazine.)
Be not thou rebellious.
Ministers exposed to corruption by their people
This was the same as to say, “I know the degeneracy of the times.
I know the corruption and obstinacy of the people. I know they will stop their
ears and harden their hearts against Divine truth. And I know that for this
purpose they will use every method, by words and looks, to corrupt your heart,
poison your sentiments, and destroy your influence. But I warn you to beware of
men; and never suffer yourself to be corrupted by those whom you are sent to
reprove and reform.”
I. Ministers are
exposed to be corrupted by the people.
1. Ministers have been corrupted by the people. This was the unhappy
case of Aaron. The same thing happened to the sons and successors of Aaron; for
we find that they were always corrupt, when the people were corrupt. God Himself
complains of the people for being always disposed to corrupt their teachers (Amos 2:10-12). They meant to corrupt the
friends of virtue, and the ministers of religion, on purpose to destroy the
influence of their example, and the force of their instructions and
admonitions; and they very rarely failed of accomplishing their malignant
purpose.
2. The bare example of the people, in a day of declension, has a
natural tendency to corrupt ministers. The prevailing spirit and practice of
the times naturally tend to cool their zeal, weaken their virtue, and injure
both the matter and manner of their preaching.
3. They are in much greater danger of being corrupted, by the
positive endeavours and exertions of the people to draw them into sin. A
corrupt people feel themselves obliged to take this course, in order to resist
the energy of plain and faithful preaching.
II. It is their
indispensable duty to guard against it.
1. God has expressly commanded ministers to guard against the
attempts of those who would corrupt their hearts, and draw them aside from the
path of duty.
2. They will forfeit the Divine presence and protection, if they
suffer themselves to be corrupted.
3. If ministers suffer themselves to be corrupted by the people, it
destroys their usefulness. Time-serving ministers generally have but few
hearers. All men, whether good or bad, inwardly despise loose and unprincipled
ministers, let their talents be what they may. And the same degree of
criminality, which would be scarcely observable in other men, is sufficient to
destroy the character and usefulness of those who sustain the sacred office of
the ministry.
4. If ministers suffer themselves to be carried down the stream of
corruption, they become destructive to the people. Corrupt ministers are always
corrupters. Though they have lost the power of doing good, yet they retain the
power of doing evil. They can do more than other men, to pull down the kingdom
of Christ, and build up the kingdom of Satan. And as they are more capable, so
they are more disposed, than other men, to stifle the spirit of religion,
oppose the doctrines of the Gospel, and strengthen the hearts and hands of the
wicked.
Reflections--
1. It is now a very dangerous day to ministers. The people have
fallen into a great and general declension, As they have increased, so they
have sinned. How many ministers neither preach nor practise according to their
own sentiments, through fear of offending, and through desire of pleasing, the
people! This conduct weakens the hands of faithful ministers, and strengthens
the hands of those who wish to corrupt them.
2. Ministers need, at this day, to be well qualified for their
office. Though religion has decayed, yet knowledge has increased. The people in
general are much more capable now, than they were formerly, of judging of the
talents and qualifications of ministers. And as they are more critical in
discerning, so they are more severe in censuring, every ministerial defect or
imperfection. But prudence, as well as knowledge, is a necessary qualification
for a minister. He needs this to enable him to exhibit Divine truth in the most
profitable manner, and to escape those snares which the enemies of truth will
always endeavour to lay for him. But ministers of the Gospel, at this day of
declension, need large measures of grace, as well as of knowledge and prudence.
They need to be crucified to the world, and the world to them, by the Cross of
Christ.
3. It is the duty of all good men, at this day especially, to aid and
assist the ministers of the Gospel in the discharge of their office. If
Christian professors would unite with Christian ministers, in the common cause
of Christianity, we might reasonably hope that religion would gain ground, and
vice and infidelity would everywhere fall before it. (N. Emmons, D. D.)
The God-made minister
(with Revelation 10:8):--In the case of Ezekiel
we for the first time see in a most impressive and instructive symbol that
Divine way of choosing, and calling, and inwardly and increasingly preparing
and maturing a prophet, that same way which is repeated in the case of the
Apostle John; that same way, moreover, which is still taken with every true New
Testament preacher. Now, first, we see in that fine symbolical scene God’s own
immediate way of making a minister. A book plays a great part in the salvation
of man; a book is brought down from heaven to earth. A book written in heaven
lies open in the hand of a heavenly minister. And the salvation of many
peoples, and nations, and tongues, and kings lies wrapped up in that heavenly
book. “Take the Book and eat it,” said the angel of the Lord. You will observe
that the angel did not say, “Take the Book and read it.” Clearly, then, this is
not an ordinary Book. Clearly this Book is like no other book. Our ordinary
language about books all falls short and breaks down before this Book. “Eat
it,” said the angel, holding the Book up to the exhausted mouth--“eat it till
it is both sweet in thy mouth and bitter in thy belly.” A most extraordinary
thing to say to any man about any book! Yes, about any book but this Book; but
this is the usual, nay, the universal, and, indeed, the necessary, thing to say
always about God’s Book. Show me the minister to whom, pulpit preparation
apart, God’s Word is his first thought every new morning, and he shall be all
but God’s absolute prophet to me. He shall always pray for me when God’s wrath
is kindled against me; for him, God has said, He will accept, as he will always
be accepted, both for himself and for other men, who can, like Job, before God,
say: “Neither have I gone back from the commandment of His lips; I have
esteemed the word of His mouth more than my necessary food.” Eat, then, the
same heavenly meat; and eat it for your first food every morning. It will do
for you what no earthly food, the best and most necessary, can do. See that all
its strength and all its sweetness fill your heart before you eat any other
meat, and before you read any other writing. Read God’s Book, and keep it next
your heart to defend you against the evil one. “Enough of that; bring me my
Bible!” one of my old elders used to say, as they read to him all morning and
down into the forenoon the newspapers. The Word of God was more to that saint
of God than his necessary food. But what does this mean? “It was in my mouth
sweet as honey; but as soon as I had eaten it my belly was bitter.” The best
way, the only way, to find out what all that means is to eat the same roll
ourselves, and then to observe what comes to pass within ourselves. Religion is
an experimental science. Just you eat the Book now before you as Ezekiel and
John ate it, and then tell me what takes place within you. I will tell you what
will take place. The Word of God will in your mouth also be sweet as honey. The
grace and the mercy of God that are in His blessed Word are always passing
sweet to a genuine sinner, as is the truth, and the power, and the holiness,
and the heavenly beauty of God’s Word to all His saints. All that is the daily
and sweet experience of all those who make the Word of God their earliest and
most necessary food. But afterwards, when this sweet Book descends into their
“inward parts,” when the holy and the just and the good Word of God enters
their guilty consciences and their corrupt hearts--ah, then, what bitterness is
that! For a “sense of sin,” as we so lightly speak, is then awakened in the
soul, and with that new sense comes a new bitterness, compared with which the
waters of Marah are milk and honey, and aloes are a child’s sweetmeat. Yes,
angel, clothed with a cloud, you may well say that it will make “our bellies
bitter”; for our belly will be bitter, first with our own sin, and then with
the sin of all other men. God’s Word taken long enough and deep enough every
day, as his necessary food, at last made Job from a sheep farmer into a
sacrificing priest. Now, you all know what a priest is, a priest is a sinner
who has not only all his own sin on his hands and on his heart, but the sins of
all other men in addition. A priest sees sin in everything and everybody. His
belly is always bitter with a bitterness such that all the honey and all the
spices of Lebanon will not sweeten it. There was written thereon lamentations
and mourning and woe. At the same time, the true priest has a secret and
compensating sweetness in his office all his own; and every true minister has
it deep down within him. Every true minister of God’s Word has a sensibility to
sin and to grace; a palate and a heart both for the sweetness of God’s Word,
and for its bitterness; a sensibility that makes him who has it the true
successor of prophets and psalmists and apostles, like Ezekiel, David, Job, and
John. “Son of man, eat that thou findest,” said Jehovah in a vision to Ezekiel.
“Take it, and eat it up,” said the angel, in like manner, to John. Observe,
that neither the prophet nor the apostle was asked nor allowed to pick and
choose, as we say. They were not to be let eat the sweet and spit out the
bitter. They were not to keep rolling the sweet morsels under their tongue, and
to keep their inward parts a stranger to this bitter share in the Divine Book.
Now this Scripture will not be sweet to all that hear it. But, even if it is at
first bitter, it must not on that account be spat out. We must submit ourselves
to read and to preach and to hear the whole Word of God. The book of the Bible,
the preacher, the circle of doctrines that we like best may not be best for us.
It is a fine study to take up the Old Testament and to trace all through it how
prophet follows prophet, and psalmist psalmist; each several prophet and
psalmist taking home to himself all that the prophets and psalmists have said
and sung before him. And then, having made the book their own by reading it and
praying over it and singing it in their own souls, then when the call came they
stood up and prophesied prophecies and sang psalms new and present, as the
people’s need was new and present; never contenting themselves with just
repeating what any former psalmist had sung, however great and however good
that former prophet and psalmist might have been. And then, as providence after
providence arises in the history of Israel, inspiration and experience keep
pace with providence, the exodus, the wilderness, the conquest, the captivity,
the restoration, and so on, so prophet after prophet and psalmist after
psalmist--Moses, and Gad, and David, and Solomon, and Isaiah, and Daniel, and
Zechariah--arise, till we have in our Old Testament the accumulated faith and
repentance, attainment and experience of that whole Church of God. And this
same docile reception, personal appropriation and personal possession of God’s
Word has always given an unshaking assurance, a masterful authority to all true
prophets and preachers--Moses before Pharaoh, Nathan before David, Elijah
before Ahab and Jezebel, Daniel before Nebuchadnezzar and Belshazzar, Peter and
John before the rulers of Israel, Luther before the Legate, and Knox before
Mary. And then with what passion that prophet will preach, and with what pathos
that psalmist will sing, who has taken home to his own mind and to his own
heart, to his own conscience and to his own imagination, the whole word of
Almighty God, both in its awful terrors and in its surpassing mercies! (A.
Whyte, D. D.)
There was written therein
lamentations.
The Bible: a record of human sorrows
I. Sorrow is
mightily present in our world. Here is a book--
1. The product of many lands and ages, expressing in manifold forms
the sorrows of those lands and ages.
2. Intended for all lands and times, speaking in the tones of sorrow
constantly, and yet expecting to be understood, anticipating that to none will
sorrow be a foreign language.
This reflection should--
1. Stir our thought. Sorrow is meant to startle, to arouse, to prompt
the questions, “How? Why? What?”
2. Cultivate our soberness, “Rejoice with trembling.”
3. Quicken our sympathies. We cannot, if we rightly know this book,
be self-contained.
II. Sorrow is
present in the world because of size.
1. Sorrow is here as the result of sin.
2. Sorrow is the penalty for sin. This rises in individual cases, to
the clearness of a demonstration.
3. Sorrow is one means of purification from sin. (U. R. Thomas.)
──《The Biblical Illustrator》