| Back to Home Page | Back to
Book Index |
Ezekiel Chapter
Sixteen
Ezekiel 16
Chapter Contents
A parable showing the first low estate of the Jewish
nation, its prosperity, idolatries, and punishment.
Commentary on Ezekiel 16:1-58
(Read Ezekiel 16:1-58)
In this chapter God's dealings with the Jewish nation,
and their conduct towards him, are described, and their punishment through the
surrounding nations, even those they most trusted in. This is done under the
parable of an exposed infant rescued from death, educated, espoused, and richly
provided for, but afterwards guilty of the most abandoned conduct, and punished
for it; yet at last received into favour, and ashamed of her base conduct. We
are not to judge of these expressions by modern ideas, but by those of the
times and places in which they were used, where many of them would not sound as
they do to us. The design was to raise hatred to idolatry, and such a parable
was well suited for that purpose.
Commentary on Ezekiel 16:59-63
(Read Ezekiel 16:59-63)
After a full warning of judgments, mercy is remembered,
mercy is reserved. These closing verses are a precious promise, in part
fulfilled at the return of the penitent and reformed Jews out of Babylon, but
to have fuller accomplishment in gospel times. The Divine mercy should be
powerful to melt our hearts into godly sorrow for sin. Nor will God ever leave
the sinner to perish, who is humbled for his sins, and comes to trust in His
mercy and grace through Jesus Christ; but will keep him by his power, through
faith unto salvation.
── Matthew Henry《Concise Commentary on Ezekiel》
Ezekiel 16
Verse 3
[3] And
say, Thus saith the Lord GOD unto Jerusalem; Thy birth and thy nativity is of
the land of Canaan; thy father was an Amorite, and thy mother an Hittite.
Jerusalem —
The whole race of the Jews.
Thy birth —
Thy root whence thou didst spring.
Thy father —
Abraham, before God called him, (as his father and kindred) worshipped strange
gods beyond the river, Joshua 24:14.
An Amorite —
This comprehended all the rest of the cursed nations.
Verse 4
[4] And as for thy nativity, in the day thou wast born thy navel was not cut,
neither wast thou washed in water to supple thee; thou wast not salted at all,
nor swaddled at all.
In the day — In
the day I called Abraham to leave his idolatry.
Salted —
Salt was used to purge, dry, and strengthen the new-born child.
Nor swaddled — So
forlorn was the state of the Jews in their birth, without beauty, without
strength, without friend.
Verse 5
[5] None
eye pitied thee, to do any of these unto thee, to have compassion upon thee;
but thou wast cast out in the open field, to the lothing of thy person, in the
day that thou wast born.
To the loathing — In
contempt of thee as unlovely and worthless; and in abhorrence of thee as
loathsome to the beholder. This seems to have reference to the exposing of the
male children of the Israelites in Egypt. And it is an apt illustration of the
Natural State of all the children of men. In the day that we were born, we were
shapen in iniquity: our understandings darkened, our minds alienated from the
life of God: all polluted with sin, which rendered us loathsome in the eyes of
God.
Verse 6
[6] And
when I passed by thee, and saw thee polluted in thine own blood, I said unto
thee when thou wast in thy blood, Live; yea, I said unto thee when thou wast in
thy blood, Live.
When I passed by —
God here speaks after the manner of men.
Live —
This is such a command as sends forth a power to effect what is commanded; he
gave that life: he spake, and it was done.
Verse 7
[7] I have caused thee to multiply as the bud of the field, and thou hast
increased and waxen great, and thou art come to excellent ornaments: thy
breasts are fashioned, and thine hair is grown, whereas thou wast naked and
bare.
Thou art come —
Thou wast adorned with the choicest blessings of Divine Providence.
Thy breasts —
Grown up and fashioned under God's own hand in order to be solemnly affianced
to God.
Verse 8
[8] Now
when I passed by thee, and looked upon thee, behold, thy time was the time of
love; and I spread my skirt over thee, and covered thy nakedness: yea, I sware
unto thee, and entered into a covenant with thee, saith the Lord GOD, and thou
becamest mine.
When I passed —
This second passing by, may be understood of God's visiting and calling them
out of Egypt.
Thy time —
The time of thy misery was the time of love in me towards thee.
I spread my skirt —
Espoused thee, as Ruth 3:9.
Entered into a covenant — This was done at mount Sinai, when the covenant between God and Israel
was sealed and ratified. Those to whom God gives spiritual life, he takes into
covenant with himself. By this covenant they become his, his subjects and
servants; that speaks their duty: and at the same time his portion, his
treasure; that speaks their privilege.
Verse 9
[9] Then
washed I thee with water; yea, I throughly washed away thy blood from thee, and
I anointed thee with oil.
Washed — It
was a very ancient custom among the eastern people, to purify virgins who were
to be espoused.
And I anointed —
They were anointed that were to be married, as Ruth 3:3.
Verse 10
[10] I
clothed thee also with broidered work, and shod thee with badgers' skin, and I
girded thee about with fine linen, and I covered thee with silk.
Broidered —
Rich and beautiful needle-work.
Badgers skin —
The eastern people had an art of curiously dressing and colouring the skins of
those beasts, of which they made their neatest shoes, for the richest and
greatest personages.
Verse 11
[11] I
decked thee also with ornaments, and I put bracelets upon thy hands, and a
chain on thy neck.
A chain — Of
gold, in token of honour and authority.
Verse 14
[14] And
thy renown went forth among the heathen for thy beauty: for it was perfect
through my comeliness, which I had put upon thee, saith the Lord GOD.
My comeliness —
"That is, thro' the beauty of their holiness, as they were a people
devoted to God. This was it that put a lustre upon all their other honours, and
was indeed the perfection of their beauty. Sanctified souls are truly beautiful
in God's sight, and they themselves may take the comfort of it. But God must
have all the glory for whatever comeliness they have, it is that which God has
put upon them."
Verse 15
[15] But
thou didst trust in thine own beauty, and playedst the harlot because of thy
renown, and pouredst out thy fornications on every one that passed by; his it was.
Playedst the harlot —
Thou didst go a whoring after idols.
Thy renown —
Her renown abroad drew to her idolatrous strangers, who brought their idols
with them.
Pouredst out —
Didst readily prostitute thyself to them; every stranger, who passed thro' thee,
might find room for his idol, and idolatry.
He it was —
Thy person was at the command of every adulterer.
Verse 16
[16] And
of thy garments thou didst take, and deckedst thy high places with divers
colours, and playedst the harlot thereupon: the like things shall not come,
neither shall it be so.
Thy garments —
Those costly, royal robes, the very wedding clothes.
High places —
Where the idol was.
With divers colours —
With those beautiful clothes I put upon thee.
The like things — As
there was none before her that had done thus, so shall there be none to follow
her in these things.
Verse 17
[17] Thou
hast also taken thy fair jewels of my gold and of my silver, which I had given
thee, and madest to thyself images of men, and didst commit whoredom with them,
Images —
Statues, molten and graven images.
Commit whoredom —
Idolatry, spiritual adultery. And possibly here is an allusion to the rites of
Adonis, or the images of Priapus.
Verse 18
[18] And
tookest thy broidered garments, and coveredst them: and thou hast set mine oil
and mine incense before them.
Coveredst —
Didst clothe the images thou hadst made.
Set mine oil — In
lamps to burn before them.
Verse 19
[19] My
meat also which I gave thee, fine flour, and oil, and honey, wherewith I fed
thee, thou hast even set it before them for a sweet savour: and thus it was,
saith the Lord GOD.
For a sweet savour — To
gain the favour of the idol.
Thus it was —
All which is undeniable.
Verse 20
[20]
Moreover thou hast taken thy sons and thy daughters, whom thou hast borne unto
me, and these hast thou sacrificed unto them to be devoured. Is this of thy
whoredoms a small matter,
And those —
These very children of mine hast thou destroyed.
Sacrificed —
Not only consecrating them to be priests to dumb idols; but even burning them
in sacrifice to Molech.
Devoured —
Consumed to ashes.
Is this —
Were thy whoredoms a small matter, that thou hast proceeded to this unnatural
cruelty?
Verse 21
[21] That
thou hast slain my children, and delivered them to cause them to pass through the
fire for them?
For them —
For the idols.
Verse 24
[24] That
thou hast also built unto thee an eminent place, and hast made thee an high
place in every street.
In every street —
Idol temples were in every street; both in Jerusalem and her cities.
Verse 25
[25] Thou
hast built thy high place at every head of the way, and hast made thy beauty to
be abhorred, and hast opened thy feet to every one that passed by, and
multiplied thy whoredoms.
At every head of the way — Not content with what was done in the city, she built her idol temples
in the country, wherever it was likely passengers would come.
Verse 26
[26] Thou
hast also committed fornication with the Egyptians thy neighbours, great of
flesh; and hast increased thy whoredoms, to provoke me to anger.
Great of flesh —
Naturally of a big, make, and men of great stature.
Verse 30
[30] How
weak is thine heart, saith the Lord GOD, seeing thou doest all these things,
the work of an imperious whorish woman;
How weak —
Unstable, like water.
An imperious woman — A
woman, that knows no superior, nor will be neither guided nor governed.
Verse 31
[31] In
that thou buildest thine eminent place in the head of every way, and makest
thine high place in every street; and hast not been as an harlot, in that thou
scornest hire;
Not as an harlot —
Common harlots make gain of their looseness, and live by that gain; thou dost
worse, thou lavishest out thy credit, wealth, and all, to maintain thine
adulterers.
Verse 34
[34] And
the contrary is in thee from other women in thy whoredoms, whereas none
followeth thee to commit whoredoms: and in that thou givest a reward, and no
reward is given unto thee, therefore thou art contrary.
Contrary —
Here we may see, what the nature of men is, when God leaves them to themselves:
yea, tho' they have the greatest advantage, to be better, and to do better.
Verse 38
[38] And
I will judge thee, as women that break wedlock and shed blood are judged; and I
will give thee blood in fury and jealousy.
Blood —
Thou gavest the blood of thy children to idols in sacrifice; I will give thee
thine own blood to drink.
Verse 42
[42] So
will I make my fury toward thee to rest, and my jealousy shall depart from
thee, and I will be quiet, and will be no more angry.
My jealousy —
The jealousy whereto you have provoked me, will never cease, 'till these
judgments have utterly destroyed you, as the anger of an abused husband ceases
in the publick punishment of the adulteress.
No more angry — I
will no more concern myself about thee.
Verse 44
[44]
Behold, every one that useth proverbs shall use this proverb against thee,
saying, As is the mother, so is her daughter.
The mother —
Old Jerusalem, when the seat of the Jebusites, or the land of Canaan, when full
of the idolatrous, bloody, barbarous nations.
Her daughter — Jerusalem,
or the Jews who are more like those accursed nations in sin, than near them in
place of abode.
Verse 45
[45] Thou
art thy mother's daughter, that lotheth her husband and her children; and thou
art the sister of thy sisters, which lothed their husbands and their children:
your mother was an Hittite, and your father an Amorite.
Thou —
The nation of the Jews.
Thy mother's daughter — As much in thy inclinations, as for thy original.
Loatheth —
That was weary of the best husband.
Verse 46
[46] And
thine elder sister is Samaria, she and her daughters that dwell at thy left
hand: and thy younger sister, that dwelleth at thy right hand, is Sodom and her
daughters.
Thine elder sister —
The greater for power, riches, and numbers of people.
Her daughters —
The lesser cities of the kingdom of Israel.
Thy left hand —
Northward as you look toward the east.
Thy younger sister —
Which was smaller and less populous.
Thy right hand —
Southward from Jerusalem.
Verse 47
[47] Yet
hast thou not walked after their ways, nor done after their abominations: but,
as if that were a very little thing, thou wast corrupted more than they in all
thy ways.
Not walked after their ways — For they, all things considered, were less sinners than thou.
Nor done —
Their doings were abominable, but thine have been worse.
Verse 49
[49]
Behold, this was the iniquity of thy sister Sodom, pride, fulness of bread, and
abundance of idleness was in her and in her daughters, neither did she
strengthen the hand of the poor and needy.
This was —
The fountain and occasion of all.
Fulness of bread —
Excess in eating and drinking.
Strengthen —
She refused to help strangers.
Verse 51
[51]
Neither hath Samaria committed half of thy sins; but thou hast multiplied thine
abominations more than they, and hast justified thy sisters in all thine
abominations which thou hast done.
Hast justified —
Not made them righteous, but declared them less unrighteous, than thou; of the
two they are less faulty.
Verse 52
[52] Thou
also, which hast judged thy sisters, bear thine own shame for thy sins that
thou hast committed more abominable than they: they are more righteous than
thou: yea, be thou confounded also, and bear thy shame, in that thou hast
justified thy sisters.
Hast judged —
Condemned their apostacy, and hast judged their punishment just.
Verse 53
[53] When
I shall bring again their captivity, the captivity of Sodom and her daughters,
and the captivity of Samaria and her daughters, then will I bring again the
captivity of thy captives in the midst of them:
When — Sodom
and Samaria never were restored to that state they had been in; nor were the
two tribes ever made so rich, mighty, and renowned, though God brought some of
them out of Babylon: the words confirm an irrecoverably low, and despised
state, of the Jews in their temporals.
Then —
Then, not before.
Verse 54
[54] That
thou mayest bear thine own shame, and mayest be confounded in all that thou
hast done, in that thou art a comfort unto them.
A comfort —
Encouraging sinners like those of Sodom and Samaria.
Verse 56
[56] For
thy sister Sodom was not mentioned by thy mouth in the day of thy pride,
Not mentioned —
The sins of Sodom, and her plagues, were not minded or mentioned by thee.
Verse 57
[57]
Before thy wickedness was discovered, as at the time of thy reproach of the
daughters of Syria, and all that are round about her, the daughters of the
Philistines, which despise thee round about.
Before —
The time of her pride was, when they were not yet afflicted, and despised by
the Syrians.
And all —
The nations that were round about and combined in league against the house of
David.
Her —
Syria, the chief whereof were the Philistines.
Verse 58
[58] Thou
hast borne thy lewdness and thine abominations, saith the LORD.
Thy lewdness —
The punishment thereof.
Verse 59
[59] For
thus saith the Lord GOD; I will even deal with thee as thou hast done, which
hast despised the oath in breaking the covenant.
In breaking the covenant — So will I break my covenant with thee.
Verse 60
[60]
Nevertheless I will remember my covenant with thee in the days of thy youth,
and I will establish unto thee an everlasting covenant.
Nevertheless —
The Lord having denounced a perpetual punishment to the impenitent body of the
Jewish nation, doth now promise to the remnant, that they shall be remembered,
and obtain covenanted mercy.
My covenant — In
which I promised I would not utterly cut off the seed of Israel, nor fail to
send the redeemer, who should turn away iniquity from Jacob.
With thee — In
the loins of Abraham, and solemnly renewed after their coming out of Egypt,
which is the time, called the days of thy youth, Isaiah 44:2.
Establish —
Confirm and ratify. It shall be sure, and unfailing.
An everlasting covenant — Of long continuance, as to their condition in the land of Canaan, and in
what is spiritual, it shall be absolutely everlasting.
Verse 61
[61] Then
thou shalt remember thy ways, and be ashamed, when thou shalt receive thy
sisters, thine elder and thy younger: and I will give them unto thee for
daughters, but not by thy covenant.
Then —
When that new covenant shall take effect.
Receive —
Admit into church-communion, the Gentiles, now strangers, but then sisters.
Thine elder —
Those that are greater and mightier than thou; that by their power, wealth and
honour are as much above thee as the elder children are above the younger.
Thy younger —
Thy lesser or meaner sister.
For daughters — As
daughters hearken to, and obey, so shall the Gentiles brought into the church,
hearken to the word of God, which sounded out from Jerusalem.
But not —
Not by that old covenant which was violated; nor by external ceremonies, which
were a great part of the first covenant, but by that covenant which writes the
law in the heart, and puts the fear of God into the inward parts.
Verse 63
[63] That
thou mayest remember, and be confounded, and never open thy mouth any more
because of thy shame, when I am pacified toward thee for all that thou hast
done, saith the Lord GOD.
Open thy mouth —
Neither to justify thyself, or to condemn others, or to quarrel with thy God.
Because of thy shame — Such a confusion for thy sin will cover thee. Indeed the more we feel of
God's love, the more ashamed we are that ever we offended him. And the more our
shame for sin is increased, the more will our comfort in God be increased also.
── John Wesley《Explanatory Notes on Ezekiel》
16 Chapter 16
Verses 1-63
Son of man, cause Jerusalem to know her abominations.
Vile ingratitude
I. Let us consider
our iniquities--I mean those committed since conversion, those committed
yesterday, and the day before, and today--and let us see their sinfulness in
the light of what we were when the Lord first looked upon us.
1. Hath the Lord loved us, though there was nothing in our birth or
parentage to invite regard or merit esteem? Then surely every sin that we
commit now is aggravated by that sovereign choice, that infinite compassion that
doted upon us, though our birth was vile and our origin base.
2. There was everything in our condition that would tend to
destruction, but nothing in us that would tend upwards towards God. There we
were, dying, nay dead, rotten, corrupted, so abominable that it might well be
said, “Bury this dead one out of my sight,” when Jehovah passed by and He said
unto us, “Live.” The recollection of our youthful iniquity crushes us to the
very earth. Yet though sovereign mercy has put all these sins away; though Jove
has covered all these iniquities, and though everlasting kindness has washed
away all this filth, we have gone on to sin. If some of us who are rejoicing in
covenant love and mercy could have a clear view of all the sins we have
committed since conversion, of all the sins we shall commit till we land in
heaven, I question whether our senses might not reel under the terrible
discovery of what base things we are.
3. One thing else appears designed to represent our sins as blacker
still. “Thou wast cast out in the open field to the loathing of thy person in
the day that thou wast born.” Great God! how couldst Thou love that which we
ourselves hated? Oh! ‘tis grace, ‘tis grace, ‘tis grace indeed! And yet--O ye
heavens, be astonished--yet we have sinned against Him since then, we have
forgotten Him, we have doubted Him, we have grown cold towards Him; we have
loved self at times better than we have loved our Redeemer, and have sacrificed
to our own idols and made gods of our own flesh and self-conceit, instead of
giving Him all the glory and the honour forever and forever.
II. The time when
He began to manifest His love to us personally and individually.
1. He washed us with the water of regeneration, yea, and truly washed
away the stain of our natural sanguinity. Oh, that day, that day of days, as
the days of heaven upon earth, when our eyes looked to Christ and were
lightened, when the burden rolled from off our back! That day we never can
forget, for it always rises to our recollection the moment we begin to speak
about pardon--the day of our own pardon, of our own forgiveness. The galley
slave may forget the time when he escaped from the accursed slave holder’s
grasp, and became a freeman. The culprit who lay shivering beneath the
headsman’s axe may forget the hour when suddenly his pardon was granted and his
life was spared. But if all these should consign to oblivion their surprising
joys, the pardoned soul can never, never, never forget. Unless reason should
lose her seat, the quickened soul can never cease to remember the time when
Jesus said to it, “Live.” Oh! and has Jesus pardoned all our sins and have we
sinned still? Has He washed me, and have I defiled myself again?
2. When He had washed us, according to the ninth verse, He anointed
us with oil. Yes, and that has been repeated many and many a time. “Thou hast
anointed my head with oil.” He gave us the oil of His grace; our faces were
like priests, and we went up to His tabernacle rejoicing. Shall the body that
is the temple of the Holy Ghost be desecrated? Yet that has been the case with
us We have had God within us, and yet we have sinned. O Lord, have mercy upon
Thy people !Now we see our abomination in this clear light, we beseech Thee
pardon it, for Jesus sake!
3. He not only washed us, He not only anointed us with oil, but He
clothed us, and clothed us sumptuously. “Jesus spent His life to work my robe
of righteousness.” His sufferings were so many stitches when He made the
broidered work of my righteousness. What would you think of a king with a crown
on his head going to break the laws of his kingdom? What would you think if a
monarch should invest us with all the insignia of nobility, and we should
afterwards violate the high orders conferred upon us while adorned with the
robes of state? This is just what you and I have done.
4. We have not only received clothing, but ornaments. We cannot be
more glorious; Christ has given the Church so much, she could not have more. He
could not bestow upon her that which is more beautiful, more precious, or more
costly. She has all she can receive. Nevertheless, in the face of all these, we
have sinned against Him.
III. What our sins
really have been. The germs, the vileness, the essence of our own sin, has lain
in this--that we have given to sin and to idols things that belong unto God.
When you pray at a prayer meeting, the devil insinuates the thought, and you
entertain it, “What a fine fellow I am!” You may detect yourself when you are
talking to a friend of some good things God has done, or when you go home and
tell your wife lovingly the tale of your labour, there is a little demon of
pride at the bottom of your heart. You like to take credit to yourself for the
good things you have done. Sometimes a man has another god besides pride. That
god may be his sloth. Have you never detected yourself, when inclined to be
dilatory in spiritual things, leaning on the oar of the covenant, instead of
pulling at it, and saying, “Well, these things are true, but there is no great
need for me to stir myself.” Sometimes it is even worse. God gives to His
people riches, and they offer them before the shrine of their covetousness. He
gives them talent, and they prostitute it to the service of their ambition. He
gives them judgment, and they pander to their own advancement, and seek not the
interest of His kingdom. He gives them influence; that influence they use for
their own aggrandisement, and not for His honour. What is this but parallel to
taking His gold and His jewels, and hanging them upon the neck of Ashtaroth?
(C. H. Spurgeon.)
A charge to city ministers
I. Ezekiel had a
commission to a corrupt city; So have you. Superstition, sensuality, formality,
worldliness, were rampant in Jerusalem. But were her sins greater than those of
Manchester, Glasgow, London?
II. Ezekiel’s
commission was to reveal the corrupt city to itself; this is yours.
1. Because the moral corruptions of a city expose the population to
terrible calamities.
2. Because the city itself is ignorant of its moral corruptions.
“They know not what they do.” Poor, miserable, blind, naked, etc. Go and tell
them. Take the torch of the Gospel into their midst, and let it flame down upon
their consciences.
3. Because a revelation of it to itself may lead it now to moral
reformation.
4. Because unless you make this revelation to it no one else can be
expected to do it. Who else will or can do it? Not scientists, legislators,
merchants, soldiers. The work is given to you. (Homilist.)
Fearless preaching
It is related of John Wesley that, preaching to an audience of
courtiers and noblemen, he used the “generation of vipers” text, and flung
denunciation right and left. “That sermon should have been preached at
Newgate,” said a displeased courtier to Wesley on passing out. “No,” said the
fearless apostle; “my text there would have been, ‘Behold the Lamb of God,
which taketh away the sin of the world!’”
Uncomfortable sermons
“I remember one of my parishioners at Halesworth telling me,” says
Whately, “that he thought a person should not go to church to be made
uncomfortable: I replied that I thought so too; but whether it should be the
sermon or the man’s life that should be altered so as to avoid the discomfort
must depend on whether the doctrine was right or wrong.”
Conviction of sin--the preacher’s aim
It is plain dealing that men need. A toyish, flashy sermon is not
the proper medicine for a lethargic, miserable soul, nor fit to break a stony
heart. Heaven and hell should not be talked of in a canting, jingling, and
pedantic strain. A Seneca can tell you that it is a physician that is skilful,
and not one that is eloquent, that we need. If he have also fine and neat
expressions, we do not despise them, nor over much value them. It is a cure
that we need, and the means are best, be they never so sharp, that will
accomplish it. If a hardened heart is to be broken, it is not stroking, but
striking that must do it. It is not the sounding brass, the tinkling cymbal,
the carnal mind puffed up with superficial knowledge that is the instrument
fitted to the renewing of men’s souls. It is the illuminating beams of sacred
truth communicated from a mind that by faith hath seen the glory of God, and by
experience found that He is good, and living in the love of God; such an one is
fitted to assist you first in the knowledge of yourselves, and then in the
knowledge of God in Christ. (R. Baxter.)
Thy father was an Amorite and thy mother an Hittite.
Hieroglyphics of truth
I. Man is
essentially religious. Religion in the heart of man is something that pertains
to the land of Canaan. It has not been invented by man, or created in his soul
by human science or culture: it is not a product of education or civilisation.
It is part of man’s nature more truly than the raindrop is part of the cloud
from which it falls, or than the river is part of the sea from which it flows
and to which it returns. It is in the soul as fire is in the flint; as the oak
is in the acorn, or as the day is in the dawn. Religion belongs to the soul, as
hunger and thirst belong to the body. Hunger and thirst may not create bread,
any more than the organ of vision can create light, or the organ of hearing
sound; but bread and water, light and sound, would be useless without these organs.
Were it not that man is essentially religious, all our preaching of the Gospel,
and all our missionary labours at home and abroad, would be vain. Go with me in
thought, and view the ruins of the temple of Heliopolis on the borders of
Arabia, or the gigantic ruins of Luxor and Thebes on the banks of the Nile, or
those of Baalbeck in the valley between the Lebanons. Whence the origin and
purpose of these ancient temples? These temples, it may be said, were largely
the outcome or expressions of man’s religious beliefs--superstitious beliefs,
if you will. But whence the origin of these superstitious beliefs? What was
their root cause? Their root cause was man’s religious nature. The word
superstition means a resting upon, yes, resting upon man’s natural religious
convictions.
II. May by nature
is morally corrupt. “Thy father was an Amorite and thy mother an Hittite.” The
Amorites and Hittites, though born in the land of Canaan, were aliens to the
commonwealth of Israel, and strangers to the covenants with promise; they were
without God and without hope in the world. This doctrine of human depravity or
moral corruption applies to all races and to men of all ranks. Sin in the soul
is not the result of evil habits, as some suppose, nor the issue of a false
education and corrupting companionship and circumstances. It is not a thing
like cold, which a man may or may not take in certain circumstances, and which,
if taken, may develop into consumption or some other disease. No. We are all
horn with it. It is a constitutional malady. Apart from the doctrine of
sin--original sin in the soul; I know not the doctrine of salvation, even in
theory. Apart from the doctrine of man’s natural alienation from God, I know
not the meaning of Christ’s mission to the world. What would be the meaning of
physicians were there no human ailments? or of drugs were there no human
diseases? or of bread and water were there no such things as hunger and thirst?
Without sin in the soul, the Gospel could have no meaning, and the Cross could
have no power.
III. Christianity is
God’s remedy for man’s malady. He who at the beginning said, “Let there be
light, and there was light,” now says to all men “Live.” The description given
in the context of man’s state by nature, speaks of death, moral and spiritual
of orphanage and great feebleness. There is a great amount of life in the
world, and man is not without life. It is called natural life; but natural life
is somewhat as the river Jordan, that ends its flow in the Dead Sea. Human
life, at the best, is as the grass, and its glory as the flower. It does not
last, and its duration is a contradiction of our supreme desires. Death is not
natural to man. Man was not made to die, as some men seem to suppose, but to
live; hence the fear of death makes men subject to bondage. The keynote of
Christianity is life, life that cannot die. “I am come, said Jesus, that ye
might have life, and that ye might have it more abundantly.” To all who hear
and believe the Gospel, God says “Live.” Is there any other religion in all the
world that can be compared with the Christian religion in this respect?
Christianity, as a system of truth, is in harmony with the soundest deductions
of enlightened reason; Christianity, as exhibited in the Person and work of
Jesus Christ, is the complement of the deepest cravings, the strongest desires,
and the universal wants of humanity. It makes man great with the “hopes which
cheer the just.” It lifts him as from “the dunghill, and sets him among
princes.” While it fosters the conviction that heaven is needed to complete his
life on earth, it opens the way, and gives him health and power to reach it. It
makes him hopeful, useful, and great. (J. K. Campbell, D. D.)
None eye pitied thee, to do any of these unto thee, to have
compassion upon thee.
--
Ezekiel’s deserted infant
I. A survey of the
misery of man’s estate. The verse presents to us an infant exposed to die. All
the common offices that were necessary for its life and health have been
forgotten.
1. At the very first glance, we remark, here is an early ruin. It is
an infant. A thousand sorrows that one so young should be so deeply taught in
misery’s school! It is an infant; it has not yet tasted joy, but yet it knoweth
pain and sorrow to the full. How early art thou blasted, O sweet flower! From
the very birth we go astray, speaking lies, and in the very birth we lie under
the condemnation of the law of God.
2. The next very apparent teaching of the text is utter inability. It
is an infant--what can it do for itself? Not even clay on the potter’s wheel is
more helpless than this infant as it now lies cast out in the open field. Such
is human nature; it can by no means help towards its own restoration. But, mark
you, and this is a thought that may crush our boastings and make us hang our
head like a bulrush evermore--this inability is our own sin.
3. Apparent, too, is yet a third misfortune--we are utterly
friendless. “None eye pitied thee, to do any of these things unto thee.” We
have no friend in heaven or in earth that can do aught for us, unless God shall
interpose. Weep and lament your kinsfolk may for you, but no lamentation can
make an atonement for your sins, no human tears can cleanse your filthiness, no
Christian zeal can clothe you with righteousness, no yearning love can sanctify
your nature.
4. Furthermore, our text very clearly reveals to us that we are by
nature in a sad state of exposure. Cast out into the open field, left in a wilderness
where it is not likely that any should pass by, thrown where the cold can smite
by night and the heat can blast by day, left where the wild beast goeth about,
seeking whom he may devour--such is the estate of human nature: unclothed,
unarmed, helpless, exposed to all manner of ravenous destroyers. O Lord God,
Thou alone knowest the awful dangers which prowl around an unregenerate man;
what mischiefs waylay him; what crimes beset him; what follies haunt him.
5. It seems that this child, besides being in this exposed state, was
loathsome. “Thou wast cast out to the loathing of thy person.” It was in such a
condition that the sight of it was disgusting, and its person was so destitute
of all comeliness that it was absolutely loathed. Such is man by nature.
6. We close this fearful description by observing the certain ruin to
which this infant was exposed, as setting forth the sure destruction of every
man if grace prevent not.
II. We are now to
search for motives for God’s grace, and we have a very difficult search before
us when we look to this infant which is cast out, because its loathsomeness and
its being covered with its own blood, forbid us at once to hope that there can
be anything in it which can merit the esteem of the merciful One. Let us think
of some of the motives which may urge men to assist the undeserving.
1. One of the first would be, necessity. Not a few are placed in such
a position that they could not well refuse to give their help when it is asked
of them. But no necessity can ever affect the Most High. The first of all
causes must be absolutely independent of every other cause. Who dictateth
counsel to the Most High? Who sits at His bar, and giveth Him advice and
warning, and maketh Him do according to his pleasure? Nor had God any necessity
in order to make Himself happy or to increase His glory.
2. In this case there was nothing in the birth of this child, in its
original parentage, that could move the passer-by. You were conceived in sin,
and stained in your very birth, and there is, therefore, nothing here that
could move the heart of Deity.
3. Nor was there anything in this child’s beauty, for it was
loathsome. What can there be in a worm to gratify the Almighty?
4. Furthermore, as we have found no motive yet, either in necessity or
the child’s birth or beauty, so we find none in any entreaties that were
uttered by this child. It doth not seem that it pleaded with the passer-by to
save it, for it could not as yet speak. So, though sinners do pray, yet when a
sinner prays, it is because God has begun to save him.
5. Yet, further, it does not appear that the pity of the passer-by
was shown upon this child because of any future service which was expected of
it. This child, it seems, was nourished, clothed, luxuriously decorated; and yet,
after all that, if you read the chapter through, you will find it went astray
from Him who had set His heart upon it. The Lord foresaw this, and yet” loved
that child notwithstanding.
III. But now
consider the mandate of his mercy. “I said unto thee, Live.”
I. This fiat of
God is majestic. He looks, and there lies an infant, loathsome in its blood; He
stops, and He pronounces the word, the royal word “Live.” There speaks a God.
Who but He could venture thus to deal with life and dispense it with a single
syllable? ‘Tis majestic, ‘tis Divine!
2. This fiat is manifold.
3. It is an irresistible voice. When God says to a sinner, “Live,”
all the devils in hell cannot keep him in the grave.
4. It is all-sufficient. “Live,” dost Thou say, great God? Why, the
man is dead! There is life--not in him, but in the voice that bids him live.
“Live,” dost Thou say? “By this time he stinketh, for he hath been dead four
days!” There is power--not in his corruption, but in the voice that crieth,
“Come forth!”
5. It was a mandate of free grace. I want to lay that down again, and
again, and again, that there was nothing in this infant, nothing but
loathsomeness, nothing therefore to merit esteem; nothing in the infant, but
inability, nothing therefore by which it could help itself; nothing in it but
infancy, nothing therefore by which it could plead for itself, and yet grace
said, “Live”--freely, without any bribe, without any entreaty, said, “Live.”
And so when sinners are saved, it is only and solely because God will do it, to
magnify His free, unpurchased, unsought grace. (C. H. Spurgeon.)
The allegory of the foundling child
Though marked by a breadth which offends against modern taste, the
allegory of the foundling child which became the faithless wife is powerful,
and, when the details are forgotten and only the general idea kept in mind,
even beautiful, as well as true. An outcast infant, exposed in the open field
and weltering in her blood, was seen by the pitying eye of a passer-by. Rescued
and nourished, she grew up to the fairest womanhood, and became the wife of her
benefactor, who heaped on her every gift that could please or elevate. But the
ways into which he led her were too lofty to be understood, and the atmosphere
around too pure for her to breathe; the old inborn nature (her father was an
Amorite and her mother a Hittite) was still there beneath all the refinements
for which it had no taste, and at last it asserted itself in shameless
depravity and insatiable lewdness. (A. B. Davidson, D. D.)
The first step for man’s salvation taken by God
I know some think that the sinner takes the first step, but, we
know better. If he did, it were like the old Romish miracle of St. Dennis,
where we are told that after his head was off, he picked it up and walked two
thousand miles with it in his hand. Whereupon, some wit observed that he did
not see any wonder in the man’s walking two thousand miles, for all the
difficulty lay in the first step. Just so, I see no difficulty in a man’s
getting all the way to heaven if he can but take the first step; for all the
miracle lies in that first step--the making the dead soul live, the melting the
adamantine heart, the thawing of the northern ice, the bringing down of the
proud look--this is the work, this is the difficulty; and if man can do that
himself, verily he can do the whole. But when God looketh upon men to save
them, it is not because they cry to Him, for they never do and never will cry
until the work of salvation is begun. (C. H. Spurgeon.)
I said unto thee,. . .Live.
Spiritual life
I. The miracle of
grace performed. As everything in the Bible is a parable to an unregenerate
man, so everything in Christian experience is a miracle wrought by the hand of
God. What! is it not a miracle, to vanquish Satan and take the prey out of his
hands--to “take the prey from the mighty and the captive from the terrible”? Is
it not a miracle to unstop deaf ears? Is it not a miracle to raise the dead,
and give them another, a new and deathless life and existence? Jehovah not only
speaks into life at first--speaks it into pre-existence, if I may so express
it--animating, quickening,--and then causing to grow, “that they may have life,
and have it more abundantly”; but it is His also to speak life to the soul in
the most exalted sense, consummating it in the life of glory. “Live!” I think,
strictly speaking, in the literal sense of the word we can hardly be said to
live till we get to the world of glory. And what some people call dying, I
think is just Jehovah saying to the souls of His people, Live. We have hardly
begun to live yet; here we have much to do with the old Adam nature, much to do
with corruption, much to do with the things that mar our enjoyment and our
life, so that we live at a “poor dying rate”; but, oh! the blessedness of that
moment, when all that is earthly, all that pertains to time, shall be shaken
off, and by one sweet sovereign command--one gracious, kind, paternal
word--Jehovah shall say, Live; and we shall pass from our deathy clay hut to
the world of spirits, and live everlastingly with Himself.
II. An epitome of
spiritual experience. You may have a religion of education--and yet none of
God; you may have a religion of natural feeling, natural passions--and yet none
of God; you may have a religion of alarm, and be terribly frightened about
going to hell--but none of God; you may have a religion of supposed joy,
natural passions moved and somewhat inflamed, which perhaps may be exhibited in
the style of the book you read or the eloquence you listen to--and yet none of
God. All these will leave you deficient. Nothing will do but a spiritual
existence. The man of the world has a natural existence, a mental existence, a
rational existence, which makes him differ from the brute creation; but a real
Christian has, in addition to this, spiritual existence, a heavenly life--the
persons and perfections of Deity dwelling in His soul--a new creation--another,
a holy, a sinless principle--the life of God--called the participation of the
Divine nature. A worldling may appear like a Christian among Christians; but
let him loose, and his whole heart is in the world immediately. A Christian may
have to mix with the men of the world in worldly business; but let him loose,
and you see in a moment that his soul has a spiritual being. This spiritual existence
is the epitome of godliness. It is communicated by a word from the throne--by a
touch of Jehovah’s hand, by the voice of Christ, by the whisper of the Spirit.
Moreover, it is immortal. I pass on, just to notice that this spiritual
existence is known by the spiritual negotiations it keeps up. If I have nothing
to do for God, the devil will be sure to find me something to do for him. The
very nature of life is to be active. If it be animal life, it must try to move
and walk and run; if it be mental life, it must find some object to pursue,
something to hear or read, something to call it forth. So with spiritual life;
it must have its activity called forth into exercise.
III. The testimony
of Divine prerogative. Jehovah says, “Live.” I hear nothing in this of “I will
if he will”; I see nothing of proposal, nothing of overture, nothing of an
offer, nothing of a condition in all this. I know there are not a few who would
have us deal with mankind, treat with sinners, as if they had a power--as if
they had a capacity for spiritual things--as if they had a spiritual work to
perform. I confess I have little heart--I have no heart at all for this,
because I never saw an instance of its success. Find me one instance in which a
sinner ever began to inquire after Christ, or knew anything about a spiritual
emotion, until God had said, “Live.” I will yield the point. The Son of God
took this prerogative upon Himself, when, tabernacling in the likeness of
sinful flesh, He went up to the widow’s son as they carried him out of the city
of Nain, touched the bier, and called the young man to life again; to the no
small comfort of his mother. He pursued the same course, and assumed the same
prerogative, when Lazarus had lain four days in the grave. And to this hour the
same prerogative is exercised by the Son of God, as well as by the Father.
Moreover, of the Holy Ghost it is said, “It is the Spirit that quickeneth.” So
that Father, Son, and Holy Ghost are concerned in the resurrection of the
sinner, as well as (as we showed the other morning) in the resurrection of the
Lord Jesus Christ. One thing more I just invite your attention to: while our
covenant God exercises His sovereignty in calling sinners out of darkness into
light and the dead into life, what a revenue of praise belongs to His holy
name! (J. Irons.)
The life of souls the ordinance of God
How manifold, how great, are the works of our God! How curious,
various, and vast are the forms of dead matter! Think of earths, stones,
metals, waters, clouds, and all the same matter combined, modified in endless
variety. Ascend one step higher, and think of the organised matter which
constitutes the living verdure of our world. Ascend another step, and survey
for a moment the countless tribes of beings animate. Who can number the birds
that fill the air, to say nothing of insects? Think of the cattle of our home
fields, the game of our woods, and the wild beasts of far-off deserts and
forests, to say nothing of reptiles. Think too of the vaster seas and of the
innumerable fishes, from the whale to animalcule. We lift our eyes to the
heavens, and our earth, huge as it is, and much as it contains, is but as a
particle of dust, or as a drop filling a bucket. Shoals of planets greater than
ours are over our heads, and even suns stand crowded there as thick as forest
leaves. What a universe! What a God is ours! But how instructive is the
relation between man and the all things of God! Man has an eye to look abroad
upon all, and to read all, and he has a spirit to conceive and adore the God
who is over all. Indeed, the all things of our God are only the ladder which
aids man to climb to the feet of God. When I think that man is not only
elevated to bow with the ranks of prostrate angels at the feet of their God,
but that he is the immediate minister of the high and lofty One, that the God
of eternity is literally achieving His grandest purposes by the agency of man,
I am struck dumb with amazement!
I. What, then, is
our office? Interesting, most animating, as it would be to be the instrumental
cause of awakening nature into new life and beauty, it is less animating than
our real work. Sublime as it would be to go forth awakening the dead, it is
less sublime than the actual ministry committed to us. But our work is so old
that we forget its grandeur. So the grandeur of the universe is slighted
because suns and moons and stars are stale things, and, as stale things, are
sure to be deserted for the sake of a few fireworks. The greatest change in
nature--that from mid-winter to mid-summer, is but a physical change, a change
in the mode of matter. Matter is therefore the agent which effects this; sun,
rain, and dew are the servants of God in this work. And to call forth the
bodies of men from their graves is a work very inferior to that of awakening
souls to the life of God. “The former work has no glory by reason of the glory
which excelleth.” If our office is an office in relation to souls, then we have
to do with the highest of all forms of existence. The souls of our world are
desolate and dead as winter: it is the will of God that a springtime should be
brought out in their history, that they should become verdant and flourishing
as the garden of the Lord. Piety is ever-living verdure, and the graces of
piety are never-withering flowers. Instrumentally to call forth these from
human souls is the ministry committed to our hands. In a word, our ministry is
a ministry of life to the dead--not to dead matter, nor to dead bodies, but to
souls dead in sin.
II. There are souls
dead!
1. Men are ignorant of the nature of their souls. Truly they know not
what souls are, or they would perceive at once that there is no adaptation
between money and souls, between sensual pleasures and souls and they would be
at least uneasy that there is nothing in the wide world suited to enrich and
bless the soul. Then, if souls know not their own nature, it is not too strong
a figure to speak of them as dead.
2. The souls of men are not fulfilling the end of their being. Their
affections are not excited; their powers are not developed; their energies are
not devoted to truth, to excellence; their thoughts do not soar away in
contemplation of the infinite and the eternal; their affections do not embrace
the God of love; eternity is before them, but they are making no preparation;
they are laying no foundation for the time to come.
3. The souls of men are strangers to the peculiar joys of their
being. Every distinct order of creatures has its peculiar pleasures: insects
have their pleasures, birds have their pleasures, the cattle of the field have
their pleasures, and souls have their pleasures; but of all these creatures the
souls of men only are alienated from, and indifferent to, their own peculiar
delights. The difference between the joys of angelic minds and those of human
minds consists in this, that angels are in the full and constant fruition of
the proper bliss of souls; but human souls are cut off from it, if dead to this
bliss; so that, without inconsistency or exaggeration, we may speak of the
state of human souls under the figure of death, and of their conversion to God
as a passing from death unto life. And the peculiar characteristic of the
Gospel is, that it is a ministration of life to souls, immortal souls dead in
sin.
III. As the servants
of the Gospel, the cry of our ministry is, live! O souls! as servants of our
God and your God, our business is with you. If you carry on no commerce with
your Maker, if your thoughts and affections rise not to contemplate and embrace
things hidden and Divine, you are strangers to the high and joyous life of
souls. In your bodies there may be life, but in your souls there is death,
which will become eternal death unless it be soon plucked out of your spirits.
By the will of God the ministry of life is now in exercise in your presence,
the design of which is to abolish death, to exterminate death’s empire without
you, and to plant in its room the principles of life and immortality. But how
are we to exercise this ministry? Our text cries, Live! Are we then to
reiterate the cry, Live! Live! to the dying souls who may be within the sound
of our voice? No; but we are to employ those means which God has instituted for
the very purpose of awakening within you a life unto God. This is our ministry.
We are charged by God to call upon you to repent, to sue for mercy, and
solemnly declare to you that not to repent is to perish. We are to tell you
that He who knew no sin died for your sins, and that, therefore, life, eternal
life, is offered to you through His death. (J. Pulsford, D. D.)
Yea, I sware unto thee, and entered into a covenant with thee,
saith the Lord God, and thou becamest Mine.
Two immutable, things
Biographies are generally interesting, if they are biographies;
that is to say, if the events of the person’s life are truly told; but the most
interesting biography to any man is his own life. Turn over the pages of the
book of memory, and think of those first times when you sought and found the
Saviour, when you repented, when you believed, when you yielded yourself up to
Jesus, when He took you to be His, and you took Him to be yours. I am sure that
this exercise will awaken many happy thoughts, and I feel equally certain that
it will suggest many regrets; but the happiness will be good for you if it
excites your gratitude, and the regrets will be good for you if they deepen
your penitence. Beloved, tim time of our conversion, the time when we joyously
realised that we were saved, was a covenanting time. It is a somewhat singular
thing that, in this chapter, God does not say anything about Israel’s part of
the covenant; He seems to pass that over as though it were never worth
mentioning. So, at this time, I shall not say much about the covenant that you
made with God; do not forget it, and do not forget that you have often
forgotten it.
I. It was a
covenant freely made.
1. It was a covenant which He made at His own suggestion, out of the
greatness of His own love; for the nation of Israel, of which He speaks, had
nothing in its pedigree to suggest it. There are some who do not believe in the
depravity of human nature. I must believe in it if I am myself a fair specimen
of human nature; and every man who has watched his own heart,, and has any idea
of the sin which dwells within him, will know that his origin is tainted, that
from the very first there is a tendency to evil, and only evil; and, therefore,
that there is nothing in him as to his birth that can command or deserve the
favour of God.
2. There was nothing in our condition to commend it. This poor child
had never been washed or clothed--it was left in all its filthiness to die;
there was nothing about it to commend it to the attention of the passer-by. And
what were we by nature?
3. It was also a covenant freely made because there was
nothing in our beauty to warrant it. Whatever there was there, was undeveloped
and, worse still, unclean. And in that day when Jesus took us to Himself, and
we took Him to be our Saviour, there was nothing as yet apparent of that which
His grace has now wrought in us; it was totally absent then.
II. It was a
covenant entirely of love.
1. Taking our text in its connection, we learn that this covenant was
a marriage covenant.
2. That it was a covenant which was meant to be entirely of love is
proved by the way in which it was carried out (Ezekiel 16:9-13). This is a covenant all
of love, for these are all love-tokens, love-gifts to the beloved one. Now,
will you go back in thought, and recollect when you used to receive those gifts
from the Lord?
3. It must be a covenant all of love which God has made with such
creatures as we are, because it could bring the Lord no profit.
III. It was a most
sure covenant: “I sware unto thee, and entered into a covenant with thee.”
1. The covenant which God makes with believers is intended to remain
forever. It is not something which may be broken in a few hours, like a child’s
toys; it is an everlasting covenant (Ezekiel 16:60).
2. In proof that He intended it to remain, He ratified it by an oath.
3. To make a covenant even surer than by an oath, men were accustomed
to seal it by a sacrifice. Now, beloved, you who believe have the precious
blood of the Lord Jesus Christ, as of a lamb without blemish and without spot,
to confirm the covenant of grace.
4. I would have you notice, in our text, that the covenant is
remembered by God. It is He who Says, “I sware unto thee, and entered into a
covenant with thee.”
5. Yet once more, this covenant will be remembered by Him forever (Ezekiel 16:60; Ezekiel 16:62).
IV. This covenant
involves very gracious consequences. “Thou becamest Mine.”
1. If God has entered into covenant with us, we have become the
Lord’s. Whose were you before? The world’s? Your own? The devil’s? Well, we
will not dispute with the many claimants; but now you can say, “O Lord our God,
other lords beside Thee have had dominion over us: but by Thee only will we
make mention of Thy name.”
2. Now, we ought to be the Lord’s more and more.
3. If that be our feeling, it will lead us practically to renew the
bond of the covenant.
4. And you who have never done so, may you come to Jesus this very
moment! Your only hope lies in Him. (C. H. Spurgeon.)
God’s covenant with the reclaimed soul
In Canada they build palaces of ice in the winter time, and very
beautiful things they are; but then, when spring comes where are those palaces?
And in summer, the very foundation upon which they were built has melted back
into the St. Lawrence. God does not make with His believing people covenants
like those ice palaces; His covenant stands secure, though earth’s old columns
bow. If God has promised to save thee,--as He has done if thou believest in
Jesus,--He will save thee in the teeth of death and hell. Rest thou sure of
this, and say with David, “He hath made with me an everlasting covenant,
ordered in all things and sure.” Here is something to rest upon: “I sware unto
thee, and entered into a covenant with thee.” He intended it to remain. (C.
H. Spurgeon.)
The moment of being possessed by Christ
“Thou becamest Mine.” Do you recollect the spot--perhaps it was
your own little room--where, as a youth, you sat after having long prayed and
wept? And at last you felt that Jesus was yours; and you sat still, and you
said to yourself “Yes, I am His, every bit of me. He has bought me with His
blood, I am His.” Do you remember those first few days in which you felt half
afraid to do anything lest you should grieve that dear Lover of your soul? Then
you wanted to do everything that you might please Him whose servant you had
become. I remember a verse of Scripture which, as a young believer, I used
often to repeat; for it was very dear to me. I daresay you love it too; it is
this: “Bind the sacrifice with cords, even unto the horns of the altar.” We did
feel then that we were wholly Christ’s; do we feel it as much now? “Thou
becamest Mine.” To come back to the marriage covenant of which the Lord
speaks,--when the husband put the ring upon his bride’s finger, he said to her,
“Thou hast become mine.” Do you remember when you felt upon your finger the
ring of infinite, everlasting, covenant love that Christ put there. “Thou
becamest Mine.” Oh, it was a joyful day, a blessed day! Happy day, happy day,
when His choice was known to me, and fixed my choice on Him! (C. H.
Spurgeon.)
Owned by God
It is a great privilege not to be one’s own. A vessel is drifting
on the Atlantic hither and thither, and its end no man knoweth. It is derelict,
deserted by all its crew; it is the property of no man; it is the prey of every
storm and the sport of every wind; rocks, quicksands, and shoals wait to
destroy it; the ocean yearns to engulf it. It drifts onward to no man’s land,
and no man will mourn its shipwreck. But mark well yonder bark of the Thames,
which its owner surveys with pleasure. In its attempt to reach the sea it may
run ashore, or come into collision with other vessels, or in a thousand ways
suffer damage; but there is no fear, it will pass through the floating forest
of “the Pool”; it will thread the winding channel and reach the Nore, because
the owner will secure it pilotage, skilful and apt. How thankful you and I
should be that we are not derelict today! We are not our own, not left on the
wild “waste of chance to be tossed to and fro by fortuitous circumstances, but
there is a Hand upon the helm; we have on board a Pilot who owns us, and will
surely steer us into the Fair Heavens of eternal rest. (C. H. Spurgeon.)
The adornments of Christ’s Church
It was observed of Queen Elizabeth (as of her father before her),
that she loved to go very richly arrayed. Her sister Queen Mary had, at her
coronation, her head so laden with:jewels that she could hardly hold it up.
King Richard II had one coat of gold and stone valued at 30,000 marks. This was
much, but nothing to the Church’s beauty and bravery, which yet was all but
borrowed, as is said in the next verse. (J. Trapp.)
How to obtain Christ’s beauty
God’s beauty which He puts upon His people is His own moral
loveliness. This attribute of Divine goodness, while enshrined in the teaching
of the Word of God, is most effectively seen in the person of the Lord Jesus.
It is from Him we catch it, if at all. As the sun imprints the image upon the
sensitive plate in the camera when it is exposed to it, so Christ’s beauty is
put upon us if we are exposed to Him by a life of communion. We do not,
however, own Christ’s beauty merely passively, there must be a constant
deliberate imitation of His holy example. “I must go home and deepen the colouring
of my infant Hercules,” exclaimed Sir Joshua Reynolds after gazing on the
beautiful sunburnt face of a peasant boy. Frequent communings with Christ make
one dissatisfied with his poor copying of so beautiful a character. “I must be
more Christlike” must be the great resolve as we go forth from His presence if
we would own Christ’s beauty. (Charles Deal.)
The transformation grace works
John Ruskin was one day walking along the streets of London. The
weather had been very wet, and the mud was plentiful and most sticky. The
thought occurred to him that he would have the mud analysed to find out exactly
the inorganic elements in it. This was accordingly done, and the London mud was
found to consist of sand, clay, soot, and water. Musing upon that fact, it struck
him that these are the very substances from which our precious jewels and gems
are formed. From the sand or silica come the onyx, chrysolite, agate, beryl,
cornelian, chalcedony, jasper, sardine, amethyst; from the clay come the
sapphire, ruby, emerald, topaz; and from the soot is formed the diamond. London
mud composed of priceless jewels! Man cannot transform the mud into those
glittering points of light, but God transforms and recreates the mud of
depraved humanity into the glory of redeemed and beautiful souls. (John
Robertson.)
I clothed thee also with broidered work.
The clothing of God’s people
See with what matchless generosity the Lord provides for His
people’s apparel.
1. They are so arrayed that the Divine skill is seen producing an
unrivalled broidered work, in which every attribute takes its part and every
Divine beauty is revealed. No art like the art displayed in our salvation, no cunning
workmanship like that beheld in the righteousness of the saints. Justification
has engrossed learned pens in all ages of the Church, and will be the theme of
admiration in eternity. God has indeed “curiously wrought it.”
2. With all this elaboration there is mingled utility and durability,
comparable to our being shod with badgers’ skins. The animal here meant is
unknown, but its skin covered the tabernacle, and formed one of the finest and
strongest leathers known. The righteousness which is of God by faith endureth
forever, and he who is shod with this Divine preparation will tread the desert
safely, and may even set his foot upon the lion and the adder.
3. Purity and dignity of our holy vesture are brought out in the fine
linen. When the Lord sanctifies His people, they are clad as priests in pure
white; not the snow itself excels them; they are in the eyes of men and angels
fair to look upon, and even in the Lord’s eves they are without spot.
4. Meanwhile the royal apparel is delicate and rich as silk! No
expense is spared, no beauty withheld, no daintiness denied.
5. Surely there is gratitude to be felt and joy to be expressed.
Come, my heart, refuse not thy evening hallelujah! Tune thy pipes! Touch thy
chords! (C. H. Spurgeon.)
Thou hast also taken thy fair Jewels of My gold.
The degrading nature of sin
Manton says, “If you saw a man labouring in filthy ditches, and
soiling himself as poor men do, would you believe that he was heir-apparent to
a crown, called to inherit a kingdom? Who will believe in your heavenly calling
when you stick in the mud of worldly pleasures, and are carried away with
carking care for secular interests?” Princes should behave as princes. Their
haunts should be in palaces, and not amid dung heaps. How, then, is it that
some who profess and call themselves Christians are found raking in
questionable amusements to discover pleasure, and many others groping amid
sordid avarice to find satisfaction in wealth? What are they at to be thus
disgracing the blood royal? How dare they drag the name of the “Blessed and
only Potentate” through the mire? A prince of the blood acting as a beggar
would dishonour not only himself but all the royal house. Nobility has
obligations. Grace, which is the eminent nobility of saints, lays them under
heavy bonds to act as the true aristocracy of the universe. (C. H. Spurgeon.)
God ill requited for all His love
I remember William Huntingdon says in his autobiography that one
of the sharpest sensations of pain that he felt after he had been quickened by
Divine grace was this, “He felt such pity for God.” I do not know that I ever
met with the expression elsewhere, but it is a very expressive one; although I
might prefer to say sympathy with God, and grief that He should be so
ill-treated. Many a man has been slandered and abused, but never was man abused
as God has been. (C. H. Spurgeon.)
I have stretched out My hand over thee, and have diminished thine
ordinary food, and delivered thee unto the will of them that hate thee.
The tyranny of Satan
To be “delivered unto the will of them that hate us”--this seems
given as amongst the most oppressive of calamities--the judgment which God,
after having long striven with the unrighteousness of a nation, selects from
the stores of His retributive appointments. Suppose one person knew another to
be his rancorous enemy, bent on doing him every kind of injury, and causing him
every kind of pain; it may be that this enemy had left the kingdom and gone to
foreign parts, so that it did not seem likely that he would again cross the
path of the object of his bitter dislike. But the individual himself may be
called to quit his home, and navigate distant seas; and he himself, falling
amongst pirates, may find that, though life is spared, liberty is gone, and
that he is to be sold as a slave on reaching the land. Who can tell the anguish
of his soul? The endearing recollections of his native shores crowd thickly
upon him; and he thinks that not only shall he never again meet the friends of
his youth, but that he shall drag out the remainder of his days in subjection
to some tyrant whose delight will be to torment. Yet perhaps not so! It is a
galling thing that he--a freeborn man--should stand in the slave market,
exposed for sale like a mere beast of burden; but it may be that, through this
degradation, he shall recover all that he has lost. He therefore waits with
trembling eagerness to know who his purchaser shall be. On a sudden his eye
rests on his ancient enemy; he cannot be mistaken. He knows that form; it will
not allow him to doubt. Oh! that he might hide himself! But in vain! His foe
has purchased him; he has paid down the demanded price. Tell me! did the man
till this moment feel himself utterly wretched? Now, the case would be much the
same with a community or nation as with the individual. If a nation must yield
to a foreign power, it would desire that it might not be to a power by which it
had always been held in dislike, and with which it had often been at war. The
galling thing would be, not merely that we were subdued, but that we were
subdued by those to whom we knew ourselves to be objects of inveterate hatred,
and who cherished against us deep-rooted antipathy. Now, whilst these may be
thoroughly accurate illustrations of our text, they are not those which cause
the passage to be surveyed under its most instructive aspects. The text, when
separated from its local and temporary application, may justly be considered as
describing the state to which the human race was reduced when, by the first
rebellion against God, it severed the links which had heretofore associated the
Creator and the creature. We all admit that through the apostasy of Adam, Satan
acquired a dominion over the globe which he never could have held had our first
parents remained firm in their allegiance, He became, in the language of St.
Paul, “The God of this world.” If it were to be said of the Jews that God
“delivered them unto the will of them that hated them,” it is easy to be said
of man in general that God surrendered him to the hands of the devil. Though
never let it be for a moment forgotten that whilst He thus allowed judgment to
fall on sin, and caused the disobedient to “eat of the fruit of their own
ways,” He was providing for the emancipation of our race--arranging that His
blessed Son should be “manifested” for the express purpose of “destroying the
works of the devil.” And you are yet to be told the worst feature in this our
natural condition. Not only are we slaves, but they that “hate” us are they
that rule over us. There can be nothing darker, if we may judge from the
scattered touches of Scripture, than the character of apostate angels. Fallen
from the very summit of created glory, their debasement seems to bear
proportion with their original eminence; and they move to and fro burning with
the fiercest animosity against God, and eager for nothing but to drag down
others to share their sufferings and their shame. It may have been that it was
hatred to man which first moved Satan to attempt his destruction. That haughty
spirit, chafed by his defeat, and furious at his own exile from happiness,
could not endure to look on the purities and felicities of Paradise. Man was
innocent, and that made him hateful; man was happy, and he was therefore
instinctively detested. And if we may speak of man as an object of hatred to
Satan whilst he held fast his allegiance, what may we suppose him now--now
that, seduced into apostasy, he hath been rescued by the interference of “God
manifest in the flesh”? Was the lofty angel to be passed by and this inferior
being taken note of? And was it to be the result of Satan’s machinations
against the inmates of Paradise that a richer than that rich garden was to open
to them all its loveliness, and a deeper than the happiness they then enjoyed
be placed within reach as their everlasting portion? This surely were sufficient
to account for a hatred the most intense and inveterate on the part of the
devil toward man! Again, Satan must hate man, so that whosoever is the servant
of this chief of fallen angels is accurately in the condition described in our
text; and every one of you is that servant, on whom there has not passed the
great moral change of conversion. Oh! that we could bring all that imagery
which was furnished by the slave market, or the horrors of an invasion, and
force those who are yet indifferent to religion to recognise in it a
delineation of themselves! He who really feels that the devil is both his
master and his enemy is not far from embracing Christ as his Redeemer and his
friend. But it in no degree alters the fact of your being ruled by one who hates
you that you are blind to your condition, and not even conscious of being ruled
at all: it does but make that condition all the worse. Why, suppose that when
the inveterate enemy has entered the slave market, and possessed himself of the
wretched being who actually quails before his look;--suppose he should speak
soothingly to his victim, easing his chains as he leads him away, promising him
abundance and enjoyment, and all because he knows a generous friend of the poor
captive is waiting on the road, and will be attracted by a cry of disquietude
or a shriek of distress;--suppose this, and you suppose precisely the policy of
Satan, who, if he can only prevent a man from feeling that uneasiness which
would prompt an appeal to the Saviour, is quite content to defer the season for
giving swing to all his malice and wreaking all his vengeance. But that season
will come. It is little, it is nothing to say that imagination is utterly
incompetent to the giving to such season its due measure of horror. We pretend
not to lift the veil which shrouds from human gaze the future, with its direful
retribution. But we may venture to say that in the brief description of our
text is condensed whatever tongue can express, or thought compass, of the
wretchedness which must be the portion of the lost. We do not attempt to carry
the description further; we have adventured thus far only in hopes that the
terrors of the future may scare some of those who, if they were this instant to
die, must have these terrors for their own. Why shrink ye from our picture of
the man sold to be a slave--a slave to his bitter enemy, who has long sought
opportunity of indulging all the vengeance of a fierce and implacable nature?
Wherefore are ye moved by this imagined wretchedness? Wherefore is the cheek
pale, and wherefore the blood cold, as you fancy that you hear the clanking
chain and the stifled cry, and behold the oppressor grinding down the captive?
Wherefore is it? Because there is a consciousness which you cannot repress, of
being in the power of one who hates you. This is supreme misery in itself, and
such a finishing stroke to all others as leaves nothing for imagination to add.
It is, indeed, to one who hates you that you are making yourselves slaves in
following the course which the God of this world prescribes to the children of
disobedience. That the devil hates you witness what he has already done to make
mankind wretched. Witness a devastated earth; witness every grave; witness
every tear. He was a murderer from the beginning; and to his foul machinations
we owe all our woe. Oh! shall it then be that you will so live that, when you
come to die, there will remain nothing but that you go down to the prison house
of woe, to experience all the terribleness of the saying--a saying from which
the most hardened amongst you instinctivley recoils when it is exhibited as
brought to pass on earth;--the saying that when God has a vast vengeance to
inflict, and a vast retribution to exact, He appoints for the
guilty--what:--that they be “delivered unto the evil of them that hate them?” (H.
Melvill, B. D.)
How weak is thine heart, saith the Lord God, seeing thou doest all
these things.
The weak place
Three great errors of the day will stand corrected if due
attention be paid to our text.
I. That a man’s
life may be irregular and yet the man’s heart be good. Here is a man who has
little or no sense of practical honesty. He thinks the very least of getting
into debt without the slightest probability of ever being able to discharge his
liabilities. He lives in a superior house, lives in luxury, his family dress
well, give entertainments, etc. But they never trouble about paying anybody;
they will fail and begin over again, that they may do the same trick. Now,
people will say of such an one: “Yes, he is sadly wanting in prudence, in
discretion, in management; but really, he is as generous, good-hearted a fellow
as ever lived.” But, in fact, he is nothing of the sort. Content to feed on the
fruits of others’ industry, he is essentially false and cruel. Another of these
good-hearted fellows is the man who won’t work. People say of him, “What a
pity! He has a fine disposition, he ought to have been born a gentleman.” The
fact is, he has made a blackguard of himself, whatever he was born; he has not
a fine disposition, but, a base disposition; he lacks all that independence,
self-reliance, courage which are the very essence of noble character. Another
of these deceivers is the specious fellow, wanting in social purity and honour.
People will speak regretfully of the escapades, the gallantries, the scandals,
of what are termed the gay Lotharios; but these scoundrels are chided as if
their infidelities and libertinism were simply on the surface, and, despite
their licence, they are reckoned as honest, kind men of the world. Not so. Such
men are profoundly selfish, cowardly, bloodguilty. Or take many intemperate
men. People say: “Fine fellow; only, his own enemy.” But that will not do.
Breaking the heart of his friends, killing his wife, reducing his family to
shame and wretchedness, he is altogether destitute of the qualities of
honourable men. Evil conduct may assume the aspect of innocence, gaiety,
greatness, but analyse it and it shall be seen to be mean, base, low, cowardly,
ignoble. How weak, corrupt, vile is thine heart, seeing thou doest all these
things.
II. That a man’s
life may be irregular and yet the man’s heart be strong. This is the second
error to be corrected by our text. There is really weakness in all sin, most
pitiful weakness no matter how cunningly it may simulate strength. Take a
passionate man. He feels strong, he looks strong, his language is strong; but
in truth he is weakness itself. No matter how in his wrath he affects the god,
he is the mere sport of the wind. The very word “passion” signifies the
passivity of the man--not that he is the actor, but that he is being acted
upon. The calm, patient man is the strong man. Take the ambitious man. He seems
strong-natured, strong-willed, but real strength is wanting. A man like
Napoleon seems a very incarnation of strength, but the fretfulness displayed by
him on the rock of exile betrayed his essential weakness. Take a discontented
man. People are ready to think that the complainings of such are signs of a
large, powerful genius which frets at narrow conditions; but it is not so.
Emerson says: “Discontent is the infirmity of the will.” And this view is fully
borne out by Paul: “I have learned, in whatsoever state I am, therewith to be
content . . . I can do all things through Christ which strengtheneth me.”
Contentment is a question of strength. Take a selfish man. He is restless,
daring, aggressive, assertive, grasping, and may easily be accounted a man of
superior force; but one of the greatest preachers of our age has just shown us
that the mightiest of all energies is the energy of unselfishness. Take a man
of great animal appetites and indulgences. He thinks himself a bold, strong
man, and many are disposed to think this type manly; but that is not the view
of the prophet: “How effeminate is thine heart, seeing thou doest all these
things.” Carlyle says truly: “Crabbedness, pride, obstinacy, affectation are at
bottom want of strength.” The revelation of divinest strength lies in
overcoming wickedness, and he who is overcome by wickedness is in soul
dyspeptic, paralysed, crippled, impotent.
III. That a man’s
life may be irregular and yet the man’s heart be neutral. The third error
corrected by the text. Without saying, perhaps, that a man who leads a bad life
has a noble heart, or a strong one, many are prepared today to say that the
man’s heart has nothing to do with his conduct whatever. The fault is not in
the thoughts, affections, will, at all. The source of man’s conduct is boldly
affirmed to be his organisation; the man has an inborn character from which he
cannot escape, his general constitution determines his personal conduct. And
the circumstances of the man complete the ring of necessity in which he moves.
Now, in opposition to this, the text declares the heart to be originative, the
prime source of mischief. The conduct of Israel in entering into alliances with
Egypt and Babylon and Nineveh is not condoned on the ground of Israel occupying
a peculiar geographical situation, which rendered such alliances politic and
necessary in the view of worldly wisdom; nothing is said of the peculiar
geographical position, but the conduct of Israel is referred at once to their
lack of true faith, of noble will, of inward loyalty to their covenant-keeping
God. So today God does not excuse our bad conduct on the grounds of the nature
we inherit, or the events which influence us, but He attributes to the
individual a full, solemn responsibility. It is false; we are not waifs and
strays, the sport of winds and currents: we are ocean steamers throbbing with a
mysterious independent energy; we can set winds and waves at defiance, we know
in which direction lies our path, we can turn the helm whithersoever we list, and
if we make shipwreck we are not blameless, as an empty bottle driven on this
shore or that, but we are found guilty and condemned by God and man as men at
the wheel are found disobedient, as captains are found asleep, as pilots are
found drunk or presumptuous. The great need then is the renewal of the human
heart. Society needs regeneration before it will permit any considerable
reconstruction. Seek in the Church to strengthen the conscience, to purify the
life--that is our first grand work. And as to the individual, the defects of
our life must be cured in the defects of our spirit. (W. L. Watkinson.)
Half-hearted men
A half-and-half man, a half-and-half creed, will never meet with
violent opposition or enmity from the world. Even what might be called a three-quarters
man will escape without very much harm. It is the out-and-out Christian, and
the out-and-out creed that the world hates. Making compromises is an old trade
of Satan’s. It is one at which he shows consummate skill; he is wilting to be
large and liberal; he will concede far more than at first sight anyone would
suppose; in fact, he will go so far as to say, You may be nine-tenths Christ’s
if only as regards the remaining tenth you will agree to be mine. The man of
God must nail his colours to the mast, and not listen even for a moment to any
terms upon which those colours are to be struck. (P. B. Power.)
Pride, fulness of head, and abundance of idleness.
The conflict in a luxurious age
1. We must be on our guard against the suggestions of pride and
self-complacency, by endeavouring to form as humble an estimate as possible of
our own powers and works. We cannot better the world but by bettering
ourselves. We cannot put down the pride of the generation in which we live, but
we can mortify our own.
2. In regard of that danger which arises to the soul from living in
plenty and abundance, we can regulate ourselves in our use of meats and drinks and
personal indulgence, practising at certain times a holy moderation and
abstinence, that we be not overcome of such delights. And as a safeguard to
ourselves in this matter, let us remember the poor. It may be said that in our
nation no sooner is a case of real suffering made public than contributions
flow in on all sides; and yet do our public prints reveal, almost daily, abuses
of the very law by which we provide for poor and indigent persons, which ought
to bring to our remembrance more keenly than it does that cumulative sin of
Sodom and her daughters, “Neither did she strengthen the hands of the poor and
needy.”
3. In regard of the disposition to abundance of idleness, which is
increasing, I believe, daily, to which all the incidents of our national prosperity
minister, and which must in the end issue in the disturbance of our
tranquillity, it is not that you here can do anything to stem that torrent of
self-indulgence which is flowing in upon us, especially in the lowest orders,
whose tastes are the coarsest, and whose wills through ignorance are the most
perverse; but you can resist the tendency to it in yourselves; you can endure
this hardness at least, of girding up your loins to do the work which God has
appointed for you in the world, as men who believe that it is their duty,
required of them by the laws of true religion and sound morality. (T. L.
Claughton, M. A.)
The bread of idleness demoralising
Honest work is the best employment for fallen man; and the bread
of idleness breeds trouble in those that eat it. This is often illustrated in
the luxuriant affluence of tropical vegetation. “Mr. Dilke believes that the
banana plant is one of the greatest curses of tropical countries, because it
will support life with no labour. It grows as a weed, and hangs down its
bunches of ripe tempting fruit into your lap as you lie in its cool shade. The
terrible results of the plentiful possession of this tree are seen in Ceylon,
at Panama, in the coast lands of Mexico, and at Auckland in New Zealand. At
Pitcairn’s island the plantain grove has beaten the missionary from the field;
there is much lip Christianity, but no practice to be got from a people who
possess the fatal plant. The much-abused cocoanut cannot come near it as a
devil’s agent.” Such are the results of eating the bread of idleness. (R. A.
Bertram.)
Idle and aimless living
Some time ago I read in a paper of a gentleman being brought up
before the magistrate. What was the charge against him? “Nothing very serious,”
you will say. He was found wandering in the fields. He was asked where he was
going, and he said he was not going anywhere. He was asked where he came from,
and he said he did not know. They asked him where his home was, and he said he
had none. They brought him up for wandering as what? a dangerous lunatic. The
man who has no aim or object in life, but just wanders about anywhere or
nowhere, acts like a dangerous lunatic, and assuredly he is not morally sane.
What! Am I aiming at nothing? Have I all this machinery of life, making up a
vessel more wonderful than the finest steamboat, and am I going nowhere? My
heart throbs are the pulsing of a divinely arranged machinery: do they beat for
nothing? Do I get up every morning, and go about this world, and work hard, and
all for nothing which will last? As a being created of God for noblest
purposes, am I spending my existence in a purposeless manner? How foolish! (C.
H. Spurgeon.)
Prosperity tests character
The soundness of a vessel is not seen when it is empty, but when
it is filled with water, then we shall see whether it will leak or no. (Manton.)
It is in our prosperity that we are tested. Men are not fully
discovered to themselves till they are tried by fulness of success. Praise
finds out the leak of pride, wealth reveals the flaw of selfishness, and
learning discovers the leak of unbelief. David’s besetting sin was little seen
in the tracks of the wild goats, but it became conspicuous upon the terraces of
his palace. Success is the crucible of character. Hence the prosperity which
some welcome as an unmixed favour may far more rightly be regarded as an
intense form of test illustrations and meditations. (C. H. Spurgeon.)
The folly and danger of pride
I. The sinfulness
and danger of pride.
1. Pride is, as far as we know, the first sin that ever was
committed. It seems to have been the leading transgression in the defection of
fallen angels.
2. Pride renders persons, in a special manner, hateful and abominable
in the sight of God (Proverbs 8:13; James 4:6; 1 Peter 5:5).
3. Pride is productive of other sins. Hence springs covetousness (Habakkuk 2:5), persecution (Psalms 10:2), strifes and quarrels (Proverbs 13:10).
4. Pride is a destructive sin. It is a presage of the ruin of those
in whom it reigns (Proverbs 16:18). It produces shame (Proverbs 11:2). Sodom (Genesis 19:24-25). Haughty Pharaoh and
his hosts (Exodus 14:27-28). Haman (Esther 7:10). Nebuchadnezzar (Daniel 4:32-33). Herod (Acts 12:23).
II. Some remedies
against it.
1. Endeavour to acquire the knowledge of your own meanness and
sinfulness, and of the holiness and majesty of God; for by comparing yourselves
with Him you will sink into nothing in your own esteem.
2. Be persuaded of the excellency of humility, the grace opposite to
pride, and “be clothed with it” (1 Peter 5:5).
3. Consider well the examples of humility set before you in the
sacred Scriptures. Abraham, Jacob, David, Agur, Paul, and many others; yea, the
holy angels fall down before the throne in lowest adoration; but, above all,
the example of Jesus Christ (Philippians 2:5).
4. Understand that all your natural and acquired abilities are the
gifts of God. Talents intrusted to your care and management (1 Corinthians 4:7). (Pulpit
Assistant.)
Idlers
I. Idlers are
generally careless. It is said that a stitch in time saves nine. But the idler
seldom takes the stitch in time. He is careless in his habits, careless over
his soul, and careless about everything. An idle man thinks any way of doing a
thing will do if it gets done. He has not sufficient interest to take pains
with his work. Whatever you do for Christ, do it well; because God sees your
work. He not only looks on the work of stupendous magnitude which is being done
by an angel; but He also sees you at your post of deacon and helper and teacher
and visitor.
II. Idlers are
often sinful. Experience proves this. An English proverb tells us that, “An
idle brain is the devil’s workshop,”--and it is confirmed by an old Latin
proverb, which says, “Evil thoughts intrude in an unemployed mind as naturally
as worms generate in a stagnant pond.” Let me show how idle Christians become
sinful. You join a church, but that is all you do for Christ; you never speak a
word to the perishing, never visit the sick. Your soul is an empty spiritual
house, which the devil uses as a purified workshop where he invents sinful
thoughts and wicked actions.
III. Idlers are
always miserable. Another old English proverb tells us that, “The used key is
always bright.” But the key which hangs on the nail soon becomes rusted. And
your soul will soon rust unless you employ it in good work. Do not allow
yourself to be even for only half an hour without finding something useful to
do.
IV. Idlers soon
tire of work. Some people only pray when they are compelled by misfortune. They
soon tire of what is to them the task of prayer. An idle prayer gets nothing;
it is like a rusted sword.
V. Idlers always
mean well.
VI. Idlers are often
of a kindly disposition. They are too lazy to be angry. But they are always
ready to do a good turn, if it does not last too long. Christians belong to a
life-saving institution. What would you think of the lifeboat men if they sat
smoking their pipes the shore when there was a wreck crowded with human beings
at the entrance of the harbour? Christians, there are human wrecks about! Come
to the rescue! (W. Birch.)
Idleness
Of the various evils to which mankind are subject, few steal upon
the soul with such fatal security, and deprive us at once of dignity, of
happiness, and virtue, as Idleness. To active crimes that annoy the peace of
others, even the most hardened sinner is forced to be awake; but against the
still, corroding vices of the heart, that chiefly affect ourselves, we are
seldom guarded, except by the voluntary exercise of our own reason, or the
friendly admonitions of others.
1. If we look up to the great Creator, as to the source of all
perfections, and contemplate His wisdom and His goodness in His works, we shall
find that no living example of Idleness or inactivity is ordained by His
Providence. All seem “working together,” and gradually fulfilling some wise and
beneficent purpose, which He has appointed. While the face of nature presents us
with this general scene of action, shall man remain, in contradiction to the
will of heaven, in the rest and sloth of Idleness? Nothing could degrade him
more in that scale of being in which he was intended to hold so distinguished a
rank. There are active duties allotted to every human being; and the fulfilling
of them with cheerfulness and diligence should form no inconsiderable portion
of our happiness. While some are assiduously providing for their own household,
by following their respective avocations, others may be engaged in laudable
attempts to extend the boundaries of science, and to increase the comforts of
social life;--while many are anxiously employed in protecting the helplessness
of infancy, and in forming the manners of childhood, a few, whom fortune has
placed above these humble duties, might fill the offices of state with
advantage; and, by their industry, their virtues, and their wisdom, greatly
contribute to the general welfare.
2. In a state of indolence are engendered many evils and many
sorrows. Among the lower classes of the community Idleness is productive of
misery and guilt in every varied form. The ties of every duty, indeed, will be
but slightly felt by him who gives himself up to Idleness. His predominant vice
gradually undermines his principles, and spreads licentiousness through his
character. If a man of this description have a family, all bred up under the
contagious influence of his vices, it is impossible to tell how far and wide
the stream of corruption will spread. So much is Idleness to be dreaded in its
consequences when it infects the poor. If we consider those of middle life, who
might be said to possess the object of Agur’s prayer, and to have “neither
poverty nor riches,” we shall perceive the same vice diffusing its miseries.
Under the pleasing delusion of comfort and of ease we may observe some quitting
the active scenes of life, which habit had rendered familiar, and almost
natural, in pursuit of happiness in retirement. But it is not every mind that
is formed or prepared for the enjoyment of solitude. A languid discontent and a
peevish neglect of ordinary comforts soon lead to sensuality and excess of
every kind. Self-indulgence is the last idol of the heart; and the short
remnant of life is often divided between the feebleness or pain of disease and
the stupors of intoxication. To those who may not be in danger of gross and
sensual vices, Idleness still brings with it distresses that ought to be
dreaded. If temptation from the body should be resisted, it seldom fails to
fasten on the mind. The human frame is so constituted as to require frequent
alternations of action and of rest. The animal functions cannot be properly
performed without them; and how these affect the mind is well known. It may be
remarked, however, that even excess of labour is not so injurious as excess of
ease. Idleness, indeed, completely disqualifies us for every rational
enjoyment. One chief pleasure in human life is the blessing of repose after
fatigue; or the relaxation of amusements, either solitary or social, after
labour. But these, to the idle, are like food to one whose appetite is already
cloyed.
3. Let me earnestly exhort you, therefore, to guard against a vice,
whose pernicious influence is so extensive, and whose consequences ought to be
so much dreaded. Whatever be your situation, reason and religion will point out
to you some scheme of duties appropriated to it, which it should be at once
your interest and pleasure to fulfil. Life abounds also with such frequent
opportunities of doing good, or improving time, that no part of the small
portion which remains should be squandered away in trifles; for, next to the
vice of Idleness, is that of employing time amiss. It is fortunate, indeed, for
the generality, that many of the active duties are forced on them by necessity:
for those who have it in their power to do what they please, always do the
least; and soon find the ardour of voluntary pursuits gradually subside, till
it is wholly lost in a passion for pleasure, or the love of ease. (J. Hewlett,
B. D.)
Neither hath Samaria committed half thy sins.
Sinners compared
The sins of one people may be greater than the sins of another;
all sins are not equal, nor all sinners equally guilty. Jerusalem’s sins
exceeded Samaria’s and Sodom’s; they were not half so great sinners as she was.
The more mercies any people enjoy, the greater are their sins if they answer
not those mercies. Christians’ sins will be found the scarlet and
unparallelable sins.
2. Comparing of sins and sinners together, makes great sins seem
little and great sinners seem righteous. Great things when they are exceeded by
greater in view, they seem little; a great house is nothing to a great rock, a
great mountain or city; a great river is nothing to the ocean; so a great heap
of sins is as nothing to a greater; what is a cartful of dung to a great
dunghill? And as it is in quantities, so in qualities: some poisons are so poisonous,
so strong, that they kill immediately; others, though more in quantity, yet are
longer in producing such an effect, and in comparison they are no poisons; so
some sins and sinners compared with others, are as none. Luke 18:14, the publican went down to his
house justified rather than the Pharisee: this Pharisee compared himself with
the publican, and thought himself righteous; but the publican in comparison of
him was righteous. Take heed therefore of comparing yourselves with others who
are worse and greater sinners than you, and from thence of framing a
righteousness to yourselves notwithstanding. Sodom and Samaria were less
sinners, more righteous than Jerusalem, yet you know how God dealt with them,
and destruction will be the end of all those who trust to such righteousness.
3. Great sinners see not, or forget their own sins, and are apt to
censure, judge, and condemn others who are less sinful than themselves, and
especially when they are under the hand of God.
4. It is a shame for those who are guilty of the same or greater sins
to judge others.
5. Sin brings shame. What a shame was it to Jerusalem that she was a
greater sinner than Samaria, than Sodom; that she did such things as made the
daughters of the Philistines ashamed of her (verse 27). Shame is the lackey
that waits upon sin, and causeth the conscience to blush as well as the face (Proverbs 14:34): sin is a reproach to
nations.
6. Shame in itself, or as it accompanies the judgments of God upon
sinners, is a burdensome thing. “Bear thine own shame,” reproach, disgrace.
7. Sinners must bear the judgments of God, and the shame that is due
unto them, whoever they be. “Thou also,” even thou Jerusalem, “bear thine own
shame.” (W. Greenhill, M. A.)
Degrees of sin
He that will not be persuaded to leap down from an high chamber at
once, cometh willingly down by the stairs; and yet the declining degrees of his
winding descent make it not less downward to him, but less perceived of him.
His leap might have brought him down sooner; it could not have brought him down
lower. As I am then fearful to act great sins, so I will be careful to avoid
small sins. He that contemns a small fault commits a great one. I see many
drops make a shower; and what difference is it whether I be wet either in the
rain or in the river, if both be to the skin? There is small benefit in the
choice whether we go down to hell by degrees or at once. (A. Warwick.)
Shame ever attendant on sin
Manton says: “The conscience of a sinner is like a clock, dull,
calm, and at rest, when the weights are down; but when wound up, it is full of
motion.” Sometimes God winds up conscience in this life, and then it works
vigorously, and strikes the time of day in the sinner’s ears. Shame attends his
sin, and he trembles in secret, A dreadful sound is in his ears, and like the
troubled sea he cannot rest. This is far better than a dead calm. Alas, in many
cases the clock runs down, conscience is again still, and the man returns to
his false peace. Of all states this is most dangerous. (C. H. Spurgeon.)
That thou mayest . . . be confounded in all that thou hast done.
The humiliation of success
The argument of this passage is very original. The prophet reaches
past all limitations to the universal grace of God, and not so much by way of
revelation as of inference. He has spoken of Israel’s past--how like a newborn
child it was thrown out, the prey of any passer-by. God’s mercy found it, and
reared it to strength--filling all the years with His goodness, but the nation
answered with disloyalty, wanton and flagrant. In spite of chastisement and in
spite of grace she sought the lowest; and in Ezekiel’s day, stripped of wealth
and power and land, a disgraced and abandoned people, Israel seemed to have
come back to where she was in the beginning when God found her. Is the story to
be repeated without alteration? Ezekiel looks at the nations around, kindred in
blood and language and custom, partners also in sin, and he sees that either
all must perish together or all must come in together. And as he knows that God
cannot cast off His people, his instincts of justice assure him that in
bringing Israel back God must bring Sodom back, the most sunken and the most
execrable of the race, and yet not so sunken as Israel. Sodom and Samaria, and
such as they, must be pardoned for the sake of a city worse than themselves. It
is substitution upside down. If there is room found in God’s mercy for
Jerusalem, there must be for Sodom, and Sodom may come covered by the blackness
of Jerusalem’s guilt. Our text is one point in the conclusion; it is the
humiliation of success. Jerusalem brings in her train the evil cities in a day
of jubilation--a day of the growth of the kingdom of God; but she herself is
humbled, because everything reminds her of her sin. I wish to speak of the sobering
and humbling quality of even the smallest success, which makes it a means of
grace to those who enjoy it aright.
1. From the greatness of the work itself. Whatever view we may take
of human nature, it must seem to us a great work to bring a man to God--to
establish in him a new kingdom of desire and hope, so that he whose heart was
narrow now regards the world with Christ’s eyes. That is a great work. It is
the beginning of hope, the beginning of usefulness, and it is the end of sin.
And constantly this great work is done by men: an impulse is given, a word
spoken, a truth pressed. The more personal in this sense the impulse is, the
deeper is the humiliation of the originator of it. He feels how little he has
done, how feebly he has spoken; he has only flung words at One radiant idea of
which he caught sight, and which he has not expressed. His work, he knows, has
been so erring, so partial, so spasmodic, and God has sent this reward. On the
one side, you feel how simple and how near such results are, that but for your
indolence and inexpectancy they might have been more than they are; on the
other, you know that, simple as they are, they are by the diameter of worlds
out of your reach. It is not I that live, but Christ who lives in me; it is not
I who work, but God. But whilst we cast upon God the burden, we must not miss
the purifying efficacy of success. Of course, it is God who works; but it is
also you or I. It is your idiosyncrasy, your peculiarity of temper, your happy
knack which accounts for the immediate result. And it is just as you do set all
you have against this result that you see the want of measure between them, and
you are ashamed because of all you have done, in that you are a comfort to men.
2. Seeing self in another. We wish for men that they might see
themselves as others see them, which is one inference of self-deceiving. We do
not know how our qualities look, for custom and self-love blind us. We scarcely
suspect how much alike we are until we think a man speaking in a certain way is
describing us, whilst probably he is describing himself. The story is told of a
ruffled baronet who complained to George Meredith of having been put into his
“Egoist” as the egoistic hero. “I had no thought of you; I thought of
myself--of us all,” is the answer reported. And as we do not know our likeness
to men we turn from, we do not know our own ugliness. In this very chapter
Ezekiel exhibits a thought of this kind. The Jews pointed with loathing at
Sodom; the name of it had become proverbial, because God had blotted it out. It
at least is worse than we; we may fairly shrink from that as a lower depth of
which we know nothing, to which we have no proclivity. And the prophet says,
What was the sin of Sodom? (verse 49). Behold this was its iniquity--pride, fulness
of head, and prosperous ease, and she did not strengthen the hand of the poor
and needy. There is nothing exceptional in it, nothing in Sodom which is not in
you, he says. You meet with an ignorance, wilful and self-complacent; you
struggle in another against that spiritual stupidity to which every worldly
advantage is apparent, and to which none but a worldly advantage can be
demonstrated. You find your efforts for some man thwarted by his intense
sensuality, or by his doubleness and suspicion. You cannot advance, you cannot
outwit his cunning or convince him of your sincerity. That stagnant and
slumberous humour you cannot awake. To that pure animalism it is hopeless to
speak of the glory of Christ. It is painful, disappointing, wearisome; but you come
to know in striving with them what these things mean--sensuality, sloth, anger,
envy: to many of us they are the too severe names of pleasant vices. But when
for some man’s good you set yourself to free him from them, you realise the
ugliness, the tenacious and wasting energy of them. And at the same time you
see yourself. It is myself I am fighting in that man: these are my faults. It
is in that real dealing with men that we come to understand the humour of a
saint who could say of an abandoned criminal, There, but for the grace of God,
am I.
3. It is a discovery of the meaning of the grace shown to us. When
habit has made a certain level of conduct easy, or when our past shows no
heights or depths, we may easily imagine, that the work of grace was not very
great in us. We were almost born Christians, born and baptized and bred in
Christian homes, with ample knowledge and wise restraint and sedulous training.
Not far from the kingdom of God at any time, we were lightly and easily brought
within it. In strong contrast is another life, gone far astray, full of heat
and passion, in which the lights burn sullenly: a man lost to decency, to hope,
to God--what have you to say to him whose life has run in so orderly and
honourable a course? Out of the depths he looks with some faint gleam of hope
to you as you talk of Christ. What can you say to him? I never was very bad,
and God has mercifully pardoned the little wrong there was: is that all you
know? The occasion widens your heart. You want to help him, and that eager
desire sends your thoughts back into God’s dealing with you. For the first time
you know your sin; it was very great--the Pharisee’s sin an isolating, loveless
self-complacency--and God came to me. Then you can say in answer, Your sin is
not mine wholly; our lots have been different, and our temptations, and our
falls; but God abundantly pardoned me, and He will pardon you. (W. M’Macgregor,
M. A.)
In that thou art a comfort
unto theme--
How saints may help the devil
I. The acts of
many of Christ’s followers have been the cause of justifying and comforting
sinners in their evil ways.
1. The daily inconsistencies of the people of God have much to do in
this matter.
2. Now, it is my mournful duty to go a step further. It is not merely
these inconsistencies, but the glaring crimes of some professed disciples, that
have greatly assisted sinners in sheltering themselves from the attacks of the
Word of God. Every now and then the cedar falls in the midst of the forest.
3. How often do the people of God comfort sinners in their sins by
their murmurings and complaints.
4. Perhaps the greatest evil has been done by the cold-heartedness
and indifference of religious professors.
II. The
consequences of this evil.
1. How often have you and I helped to keep sinners easy in their sin,
by our inconsistency!
2. Do you not think that very often, when a sinner’s conscience has
been roused, you and I have helped to give it a soporific draught by our
coldness of heart?
3. Is it not possible that often sinners have been strengthened in
their sin by you? They were but beginning in iniquity, and had you rebuked with
honesty and sincerity, by your own holy life, they might have been led to see
their folly, and might have ceased from sin; but you have strengthened their
hands. “So-and-so is not more scrupulous than I,” says such an one; “I may do
what he does.”
4. Nay, is it not possible that some of you Christians have helped to
confirm men in their sins, and to destroy their souls? It is a masterpiece of
the devil, when he can use Christ’s own soldiers against Christ. But this he
has often done.
III. Bring out the
great battering ram, to bear against this vain excuse of the wicked.
1. What hast thou to do with the inconsistencies of another? “To his
own master he shall stand or fall.” Thou wilt be punished for thine own
offences, remember, not for the offences of another. Man! I conjure thee, look
this in the face. How can this help to assuage thy misery? How can this help to
make thee happier in hell, because thou sayest there are so many hypocrites in
this world?
2. But besides, thou knowest well enough that the Church is not so
bad as thou sayest it is. Thou seest some that are inconsistent; but are there
not many that are holy? There would be no hypocrites if there were not some
true men. It is the quantity of true men that helps to pass off the hypocrite
in the crowd.
3. Then again, I say, when thou comest before the bar of God, dost
thou think that this will serve thee as an excuse, to begin to find fault with
God’s own children? The rather this shall be an addition to thy sin, and thou
shalt perish the more fearfully.
4. But come, man, once again: I would entreat of thee with all my
might. What! canst thou be so foolish as to imagine, that because another man
is destroying his own soul by hypocrisy, that this is a reason why thou
shouldst destroy thine by indifference? (C. H. Spurgeon.)
Comfort to Sodom
What is the meaning of this text? Jerusalem is said to have been a
comfort to Sodom and Samaria; and this is mentioned as if it were a fault. Are
we not bidden to love even our enemies, and to do good even to them that hate
us; and can it then be wrong to be a comfort even to the worst of
mankind,--even to Samaria and Sodom? Yes, in such a case as this it is wrong to
be a comfort to a bad man or a bad city; because in such a case it is the very
reverse of a kind turn to be a comfort to them. It is doing harm to them, and
not doing good to them, to be a comfort in this particular way. For Jerusalem
had been a comfort to Sodom and Samaria, in such a manner as had encouraged
them in their sins. Now, I am sure you will all readily see that there is a
great and important principle suggested to us by the text. You know, every
Christian is solemnly bound to do all he can to make other men Christians. The
knowledge of the Gospel is not a thing which a man may have, and without blame
keep to himself. And just as blessed and happy a thing as it is to bring
another soul to the belief of the Gospel,--so wretched and wicked and fearful a
thing is it when a man who bears the Christian name lives in such a way as
positively encourages those around him to contemn and disbelieve Christianity.
1. There is one obvious way in which professing Christians may do
this, which we mention only to pass it by, in the hope that none of us who bear
even the Christian name are so sorely and shamefully guilty. This is the way in
which we understand from the prophet that Jerusalem was a comfort to Sodom; and
that was, by being actually as bad as Sodom itself. Would not every swearer and
drunkard and liar in the parish quiet his conscience, with the reflection that
he was no worse than that wicked professor of religion? Would not such a man be
a comfort to all the Sodoms and Samarias in the district? It is easy to say, and
it is true to say, that religion is a thing that must be judged of on the
ground of its own merits, and quite apart from the conduct of those who profess
to believe in it; yet, illogical as it may be, foolish and wrong as it may be,
the mass of mankind will always encourage themselves in sinfulness when they
find professing Christians going on in sin.
2. If any sincere Christian is present in a company where what is
sinful is said or done, and if he permits it to pass without remark, or even
appears tacitly to approve it, I do not see how he can clear himself from the
charge of having been “a comfort to Sodom.” The apparent approval of one true
and earnest Christian--even the very humblest in worldly rank--will have more
influence to comfort the wicked man,--to keep his mind easy, and his conscience
asleep,--than the loudest declarations of his own wicked associates that he is
a fine fellow and has done nothing wrong. And I am not forgetting the
restraints which the usages of civilised society impose upon our telling a man
to his face what is our opinion of his conduct. The Christian is not called
upon to go up to a man and tell him that he is a bad man, merely because he
thinks he is one. There is a silent, unobtrusive disapproval, by which the
humblest may be a check upon the highest; there is a silent, unobtrusive
disapproval, expressed without words or demonstration of manner, one can hardly
tell how, which even the most hardened sinner will find it very hard, very
uncomfortable, to bear.
3. Another way in which a Christian may so act as to encourage and
comfort an irreligious man in his godless ways is by seeking his society and
acquaintance; showing him that you think him a congenial spirit, and that you
feel it pleasant to be with him. How can he think,” the unbeliever will
judge,--“How can he think that I am going to hell! Is it possible that he
should like to be the companion of my walks,--to interchange thought and
feeling with me,--to discuss great questions with me,--perhaps often to jest
and laugh with me;--and all the while believe and know that, as sure as there
is a God above us, I am going down to hell!” Don’t you see now what eternal
damage you who are Christians may do an unbelieving neighbour? Let them feel
that you dare not make those too dear, from whom the grave must part you
forever! See that you be not a “comfort” to them!
4. I go on to mention, as a way in which Christians may encourage and
countenance ungodly men in their doings,--the cherishing a worldly
spirit,--being as eager for worldly advantage, and as unscrupulous as to the
means by which it may be attained, as men who make no Christian profession.
And, alas! my friends, how much of this them is among professing Christians! Do
not many who bear the Christian name show that they are far more eager to get
on in life than to prepare for immortality? Is there not as much vanity and
pride and grasping at gain and self-seeking and contemptible worshipping of
rank and wealth,--even when completely dissociated from worth and goodness,--among
many professing Christians and Christian ministers, as in any class of men? The
sharp bargain made by the communicant may do worse than levy an unfair tax upon
his neighbour’s pocket: it may damage his neighbour’s soul! It may set him up
to “go and do likewise!” It may lead him to think that there is no difference
between the Christian and the worldly man at all!
5. I shall mention just one way more, in which a Christian may incur
the condemnation pronounced in the text: this is, by never in any way warning
his neighbour that he fears or knows he is not a Christian. I daresay some of
you have some idea that it would be intruding into the priestly office were you
to set yourselves to the work of bringing souls to Christ. But if you saw a
friend manifestly stricken by fever or consumption, would it not be your duty
to warn him, although you are not a physician? If you saw a friend drowning,
would it not be your duty to try to save him, although you are not a member of
the Humane Society? If a man be really in earnest about religion he will never
bear the sight of a human being whom he daily sees and talks with going to
eternal ruin, without a word of warning or advice! It is possible enough he may
not like to listen to your warning words; it is possible enough you may make
yourself an annoyance and a discomfort to him: he may think you are his “enemy,
because you tell him the truth”; but oh! better, better that than to be a
comfort to one to whom comfort is the anodyne that will drug to death, to whom
comfort is the stream that will bear on to perdition! I have heard of one who
on his deathbed said that if, as he humbly trusted, he had been led to yield
himself to his Saviour, and so to find hope in death, it was by the simple and
solemn warning of one in whom simple earnestness and heartfelt piety gave force
to the words of early youth, unsophisticated and sincere. (A. K. H. Boyd, D.
D.)
I will establish My covenant with thee.
God’s pardoning mercy
I. The way in
which God reveals His pardoning mercy. “I will establish My covenant with
thee.” The covenant of grace is the grand repository of the redemption of man.
It comprehends all the items, all the particulars of Christ Jesus our Lord, in
His person, His name, and all the characters and offices He has fulfilled in
the work of man’s redemption--which holds up all the effects of that work, all
the fruits of that love, all the blessings of that redemption, and withal
tracing it in all its refined ramifications to the covenant of grace.
II. The character
in which He thus reveals it. “Thou shalt know that I am the Lord.” Thus to know
the Lord is to know Him as a covenant God--to know Him as a God in Jesus Christ.
God out of Christ is a consuming fire--I dare not approach Him but in Christ. I
find Him to be a God of sympathy and compassion, because I find God in my
nature is the very High Priest who intercedeth for sinners. God in my nature
can be touched with the feeling of my infirmities, and knows how to sympathise
with me. It is in this character as God in Christ that He reveals the blessings
of His salvation.
III. The effect that
is produced on the heart by this pardoning mercy. “That thou mayest remember, and
be confounded,” etc. If there is not a more pure or a more exalted motive to
obedience than the love of God, there is not a more powerful motive to walking
in the ways of God, than the assurance of His pardoning love and mercy. How
quickly does it excite the attention of a poor trembling sinner to hear the
sound of mercy, when he knows that that sound comes from God who can pardon!
(J. Holloway.)
The lasting covenant
I. What this
covenant is, as revealed to a people among the Jews in the youthful period of
that nation. Now, then, “nevertheless,” notwithstanding all this heathenism, “I
will remember My covenant with thee in the days of thy youth.” The covenant was
made with a people among the Jews in the youthful time of that nation. First,
in the 3rd verse of the 12th of Genesis, the Lord said to Abraham--and that was
the infancy, the commencement of the nation,--“In thee shall all families of
the earth be blessed”; which is afterwards explained to mean that in Jesus
Christ shall all families of the earth be blessed. That is God’s covenant. Now,
just look at the suitability of this. It is in Christ Jesus. What is it that we
need? Why, the very first thing that every man needs is a Saviour. We are by
sin lost. And so, in the very first chapter of Matthew, “Thou shalt call His
name Jesus, for He shall save His people from their sins.” Here, then, this
covenant is nothing else but a positive engagement on the Lord’s part to bring
about eternal salvation. He has done that. And how suited this is! suited not
only in itself, but in its manner--that “whosoever shall call upon the name of
the Lord shall be saved”; that is, brought to see what Jesus Christ is as the
Mediator of this covenant. Let your confidence be in His person, in His
righteousness, in His atonement, and in the promises that are by Him; and if
you can do nothing else but go on from time to time with “Lord, save me; Lord,
have mercy upon me; Lord, look upon me; Lord, teach me; Lord, direct me”;--if
you have these desires, together with an acquaintance with the Lord Jesus
Christ, in whom the blessings are, then thou wilt not be lost, for “whosoever
shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved.”
II. How this
covenant is an everlasting covenant. The covenant the Lord made with the Jews,
that He was to be their God, and that they were to have the land of Canaan, and
the great advantages of national distinction, as described in the Word of
God--Leviticus, Deuteronomy, and many other places--they were to continue to
enjoy all these on the ground of their conformity to that covenant; they were
to continue in the purity of it. But instead of this they forsook God’s
covenant, threw down His altars, the altar of sacrifice and the altar of
incense; and the next thing, of course, was to slay those prophets and
ministers that preached even this national covenant. There was no righteousness
belonging to that temporal covenant that was eternal, and that could therefore
perpetuate the covenant. There was no sacrifice in that covenant that could
take away sin, and that could consequently perpetuate that covenant. If the
people apostatised, or gave way, then everything was gone. But here the Lord
says, “I will establish unto thee an everlasting covenant.” Here is a
testamentary will wherein God has willed everything by Christ Jesus. Now, Jesus
Christ has brought in everlasting righteousness, for His righteousness is
everlasting, and this perpetuates the covenant. This covenant and the promises
cannot fail while Christ’s righteousness remains what it is; and as His atonement
is perfect, and He has perfected forever all them that are sanctified, here it
is the covenant is perpetuated. It must remain.
III. The note of
time. Now, when you are brought to receive this covenant, there is a certain
temper of mind. “Then thou shalt remember thy ways, and be ashamed.” Saul of
Tarsus, before he was brought to this covenant, remembered his ways and was
delighted. (J. Walls.)
That thou mayest remember,
and be confounded, and never open thy mouth any more, because of thy shame.
The heart full and the mouth closed
I. Review the
blessed condition into which every believer in the Lord Jesus Christ has been
brought by the sovereign act of God’s mercy. The Hebrew word which here sets
forth forgiveness and pardon properly signifies to cover a thing with that
which adheres and sticks to the thing covered; not with dry dust or leaves,
which could be easily removed, but with glue or pitch, so that the thing hidden
cannot easily be brought to sight again. O believer, God is pacified towards you,
for your sin is covered; it is put away, all of it, and altogether. Since you
have believed in Jesus Christ your sin has not become dimly visible, neither by
searching may it be seen as a shadow in the distance, but God seeth it no more
forever. God is pacified towards His people, for all that they have done,
altogether pacified, for their sins have ceased to be. And this is not
occasionally true, but always true, not only so in happier moments, when we
enjoy a sense of it, but always, whether we have a sense of it or not. At all
times, in the dark as well as in the light, in down castings as well as in
upliftings, the Lord is pacified towards His people. I would to God that the
Lord’s people grasped this more fully, and lived in the power of it more completely.
May God grant we may! There is peace, there is nothing but peace, between my
soul and God. Oh, what a joyous thought this is! Grasp it, Christian, and let
your spirit exult in it. And all this, remember, is written in our text
concerning a people who had plunged into wondrous sins. The greatness of the
sin reveals the greatness of the redeeming sacrifice, and the direful nature of
the disease declares the infinity of that Physician’s skill who is able to put
it all away.
II. What we have
learned in the process of reaching this peaceful standing.
1. First, we have learned salvation by a covenant. The thought is
charming, for we were lost by a covenant. Here, then, was the way to restore us
again. As we sinned representatively, it was possible for us to satisfy the law
by a representative. Here was the opening for the way of salvation. By a second
covenant head man may be redeemed, and therefore Jesus Christ comes, the second
Adam, and God makes a covenant with Him, which covenant runs thus--“If He will
bear the penalty of sin--if He will keep the law, then, all that are in Him
shall be delivered from every sin, and the righteousness of the second Adam
shall be imputed to them, and they shall be loved and blessed as if they were
righteous.” Oh, matchless mystery of love!
2. The next thing we have learned while reaching our happy condition
of peace with God is the lesson that Jehovah is indeed God. “Thou shalt know
that I am the Lord.” To be saved in a way that makes us know that God is God is
to be taught aright. That God is God is easy to say but hard to know.
3. We have learned ourselves. To remember and to be confounded--that
is not comfortable. Who likes to remember and be confounded? Once you could
have found twenty excuses, and had your choice out of them; but now that the
Lord has forgiven you, you cannot find one, and as you turn them all up--those
old excuses of yours--those fig leaves of yours, with which you once hoped to
cover your nakedness, you despise them, and think you never saw such flimsy things.
III. The silence
which is forever induced. “Thou shalt never open thy mouth any more because of
thy shame.” If any man who believes himself to have been moral and sinless will
only begin to look at the reasons why he has been so innocent, and search
himself, he will often discover that inside all that purity of his there has
been a mass of pride, self-conceit, self-seeking, indifference to God, and
every detestable thing. When the Lord shows the man all this, and casts him
down into the ditch till he abhors himself, and then cleanses him in the
precious blood till he is pacified towards Him, he will never open his mouth
about that matter any more. Neither will a man who has been cleansed in this
way open his mouth any more against Divine sovereignty. He is the man above all
others who loves to hear of God as absolute. He knows how gracious, how strong,
how truly good He is. So, also, this way of salvation shuts a man’s mouth as to
all murmuring and complaining against God upon any score whatever; for, saith
he, “If the Lord has pardoned me, let Him do what He wills with me.” (C. H.
Spurgeon.)
Humiliation and reconciliation
I. The first
doctrine in our text is that of humiliation. It is no small mercy for us that
we are allowed to distinguish between the voice of God’s law and the voice of
God’s gospel. Hence the Apostle Paul saith, “We know that what things soever
the law saith, it saith to them who are under the law; that every mouth may be
stopped, and all the world may become guilty before God.” Now, the humility
here that clothes us with confusion of face and with shame in our own
estimation, this humility is a real internal grace of the Holy Spirit, and not
a mere put-on thing. It is not a mere humility of manner, though that is very
good and useful in its place; but it is a vital, real humility, arising from
what is felt within. Now, the law of God is spiritual, always spiritual. Are
you? The Christian cannot, he dare not, say that he is always spiritual; but
thank God he is not under the law, but under grace, where the spirituality of
One who is perfect is set to his account. But to the natural man we say, The
law is always spiritual, you are always carnal; the law is always holy, you are
always unholy; the law is always good, you are always evil; the law is always
just, you are always unjust; the law is always upright, and you are always as
deceitful as the devil. Your heart is deceitful above all things, and
desperately wicked. When thou seest the law to be thus spiritual, thou wilt
remember thy foolish ways, how thou hast sinned against the Lord. You have not
one reason to assign why the Lord should show mercy to you, or show you any
favour whatever. Now, can you say this is the case?
II. The
reconciliation. Now, “what the law saith it saith to them that are under the
law.” Satan is our enemy; sin is our enemy; take both these in one. Without sin
being put away by Jesus Christ, and Satan conquered by Jesus Christ--without
this everything is against us; but when this is done, things then are made to take
that wonderful turn that everything is in our favour by faith. Those of us that
know thus our condition, we do most solemnly, most firmly and understandingly,
and we can say lovingly, sincerely, and decisively, believe in what Jesus
Christ hath done. We see by what He hath done all the sins of which we are the
subjects put away, and we are delivered from them all. We are no longer
reckoned sinners, but saints; no longer reckoned enemies, but friends--“Abraham
My friend”;--and so the Lord’s people are the seed of Abraham, and are God’s
friends by faith in what Jesus Christ has done. And so great is the change He
has wrought that now the Lord doth not behold iniquity in Jacob, nor see
perverseness in Israel. (J. Wells.)
The effect of God’s mercy on, the renewed soul
I. The extent of
man’s wickedness.
I. Give a brief
summary of the chapter; mark how this image was applicable to Judah and
Jerusalem; to us also it may be applied.
II. The exceeding
riches of God’s grace; vile as the Jews had been, He promised to restore them
to favour. This promise is no doubt to be extended to us.
II. The effect of
this grace upon every soul of man. It is thought by some calculated to puff up
pride and conceit in all who receive it. But this is--
1. Contrary to reason;
2. Contrary to fact. Remember--
The silence of penitents
This is plainly a prophecy of the way in which the remnant of
Judah shall be saved in the last days after the fulness of the Gentiles has
come in. Some believe it to mean that in the awful times of Antichrist the
Christian Jews shall be the heroes of the faith and the bulwark of the Church.
Others have seen in the chapter the reunion of Christendom. However interesting
these interpretations may be, we cannot overlook the extraordinary language of
the last verse, which points out the frame of mind appropriate to the redeemed
Jew, or whosoever shall stand for the figurative Jerusalem in those final days
of this world. It is being confounded, and never cloning the mouth, because of
shame. There can be no doubt that we are all too much disposed to underrate the
exceeding shamefulness of wilful transgression against the light. There are
those, indeed, who would eliminate the exercises of penance altogether from the
Christian system. They hold that to expect a man to do penance for his sins
after they have been forgiven him by our Lord is to take away from the
perfection of His atonement, to limit the possibilities of His grace. But there
is also to be considered the temporal punishment due for sin that justice may be
satisfied and the world governed righteously. What right-minded soul does not
yearn to make up in such wise as it can for past acts of coldness and
disobedience? Suppose a son that has been estranged from his mother for years,
has neglected her, thought hardly of her, perhaps spoken against her. And then
after a long season he is brought back to her again, to find her poor and old
and wellnigh helpless, going down to the grave uncared for and unloved save by
strangers. The old love of early life comes back to him. Now he counts nothing
too hard to do for her: he watches her day by day to find out in what small
ways he may lighten her heavy burden and brighten her few remaining years. He
knows this does not make up for the past,--only her dear pardon so generously
given can do that; but it is all the reparation he can make, and he strives
with his whole nature to make it. In like manner the true penitent knows that
he cannot give back to God the love and obedience withheld so many years as one
might pay back the money he had stolen; but at least he can show that he truly
grieves for those years of sin, and has the heart to undo them had he but the
power. When, therefore, we consider the relation of love in which we stand to
Almighty God, and the duty of obedience which we know so well, we must
acknowledge that only ignorance or thoughtlessness can make the penitent all
full of joy without intermingling of pain. There is also another aspect of the
matter. This consciousness of one’s own shame, which belongs to the life of
true penitence, must materially affect our judgments of our fellows. If when we
are most earnest and stern voiced in rebuking our fellows we could be suddenly
brought face to face with the words of this text, do you think we should not be
silenced by them? What are we that we should sit in judgment upon our fellow
men? Have we not sinned as grievously as any of them; or if not outwardly, when
our greater light and opportunities of grace are taken into account, is there
much in our favour? This is by no means to say that we ought not to denounce
sin, and to stand out for the very highest type of Christian living. We are to
be absolutely inflexible in maintaining in all points the doctrine of Christ
our Lord. But when it comes to passing judgment upon individual sinners, let us
not lose sight of the solemn words put by God in the mouth of the prophet
concerning penitent Jerusalem. How can the Christian who has any vivid
consciousness of his own past speak uncharitably of his neighbours and sharply condemn
their failings, not making allowance for their circumstances and temptations;
ay, often not even considering his own probable ignorance of some of the facts
about which he so sternly speaks? What if our Master had judged us as we judge
and had not pardoned us instead? Even when we have learned in some measure to
control our tongues and lips, how often do we find rising up in our souls the
self-righteousness of the Pharisee. What a hateful thing it is! How unlike the
spirit of our gracious Master? Is there no way in which it may be conquered,
and banished from our souls? I think there is a way. It is that of daily calling
to mind, and that not perfunctorily but very thoroughly, the many evil things
in our past lives of which we have repented and for which we have received
God’s pardon. (Arthur Ritchie.)
──《The Biblical Illustrator》