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Ezekiel Chapter
Thirty-four
Ezekiel 34
Chapter Contents
The rulers reproved. (1-6) The people are to be restored
to their own land. (7-16) The kingdom of Christ. (17-31)
Commentary on Ezekiel 34:1-6
(Read Ezekiel 34:1-6)
The people became as sheep without a shepherd, were given
up as a prey to their enemies, and the land was utterly desolated. No rank or
office can exempt from the reproofs of God's word, men who neglect their duty,
and abuse the trust reposed in them.
Commentary on Ezekiel 34:7-16
(Read Ezekiel 34:7-16)
The Lord declared that he intended mercy towards the
scattered flock. Doubtless this, in the first place, had reference to the
restoration of the Jews. It also represented the good Shepherd's tender care of
the souls of his people. He finds them in their days of darkness and ignorance,
and brings them to his fold. He comes to their relief in times of persecution
and temptation. He leads them in the ways of righteousness, and causes them to
rest on his love and faithfulness. The proud and self-sufficient, are enemies
of the true gospel and of believers; against such we must guard. He has rest
for disquieted saints, and terror for presumptuous sinners.
Commentary on Ezekiel 34:17-31
(Read Ezekiel 34:17-31)
The whole nation seemed to be the Lord's flock, yet they
were very different characters; but he knew how to distinguish between them. By
good pastures and deep waters, are meant the pure word of God and the
dispensing of justice. The latter verses, 23-31, prophesy of Christ, and of the most
glorious times of his church on earth. Under Him, as the good Shepherd, the
church would be a blessing to all around. Christ, though excellent in himself,
was as a tender plant out of a dry ground. Being the Tree of life, bearing all
the fruits of salvation, he yields spiritual food to the souls of his people.
Our constant desire and prayer should be, that there may be showers of
blessings in every place where the truth of Christ is preached; and that all
who profess the gospel may be filled with fruits of righteousness.
── Matthew Henry《Concise Commentary on Ezekiel》
Ezekiel 34
Verse 2
[2] Son
of man, prophesy against the shepherds of Israel, prophesy, and say unto them,
Thus saith the Lord GOD unto the shepherds; Woe be to the shepherds of Israel
that do feed themselves! should not the shepherds feed the flocks?
The shepherds —
The rulers of the people kings, magistrates, and princes; as also priests, and
prophets.
Of Israel —
The two tribes, and the few out of the ten that adhere to the house of David.
That feed —
Contrive their own ease, advantage, and honour.
Verse 3
[3] Ye eat the fat, and ye clothe you with the wool, ye kill them that are
fed: but ye feed not the flock.
Ye kill —
You contrive methods, to take first the life, and next the estate of the
well-fed, the rich and wealthy.
But —
You take care to lead, protect, provide for, and watch over them.
Verse 4
[4] The
diseased have ye not strengthened, neither have ye healed that which was sick,
neither have ye bound up that which was broken, neither have ye brought again
that which was driven away, neither have ye sought that which was lost; but
with force and with cruelty have ye ruled them.
The diseased —
The weak and languishing.
Bound up —
Oppressors in the state, or church, broke many then, but these shepherds bound
them not up.
Verse 5
[5] And
they were scattered, because there is no shepherd: and they became meat to all
the beasts of the field, when they were scattered.
No shepherd — No
vigilant, faithful shepherd.
Became meat —
Were made a prey of, and devoured by all their neighbours.
Verse 12
[12] As a shepherd seeketh out his flock in the day that he is among his sheep
that are scattered; so will I seek out my sheep, and will deliver them out of
all places where they have been scattered in the cloudy and dark day.
In the cloudy and dark day — In the time of general distress.
Verse 16
[16] I
will seek that which was lost, and bring again that which was driven away, and
will bind up that which was broken, and will strengthen that which was sick:
but I will destroy the fat and the strong; I will feed them with judgment.
The fat —
The powerful and rich.
I will feed — I
will judge and punish them.
Verse 17
[17] And
as for you, O my flock, thus saith the Lord GOD; Behold, I judge between cattle
and cattle, between the rams and the he goats.
I judge —
Between men and men, between the smaller and weaker, and the greater and
stronger, as their different state requires I will do.
The rams —
Rulers, who also shalt be dealt with according to their behaviour.
Verse 18
[18]
Seemeth it a small thing unto you to have eaten up the good pasture, but ye
must tread down with your feet the residue of your pastures? and to have drunk
of the deep waters, but ye must foul the residue with your feet?
But ye must tread down — You great ones, eat the fat, and sweet; and what you cannot eat, you
waste and spoil.
The deep waters —
Which are sufficient for all.
Verse 20
[20]
Therefore thus saith the Lord GOD unto them; Behold, I, even I, will judge
between the fat cattle and between the lean cattle.
I will judge — I
will vindicate the poor.
The fat cattle —
The rich.
The lean —
The poor.
Verse 23
[23] And
I will set up one shepherd over them, and he shall feed them, even my servant
David; he shall feed them, and he shall be their shepherd.
One shepherd —
Christ, the great good, chief, only shepherd, that laid down his life for his
sheep.
My servant David —
The seed of David, the beloved one, who was typified by David, and is in other
places called by his name, as Jeremiah 30:9; Ezekiel 37:24; Hosea 3:5.
He shall feed — Do
all the office of a good and faithful shepherd, and that for ever.
Verse 24
[24] And
I the LORD will be their God, and my servant David a prince among them; I the
LORD have spoken it.
My servant —
Christ was in this great work his fathers servant, Isaiah 42:1.
Verse 25
[25] And
I will make with them a covenant of peace, and will cause the evil beasts to
cease out of the land: and they shall dwell safely in the wilderness, and sleep
in the woods.
A covenant — A
covenant of promises, which contain, and shall bring peace, that is all good.
Verse 26
[26] And
I will make them and the places round about my hill a blessing; and I will
cause the shower to come down in his season; there shall be showers of blessing.
Them — My
returned captives, The places - All the country.
My hill —
Jerusalem.
Verse 29
[29] And
I will raise up for them a plant of renown, and they shall be no more consumed
with hunger in the land, neither bear the shame of the heathen any more.
A plant —
The Messiah.
The shame —
The reproach.
Verse 30
[30] Thus
shall they know that I the LORD their God am with them, and that they, even the
house of Israel, are my people, saith the Lord GOD.
Their God — By
covenant, from their forefathers.
Am with them —
Present with them, and reconciled to them.
── John Wesley《Explanatory Notes on Ezekiel》
34 Chapter 34
Verses 1-31
Verses 1-10
Woe be to the shepherds of Israel that do feed themselves! should
not the shepherds feed the flocks?
The unfaithful shepherds
I. Human rulers
stand in the same relation to the people whom they rule as shepherds to their
flocks. Therefore the qualifications required are similar.
1. A special knowledge (Genesis 46:34). So to rule men
successfully requires a knowledge of men. Christ is the preeminent Ruler of
men, because He knows them--because He needs not that any should “testify of
any man” whom He is shepherding for eternity (John 2:25).
2. A willingness to endure hardship for those whom they shepherd (Genesis 31:40). Shepherds of men must
likewise be willing to deny themselves for their flock, even as Christ was
willing to spend His nights upon the mountains (Luke 6:12) and to be consumed with labour
during the day, in order to be “the Good Shepherd.”
3. Affection for the flock (1 Samuel 17:34). It cannot be
dispensed with in ruling men. To love men is to understand them. To love them
is to be willing to suffer for them, and must beget a correspondent feeling.
The Great Shepherd had as much love for His flock as He had knowledge of them (John 10:11).
II. The rulers of
Israel had lacked these qualifications.
1. Their self-indulgence had led them to neglect to feed the flock.
2. They had gone from neglect to positive acts of crime. They had
taken the lives of their subjects in order to enjoy their possessions. Sins of
omission lead to sins of commission.
III. The effect of
the negative and positive transgressions of Israel’s rulers. “My sheep were
scattered.” They were so widely sundered as to be beyond the recall of any but
the Omniscient One, who alone knew the mountains upon which they were
wandering.
IV. God Himself
would raise up a Shepherd who would combine all the qualities needed to gather
in the scattered flock.
1. The name given to this divinely appointed shepherd--David. The
Messiah is called by this name in Isaiah 55:3-4; Jeremiah 30:9; Hosea 3:5.
2. His two-fold office. His Father’s servant and His people’s king
(verse 24).
V. That which is
intended to be a great blessing to ourselves and others, namely, power, may
become the greatest curse to both. (A London Minister.)
Gospel ministers shepherds
I. Christian
ministers as shepherds have devolving upon them the care of Christ’s flock.
Believers are exposed to many evils, surrounded by numerous enemies, liable to
many wants and diseases. To promote their comfort and safety, God sends His
servants to take the oversight, and care for them as shepherd for flock.
II. Christian
ministers as shepherds must feed their flocks.
1. They must do this by leading them into green pastures, etc.
2. The shepherd is to render the word instructive and consolatory,
and the ordinances refreshing and edifying.
III. Christian
ministers as shepherds are to watch over their flocks. To warn them against
danger,--to admonish, to counsel, and to direct them into safe and plain paths.
Their dangers are numerous. From the world, from Satan, from false professors,
from their own weakness, etc. How necessary, then, is a spirit of holy energy,
vigilance, etc.
IV. Christian
ministers as shepherds are to regard especially the weak and afflicted of the
flock. “Who can understand his errors?” How often is spiritual disease evident
in the mind, in the heart, in the spirit, in the conversation, in the walk and
conduct! Now it is for the shepherd to labour for the healing of these
maladies.
V. Christian
ministers as shepherds must give an account of their flocks. They are
responsible to God. Application--
1. How truly solemn is the office of the Christian shepherd--the
charge of souls.
2. How necessary for its right discharge are Divine qualifications
and help.
3. Faithful shepherds should have the kind sympathy and aid of all
the members of the Church.
4. How glorious the meeting when all the flock of God, with each
shepherd, shall appear before Christ to receive His blessing, even life for
evermore. (J. Burns.)
Neither have ye healed
that which was sick.
Hospital Sunday
The obligation of rulers and Christians generally to care for the
sick poor. The government of a great empire embraces many responsibilities--the
protection of property and of life, the encouragement of art and science and
every form of learning and of commerce, the maintenance of justice, the
punishment of crime. We are concerned now with only one aspect of the
obligation of rulers--the obligation to consider and to care for the diseased
and the bruised poor. Most of the poverty and distress, most of the diseased
and broken frames which are to be found amongst us are the results of vice and
sin. Intemperance and immorality are fertile soils, producing plentiful
harvests of mangled and agonised and loathsome bodies. Hence the necessity for
adopting a policy of prevention--for establishing such legislative measures as
shall check and, if possible, effectually prevent, the ravages of intemperance
and vice. Prevention is better than regulation when a nation’s strength and a
nation’s morals and a nation’s life are at stake. Much may be done, and much
must be done, in this direction; but meanwhile, our rulers have to regard and
to deal with existing miseries which have resulted, for the most part, from
transgressions and sins. At this present moment there are in the great
metropolis thousands upon thousands of wretched creatures, their bodies
consumed by disease, or mangled and broken through accident or self-inflicted
suffering. And they are poor and helpless! Unless someone aid them they must
wrestle with their agony alone, they must languish and die. But the obligation
to care for the sick lies not with the rulers alone. In a special manner does
it rest upon the Christian Church generally. Ministers of religion should be
the first to welcome a Hospital Sunday. Ah! giving for the sick, caring for the
diseased and the bruised, brings its own sweet reward. To spare one pang, to
bring one ray of light into a heart environed with darkness--this is worth
living for. And now what we have to do is to enlarge our sympathies. Think of
the multitudes of agonised mortals in the London hospitals today. Without
money, those necessary institutions cannot be supported. Without money, the
poor must pine away and perish. In our relation to the afflicted poor we must
think of the example and precepts of our Lord. Jesus was not a philosophical
theologian. He was a practical Saviour. The blind came to Him, and He gave them
sight. The sick were brought to Him, and He healed them. We cannot heal the
sick with a word as Christ did. But we can follow Christ in doing good ill the
way open to us. What we want is the spirit of Christ--the thoughts of
Christ--the purpose of Christ. In this lies the glory of Christianity. (A.
G. Maitland.)
Verses 11-19
I, even I, will both search My sheep, and seek them out.
The flock sought and found
Is the Great Shepherd to leave the stray sheep to wander and
perish? or is He to pity and reclaim them? In the Crimean War there were two
ways, very different from each other, in which heroic deed manifested itself.
One was, by our soldiers’ indomitable courage in the field,--when brave men
stood manfully to their guns, and poured the iron hail against fearful odds.
That was the stern glory of carnage and destruction. The other unfolds a
picture in strange and startling contrast with this. At midnight, in stiffed
hospital wards, amid the light of dim lamps and moans of sufferers, a gentle
form of pity flitted from couch to couch, with words and looks and deeds of
mercy;--pale lips kissing the shadow on their pillows as it passed. On which of
the two does the mind love most to dwell? On that field of stern desperate
valour; or on these hushed corridors, away from the roar of battle, with the
one hero-heart moving like a ministering angel amid the congregated crowd of
wounded and dying? God’s way regarding man (with reverence we say it) was the
latter. We may look to this truth, first, in its simplest aspect. The soul, as
we have already noted, is ever and anon manifesting some undefined longing
after its lost portion in God. But it has in itself a hopeless moral inability
to return. It cannot retrace its lost way. Alas! often there is rather the
plunging deeper and deeper amid the pathless wilds of ruin, till, in addition
to inability, there is added disinclination to be restored to the long lost
fold. The sheep, rather than return to the Shepherd, will go roaming in search
of other pastures--increasing its mournful distance from the fold, and bringing
it only into more perilous vicinity to the lions’ dens and the mountains of the
leopards. How, then, can the sinner be reclaimed? It is manifest that by no
self-originated effort can he return. If saved, it must be by another. Himself
he cannot,--himself he will not save. Omnipotence alone can bring it back. It
is easy enough to take the tiara of priceless diamonds, or the necklace of
gold, and plunge it down in mid ocean; but it is not so easy to descend through
that untraversed barrier, that liquid rampart which rolls defiant between, and
get them up again. The soul, the true casket of lost treasures, by reason of
its own sad principle of moral gravitation, sinks easily downward. But it is He
alone who “taketh up the waters in the hollow of His hand” that cart rescue it
from the depths of ruin and despair. Here, then, is the Gospel’s glorious
history of the restoration of the wanderers. Marvellous
condescension--unspeakable grace! He speaks in one of the verses which precede
this chapter as if it were something wondrous,--something well-nigh incredible:
“Behold I, even I.” The spot is still pointed out with pride, amid the rocky
wilds of Dauphine, where nil eagle bore in its talons the infant which had been
left smiling in fearless innocence in its cradle by the cottage door. One
stalwart form after another tried to climb that giddy height for the rescue,
but had to abandon it in despair. At last a fleet and nimble foot spurns all
difficulties. Up she climbs, from crag to crag, until, reaching the dizzy
eminence, she buries the yet living child in her bosom, saying, as a mother’s
tongue in such an hour alone could say, “This my child was dead, and is alive
again--was lost, and is found!” But that was a mother’s speechless affection
for her offspring. As she brought her “loved and lost” back to her cottage
home, and replaced it in the empty cradle, we would think it strange to hear
her saying, “Behold I, even I, have done this.” Who could have done it but she?
But what does the Infinite Jehovah see in us?--What claim have these sheep on
this Shepherd of the universe--these sinners on their God?--None! The natural
heart is a den of pollution, a haunt of evil, the nurturing home of rebellion.
Not only, however, are we called to note and admire God’s grace and
condescension; but to admire the sovereignty of that grace as shown in the
selection of its objects. Mankind were not the only fallen family in the
universe. Other sheep, not of the earthly fold, had also strayed from the
Shepherd. Might we not have expected that, in resolving on the ransom and
recovery of any lost ones, he would have made choice rather of a different race
of wanderers? Fallen angels (the aborigines of heaven) were greater than man.
Well may we pause and ponder this wondrous manifestation of sovereign grace in
the salvation of sinners of the dust! Truly, indeed, this salvation of man is a
story of grace. Turn the moral kaleidoscope as we may, the gleaming words still
stand radiant before our eyes, “By the grace of God we are what we are.” Once
more. God’s grace and compassion are further manifested in His untiring love
and patience in the pursuit of the lost, till restoration and safety be
ensured. In other words, we have to admire, not only His free grace and His
sovereign grace, but what the old writers call His irresistible grace. “Thus
saith the Lord God, Behold I, even I, will both search My sheep and seek them
out.” He will not only search for them, but He will search till He discover
them. “He goeth after that which was lost until He find it.” The Saviour’s love
is bounded by no distance, is cooled by no difficulties, is repulsed by no
obstacles. One of the noblest records of true heroism in England’s annals is of
comparatively recent date; when a gallant vessel, manned with gallant hearts,
vent forth amid the frowning icebergs of the Northern Seas, to search for a
band of missing explorers. They sailed thither, buoyed with the faint, feeble
hope that the object of their search might still be found, battling bravely
with eternal winter. Alas! they went after the lost “until they found them”;
but they found them with the stiffened snow and ice as their winding sheet!
They brought not back the living, but only some sad mementoes and memorials of
the dead. Not so is the journey, not so the pursuit, of the Great Shepherd of
the sheep. His omniscient eye follows every wanderer. Those whom He has marked
for His own He will, without fail, bring home. Not one can elude His pursuit,
nor evade His loving scrutiny. (J. R. Macduff, D. D.)
The Divine Shepherd
I. The simile of
Christ to a shepherd.
1. His character: “a shepherd” (John 10:14).
2. His employment: “seeketh out” (Ezekiel 34:11).
3. The objects of His care: “His flock” (Isaiah 40:11).
4. Their condition: “scattered” (John 11:52).
5. Then the time of gathering: “the day” (Zechariah 13:1).
6. His situation: “among them” (Psalms 132:13-14).
II. The important
declaration. “I will seek out.”
1. By the word written (2 Timothy 3:15).
2. The word preached (1 Corinthians 1:23-24).
3. But always by the Spirit (Zechariah 4:6).
III. Why they are
called “His sheep.”
IV. The deliverance
of the sheep.
1. This implies determination: “I will” (Ezekiel 13:21).
2. It denotes contest: “deliver” (Isaiah 49:25).
3. It signifies power: “I will deliver them” (Isaiah 40:29). “All places.”
4. It also denotes great wisdom in searching and distinguishing them;
simply because--
In the cloudy and dark day.
The Shepherd seeking the flock in the cloudy and dark day
I. “The lost.” We
may regard the figure as descriptive of those who (by imperceptible degrees)
have erred and strayed from the Shepherd’s fold and presence. Once their
landscape was bathed in sunshine;--the mountain tops of God’s faithfulness were
clear;--the summits of the heavenly hills sparkled gloriously;--theirs were the
green pastures and still waters,--the Shepherd’s voice to cheer them, and the
Shepherd’s steps to guide them. But all is gloomy now;--the storm clouds have
gathered in their once serene sky. It may arise from their own sluggish
unconcern;--a drowsy, sleepy, callous frame,--the result of a gradual, but
ever-deepening insensibility to Divine things;--a trifling with their spiritual
interests;--languor in prayer--conformity with the world--tampering with sins
of omission--venturing on forbidden or debatable ground.
II. Those who are
“driven away.” Some overt act has been the cause of their scattering. Look at
David as an illustration. His own iniquities separated between him and his God.
He never after was the joyous believer he once was. He was indeed restored,
pardoned, loved;--but the memory of that sad day followed him to the grave, and
mantled Iris whole moral landscape with clouds, even to the very entrance of
the dark valley. And how many among the true flock of the Shepherd have to tell
a similar mournful tale! Some one guilty deed has laid the foundation of weeks and
months--ay, years, of spiritual alienation and distance from the fold.
III. “The broken.”
How numerous are these! Some are “broken” by calamity;--penury scattering them
in its cloudy and dark day. Some are “broken” by bitter disappointment; an
aching heart wound too sacred to be revealed has left them bleeding and
desolate, refusing to be comforted. Some are “broken” by bereavement.
IV. The sick. We
might take this in a figurative sense; as descriptive of those who are sick at
heart,--sad and disconsolate with the trials and sins and sorrows of death, and
with the corruptions of their own natures. But why not regard it literally, an
applied to those laid on beds of sickness? Many among us who inadequately
appreciate the talent of health are apt also to forget and overlook this large
section in God’s world;--the “poor afflicted ones,” the maimed members of the
flock.
V. To one and all
of these “scattered ones” the Great Shepherd comes. He has a special word of
comfort for each separate case.
1. “Lost!” He “seeks” you. Though you have forgotten Him, He has not
forgotten you.
2. Ye who have been “driven away,” He will “bring you again.” Ye who,
like the Psalmist of Israel, have unwarily left the pastures of peace and
security, and entangled yourselves in the midnight forest of danger and sin;
the grace of Him who first brought you to the fold is able to bring you back
again, and restore to you the joys of His salvation.
3. Broken ones! Ye who are crushed and mutilated by the thousand ills
of suffering and sorrow: rejoice! That Shepherd came to “bind up” breaking
hearts; His name is “The Healer of the broken hearted.”
4. “Sick!” Ye pining sufferers in earth’s great hospital! Ye bleating
sheep, lying languid and helpless in the fold--He, the Great Shepherd, comes to
“strengthen you.” A sick bed--where the noisy world is shut out--where its
cares and anxieties and aspirations and ambitions are no longer present to
hamper and harass--what a blessed season for converse with the Infinite.
VI. The gracious
adaptation of Christ’s dealings to the different wants and trials and
necessities of His people.
1. He “seeks” the lost; and on finding them a look of love suffices
to bring the conscience-stricken wanderers back.
2. He “brings again” the driven away. Those cowering in terror at
their own wilful blindness and apostasy, their deep ingratitude and heinous
guilt, need help, encouragement, guidance;--they need being carried in the
Shepherd’s arms.
3. He “binds up” the broken; He stanches the bleeding wound with the
application of tender restoratives--the balm words of His own exceeding great
and precious promises. He, the Brother born for adversity, teaches the wounded
spirit, and He alone can, how to “bear” in this “dark and cloudy day”; He turns
the shadow of death into the morning.
4. He “strengthens” the sick--those who for years on years have been
laid on couches of languishing--secluded from the gladsome light of day, on
whose ears the tones of the Sabbath bell fall only to tell of forfeited
privileges. They can best bear attestation how a mysterious, sustaining
strength, not their own, is imparted to them, which makes them wonders to
themselves.
Let us close with two practical reflections.
1. The all-sufficiency of the Shepherd’s power and love. There is no
case He cannot meet. Lost ones, driven ones, broken ones, sick ones. It seems
to exhaust the circle of human wants and necessities. He seems to anticipate
every supposable case, so that none dare say “that Shepherd-love does not
include me.”
2. This precious passage, so full of tenderness and love to the
erring, the backsliding, the suffering, ends with a brief but most solemn
utterance of “judgment” on the impenitent, the self-righteous, and unbelieving.
“He that has rest for disquieted saints,” says Matthew Henry, “has terror to
speak to presumptuous sinners.” (J. R. Macduff, D. D.)
Shadows of religious life
Night and morning are familiar types of human life in its
alternation of shadow and sunshine, its chequered history of grief and joy.
“Weeping may endure for a night, but joy cometh in the morning.” It is the law
of nature and of humanity. Is it not also the law of the higher spiritual life?
No doubt there are moments of rare enjoyment in the experience of a godly man;
moments of special communion with the Unseen. But there are seasons, too, of a
widely different complexion, when the firmament above him darkens into a
hemisphere without a star, and the heart within him grows sick of the weary
struggle, and he is sorely tempted, like Elijah, to fold his head in his mantle,
and lie down in despair to die.
1. These shadows of religious life sometimes originate in physical
disease. Very wonderful is the sympathy between body and soul. Many a life
might be comparatively blithesome, but that chronic dyspepsia fills it with morbid
fears and feelings. Trifling with the delicate mechanism of the human frame has
brought upon many excellent people a settled melancholy, an impression that
they have committed some unpardonable sin, and are absolute outcasts from God’s
covenant of mercy. Let the organ be out of tune, and Handel himself could not
bring good music out of it; and when the nervous organism is unstrung, it is
not surprising if the secret harmonies of the soul be turned into jars and
discord. Temperance, chastity, and godliness,--the “mens sana in corpore
sano,”--are a wellspring of perennial cheerfulness; but without them, the
fountains of real pleasure are poisoned, life loses its zest and buoyancy, and
becomes little better than a funeral march to death and judgment.
2. These shadows of religious life sometimes originate in personal
wrong-doing. Misconduct is the ruin of tranquillity, and may cast a pall and
blight over life’s fairest prospects. He who can do a deliberate wrong without
a pang of regret is more demon than man. Peter’s backsliding cost him bitter
tears. David’s double crime made his children a scourge and his conscience an
accusing hell. Saul’s transgression caused “an evil spirit” to enter into him,
so that he sat in his palace, javelin in hand, silent, moody, and downcast. And
the sin of God’s people, in like manner, may still rob them of solid peace, and
make them acquainted, otherwise than by book, with Bunyan’s Slough of Despond,
Doubting Castle, and Giant Despair.
3. These shadows of religious life sometimes originate in
providential trials. Saint or sinner, if you are pricked you bleed; with this
difference, that in the one case you possess a balm for the wound, in the other
not. Insensibility would render Divine discipline a nullity. It is right to feel
appropriately towards all things as they really are; nay more, such inflexion
of feeling is a necessary condition of human amendment; Christianity is a
nobler science of life than stoicism, for it teaches how sable and gold may
both be woven into a robe of immortal radiance--how adversity, even more than
prosperity, may come laden with the richest blessings.
4. These shadows of religious life sometimes originate in spiritual
conflicts. No fortress on earth is so often beleaguered as the citadel of the
human heart. No din of contending hosts is there--no anxious nations look on in
breathless suspense--no change of temporal dynasty or statecraft or dominion is
imminent; but the doom of an immortal soul is involved, and heaven and hell
hang upon the final issue. The stake is tremendous, and all trifling is simply
insane. The ground has to be won inch by inch, and, maybe, lost and won again.
Shield of faith, helmet of salvation, breastplate of righteousness, girdle of
truth, sword of the Spirit, greaves of love and peace, all bear marks of the
severity of the strife. Protracted to the end of life, the battle is as arduous
as it is honourable, and its wavering fortunes not unfrequently make one
pensive, careworn, and disheartened. Thank God! “though he fall, he shall rise
again--he shall not be utterly cast down.” An invincible Captain leads us on.
5. These shadows of religious life sometimes originate in doctrinal
perplexities. It has been said that “the Bible has shallows in which a lamb may
wade, and deeps in which an elephant may swim.” Unhappily, some who are not
elephants venture to leave the terra firma of revealed truth, and to
plunge into the bottomless sea of metaphysical divinity; and, as they cannot
swim, they sink in deep waters, or flounder about like a log in a tempest, and
the waves and billows go over them. Without putting a veto on legitimate
inquiry, it is well to remember that “secret things belong unto the Lord”--that
His eternal wisdom and kindness will manage them without human meddling--that no
prying curiosity of ours can ever modify them in the least degree; and that for
us the only possible solution of them is the testimony of individual character
and life.
6. These shadows of religious life sometimes originate in the enigmas
of Divine government. God in history, subordinating everything to His supreme
will, and accomplishing through secondary agencies or otherwise His own
sovereign purposes, is the basis of a good man’s creed, and the sole pledge of
humanity’s regeneration. But, to man’s thinking, how often do the ways of God
seem a mystery, an anomaly, or even a contradiction! Everywhere the old Titanic
forces of good and evil wrestle with each other in mortal combat, and the
wonder is how the strife will end. And, standing face to face with facts like
these, after some six thousand years of credible history, and some nineteen
centuries of Christian teaching, many a heart cries out in fearfulness and
pain: “How long, O Lord, how long? Why tarry the wheels of Thy chariot? Oh,
when shall the wickedness of the wicked come to a perpetual end?” Pilgrims of
the night! amid all this darkness, turmoil, and misery, “rest in the Lord, and
wait patiently for Him.” (L. B. Brown.)
Verse 16
I will seek that which was lost, and bring again that which was
driven away.
The good shepherd
In reading this verse hastily we are apt to overlook the new and
very interesting idea introduced in each succeeding clause of it. Our feeling
is that each clause is just meant to teach the idea of the former one in
different terms. A little attention will satisfy us that this is far from doing
justice to the verse.
I. The first class
suggested to our notice comprehends “the lost,” of whom it is said that the
Saviour “will seek them.” The language, every Gospel-hearer is familiar with,
as descriptive, on the one hand, of man’s natural state of spiritual stupidity
and danger, and on the other, of the tender compassion of Christ, the great Shepherd,
in redeeming and reclaiming him.
II. “The driven
away,” whom the Saviour tells us He “will bring again.” It implies, no doubt,
like the former, that the sheep is gone out of the fold, and cannot, therefore,
for the present be in a situation of comfort or safety. But does it not imply
that the sheep has left the fold reluctantly? It has not escaped of its own
accord. It has been “driven away” by some enemy; and, wandering now in want and
fear, it longs to return to “the green pastures” where it had hitherto fed in
plenty and safety. What could be more descriptive than this of the case of the
backsliding Christian? Was it not thus that, by the violence of temptation,
David was for a time driven away into sin, so that he lost his previous
consciousness of the saving care and countenance of his God? Was it not so,
too, with Peter, whom the fear of man so far overcame in a moment of weakness
that he denied his Lord, and so was for a season visibly separated from the
fold of Christ? Even now, is not the voice of our great Shepherd lifted up
amongst us, at once rebuking our wanderings and encouraging our return?
III. “The broken,”
whom He graciously promises to “bind up.” Solemn pledges forgotten, broken
through, trampled on,--mercies of every description slighted and abused,--the
cause of Christ dishonoured,--perhaps, through their unaccountable folly, some
neighbour, some companion, if not some relative or child, hardened against the
Gospel, and led away to ruin! Oh! the very thought of such aggravated sin is
heart rending, and the appalled backslider can only cry out in vexation and
trembling, “Mine iniquities have taken hold upon me, so that I am not able to
look up; they are more than the hairs of my head, therefore my heart faileth
me.” Or, in another way still, may the heart of a backsliding Christian be
broken. Think of the deep wounds of adversity to which Jesus has found it
necessary to subject him, as the means of putting an end to his wanderings. Now
by these and similar measures Jesus may have checked the believer’s wanderings,
and won back his heart. He has recovered His straying sheep, and brought it
home to His fold. But oh! is it not broken, suffering bitterly under the
consequences of its wanderings, and therefore needing greatly the attention and
sympathy of its Shepherd? Wounded and bleeding, it must now become the object
of His tenderest care, and with skilful hand must He now apply the healing balm
of His blood and grace. And He does so.
IV. “I will
strengthen that which was sick.” This description refers to those more secret,
insidious diseases by which the shepherd’s flock is liable to be infected, and
which, if allowed to take their course, may prove as fatal as any of the
seemingly more alarming casualties to which the wandering sheep may be
subjected. The seat of this spiritual sickness is the heart; and it will be in
operation there for months, perhaps, before the symptoms of it appear
outwardly, or assume a serious aspect. It may receive a check at any stage of
its progress, or it may be suffered to take its course, till at last it
prostrates its victim before some gross temptation, so that his case becomes an
astonishment to the world, and a grief to all who respect the honour of the
Gospel. This is certain, it will receive a check, sooner or later, in the case
of every true Christian. “I will strengthen that which was sick.” True, it may
often seem to our narrow view as if He delayed the communication of spiritual
strength long after it has become every way needful. Such delay, however, undoubtedly
accords with His own sovereign and, wise plan, though we cannot understand it;
and so far from indicating a want of interest in the individual, or a want of
power or of determination eventually “to restore his soul,” it would be seen,
if we rightly comprehended the case, to indicate the contrary; just as
Lazarus’s death, which could easily have been prevented, is allowed to take
place, in order that the Saviour’s power and love may be the more signally
displayed in His resurrection. (P. Hannay.)
Will strengthen that which
was sick.
Sickness a strengthener
I. Sickness makes
us contented to perform all the God-assigned tasks of life, severe as these
tasks may be. When I hear people complaining of the burdens of life, and
expressing a longing to die, I say to myself: They are only talking, and their
words are empty words. A visitation of sickness would change their tone. A
square look at death would make them satisfied to live, and to live right in
the midst of the toils against which they speak. The ancients were fond of
relating this tale which falls into the line of my thought. A discontented man
heavily burdened was called to the task of carrying his burden to a town on the
other side of a steep hill. Murmuringly he began the toil of ascent. The burden
was heavy before, but it grew still heavier as he climbed. At last his
discontent knew no bounds, and, disgusted and dissatisfied with his lot, he
threw the burden from him and cast himself upon the ground, crying, “O death,
come and deliver me! O death, come and deliver me!” Death heard the cry of the
man and responded, and came to take him at his word. In the dim distance the
discontented man saw the awful form coming into sight. There was a great gaunt
figure, a skeleton form, sweeping toward him with tremendous gigantic strides.
Instantly he leaped to his feet and laid hold of his burden and endeavoured to
shoulder it. With a sepulchral voice Death greeted him: “I believe you called
me; now here I am. What do you want of me?” With the look of the sweetest
innocence the man replied: “It was my voice that you heard, no doubt. My burden
fell off my shoulder, and I was only calling for someone to come help me
restore it to its place again.” The sight and voice were enough. They were an
inspiration to the man. Of his own strength he lifted his old burden, and with
a positive pleasure carried it to the town over the hill. That story, whether
it be fact or fiction, is true to life. We leave the sickroom, where we have
looked death in the face, willing to take up the toils of life, and we find the
heaviest task within the compass of our abilities a delight. Willing workers,
satisfied workers, enthusiastic workers, bright-faced workers, mastering and
performing the duties of life, and carrying forward the great enterprises of
the age--these are the product of the sickroom. These are what the world needs.
They carry in them a spirit that is contagious, and that generates faithfulness
to duty in all whom they touch.
II. Sickness gives
us a new appreciation of the Divine things in our lives. I knew a man who for
years spent his Sabbaths in the machine shop, repairing engines, without a
single desire toward the house of God. I begged him many a time to give up his
irreligious life and worship with his family on the Sabbath; but to no purpose.
The time came when he was imprisoned in the sickroom, and then his lament was
that he had neglected the sanctuary. That man spent the first returning
strength of convalescence in travelling three miles to my house, and for what purpose?
That I might kneel with him at the Throne of Grace and offer prayer of
thanksgiving for him. Not only is the Throne of Grace made appreciable by
sickness; the Book of God also is made appreciable. The Bible of the invalid is
a well-used book. It is thumb-marked--at the writings of Job; at the 23rd
Psalm; at the 14th chapter of John; at the 15th chapter of 1 Corinthians; at
the 21st and 22nd chapters of Revelation. These closing chapters of the Divine
volume are studied until the geography of the heavenly land is as well known as
that of the land in which we live.
III. Sickness
teaches us the value of health and the duty of looking after the condition of
the body.
IV. Sickness cuts
up by the roots our conceit and pride and selfishness and develops in the
places of these humility and sympathy. If this be true, then physical pains
bring spiritual gains. Humility and sympathy help in the making of grand men.
Humanity should be willing to pay a great price for the eradication of such
evils as pride and selfishness, for they are social curses and social
disorganisers. Humanity should count nothing too dear to pay as a purchase of
humility and sympathy. Humility and sympathy were two of the virtues that made
the Christ of history the Man who inaugurated the highest civilisation of the
world. That which has the power of making men Christ-men is a most desirable
factor in this world. It is easily seen why man is unsympathetic. The sense of
power generates independence; the sense of independence closes the avenues of
sympathy. Where there is no sympathy, where there is no recognition of the
mutual dependence of man upon his brother man, man becomes selfish and proud
and hard. The sense of dependence is the basis of sympathy. Sickness brings the
sense of dependence. A man who has to be lifted and turned by his nurse, a man
who has to be fed by a spoon in the hand of another, cannot look down and
despise his fellow men. There, in the hour of weakness, he learns his
indebtedness to man, and his duty to make a return for benefits received by
willingly giving service and kindness and interest and care and his very life.
These things he is constantly receiving from others, and these things make him
what he is. These things it is his duty to pass on. At a railroad station a
benevolent man found a schoolboy crying because he had not quite enough to pay
his fare home. He remembered suddenly how years before he had been in the same
plight, and had been helped by an unknown friend who enjoined upon him that
some day he should pass that kindness on. Now he saw that the opportunity
spoken of had come. He took the weeping boy aside, heard his story, and paid
his fare, and asked him in turn to pass the kindness on. As the train moved off
from the station the lad waved his hand to his benefactor and cried cheerily,
“I will pass it on, sir.” That act of thoughtful love is being passed on
through our globe, nor will it stay until its ripples have belted the globe and
met again. To every man who has received kindness and sympathy in the hour of
his sickness and trial God is saying, “Pass these on. Remember there are hearts
to be bound like thine; there are tears to be dried like thine; there are lives
to be illumined like thine. Light up the lives of others.” (D. Gregg, D. D.)
I judge between cattle and cattle.
Selfish scramble and Christian service
It presents to us the scene, far too often enacted in human life,
of a selfish scramble--a scramble for position, for money, for power, for
enjoyment. We find this in business, in professions as well as in trade and
commerce, in art, in politics, in pleasure, and, it must be admitted, sometimes
in the sacred sphere of religion. Of this selfish scramble we may remark--
I. Its essential
sinfulness.
1. Self-elevation is right and good. To make the most of our powers
and opportunities; to rise by honest, patient industry, and to walk along the
high level of honourable usefulness--this is admirable.
2. Emulation is allowable and helpful. The boy who has no ambition to
reach the top of his class, the manufacturer or tradesman who does not care to
make or to sell the best possible goods, is not likely to accomplish much. But
a selfish scramble, in which we only care to secure our own comfort or
enlargement, and do not care at all who is stranded or last, in which we
present such a picture in life as that given in the text of cattle in the
field, is ugly and evil. And if it seems thus to us, how much more guilty must
it appear to Him who is Love itself, who lives to love and bless--how hateful
and offensive must it be in His pure sight!
II. Its indurating
influence. The struggling cattle in the field are no worse for their
heedlessness, or even for their violence. They suffer no spiritual harm; they
do not rise and fall, in a moral sense. But we do. He who is living the life of
selfish scramble is losing all the finer and nobler elements of his nature, is
sinking to that base condition in which his own wants and tastes are everything
to him and all else is nothing.
III. The contrast of
Christian service. We look at the life of our Lord, and we find Him positively
declining to use His power to turn the stone into bread, though He must have
sorely needed food (Matthew 4:4); refusing to accept the
opportunity of self-aggrandisement at the expense of the sacrificial mission on
which He came (Matthew 4:9); compelling all things to
give place in order that He might give food to the hungry, and healing to the
sick, and hope to the abandoned, and rest to the weary. Let us use those powers
which we have from God, that we may follow where Christ is leading. (W.
Clarkson, B. A.)
The Divine discrimination
I. The objects of
the Divine discrimination.
1. He will judge between the Church of God and its enemies, the
genuine professors of religion and its opposers.
2. He will distinguish between the hypocrite anti the sincere
believer. Counterfeit graces will bear no comparison with sterling piety, when
exhibited in the light of heaven, though for the present they may obtain a
surreptitious currency.
3. A distinction will likewise be made between saints and saints; for
the Lord shall call to the heavens from above, and to the earth, that He may
judge His people. According to the talents they possess, the improvement they
make of them, and their process in the Divine life; according to the strength
or weakness of their graces, the honour or disgrace which their conduct
reflects upon religion,--such will be their sentence from the supreme Judge,
who will reward every man according to his works.
II. The manner in
which these various characters shall be distinguished.
1. Judgment sometimes signifies the same as discernment. In this
sense God judgeth all men; He knoweth their inward principles, as well as their
outward conduct and behaviour. He is not influenced by prejudice, or liable to
mistake.
2. It implies correction, or judging in a way of punishment. God is a
light to Israel, but a consuming fire to their enemies. Or if He sees fit to
correct the former, it shall be in measure; He will not punish them with
severity, though He does not leave them altogether without chastisement.
3. Though the Lord often makes a wide distinction between the
righteous and the wicked in the present life, yet He will do it more
effectually and more awfully in the last great day. (B. Beddome, M. A.)
Even My servant David; he shall feed them.
The Davidic ruler
The meaning cannot be that David would in person revive and
reappear. It is more doubtful whether the prophet means that the line or family
of David would again occupy the throne or that a single person would be king.
It is possible that this question was not strictly before his mind; it is the
character of the ruler that he thinks of. The Oriental mind hardly
distinguishes between an ancient personage and one who appears in his power and
spirit; when it compares it identifies. The new prince over the people will be
David, the servant of the Lord. Both the person and the reign of David were
idealised. He was not in general terms but in truth the man after God’s own
heart. His rule was not merely extensive; it was universal. He gave the people
victory and secured them peace--he was a leader and commander of the people.
Such shall be the king of the restored community when Jehovah is indeed the God
of Israel. (A. B. Davidson, D. D.)
I will make with them a covenant of peace.
God’s covenant with His people, and their assured safety in the
wilderness
I. The King’s
charter. Observe, the text does not say, “We will make a covenant with one
another,” God and man; it says, “I will make them a covenant”; originating in
the electing love of God.
II. The exercise of
the royal prerogative--“I will cause the evil beasts to cease out of the land.”
Satan cares not how many churches or chapels are built, provided the things of
the King’s charter are never talked of. But, says Jehovah, “I will cause the
evil beasts to cease out of the land.” Hell’s powers are vanquished. Who is He
that said, “He spoiled principalities and powers, and made a show of them
openly”? Who is He that is said to have “destroyed death, and him that bad the
power of death, that is, the devil, and thereby delivered them, who through
fear of death were all their lifetime subject to bondage”? Who is he of whom it
was predicted, that He should “bruise the serpent’s head”? Even the second
Person in the glorious Trinity, who in this covenant of peace became Himself
the peace of the Church.
III. The position,
which this King’s dominion occupies in His world in “the wilderness.” What is
“the wilderness”? A place haunted by every description of evil beast; a place
uncultivated, trackless, and dangerous. If you can picture to yourselves, for a
moment, what that wilderness was to the tribes of Israel literally, you may
draw the inference, and a very fair one, that just such the world through which
we pass is to a believer spiritually. It is a wilderness; but God has a Church
in it, and that is the mercy. Of Christ it is said, that He was “with His
Church in the wilderness.” He had, then, His Church in the wilderness, His
spiritual family; and so He has now,--a Church, a little flock, an encamped
land, a chosen family, brought out of Egypt by miracles of grace, and
travelling towards Canaan, the constant object of His love. Such is the portion
of the Church--in the wilderness.
IV. The precious
promise of tranquillity. Though the Church may occupy a position so frightful,
so fearful, so alarming as that I have described, the text says, “they shall
dwell safely.” What protection! And they shall “sleep too”; that is, they shall
rest. Mark these two things
1. In these woods, solemn as they are,--and really they are more affecting
than any language can describe,--they are encompassed with Deity--with all the
attributes of Deity--encompassed with angelic guardians--encompassed, as we
read in the Psalms, by the Angel of the Lord. Jesus encircles His Church with
His own perfections and attributes. He guarantees her security in the
wilderness; and this accounts for her dwelling safely.
2. Mark one thing more; they were “to see the salvation of God.” If
you get a fair sight of it you will “stand still.” Faith’s telescope will not bear
much shaking about; and if you have a fair view of the salvation of God you
will “stand still.” He works best when we do nothing; He displays His glory
most when we most feel our need of it. He shines abroad, and even “rides upon
heaven for help” when we cannot crawl on earth to ask for it. (J. Irons.)
Peace possible under all circumstances
If you have Christ in your heart, then life is possible, peace is
possible, joy is possible, under all circumstances and in all places.
Everything which the soul can desire it possesses. You will be like men that
live in a beleaguered castle, and in the courtyard a sparkling spring, fed from
some source high up in the mountains, and finding its way in there by
underground channels which no besiegers can ever touch. (A. Maclaren.)
I will make them and the
places round about My hill a blessing.
God’s gracious engagements with His Church
I. The description
given of God’s Church. “My hill.”
1. The term denotes--
2. But this is described as God’s hill.
II. The promises
made to it. “I will cause the shower to come down,” etc.
1. The promise is general. Protection, provision, comfort, and
prosperity, all included.
2. The promise includes abundance. “Showers of blessings.” Bounty of
God infinite (2 Kings 4:1; Malachi 3:10).
3. The blessings are to be seasonable. “Shower in his season.” Not
before necessary, not when it is too late; but at the crisis of need, etc. (Psalms 107:1-43.)
4. The blessings are to promote a happy influence on all around. The
Church is to spread the savour of grace through the whole earth.
Application--
1. Do we dwell in the Lord’s holy hill? (See Psalms 15:1-5.)
2. Congratulate the children of Zion. Let them be joyful, etc.
3. Invite sinners all around to come and join themselves to the
people of the Lord, etc. (J. Burns, D. D.)
The hill of Zion
I. An interesting
place. The most interesting in the whole universe, and connected with the most
pleasing, delightful, affecting associations. Consider wherein the Church resembles
Mount Zion.
1. In point of elevation and grandeur. Believers are raised up
together with Christ, and made to sit together with Him in heavenly places.
They follow out sublime designs far above this world; and they are animated by
lofty aspirations.
2. A mountain is an object of visibility and attraction. So is the
Church; it stands not in a valley, but on a hill, visible, and calculated to
excite attention. It is also an object of attraction. It occupies a conspicuous
place, and millions have been attracted by it and drawn. It points upward to
the skies.
3. A mountain is a place of strength and stability. So is the Church.
It is not founded upon the sand. Century after century has passed away; empires
have arisen and fallen in close succession; but this Hill of Zion remains in
all its strength and glory.
II. An encouraging
promise.
1. Its nature. “A blessing.” In this everything is included. It is
not nominal, but real, solid, and substantial. The blessing God gives is
suitable, sweet, sufficient, free, and lasting. It includes protection from
evil, enjoyment of good, peace, prosperity.
2. Its abundance. “Showers of blessings.” This is like the Great
Master. Ask as a sinner, He gives like God;--not a scanty portion, not drops,
but showers (Deuteronomy 32:2; Psalms 72:6; Malachi 3:10; Romans 10:12). Think of the infinitude of
God, and of the infinity of His love--and think of His power!--He is able to do
exceedingly abundantly.
3. Its seasonableness. “And I will cause the shower to come down in
his season.” We do not know the time when deliverance will come;--often out in
our judgment of things, and imagine that all things are against us. Providence
is like a piece of machinery, the wheels of which are to our view perplexing,
and which we cannot understand.
4. Its extent. “I will make them,” etc. Oh! to be made a blessing!
What an honour!--to be a blessing to the Church, to the cause of God, and to
the generation in which we live. (E. Temple.)
The Church of Christ
I. Christ’s Church
is to be a blessing. The object of God, in choosing a people before all worlds,
was not only to save that people, but through them to confer essential benefits
upon the whole human race. The Gospel was sent that it might first bless those
that embrace it, and then expand, so as to make them a blessing to the whole
human race.
1. Here is divinity. It is God the everlasting Jehovah speaking: He
says, “I will make them a blessing.”
2. The personality of the blessing. “I will make them a blessing.” “I
will make each member of the Church a blessing.” God never makes useless
things; He has no superfluous workmanship. I care not what you are; you have
somewhat to do. And oh! may God show you what it is, and then make you do it,
by the wondrous compulsion of His providence and His grace.
3. The development of Gospel blessing. “I will make them a blessing”;
but it does not end there. “And the places round about My hill.” Religion is an
expansive thing. When it begins in the heart, at first it is like a tiny grain
of mustard seed, but it gradually increases, and becomes a great tree, so that
the birds of the air lodge in the branches thereof. A man cannot be religious
to himself. What are the places round about our hill? I think they are, first,
our agencies; secondly, our neighbourhood; thirdly, the churches adjacent to
us.
II. God’s people
are not only to be a blessing, but they are to be blessed.
1. Is it not sovereign, Divine mercy, for who can say “I will give
them showers” except God?
2. It is needed grace. What would the ground do without showers? You
may break the clods, you may sow your seeds, but what can you do without the
rain! Ah! you may prepare your barn, and sharpen your sickles; but your sickles
will be rusted before you have any wheat, unless there are showers. They are
needed. So is the Divine blessing.
3. It is plenteous grace. It does not say, “I will send them drops,”
but “showers.” “It seldom rains, but it pours.” So it is with grace. If God
gives a blessing, He usually gives it in such a measure that there is not room
enough to receive it.
4. It is seasonable grace. “I will give them the shower in its
season.” There is nothing like seasonable grace. There are fruits, you know,
that are best in their season, and they are not good at any other time; and
there are graces that are good in their season, but we do not always require
them. A person vexes and irritates me; I want grace just at that time to be
patient. I have not got it, and I get angry; ten minutes after I am ever so
patient; but I have not had grace in its season.
5. Here is a varied blessing. “I will give thee showers of blessing.”
The word is in the plural. All kinds of blessings God will send. The rain is
all of one kind when it comes; but grace is not all of one kind, or it does not
produce the same effect. God sends showers of blessings. If He gives comforting
grace, He will also give converting grace; if He makes the trumpet blow for the
bankrupt sinner, He will also make it sound a shout of joy for the sinner that
is pardoned and forgiven. (C. H. Spurgeon.)
There shall be showers of
blessing.--
Showers of blessing
The word “blessing” belongs strictly to the vocabulary of
religion. In prayer there is no petition which a Christian man so naturally
offers for himself as that God should bless him, and when he is thinking
affectionately of others, he naturally asks God to bless them. Even as he takes
his daily bread, he invokes on it a blessing. What does it mean? Take the
simplest case of all--that to which I have just alluded. Why, when we are about
to partake of food, do we ask a blessing on it? It is an acknowledgment that,
in addition to the natural property of food to sustain the bodily strength,
there is needed a certain superintendence and favour of heaven to maintain the
health of the body, and that Divine wisdom and strength are necessary to make a
good use of health when we have it. In the same way when, in the morning, we
ask God to bless the work of our hands during the day, as in Scripture He often
promises to do to those who ask Him, it is an acknowledgment that, along with
our skilful planning, and our conscientious performance, there is necessary a
something else which we cannot define but which we refer to God, to give us
good success. Men of the world call it good luck, but men of God and the Word
of God call it God’s blessing. Even in temporal things there is a large element
of unspeakable value for which there is no true and reverent name except the
blessing of God. But it is in the spiritual domain that this word has its true
scope. If in religion there is any reality at all, then it is the grandest of
realities. It is not only an essence which can sweeten and enhance all the
elements of life, but it is in itself so valuable that he who possesses it is
rich though he be stripped of all the other possessions which are the accepted
badges of happiness. It is the pearl of great price, which a man may well sell
all he has to buy. It is the blessing of God, and we have only in silent and
lowly awe to take it when it comes.
I. The copiousness
of God’s blessing. “There shall be showers of blessing.” If the blessing of God
is so essential to human welfare, it may be asked why so few are possessors of
a thing so precious? It is not because it is difficult to get at. If the will and
love of God could have free course there would be showers of blessing. The
obstacle which hinders is in ourselves. Have you never, when enjoying any of
the simple pleasures of nature, reflected with surprise on how little they are
taken advantage of? There is not in nature a sublimer sight than the rising of
the sun. There is no other which can suffuse the mind with deeper peace, yet
multitudes live and die without ever seeing this great sight once; and the
average man does not see it a score of times in a lifetime. The blessing of God
is like this. It is so near, and yet it is so far on account of our negligence.
What a peace, for example, is bred, and what a cool, firm grasp on life is
given by the practice of spending a short time with God in prayer, and in the
study of His Word, before beginning the work of the day. Yet how few cultivate
this source of blessing. We are not straitened in God: we are straitened in our
own hearts.
II. Its timeliness.
“I will cause the shower to come down in his season.” This refers to the
well-known fact that in Palestine rain fell only at certain seasons of the
year. It was of the utmost consequence that at these seasons it should not
fail. If it did not come, the drought meant loss or even ruin to the
husbandman; but if it came copiously, it caused the fields to rejoice with
abundant crops and made glad the heart of the husbandman. No doubt our text
refers, in the first place, to this temporal blessing, but it has also a wider
scope; blessing of every kind may be said to come in its season. God is not,
indeed, bound to times and seasons, and sometimes His blessings come when they
are least expected, resembling, in this respect, the sudden showers of rain to
which we are accustomed in our own variable climate. But, as a rule, the
blessing comes in the time of need, when the hearts of men are sighing and
crying for it. Are you expecting a blessing today? Is your heart longing for
it? Then this is a promise for you: “I will cause the shower to come down in
his season.” You may be very near a great blessing which would change your
spiritual existence from an invalid, backsliding condition into a life of joy,
of power, and unfaltering progress. I once asked a friend why a mutual friend
of ours, though a man of many accomplishments, did not succeed in the pulpit.
“Well,” said he, giving a slight crack of finger and thumb, “he just wants
that.” Yes, that was exactly it. It is this something extra, this little more,
that makes everything exceptional and excellent. And many of us are just
needing this to make us holy, happy, creditable Christians. Why should you not
be baptized with power?
III. The
diffusiveness of God’s blessing. “I will make them and the places round about
My hill a blessing.” The happiness of some people is rather to be pitied than
envied, because they are made happy by such questionable things. But
blessedness is derived from a pure as well as an inexhaustible source. Yet this
is not the best result of the blessing of God--that those on whom it falls are
themselves blessed. It is a far nobler thing which is promised in our text, “I
will make them a blessing”--they shall be the means of making others blessed.
From of old this has been the noble prerogative of the people of God. In
Christianity this element has come to the very front. What is it to be a
Christian? Is it to be blessed? is it to be filled with the peace, the joy, the
life, the power of God? No, it is to be so filled with these that the vessel
runs over, and all that are round about get the benefit. This is a text to try
our Christianity by. Has the sound of the Gospel not only reached us, but
sounded out from us, as a testimony which has arrested and awakened others? It
is a severe test. But some can stand it. There are Christian souls which move
through the world surrounded with a halo of blessing. There are Christian homes
which radiate happiness. There are Christian congregations which you cannot
enter without feeling that the power of God is there, and streams of blessing
flow out from them over the city, the country, and the world. (J. Stalker,
D. D.)
Showers of blessing
I. This
communication is needed by the world.
1. Contemplate the vast portion of the world, which is still
destitute of the presence and the power of true religion.
2. Contemplate the tardiness with which true religion is now
advancing among men.
II. This
communication is promised by God.
1. The promise of God defines the nature of this communication. It
consists in the influences of the Holy Spirit, made to affect the hearts and
the consciences of men by the truth, which the Gospel embodies and displays.
2. The promise of God has also defined its extent. There are to be
“showers”--impartations commensurate with the existing need, and designed
absolutely and entirely to extinguish and terminate that need.
3. The purpose of God has also defined its results. “There shall be
showers of blessing.”
III. This
communication, which is needed by the world, and which is promised by God, must
be sought by the Church.
1. The Church must seek for this communication by the removal of
worldly confortuity.
2. The Church must seek for this communication by the cultivation of
union and fraternal love.
3. The Church must seek this communication by the employment of
vigorous and zealous exertions, in the practical distribution of the truth,
which has been affirmed to be the instrument, through which the Spirit of God
is to descend in blessing upon the world.
4. The Church must seek for this communication by the offering of
fervent and importunate prayer. (J. Parsons, M. A.)
Showers of blessing,
This blessed promise may be claimed by--
I. The believer.
1. In the joy of the morning. “Songs in the night,” but blessings for
the morning. A blessing is added strength.
2. In the heat of the noonday. As a reminder of Providence, and a
remembrancer of the God who promised that the “sun shall not smite thee by
day,” these cooling showers shall come.
3. In the weary evening. Do doubts assail, do fears annoy? Do sorrows
gather, do tempests rise? There shall be showers of blessing, and “dewy eve”
will be a time of surcease from grief and labour, turmoil and care, and He will
give “His beloved sleep.”
4. In the desolate night. After all friends have gone, after even
friendly twilight has withdrawn herself, in that “dark and lonely hour,” they
shall fall upon him to season his meditations or perchance to lull to repose
his wearied and inflamed orbs.
5. Ever, there shall be showers of blessing for the believer.
II. The backslider.
1. In the hour of thoughtfulness. When he considers his relations to
God, and how strained they are.
2. In the hour of remembrance. The blessed “Remembrancer,” the good
Spirit of Truth, will bring forsaken joys, discarded delights, and vanished
experiences to his memory.
3. In the hour of penitence. Is it not recorded that “God resisteth
the proud but giveth grace to the humble”? and humility is twin sister to
penitence.
4. In the hour of return. When the prodigal son returned, the tears
which bedewed the cheeks of reconciled father and repentant son were indeed
showers of blessing.
III. The sinner.
Blessed showers will come when--
1. He feels his need.
2. Loathes himself.
3. Cries to God.
4. Trusts in the Saviour. (J. B. Esenwein.)
Showers of blessing
I. All temporal
and spiritual blessings, like showers, descend from above.
1. “Showers” am abundant. The great Creator does not give the rain
stingily, but opens the windows of heaven, and pears down His blessings upon
the dry and thirsty land. So spiritual blessings come upon the thirsty and
longing hearts of men.
2. “Showers” are repeated and continued; for season after season
descend the early and the latter rain, and by repeated showers the earth brings
forth and buds, and gives seed to the sower and bread to the eater. So in the
history of the Church, and of every individual believing soul, there has been
given grace for grace, that there might be progress from strength to strength
in the journey Zionward.
3. “Showers” are gratuitous; they come down freely from the clouds,
without money and without price. We could not purchase them, for the silver and
the gold belong to God, as well as the cattle upon a thousand hills. So all
spiritual blessings are free; indeed, they are priceless, as well as peerless.
4. “Showers” are suitable; as they fall upon the earth they make it
soft, and drop fatness into the soil, and become the occasion of beauty and
bountifulness. So the blessings that crown our lives are suitable to our needs
and adapted to minister to our well-being and joy. Especially is this true of
spiritual blessings.
5. “Showers” are gentle. How softly, as a rule, they fall, feeding
the roots of the mightiest trees, and yet not wounding the leaves or blossoms
of the tiniest flowers. How gently our temporal blessings come to us, how
softly the light streams over the earth to gladden our eyes, and how gently the
tide of health flows into our system, to make us strong and fit for our
ever-recurring toils of life. And the blessings that refresh our spirits and
revive our faith, they fall gently upon us while we pray and praise, and nestle
upon our hearts while we engage in Christian work and worship.
II. Temporal and
spiritual blessings, like showers, require the cooperation of man; or the
design with which they descend from above will be frustrated. We must cooperate
with Providence in the temporal blessings sent us, or they will not answer the
end designed. The human and the Divine must work hand in hand. This is equally
true of the Church and of individual souls. God sends down “showers of
blessing,” but there must be preparation for them and cooperation with them;
then the wilderness and solitary place shall be glad, and the desert shall
rejoice and blossom as the rose. Showers come when the land is thirsty, and
when the vapours from the earth have ascended and formed themselves into thick
clouds; and “showers of blessing” will come upon us when our hearts are
thirsty, and cry out for the living God; when our prayer-like clouds of incense
have ascended to Heaven for the downcoming of the Holy Ghost. (F. W. Brown.)
Showers of blessing
1. Here is sovereign mercy--“I will give them the shower in its
season.”
2. Is it not sovereign, Divine mercy?--for who can say, “I will give
them showers,” except God? There is only one voice which can speak to the
clouds, and bid them beget the rain. “Who sendeth down the rain upon the earth?
Do not I, the Lord?” So, grace is the gift of God, and is not to be created by
man.
3. It is also needed grace. What would the ground do without showers?
You may break the clods, you may sow your seeds, but what can you do without
the rain? As absolutely needful is the Divine blessing. In vain you labour,
until God the plenteous shower bestows, and sends salvation down.
4. Then it is plenteous grace. “There shall be showers.” It does not
say, “I will send them drops,” but “showers.” So it is with grace. If God gives
a blessing, He usually gives it in such a measure that there is not room enough
to receive it. Plenteous grace! Ah! we want plenteous grace to keep us humble,
to make us prayerful, to make us holy; plenteous grace to make us zealous, to
preserve us through this fife, and at last to land us in heaven. We cannot do
without saturating showers of grace.
5. Again, it is seasonable grace. “I will cause the shower to come
down in his season.” What is thy season this morning? Is it the season of
drought? Then that is the season for showers. Is it a season of great heaviness
and black clouds? Then that is the season for showers. “As thy days, so shall
thy strength be.”
6. And here is a varied blessing. “I will give thee showers of
blessing.” The word is in the plural. All kinds of blessings God will send. All
God’s blessings go together, like links in a golden chain. If He gives
converting grace, He will also give comforting grace. He will send “showers of
blessing.” Look up today, O parched plant, and open thy leaves and flowers for
a heavenly watering! (C. H. Spurgeon.)
Showers of blessing sent from God
I. The blessings
bestowed on the peculiar people of God are blessings of unspeakable value.
1. Their origin, and the glory and the grace of their author (James 1:17; Ephesians 1:3).
2. The price paid for their purchase (1 Peter 1:18-19; 2 Corinthians 8:9).
3. Our indispensable need of them (Revelation 3:17).
4. The peculiar and transcendent happiness which the possession of
them ensures (Revelation 3:18; Psalms 4:7; Philippians 4:7; 1 Corinthians 2:9).
II. The precious
blessings bestowed on the people of God are incalculably numerous.
1. Can you calculate the number of showers that fall to refresh, to
fructify, and to bless the earth, in the course of the revolving seasons? nay,
I will ask further, can you calculate the number of drops of which each shower
is composed? Then may you calculate the number of blessings bestowed on the
people of God.
2. Can you tell how numerous, or, rather, innumerable, the wants of
God’s people are?
III. The blessings
peculiar to God’s people are all most opportunely bestowed. “I will cause the
shower to come down in his season.” To the young, to the middle-aged, and to
the old, they come just as their various and peculiar circumstances render
necessary. To the poor, to the afflicted, to the tempted, and to the dying, how
seasonable are the supplies of all those blessings especially requisite for
them! The promise in each individual case is fully and happily realised (Deuteronomy 33:25).
IV. The blessings
bestowed on God’s people are all the result of Divine agency.
1. Who but the blessed God could have devised that wondrous plan of
grace, by which the blessings of the everlasting covenant are secured to His
people? (Romans 3:24-26; Romans 11:33.)
2. Who but a Divine person could have paid the price by which these
blessings have been purchased? (Romans 8:3; Romans 8:34; John 1:1, compared with verse 14.)
3. The actual application of these blessings, too, is all of God (Philippians 2:13). Who gives the new
heart? (Ezekiel 36:26.) Who gives pardon? (Isaiah 43:25.) Who sanctifies them? (Exodus 31:13; 1 Thessalonians 5:23.) Who completes
the work of their redemption? (Philippians 1:6; Revelation 3:21.)
Application--
1. It is no presumption to expect great and manifold blessings from
the great and manifold grace of God (Revelation 3:21).
2. What a happy people must the people of God be! (Deuteronomy 33:29.)
3. To God alone we should ascribe the glory and praise of all our
blessings (Psalms 115:1).
4. We should be encouraged, from the receipt of common mercies, to
expect special blessings from God.
5. The wickedest of men may yet be blessed of God (Isaiah 55:1-3). (A. Thomson, D. D.)
Conditions necessary for showers
An Irish gentleman remarked in my hearing that he had always
noticed that when it rained there were clouds about, and so all the air was in
right order for the descent of rain. We have noticed the same, and it so
happens that the clouds and general constitution of the atmosphere have much to
do with the value of moisture for the herbs. It is no good watering them in the
sun, the circumstances do not benefit them. So with revivals. Certain things
done under certain circumstances become abundantly useful, but if you have not
similar circumstances, you may use the same machinery, but mischief instead of
good will follow. Begin yourself with the Master, and then go outward to His
service, but plans of action must be secondary. (C. H. Spurgeon.)
Shall know that I am the
Lord, when I have broken the bands of their yoke.
The yoke removed and the
Lord revealed
But do not all men know
that God is the Lord? They should know it, for He is clearly to be seen in the
works of nature. But man by wisdom knows not God. But do not all know God in
this land--this land where there is so much Gospel teaching? Alas! no. You know
the report of God which you have heard with the hearing of the ear; but that is
a small matter unless it leads to something higher. Those who know the Lord
know that He is still the I am that I am, unchangeable in all respects; and we
know that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, is the same
God who revealed himself at Paran, and came with sound of thunder at Sinai. It
appears from the text that there is a process by which God’s own people are
brought to know the Lord. This process takes place when He breaks the bands of
their yoke. Then they know that the Lord is God. It is clear, therefore, that
He must, first of all permit His own chosen, for a wise purpose, to come into
bondage. I do not commend the bondage; it is a thing to be deplored; but, as
Augustine once cried out, “Beata culpa!” “Happy fault!” when he saw how sin had
made space for the wonderful display of Divine grace, so I venture to say, “Blessed
bondage, which gives an opportunity for our God to come in and set His children
free, and by thus breaking the bands of their yoke to teach them that He
Himself is the Lord.”
I. It is not
difficult to show that the lord breaks the bands of the yoke of His people, for
the yokes which they wear at different times are many, and, in the breaking of
each one of these, they learn that He is the Lord.
1. You cannot forget the first yoke of which you were conscious. It
was a yoke of iron; but you had worn it for many years without feeling it. A
spark of Divine life dropped into your bosom, and then you began to perceive
that a yoke of sin, of guilt, of condemnation under the law, was firmly fixed
upon your neck. Happy is the hour when the Lord breaks that yoke. He alone can
remove it, but He does it most effectually, and then we know that He is Jehovah
our God that brought us out of the house of bondage. To emancipate a soul from
the thraldom of sin is a labour worthy of a God, and to His liberating hand be glory
forever and ever.
2. Then the awakened soul begins to be conscious of a second yoke.
More or less, according to temperament and circumstances, and so on, but still
in each case somewhat, we feel the yoke of natural corruption and inbred sin.
The moment we become Christians an inward battle begins. You may presume that
sin is completely dead in you, but it laughs while you are boasting, and before
long it will make you weep to think that you were so readily deceived. The Lord
can break this yoke also, and tear away each one of its bands. Very joyful is
the deliverance, and when it comes the text is abundantly fulfilled.
3. Another yoke which the Lord’s people have too often borne is that
of a perpetual tendency to unbelief. Many about whose interest in Christ nobody
who knows them can have any doubt at all, whose Christian consistency is beyond
all question, whose prayerfulness, whose love of the Word of God, whose simple,
child-like trust in Jesus Christ is manifested to everybody except themselves,
are nevertheless in heaviness through anxiety as to their state. May the Lord
bring up such brothers and sisters out of their prison, and then shall they
know that He is the Lord when He has broken the bands of their yoke.
4. Some Christians are also loaded with a yoke through great trouble.
If we knew what they have to suffer in business, suffer in body, suffer in the
domestic circle--if we knew the weight they have to carry, we should very often
communicate to them words of comfort, whereas now, through our not knowing,
they are left unheeded, and there is little or no Christian sympathy
manifested. Ah, dear brother, it may be that you have been made to carry a very
heavy yoke for years, but when the Lord shall break the bands of your yoke then
shall you know that He is the Lord.
5. many yokes which God’s people bear they cannot break themselves.
The Lord often puts His people on purpose into positions where there is an end
of the creature, where all carnal hope fails, where you look all around and not
a single ray of light gladdens your weary eye till the star of Bethlehem breaks
forth, and heralds the morning. But let us recollect that though yokes be very
many, and some of them are such that we cannot possibly break them off, yet
there is no yoke but what the Lord can readily enough take from His people. One
of His saints of old recorded his experience in these words, “Out of the depths
have I cried unto Thee, O God, and Thou heardest me.” His experience is that of
all the captives who trust in the Lord.
6. We may expect the Lord to break the bands of our yoke. Christian,
He is bringing you low, He is stripping, you, He is casting you into the mire,
He is beating you small as the dust of the streets, and all because by this
means He will make you see your nothingness, and will cause you more fully to
appreciate the splendour of His grace, and the all-sufficiency of His power.
Knowing this, faith may help us to rejoice in tribulation at the moment it
arrives, saying, “Here is my Father’s black horse come to my door to bring me a
new token of love from Him.”
II. When He does
this then they know Him to be the Lord. Here we come to personal experience.
Beloved, when we have great deliverances from bondage then we begin to see the
Divine attributes displayed.
1. You all believe God to be very powerful, for you have heard His
voice in the thunder, and seen His might in the tempest; but when you have been
brought into very deep distress, and God has brought you out of it with a high
hand and an outstretched arm, then you have said, “Now I see His power. No hand
but His could have moved that burden, and He has done it.”
2. You must also have seen with wonderful vividness the attribute of
wisdom. You have been all in a snarl. You have done your best, and you have
made things worse. You have gone for advice, and the advice has perplexed you.
You have looked in all directions, and the more you have looked the less hope
you have seen; and then, on a sudden, God’s finger has seemed to be put out,
and all the knots have been untied, and His Word has been fulfilled,--“I will
make the crooked places straight and the rough places plain.”
3. The Lord’s love also is clearly revealed in our deliverances.
4. When the bands of our yoke have been broken it is often in answer
to prayer, and because that liberty has come in answer to prayer, we have
exclaimed, “Now I know the Lord.”
5. So, again, we know Him from another reason: the special hand of
God is often seen in the breaking of the yoke of His people--the special hand.
There was a very large sum of money to be paid for the building of the
Orphanage, and I was up with certain friends at Regent’s Park--dining at the
house of one of our brethren. I there mentioned that I was short of some £2000
to meet an account which would very soon be due, but that I was sure that God
would graciously give it, for it was His work and He would supply its needs in
answer to prayer. We were discussing as to whether it was not rather bold to
speak too positively about answers to a prayer of such a kind, and while we
were still discoursing there came a telegram from the Tabernacle to me, saying,
“A person unknown has called and left £2000 in banknotes for the Orphanage.” I
read the telegram to the friends assembled, and their gratitude and
astonishment abounded. My dear old friend, Dr. Brock, who is now with God,
said, “Put down your knives and forks, and let us bless the name of the Lord”;
and he stood up and poured out his heart in a most wonderful manner in devout
thankfulness to the Answerer of prayer. We all heartily joined in that act of
devotion. The Lord was there; we felt His presence as much as if it had been a
sacramental supper, for the Lord had drawn so near to us. If someone had said
to us just then, “Well, you know, this is a coincidence, a mere coincidence,”
we should have laughed, and I for one should have said, “It is a very blessed
coincidence, and I hope it will go on coinciding; for truly it coincides with
the promise and with my faith in God.” The devil does not give his followers
such coincidences. (C. H. Spurgeon.)
The elect produced on men
by the displays of kindness from God
I. The import of
this exceeding great and precious promise.
1. It ensures deliverance from the grievous oppression of cruel,
inveterate, and powerful enemies. As it respects ourselves, we are to regard
the promise as having a chief reference to the deliverance obtained, or to be
obtained, for us from our spiritual foes. It is, accordingly, thus applied (Luke 1:74-75). All genuine saints have the happiness to enjoy “the glorious
liberty of the children of God” (John 8:36; 2 Timothy 2:26; Romans 6:14; 1 John 5:4). To spoil our enemies, to break the bands of their yoke, and
thus to deriver us from their wretched dominion, was one grand design of the
mission and mediation of the Son of God (Isaiah 61:1). It is the grand object He has still in view, by the preaching
of the everlasting Gospel (Acts 26:17-18); and the blessing thus promised is of infinite importance.
2. It ensures abundant supplies for our support. Both the bodies and
the souls of God’s people have been bought with a price; and both, therefore,
shall be supplied with abundance of nourishment. That single promise secures
all (Isaiah 33:16). He who feeds the ravens when they cry, will not surely suffer
His redeemed people to be in want of any kind (Psalms 34:9-10).
3. It ensured to the Israelites great happiness and continued
security in their inheritance. Canaan was typical of heaven, which accordingly
is, in reference to it, denominated “another and a better country, even an
heavenly.” Here, then, it is implicitly promised to all true Israelites, that
they shall ultimately have heaven for their inheritance--that is the land in
which they are to dwell; and how great is the glory of that land! Surely the
people of God shall be safe when there (Revelation 21:4). How great, and boundless, and endless, the happiness of the
inhabitants! (Revelation 7:14-17.)
II. The religious
improvement to be made and to which the accomplishment of the promise was to
lead. “They shall know that I am the Lord.”
1. It would lead the Israelites to acknowledge the existence and the
providence, the glory and the grace of Jehovah, Jacob’s God.
2. It would lead them more and more to admire and love, to worship
and obey, the Lord.
Application--
1. What think you of promises like these? What would you think of
promises from some great man, ensuring temporal abundance, or temporal riches?
But if you have any spiritual discernment, will you not much more value
promises of infinitely better things, especially as coming from God?
2. To whom do you look for the supply of all your wants?
3. What improvement do you make of the kindness of God in the
dispensations of His providence and grace?
4. The enemies of Israel, and of Israel’s God, must perish forever. (A.
Thomson, D. D.)
Verse 29
I will raise up for them a Plant of renown.
The eternal Plant
The symbolism of the Bible forms one of its most interesting and
conspicuous features. As children are oft-times taught the alphabet by the
assistance of pictures, so ancient Israel, living amid the dim shadows of
patriarchal and mosaic times, were instructed in the A B C and rudimental
principles of religious worship and godly knowledge and obedience by the help
of types, prefigurements, symbols. Ezekiel every now and then swells out in
organ strains of grand poetic utterance, calling into use the wealth of
nature’s imagery to embody and symbol forth the wonderful creations of his
inspired and sanctified genius. And strange, yet glorious to say, all this
wealth of biblical imagery, either directly or indirectly, points to and finds
its higher actualisation in “the Christ,” who is the “Alpha and Omega” of
Scripture. We speak not here of Jesus the “Rose” or Jesus the “Lily”; of Jesus
the “Star” or Jesus the “Sun”; of Jesus the “King” or Jesus the “Servant”; of
Jesus the “Foundation” or of Jesus the “Stone of Stumbling”; of Jesus the “Branch”
or of Jesus the “Tree of Life”; but of Jesus the “Plant”--the Eternal “Plant,”
the “Plant of Renown”--of renown among men, angels, seraphs, God! In thought,
memory, and love, let us gather around this “Plant” to meditate, admire, adore.
I. Jesus is an
aromatic “Plant.” He outbreathes an aroma which fills heaven with ecstasy, and
saves earth with its teeming population from moral putrefaction and death.
Christ is an eternal perfume. Angels and archangelic ones drink it in as
flowers drink in the solar ray. And whenever on human soil He is scented for
the first time, it creates an insatiable desire in the soul to daily and hourly
drink at this fountain of sweetest odours.
1. The Bible would have no fragrance were it not for Christ. It would
be mouldy and mildewed, antiquated and repulsive, without the aroma of this
Plant.
2. Preaching would have no refreshing and soul-saving odour without
this Plant. It might have persuasive rhetoric, and convincing logic, and
charming elocution, and faultless learning, and elegant diction--yea, all the
graces and glories of finished composition; nevertheless, devoid of the
aromatic odours of the “Lamb of God”--the one Mediator for and only Saviour of
a fallen world--it would be nothing more than “a sounding brass and a tinkling
cymbal,” or a message surcharged with the “savour of death unto death”!
3. Prayer, too, would have no effect without the perfume of this
Plant. There might be fluency of utterance, beauty of sentence, multiplicity of
words, glowing creations of thought, minute descriptions of want, and
oratorical outbursts of desire and request; but unless fragrant with the
incense of Jesu’s blood, and death, and intercession, it will be but a bundle
of “vain repetitions,” or a jingle of unmeaning terms, unacceptable to God, and
unbenefiting to us.
4. Heaven would have no fragrance but for Christ. Fie is the all of
heaven! The music of its songs, the brightness of its skies, the health of its
atmosphere, the splendour of its sceneries, the vitality, and glory, and wonder
of its inhabitants--ay, the nectar of its unwithering flowers, the eternal
perfume of its homage, worship, service, adoration!
II. Christ is a
medicinal Plant. His “leaves are for the healing of the nations.” He is the
“balm of Gilead,” the “balm for every wound,” the “cordial for every fear.” A
wonderful variety of medicinal virtues is characteristic of this unique Plant.
While as a grand specific for the world’s sin it is one; yet, for the Church’s
manifold ailments it is a repository of all that is needed, suited, effectual.
If you suffer morally from had appetite and “indigestion,” so that you do not
relish the means of grace or the ordinances of the Church, and loathe the food
with which God’s servants try to feed you, through its not being dainty enough,
or too much spiced, or not cooked to your taste--make application to Christ and
He will speedily effect a cure. Or if you suffer from soul “dyspepsia,” which
makes you peevish, discontented, morose, and querulous in the church and in the
family and in the business, so that you are an unwholesome sample to the world
of our glorious Christianity--come to Christ and tell Him all and He will send
you healthy and happy away.
III. Jesus is an
unwithering Plant. Not only evergreen, ever-verdant, ever-fresh, but eternally
enduring. The frosts of time cannot nip it; the roll of centuries cannot fade
it; the heat of a myriad persecution--suns cannot scorch it; the blasts of all
storms, and the blights of all winters, and the changes of all seasons, and the
sweep and swing of all eternities, cannot sear, shrivel, wither it! In two of
its ingredients--qualities--it stands in sublime and unapproachable isolation,
namely, immutability and eternity. It is immutable, because eternal from
necessity, and eternal from necessity because uncaused and infinite.
IV. Jesus Christ is
a universal Plant. In other words, a Plant in every place, being omnipresent;
and a Plant for every sinner’s appropriation, being suitable and sufficient.
None can monopolise it, any more than they can monopolise the sunlight, the
rain, the dew. It is the property of all in general, but of everyone who
believes in particular. He is “the Saviour of the world.” He is for “the
healing of the nations.” “All men are to be blessed in Him.” As the old sun shines
on every shore, so this Plant shall cast its healing shadow over every land,
and drop its “sovereign balm” in every receptive heart, and be renowned by all
languages and peoples. (J. O. Keen, D. D.)
The plant of renown
I. Its nature.
There never was such another. The plant has two perfectly distinct natures. In
the language of the Song of Solomon it is both “white and ruddy.” Each of those
two natures is complete in all its attributes. Christ was perfect God, and at
the same time perfect man.
II. Its beauty.
Every believer will acknowledge this. Feeling how exactly suitable the Lord
Jesus is to meet your every want, you admire all that concerns Him.
III. Its
fruitfulness. The Lord God, who in the beginning gave to man every tree for
meat, has given us Christ for the same purpose. Other trees have only one
species of fruit, but this produces twelve manners of fruits: fruits for every
season: fruits for prosperity; fruits for adversity; fruits for every occasion
that can possibly arise; fruits for newborn converts; fruits for those of riper
experience; fruits for fathers and mothers in Israel; fruits suited to every
individual whom the Holy Spirit leads to Christ.
IV. Its permanency.
Its branches will be ever stretching forth, the glory of Paradise. Its leaves
will never lose their healing virtues. Its fruits will be as delicious ten
thousand ages hence, as they will be in the very commencement of your future
eternity. No one that takes shelter beneath its branches will ever be compelled
to flee from under it.
V. Its fragrancy.
In whatever sanctuary He is preached, how fragrant is He there! In whatever
book He is set forth, how fragrant is He there! The leaves of that book all
smell of myrrh, aloes, cassia, and all manner of sweet spices. How fragrant,
too, is any house which is the abode of even one of the Lord’s redeemed people!
How fragrant is any parish, any country, where believers are multiplied,
walking in the fear of the Lord, and in the comfort of the Holy Ghost!
VI. Its shadow.
There will come seasons when you will find the hot winds of severe afflictions
beating so vehemently upon your heads, that, without Christ’s supporting grace,
you will be brought to your wits’ end, and will be at the point to die. Oh,
that you would see how sad is your condition compared with that of Christ’s
people in their trials and difficulties!
VII. Its celebrity.
In one respect this plant resembled others. In its origin it was tittle
accounted of. In His incarnation, humiliation, and death, He was comparatively
despised and rejected; but springing up, in His resurrection, ascension and
heavenly glory, He has become greatly renowned, and is daily made more so by
the spreading of His Gospel throughout all nations. I conclude by a two-fold
admonition.
1. Feed upon this plant yourselves.
2. Make it known to others. (C. Clayton, M. A.)
Christ the Plant of renown
I. Some plants are
renowned for their rareness. Anything that is rarely to be met with in this
world is all the more valued, because it is uncommon. If it be really valuable
in itself, it is prized not merely because of its intrinsic excellence, but
doubly prized because it is rare. Now, in this respect, Christ may well be
called the Plant of renown. He is the only-begotten and well-beloved Son of
God. In every view Christ is rare and precious. To be convinced of this, think
not merely of His original glory, nor of His mysterious person; but think also
of what He is and has done for His people. Truly we must say, He is the
unspeakable gift of God--a gift that stands out prominently from all the other
gifts of our heavenly Father--a gift with which no other can be compared--yea,
with whose infinite value the united value of all other gifts together is not
to be put into the balance. As to His love, if we try to speak of it, we must
close by saying, that it passeth knowledge. As to His sufferings, if we try to
describe them, we must admit that they exceed all our conceptions, and that
there never was any sorrow like unto His sorrow. As to His riches, if we try to
reckon them, we must end with the confession that they are unsearchable riches.
As to His excellence, both in Himself and as the Saviour of His people, if we
try to speak of it, we must admit, after all illustrations and comparisons,
that it is unparalleled and inconceivably great.
II. Some plants are
renowned for their beauty. Some for the gorgeous richness of their colour;
others for the delicate paleness of their hue--some for the elegant, form and
loveliness of their flower; others for the stately and majestic appearance of
the plant itself. And most assuredly Christ may in this respect be called the
Plant of renown. In Him we see every variety of colour and shade, which,
combined, constitute the perfection of beauty. The most lovely sight which this
world ever saw was the character of Jesus. Everything which pure and holy
beings can admire, is to be seen in Jesus. View the graces separately, and you
see each of them perfect in Christ--humility in His becoming a man--meekness in
bearing insults--gentleness in administering reproofs--patience in enduring
sufferings--devotedness to His Father’s will, which made Him say, that in the
doing of it He had meat to eat which the world knew not of--devotion, which
wearied not of whole nights spent in prayer--benevolence, which knew no bounds
in the bestowment of blessings--heavenly-mindedness, which made Him, though in
the world, not of it. These graces shine each of them gloriously in the
character of Jesus, and all of them combined constitute that perfect excellence
which saints and angels shall admire forever.
III. Some plants are
renowned for their fragrance. Sweet smelling flowers and fragrant plants are
felt even here to be most delightful and refreshing; but in the East, there are
plants of such rich fragrance, as we can have no conception of at all in these
northern climes. To pass a garden of aromatic herbs, when the gentle breeze
causes the sweet spices to flow forth, is perfectly delightful to the weary
traveller. And in this respect, too, Christ may be called the Plant of renown.
What a sweet savour there is about all the graces and excellencies of Christ!
You cannot come to the contemplation of His character without feeling that you
are breathing a pure and holy atmosphere, grateful as the spicy breezes of the
East to those who are faint and weary. The death of Christ is an offering and a
sacrifice to God of a sweet smelling savour, and the Lord is well pleased for
His righteousness’ sake, seeing He hath magnified the law and made it
honourable. And anxious souls feel that it has a delightful fragrance, when
their hearts are cheered, and revived, and comforted, as they behold the Lamb
of God taking away the sins of the world. Never was weary traveller, when like
to faint under the burning rays of an eastern sun, so revived and refreshed by
the spicy breezes, as poor souls, ready to faint under a burden of sin, and
amid the trials of the world, are refreshed and cheered by the sweet savour
that there is in Christ.
IV. Some plants are
renowned for their healing virtue. It is a proof of the goodness and
benevolence of God that, while this world, in consequence of the Fall, is
filled with disease and pain, there are medicinal plants whose application has
a healing efficacy. And in this respect, as well as those already mentioned,
Christ may be called the Plant of renown. From the Saviour on the Cross there
flows a healing virtue to cure all the diseases of our souls. The blood and
grace of Jesus are the precious balm. It is balm extracted from the wounded
Tree of Life--from the pierced side of Immanuel; and it is effectual in curing
the envenomed bite of the old serpent, the devil in mortifying the wounds which
the arrows of conviction have made in our souls, and in completely healing the
loathsome disease of sin.
V. Some plants are
renowned for the shelter they afford from the scorching rays of the sun. Even
in our own climate it is often most refreshing, when oppressed with heat, to
recline under the shade of a spreading tree. And how much more delightful for
an eastern traveller to come to a shady tree, under whose wide-spreading
branches he may lie down upon the cool ground and rest himself! Flow delightful
for the eastern shepherds, when they have conducted their flocks to the place
of rest at noon, to lie down and rest themselves in the shade! But, oh, how
infinitely more delightful for the poor sinner to sit down under the shadow of
the Plant of renown! The branches of the trees of Paradise were no covering to
guilty Adam, but under the shadow of the Tree of Life the awakened sinner may
lie down and take quiet rest, assured that the wrath of God will never reach
him any more.
VI. Some plants are
renowned for the excellent fruits which they bear. This is a quality for which
the plant here spoken of is renowned; for the consequence of its being raised
up to God’s people is, that they shall no more be consumed with hunger in the
land. If it be delightful to a weary traveller to lie down at noon under the
cool shade of a spreading tree, it is especially so when the tree is laden with
mellow and delicious fruit, which the traveller may pluck and eat for the
quenching of his thirst. In this respect, every believer finds Christ to be the
Plant of renown, and it is while he feeds upon Christ by faith that he is no
more consumed with hunger in this batten land. (John Laird.)
Christ as a Plant of renown
.--
I. He is renowned
in His stately beauty. He towers high above all the trees of the great forests
of the world, and His branches, adorned with lovely foliage, spread out in all
directions over all. Christ is the incarnation of the highest moral beauty; He
is altogether lovely.
II. He is renowned
for His wonderful fruitfulness. He is the Tree of Life, His fruits are for the
healing of the nations. His fruits are sufficient to feed and bless all hungry
souls. Who of all the children of men ever accomplished one-thousandth part of
the good that Christ has accomplished?
III. He is renowned
for His remedial virtues. He has a sovereign “balm for every wound,” He “binds
up the broken-hearted,” He is the “Great Physician.” He is a cure for guilt,
for fear, for remorse, and for all the disorders of the mind.
IV. He is renowned
for His great durability. All human plants wither, decay, and pass away; but He
continues unchanged through the centuries. (Homilist.)
Jesus, a Plant of renown
The Creator has implanted love for the beautiful in our hearts for
very wise and beneficent purposes; not that we may be like the briar, creeping
along the ground, nor like thorns or nettles, pricking and stinging those who
are brave enough to touch us; nor like the poppy, very showy and vain, but very
empty and weak; and certainly not like the thistle, full of ill-will to
everybody that shall take hold upon us. I think God wanted to show us of His
great love to us; for if He had not loved us, He would never have thrown, in
their variety, fragrance, and beauty, such proofs of His love all around us.
And further, He intended to teach us to imitate the flowers, to try and be
beautiful and fragrant, kind and pleasing, and not to live so much for
ourselves as to impart joy to others. To an attentive listener, the flowers and
plants are quite eloquent as they preach to us the graces and virtues of
religion. The flowers are ever speaking to us of Jesus. Isaiah prophesied of
the coming of “A root of Jesse”; Solomon called the Lord Jesus “The lily of the
valley and the rose of Sharon.” So theft if when we next go into a garden we
will only think, we shall meet with things to lift up our minds and affections
to Jesus.
I. Why Jesus is
the “Plant of renown.”
1. His great beauty. It is impossible for us to say what Jesus was
personally, that is, His physical appearance; nor can such a subject concern us
much. Many who show little or no physical beauty reveal high intellectual and
spiritual worth, and if we look at Jesus through this channel, we shall soon
find that He was the most beautiful plant that eyes of man ever looked upon. No
one ever said such beautiful things as Jesus. Whether He was on the sea or on a
mountain apart, whether at a marriage feast or at a funeral, whether surrounded
only by His beloved disciples or by the inquisitive eager multitudes, whether
at home with His parents, in the house of Martha and Mary, on the Mount of
Olives, or even hanging on the Cross, no one ever uttered such beautiful
sayings as He. He was, for beauty, the “Plant of renown,” if we look at the
character Fie possessed. No passion marred it, no sin spotted it, no darkness
eclipsed it, no sorrow dimmed it, nor did any combination of forces impair or weaken
it,. Then His worthiness to be called the “Plant of renown” is seen if we call
to mind the beautiful deeds He accomplished. It was a beautiful thing for Jesus
to leave His home and glory in heaven, and to come to suffer and bleed and die
for us. And how full was that life of beautiful acts! Nazareth and Capernaum,
Bethlehem and Jerusalem, Bethany and the Mount of Olives, all say His life was
crowded with deeds most beautiful; and therefore Ezekiel was quite right when
he said that Jesus was a “Plant of renown.”
2. If we examine His marvellous strength we shall find another right,
or title, to the figure. There are some things exceedingly beautiful, but they
are so weak that we are afraid of damaging if we only touch them. Had not Jesus
been as remarkable for His strength as for His beauty, He would have been
destroyed by the rough elements that surged around, and wasted their strength
upon Him. The world put forth its energy to destroy this Plant; its prejudice,
its envy, its malice, its hate, its unbelief, its authority, and its
allurements were all brought forward to destroy Jesus; but His strength was
superior to all, and so He said, “I have overcome the world.” Satan, he who
overcame the first Adam, and who since the victory then won has weakened, broken,
defaced, and destroyed many and many beautiful plants,--Satan brought his great
power to bear upon Jesus, the “Plant of renown”; but here he was foiled and
defeated. So strong was Jesus that he overcame the devil And what for strength
this “Plant of renown” was, it still remains. Not the roll of nineteen hundred
years has at all impaired it; neither in root, nor leaf, nor flower has it
suffered any decay. This Plant is a strength-giving Plant. Jesus has power to
comfort the sorrowful, to help the helpless, to guide the perplexed, to release
the prisoner, to make bold the diffident, and to cause the barren to be
fruitful. Yes, “He is mighty to save, and He travels in the greatness of His
strength.”
3. His healing properties. I can’t think there are many people who
would refuse to have in their possession a plant which could cure all their
maladies, or turn their maladies into blessings. Certain I am that if any
gardener could exhibit such a plant for sale, he could have almost any price
for it, and then be utterly unable to meet all demands. Now, Ezekiel’s “Plant
of renown” is a plant of this character. And yet--oh, marvellous to
relate!--men, women, and even young people, are seldom eager to possess it.
4. Jesus is the “Plant of renown” because of the fruit He bears.
Perhaps if you were to search very minutely and very long, you might meet with
a boy who does not care for plants because of their beauty, or with a girl who
thinks little of them because of any healing virtue they may have; but I don’t
think any searching would find boy or girl who would care nothing about any
fruit you might mention as produced by plants. The possessors of this Plant
have Christ formed in their hearts, and they bring forth fruit unto
holiness,--“they grow in grace,” and are “pure in heart.” No plant, then, for
beauty, strength, healing power, and fruit, can compare with Ezekiel’s “Plant
of renown.”
II. Where Jesus is
this “Plant of renown.” “Everything in its place,” is a capital maxim. There
are places where we might as well search for sunshine at midnight as for this
“Plant of renown.” I shall not ask you to look for this Plant in the writings
of infidelity, for if it could be found there, it would only be that it might
be insulted and, if possible, destroyed. I shall not ask you to search for it
in the multitudinous volumes of light, fictitious literature with which we are
almost deluged; such a soft has neither depth nor richness sufficient for this
Plant.
1. Jesus is a “Plant of renown” in the Bible. I want to compare the
Bible to a conservatory; and I think we shall find it the very best
conservatory the world has ever seen. Let us go inside, for our fathers many
years ago opened wide the door, and now we are quite welcome to enter. How
beautifully it is fitted up, and what an assemblage of colour and fragrance,
what unspeakably rare plants are here; and all preserved in excellent order.
But now just listen; what can it be these plants are all saying? “We have no
root of ourselves, no beauty underived, no fragrance our own, no fruit
naturally, no life independent; for all these things we are dependent, and
dependent only, upon Ezekiel’s ‘Plant of renown.’“
2. Jesus is a “Plant of renown” in all the intercourse held between
man and God.” Who has not heard of “the missing link”? Jesus is the only
missing link of union between God and us. God’s character is one of holiness,
justice, truth, and love; man’s character is one of sin, injustice, falsehood,
and hate. Oh, what can bring the two together? Heaven and earth combined, proclaim,
“Jesus of Nazareth, the Plant of renown.”
3. Jesus is a “Plant of renown” in the hearts of God’s people. The
moment Jesus enters the soul, all sickness and darkness, all parchedness and
blight, entirely disappear, and, with the “Plant of renown” right in the
centre, the heart becomes like the garden of the Lord.
4. Jesus is a “Plant of renown” in the history of the entire world.
What a great deal that history will have to say about His coming into and His
growth in our world; about the influence of Jesus in all cottages and palaces,
in all courts and camps, and in all counsels, whether of Churches or of States.
How that history will show, in characters of living light, His value as
Redeemer, Saviour, Friend, and King. How it will ascribe to Him preeminence in
all things--in virtue, truth, goodness, grace, sanctity, glory, and everything
else that is lovely and of good report; ever presenting to Him the homage and
love of a glorified and saved Church, out of all nations, and peoples, and
tongues under heaven.
5. Jesus will be the “Plant of renown” in heaven. Gabriel, Michael,
the whole company of the angelic world, cherubim and seraphim, are all like so
many plants of rare excellence; but no plant in heaven like Jesus. Think, too,
of the plants that have gone from our garden plots here, from our homes, and
from our hearts. All gone: we see them not, we hear them not: the Master hath
called them. But whilst they were here they were “plants of the Lord’s right
hand planting,” “trees of righteousness.” Then what, after years of holy
culture and constant growth, must such be in heaven? Who now shall estimate
their beauty or worth? But high above and far beyond all others in heaven, will
be the Lord Jesus, the “Plant of renown.”
The Plant of renown
I. The glory of
the Saviour, as intimated by the metaphorical designation here given to Him--“a
Plant of renown.”
1. The glory that surrounded Him, even amidst the greatest depth of
His humiliation.
2. His triumphant resurrection from the grave, and His exaltation to honour
and glory at His Father’s right hand.
3. The triumphs of His Gospel, from the earliest period of its
proclamation to the present day.
4. The Divine predictions of His millennial glory on earth, and His
perpetual reign in heaven.
II. The agency of
God the Father in securing all this glory to the Saviour. Jehovah is the
Speaker; and He says, “I will raise up a Plant of renown” (verse 23).
1. God the Father called the Saviour, and set Him apart to His work.
2. God the Father sent our Saviour into our world clothed in our
nature.
3. God the Father qualified Him for His work, and assisted Him in it.
4. God the Father, as a proof of His love, and as the reward of His
services, gave Him all that renown which He had acquired.
III. The blessedness
of Christ’s people, in consequence of His elevation to glory, or renown for
their sakes.
1. In consequence of the work and exaltation of Him who is here
denominated “a Plant of renown,” His people shall be at once freed from want,
and blessed with abundance.
2. In consequence of the work and exaltation of Christ, His people
shall be at once freed from shame, and loaded with honour.
Application--
1. Give glory to God for raising up for you a Plant of renown.
2. Live constantly by the faith of Him who was once greatly humbled,
but is now highly exalted for your sakes.
3. Days of darkness and distress will to believers be succeeded by
days of joy and triumph.
4. Use the means of making the Redeemer more renowned.
5. All must be exposed to want and eternal ruin who have no connexion
with Christ as the Plant of renown. (A. Thomson, D. D.)
The Plant of renown
I. Premise a few
things concerning this blessed Plant.
1. What is here ascribed to Christ, is not to be understood
absolutely of Him as God, but officially--as He is Mediator and Redeemer.
2. This Plant is but small and little in the eyes of a blind world.
3. However contemptible this Plant of renown is in the eyes of a
blind world, yet He is the tallest plant in all God’s Lebanon.
4. This blessed Plant of renown was cut down in His death, and sprung
up gloriously in His resurrection.
5. All the little plants in the garden are ingrafted in this Plant of
renown.
II. He is a
renowned Plant. He is renowned in heaven, and He is renowned on earth, and will
be so (Psalms 72:17).
1. He is renowned for His antiquity.
2. He is renowned for His beauty. The glory of a God is in Him Is
there any glory in His eternal Father? Why, that glory shines in our Immanuel
in the very brightness of it (Hebrews 1:3).
3. He is renowned for His verdure, for His perpetual greenness. Other
plants are fading.
4. He is renowned for His virtue. We read in Revelation 22:1-21, “That the leaves of
the tree of life were for the healing of the nations,”--that tree of life is
the very same with this Plant of renown; the leaves of this Plant are for the
healing of the nations; and we that are ministers are come this day to scatter
the leaves of this tree of life, of this Plant of renown; try if you can get a
leaf of it applied and set home upon your souls; depend upon it, there is
virtue in every word of His.
5. He is renowned for His fertility: He is not a barren Plant; He
would not be renowned if He were barren; He brings forth all manner of fruit
every month; yea, I may add, every day, every moment. There is the fruit of His
incarnation; there is the fruit of His death; there is the fruit of His
resurrection; there is the fruit of His ascension; there is the fruit of His
intercession, and sitting at the right hand of God; there is the fruit of His
prophetic office; there is the fruit of His priestly office; there is the fruit
of His kingly office; there is the fruit of His appearing within the vail;
there is the fruit of what He did without the vail, and without the camp. Oh,
what fruit is here!
6. He is renowned for His scent, and pleasant savour (Song of Solomon 1:2). The believer finds
a scent about Him, he draws a savour from Him. What is the design of us
ministers but to cast abroad His scent; and it is by this we win souls.
7. He is renowned for His shadow (Song of Solomon 2:3). Oh, sit down under
His shadow, and you will find shelter there against all deadly; whatever blasts
come, you will find safety there; would you be shadowed from the king of
terrors, death is a terror to many. Oh, if you would be shadowed against the
awful terrors of death and God’s vengeance, get in under this shadow, and you
are safe.
8. This Plant is renowned for His stature; He is a high Plant, He is
a tall Plant. You see the heavens above you, but they are but creeping things
in comparison of Him; but this glorious Plant, “He is the high and lofty one
that inhabits eternity,” you can never see His height.
9. This Plant is renowned for His extent, not only for His stature,
but He is a broad Plant. He was planted in the first promise in Paradise, He
spread through the Old Testament Church, He came the length of filling the land
of Judaea, but at length this Plant has spread among us, and oh, that I could
spread Him among you!
III. The raising or
upbringing of this Plant.
1. He was raised up in the counsel of God’s peace from eternity.
2. He was raised up in the first promise to Adam and Eve.
3. His actual manifestation in the flesh, when, in the fulness of
time, He appeared.
4. This Plant was raised up, even in His death.
5. This Plant was raised up in His resurrection from the dead. For in
His resurrection from the dead He was “declared to be the Son of God with
power, by the Spirit of holiness.”
6. This Plant of renown was raised up higher in His ascension into
heaven, when He was set “down on the right hand of the Majesty on high,” after
He had, by Himself, purged our sins.
7. He is raised up likewise in the revelation of the everlasting
Gospel.
8. This Plant of renown is raised up in the day of the Church’s
reformation.
9. This Plant of renown will be raised up at His second coming.
10. This Plant of renown will be raised up in the songs of the
redeemed through endless eternity.
IV. For whom is it
that this Plant is raised up? He is raised up for mankind sinners, not for
angel-kind sinners, and every mankind sinner that hears tell of Him should lay
claim to Him (Isaiah 9:6). As the firmament is for you,
if you will open your eyes, so the Sun of Righteousness is for you, if you will
open your hearts to Him: for the Lord’s sake do not refuse Him, or else it will
not be telling you; you will rue it to eternity.
V. Why is He
raised up?
1. He is raised up as a Redeemer to set the captives of the mighty at
liberty.
2. He is raised up as a Mediator of the new covenant, to make peace
between an offended God, and offending rebellious man, He “makes reconciliation
for iniquity” (Daniel 9:24).
3. He is raised up as a Surety, to pay the debt of a company of
broken divers, and to bind Himself under a bond to satisfy justice for their
crimes, and that He should reduce them to obedience to their offended Lord.
Hence He is called (Hebrews 7:25).
4. He is raised up as a renowned Healer, a non-such Physician. He has
opened up a medicinal well (Zechariah 13:1) that washes from sin and
uncleanness, and, whatever be your malady, we invite you to come to this well,
and wash and be clean.
5. He is raised up as a Witness to tell the truth, or as a Prophet to
reveal it.
6. He is raised up as Leader unto the people, to show us the path of
life, and to lead us into it, and, by His leading, He causes the wayfaring man
to walk without erring,--“I will bring the blind by a way they know not,” etc.
7. He is raised up as a Commander unto the people, as the Captain of
salvation, to fight our battles for us, and to head the armies of God’s Israel
in their way to glory. And, by His skill and conduct, He makes them all
conquerors, yea, more than conquerors, etc.
VI. Application. Is
it so that Christ is a Plant of renown, raised up by Jehovah? Then--
1. See hence the iniquity and wickedness of these men who study to
derogate from the glory of this renowned Plant.
2. See hence how to know a true and faithful minister of Christ. He
will have a smell of the Plant of renown about him, whether he be in the pulpit
or out of it.
3. See hence whence it is that believers flock to Gospel ordinances,
where they can get them dispensed by those that bear Christ’s commission to
dispense them. It is the smell of the Plant of renown that draws them thither.
4. See hence why God the Father is called a Husbandman. He is so
called with reference unto His raising up this Plant of renown (John 15:1).
5. See hence the regard that God hath for His Church upon earth, as
His own garden. Why, He plants this Tree of Life in her, by which she became a
new paradise:
6. See hence the excellency of Christ, in His Person, nature,
offices, and appearances.
7. See what makes a land or a church pleasant, a Hephzibah or a
Beulah unto the Lord. If the Plant of renown and His interest be thriving in a
land or Church, it makes her “beautiful for situation, the joy of the whole
earth,” etc.
8. See when it is that a Church loses her beauty and glory, and makes
defection. It is when Christ loses His Savour among her ministers and
professors.
9. See hence how a person may know whether matters be right or wrong,
whether he be thriving and prospering in grace, or if he be decaying and going
backward. Is the Plant of renown rising or going back with you? If He be
rising, then--
10. If Christ be the Plant of renown, raised up by His eternal Father,
may it not be for matter of lamentation that the Plant of renown is in so
little request among us at this day, and that there is such a plucking away of
the glory of this blessed Plant?
11. Is it so that Christ is a Plant of renown raised up by Jehovah?
Then let all that bear the name of Chris, especially you who have been
entertained at His table, and tasted of His special love and goodness, study to
answer God’s design, in raising up for us this Plant of renown.
The Plant of renown
Christ is frequently spoken of as a tree, a branch, a root, a
stem, a rod, a lily, a rose. But the word plant has a signification somewhat
different. What we plant we cultivate, sow the seed maybe, watch the growth,
and tend in its maturity. And the plant here spoken of would refer to the human
work and human nature of our Lord, arranged and developed by Divine wisdom.
I. The seed was
sown in the eternal counsels of God. We know that the purpose existed before
the world was formed. There was the sowing of the plant.
II. The growing.
The plant started above the soil when man fell. Its green leaves showed
themselves when the promise was given as to the seed of the woman which was to
bruise the serpent’s head.
III. The developing.
In teaching, symbol, ritual, prophecy, the light gradually dawned.
IV. The blossoming.
When Christ came visibly into the world, He “blossomed like a rose.” His words
were as fragrance. His acts of mercy and love beautified the earth, and filled
all nations with their beauty.
V. The fruit
bearing. The plant flowered, and apparently withered when Christ was put to
death. But out of that very fact we see the result of ripened seed--“The flower
abideth alone, except it die,” and Christ’s death caused the seed to be
scattered abroad, which should cause the whole world to bloom. The seed of
life, joy, hope.
VI. The honour
giving eternal glory. “A Plant of renown.” It is not a mere passing, fading,
temporary, useless growth. It is renowned for its beauty--the essence of the
Father’s glory; for its usefulness--the covert and shelter of all people; for
its continuance--it shall never fade; for its fruitfulness--it shall nourish
all mankind. Happy is the man who finds shelter and rest in Him. (Homilist.)
The Messianic conception in the prophets
The attempt is sometimes made to trace a gradual development and
enrichment of the Messianic idea in the hands of successive prophets. From that
point of view Ezekiel’s contribution to the doctrine of the Messiah must be
felt to be disappointing. No one can imagine that his portrait of the coming
King possesses anything like the suggestiveness and religious meaning conveyed
by the ideal which stands out so clearly from the pages of Isaiah. And, indeed,
no subsequent prophet excels or even equals Isaiah in the clearness and
profundity of his directly Messianic conceptions. This fact shows us that the
endeavour to find in the Old Testament a regular progress along one particular
line proceeds on too narrow a view of the scope of prophecy. The truth is that
the figure of the King is only one of the many types of the Christian
dispensation which the religious institutions of Israel supplied to the
prophets. It is the most perfect of all types, partly because it is personal,
and partly because the idea of kingship is the most comprehensive of the
offices which Christ executes as our Redeemer. But, after all, it expresses
only one aspect of the glorious future of the kingdom of God towards which
prophecy steadily points. We must remember also that the order in which these
types emerge is determined not altogether by their intrinsic importance, but
partly by their adaptation to the needs of the age in which the prophet lived.
The main function of prophecy was to furnish present and practical direction to
the people of God; and the form under which the ideal was presented to any
particular generation was always that best fitted to help it onwards, one stage
nearer to the great consummation. Thus while Isaiah idealises the figure of the
king, Jeremiah grasps the conception of a new religion under the form of a
covenant, the second Isaiah unfolds the idea of the prophetic servant of
Jehovah, Zechariah and the writer of the 110th Psalm idealise the priesthood.
All these are Messianic prophecies, if we take the word in its widest
acceptation; but they are not all cast in one mould, and the attempt to arrange
them in a single series is obviously misleading. So with regard to Ezekiel we
may say that his chief Messianic ideal (still using the expression in a general
sense) is the sanctuary, the symbol of Jehovah’s presence in the midst of His
people. At the end of chap. 37, the kingdom and the sanctuary are mentioned
together as pledges of the glory of the latter days. But while the idea of the
Messianic monarchy was a legacy inherited from his prophetic precursors, the
Temple was an institution whose typical significance Ezekiel was the first to
unfold. It was, moreover, the one that met the religious requirements of the
age in which Ezekiel lived. Ultimately the hope of the personal Messiah loses
the importance which it still has in the present section of the book; and the
prophet’s vision of the future concentrates itself on the sanctuary as the
centre of the restored theocracy, and the source from which the regenerating
influences of the Divine grace flow forth to Israel and the world. (John
Skinnier, M. A.)
No more consumed with
hunger in the land.
Education true and false
What a tempting thing it is to try to put right some of the evils
of the world by short and easy methods! To check some of the waste of natural
wealth which keeps falling away. To take drastic measures for supplying the
wants of the starving, and to cut, off occasion from those who misuse the
privilege of plenty! To drain off vice into channels of virtue; to make the
weary to lie down, the sufferer to rejoice, the ignorant to know, the oppressed
to go free! We are tempted to think that it is, after all, only the involved
complications of a novel, which a word of explanation and a mere handful of
advice can rectify at once. And so, from time to time, people have descended,
and do descend, into the arena of the world, whether sent by God directly, or
by the prompting of their own heart. Reformers, statesmen, theorists,
philanthropists, each with their schemes of regeneration, amelioration, or
progress. But, alas! a great number in the end find that they must retire,
baffled by the almost superhuman wrong-headedness of mankind; and perhaps feel
that an interference, well meant, has only complicated a problem which was
sufficiently difficult before. Now, one of the most imposing panaceas for
regenerating society (and rightly so) is education. Education means, I suppose,
a drawing forth of the human powers by instruction, by training, by discipline,
by rewards, by punishments, by fostering care; education, says the popular
voice of utilitarian England, means furnishing a child with useful knowledge.
“See the waste of material going on in the world, teach him how to use the
advantages which come in his path; see the evils of intemperance and vice, show
him the beauty of morality; see the political errors of former years, educate
our masters in the thin principles of political history; see the squalor and
penury and extravagance which is all around us, teach them thrift.” “And what
about religion?” Here we are told that there are so many hundred religious
sects, and so much disputing, that it is a question which can be approached
only with difficulty. It is one of the darkest blots in the religious world in
England at the present day, that whereas the Church, the true mother yearning
for all her children, is yet willing to give up the child to the mother that
claims it, rather than that the child should be taught undenominationalism or
no religion at all; there are found those who are not ashamed to betray their
lack of true motherly feeling for the little ones of Christ’s flock, by crying
out in all the bitterness of sectarian partisanship, “Let the child be neither
mine nor thine, divide it.” Let it be taught no religion at all, let it be
brought up on that desiccated, sterile, lifeless inanity known as
undenominational religion--a supposed “residuum” of Christianity left from the
contentious controversies of the sects, “to which no one has any particular
objection,” except the few who are allowed a separate treatment of unusual
favour, and the Roman Catholics who are far too wise to be taken in by the
offer of a stone which has not even the appearance of bread. The blasts of
sectarian controversy ought to be kept away from the education question
altogether. In the first place, is it right, is it fair, either to secular or
to religious education, practically to divorce them, and to allow the child to
see and draw his own conclusions from the fact that the Tree of Life and the
Tree of Knowledge are planted by different hands? The State ought not to be
willing to part with religious teaching, and the Church ought not to be willing
to part with secular teaching. They form one sacred responsibility. Again, is
it fair that Sunday, the day of religious worship and real recreation, should
be made a day of slavery to the child already overpowered by a burden of
ever-increasing educational requirements? The question which we are being
called upon to decide is really the question as between religious and
irreligious education in the long run; between education and that which can
only lay claim by sufferance to that name. It has its promise. It, too, says,
“I will raise up unto you a plant of renown.” A great future is in store for an
instructed nation. “Ye shall no more be consumed with hunger”; material
progress, intellectual progress, lie at the feet of an enlightened people; “ye
shall not bear the shame of the heathen any more”; ye shall be emancipated from
the swaddling bands of an effete superstition. Yes, but the response is
inadequate; the uneducated passions rise up in rebellion against the educated
reason. There are certain powers within which do not bow to reason. Vice in its
rebellious fury, dishonesty, greed, idleness, these are not to be tied down
with the two ropes of a mere intellectual education. God puts before the
children in our schools a plant of renown--something higher than the example of
a successful tradesman, or a provident saver, or a moral improver, or an
example of self-help. God puts before each of our children--high and low, rich
and poor--a plant of renown, a high and holy example of One who grew up before
Him as a tender plant; who knew the sorrows and needs and joys of childhood,
the trials and griefs of opening boyhood, the hardships and the triumphs of
manhood, and the mystery of death Can you suppose for an instant the perfect
man, Jesus Christ, dividing off His life into the sharp division of the
religious and useful? His work was religious, and religion ran up into His
work. It is an immense thing for children to have an enthusiasm, to read the
lives of heroes, of inventors, of philanthropists, of self-elevated men. But of
how far greater importance is it to have a life always put before them, in all
its supernatural bearing, a life to which they may cling in prayer and praise,
a life which shines through the pages of the Bible, as the sun through some
painted window, mere lead and glass without it. There is a time when mere
useful knowledge ceases to satisfy; there is a hunger for a comforter, for
peace, for truth, for a Saviour, for a very present help in trouble. There is a
hunger for God. Ah, how sad to think of our great philosopher, with his keen,
magnificent intellect--no Atheist, as he himself has told us, because he had
never been taught to believe in God, and therefore could not reject Him. With
natural affections apparently stamped out of him, with a life written by his
own hand, which has in it no mention of a mother’s love; yet, strange to say,
humanly speaking, sacrifices his life and health at the grave of one whom he
loved with an affection which had satisfied his longing, only to leave the pang
of a separation behind it, and leave him beating against the bars of death
unillumined by a glimpse of eternity. Are we to send our children into the world
where there is the famine of uncertainty and doubt and the shadow of death,
with the hunger for peace and comfort and pardon unsatisfied; without showing
them where alone the food can be found which will still the craving? If we part
with our children, we are parting with the young blood of the Church. The
Spartans were asked in a day of humiliation to hand over fifty children to be
hostages to the enemy, and the answer was, We would rather give you a hundred
of our best men. They may succeed where we have failed, they may conquer where
we have been beaten, and live to retrieve our honour. So I would say, we would
pinch and starve, if necessary, other things which seem almost necessary to the
well-being of our parishes--our very beauty of worship itself,--but we will
keep our children in our hands. When they are ours we know what to do with
them. When we part with them, we part with them to that which is at the best a
doubtful future, and then we are parting with the young blood of the Church.
The teaching of the Church is something definite. Undenominational teaching, we
fear, cannot grapple with the reproach, the famine, and the sin which leaps
upon a fallen world. (Canon Newbolt.)
Verse 30
They, even the house of Israel, are My people.
Israel’s privileges
I. The distinctive
appellation here given to the persons addressed--“the house of Israel.”
1. They were a people closely connected with each other. They
belonged to the same house, or family. As the descendants from the same
progenitor, they were, in a peculiar sense, brethren. The same is the case,
though in a different sense, with those to whom the promises in the text are
now made, in regard to their spiritual import. These persons, as genuine
believers, are of the same house, or what the Apostle calls--“the household of
faith.” They are brethren; and God Himself is their Father.
2. As “the house of Israel,” the persons to whom the promises in the
text were originally addressed were a people highly privileged. But the people
of God, under the present dispensation, are more highly favoured still. They
too have been chosen by Him to be His peculiar people. They have a fuller and a
far more glorious revelation of His will, and, both as it respects their
present position and their future prospects, they have indeed “a goodly
heritage”
3. As “the house of Israel,” they were bound to the discharge of
peculiar and very important duties. More still has been given to us; and therefore
are our obligations to duty, if possible, more imperative. The Israelites were
bound to love, to worship, and, in every other view, to serve the Lord; and so
unquestionably are we.
4. Notwithstanding all this, “the house of Israel” had, previously to
the time here referred to, departed grievously from the Lord, and wrought great
abominations. Alas! the parallel here in regard to ourselves holds in a way
that may and ought to fill us with shame and confusion of face. But where sin
abounded, grace is often made much more to abound.
II. The import of
these promises as made to the persons so characterised.
1. There is here a promise of the continued presence of the Lord to
be with them as their God.
2. It is here promised that the Lord will recognise the people
addressed as being in reality His own people. The people of God are His
peculiar property in consequence of the price paid for their purchase (1 Peter 1:18-19). They are further
God’s people, in consequence of being closely, vitally, and immutably united to
the person of His Son (John 17:21). They are His people,
besides, in consequence of having been subdued and won to Him by the powerful
and gracious operations of His Holy Spirit (Psalms 110:3). But, on the other hand,
they are characterised and treated as the people of God in consequence of their
own voluntary choice and covenant engagement to be “for Him, and not for
another.” They are accordingly blessed with all needful blessings as the people
of God (Ephesians 1:3).
3. It is here promised, that they shall have a pleasing conviction of
their peculiar blessedness in enjoying the presence of the Lord, and being
recognised by Him as His people.
4. The accomplishment of this promise, implying, as it does, such
honour and blessedness, is as certain as the truth of God can make it.
Application--
1. Inquire to what description of people we belong.
2. Well may the saints of God “be joyful in glory.”
3. All must be wretched and miserable who are not the people of God (Isaiah 57:20-21).
4. Those who are not now the people of God may yet have that honour (Hosea 1:10). (A. Thompson, D. D.)
Verse 31
And ye My flock, the flock of My pasture, are men, and I am your
God.
Man’s destiny
Every breath of the autumnal wind brings down hundreds of faded
leaves: they lie thick under the fast baring trees in thousands. Perfect in
form, wonderful in construction, beautiful in hue, they are crushed down in
myriads under every passing foot of man or beast. And what is the fall of one
leaf among so many? Yet we are told by those who have studied the vast
distances and proportions of this marvellous universe,--the fall of our world
from the sphere of creation would be but as the fall of a leaf in the midst of
a great forest. And our text does not even concern itself with the earth in its
entirety, but speaks only of the members of the race that inhabits it,
creatures of a moment, dying fast as the leaves of the autumn wood, and swept
like them to decay.
1. “The Lord God.” This holy name meant much to the devout Israelite
in Ezekiel’s time. The Jew had been taught to ascribe all around him--from the
tiny herb on the wall to the cedars of Lebanon, from the raindrop against his
easement to the blue waters of the Mediterranean that washed the shores of his
beloved land, from the minute insect on the leaf to the lion roaring for his
prey, from the lowest among the people to the majestic figure of a Moses or an
Elijah--to the power and will of the Lord God. “For Thy pleasure they are and
were created” was a fundamental article of his faith. And he associated with
the holy name the conception of the Lawgiver. Yet what was his knowledge of the
power and majesty of the Lord God compared with that we now possess? The power,
the wisdom, and the greatness of the Lord God as creator have been magnified a
thousandfold by the scientific research of later days. And certainly the
discoveries of science have tended to magnify the idea of Law. We meet it
everywhere, inflexible, unbending, supreme. If, then, it is dominant in the
physical universe, and certain to justify itself upon the disobedient, must not
we, who acknowledge the God of the Israelites, feel what an argument we thus
have for the fact that the moral law is equally stern and unyielding in its
demands on our obedience? Thus are we prepared to understand our need of the
Gospel, and to comprehend in some degree the absolute necessity, of the perfect
obedience and of the great Atonement which is set forth in the life and death
of Jesus Christ. The first duty required of man--the initial duty, if he is to
receive blessing and acceptance, is that he should bow down in humility and
adoration before the Lord his God.
2. He, then, the High and Holy One that inhabiteth eternity, is the
speaker. And looking down upon this little globe, a mere speck in His vast
universe, He says of its inhabitants, “Ye My flock, the flock of My pasture,
are men, and I am your God.” And what has science to tell us of man? It has
been busy with his origin, with his capabilities and his destiny, and every
step in its progress has tended to do away with any special dignity as
connected with our humanity. We are asked to believe that by a gradual process
man has been developed from the lowest scale of organism to his present state
of physical and intellectual power; we are told that all the researches of
science go to prove that the difference between his mental capabilities and
those of the higher animals is one of degree, not of kind; we are confidently
assured that as they die so he dies. Science can find no trace of the spirit of
man that goeth upward, and it can only pronounce upon what it sees, and the
lofty conceptions of man’s immortality it dismisses to the region of dreams.
3. And has our experience a more flattering tale to tell of human
capabilities and destinies? A few years of bright hope and vigour, a narrow
span of time which is utterly insufficient to fulfil one half of man’s
aspirations and purposes, a training which is suddenly arrested, an education
broken short, a sharp discipline of sorrow and pain--and then the darkness and
decay of death. Man’s very work outlives him. The labours of his brain and
hands have a vitality beyond his own. If we look at man morally, have we
greater reason for speaking of his dignity? There is much that we may call
noble, but how much that is unutterably mean and degrading! There is a gradual
advance in civilisation and outward refinement, but the thin veneered surface
covers a depth of moral defilement and evil.
4. Yet it is of man, of whom science and experience have but a
mournful tale to tell, that the Lord God says, “Ye, the flock of My pasture,
are men, and I am your God.” And this is surely the point to which we are
brought. Talk as we may of the dignity and destiny of humanity, we search in
vain for any real proof of it till we come to the Revelation of God’s Word. The
Bible, which throws the clearest light on man’s weakness and sin, exalts him to
a height above all we could hope or desire. It marks out man from the rest of
creation by the fact that he is capable by grace of hearing God’s voice, of
following after and of loving Him. The Lord takes one of the tenderest
relations of pastoral life when He says, “Ye are My flock”; and in the fulness
of time we have the clear explanation of these words in those of Christ Jesus
our Lord, “I am the Good Shepherd: My sheep hear My voice and follow Me.” He
who believes that this world has been trodden by the human steps of the Son of
God, that His prayers have ascended from it, that He shed His blood to redeem it,
that He shared our humanity even unto death, and lives again at God’s right
hand, can receive with joy unspeakable the marvellous promises of the destiny
of those who are Christ’s. The love of God becomes a reality, life earnest,
restoration to holiness possible. (D. Reith, M. A.)
God’s care for men
I. The Divine
method in creation shows this. In so far as we know creation generally, and the
earth in particular, this is the case. Scientific research has landed us near
impassable gulfs between period and period, genus and genus, species and
species; and a still wider gulf between matter and mind, which the Creator’s
hand alone can span. By the impetus of His will God has sent forth matter and
life, travelling through immeasurable distances, and they exhausted their
strength. Then another breath of inspiration from Him sent them still further;
and from stage to stage they have come to our own day, which appears to be the
consummation of all the former processes; we will not say that it is the last,
because a new heaven and a new earth are in prospect. And why do we mention
these things? Because that the highest steps yet taken by both matter and life
known to us are seen in the constitution of man. Call it evolution, but it
means development; call it discovery, but it is as old as Genesis. It is a
grand truth that an unseen hand has guided the steps of matter and life through
countless ages to find a resting place today in the being of man.
II. The care of God
for men is exhibited in the circumstances of life. We sometimes speak of the
subordination of all things to the wants and wishes of mankind. When we do this
we look through the spectacles of authority. When, however, we regard all these
provisions and arrangements as the outcome of that supreme desire in the Divine
heart to care for the flock, we have a higher and a clearer vision of the being
of man. Man never appears so great and noble as when seen in the light of
eternal love. Provision and preservation are the two handmaids which attend to
his wants. A glance at man’s creation satisfies us that he received a fitness
to ascend, by degrees of discipline, into union with God. This fitness needed
resources in order to expansion,--Yea, we say pasture for the flock. All things
yield their fruit, and even themselves, for the service of mankind. “The earth
hath He given to the children of men.” No less clear is the hand of God seen in
the preservation of His people. He is a wall of fire around them; their sun and
shield. The guardianship is so complete that not a moment of time, or an inch
of space, is devoid of its presence.
III. The care of God
for men appears more distinctly in the appointment of the Good Shepherd. The
tender care of Jesus Christ was exclusively shown to mankind.
1. That care arose from His heartfelt love to men. It was not mere
pity excited by their wants, or commiseration engendered by their helplessness
and misery, but affection for their very being. When the Saviour saw the sheep
of the lost house of Israel without a Shepherd scattered over the mountains,
torn of wild beasts, and no one caring for their life, His compassionate nature
was necessarily moved. But there was below that a love which sprang from the
old relationship--they were the children of the heavenly Father.
2. The extent of the care of Jesus for men appears in a life of
effort, and a death of sacrifice on their behalf. He sought men. He went after
them as the shepherd goes after his lost sheep. There were others who searched,
some for riches, others for knowledge, others for power, and others for fame,
but He sought out men--not the tatters of sin which covered their life, but
themselves. He Unsealed the fountains of their being, and made streams of
devotion flow God-ward.
IV. Let us be
imitators of him. Let those to whom God has given light flash it on their
fellow creatures who live in gross darkness. Be ye leaders of men, to go before
the sheep and show them the better pasture. Defend the helpless against
oppression. Show charity to them for whom Christ died. To receive Christ into
our heart is a glorious state, but to give that Christ to the world is a grade
higher. (T. Davies, M. A.)
A call to the Lord’s own flock
I. I shall notice
first, what the text rather suggests than declares, namely, our profession
towards God.
1. That we avow Jehovah to be our God. The God of Abraham, of Isaac,
and of Jacob is the God of believers to this day. We do not wish to have any
other God, although in these days the carnally wise have set up another. This
effeminate deity now occupies the place once given to Apollo or Venus, and he
is as much a false god as they were.
2. That we are His people. Our song is, “My Beloved is mine, and I am
His.” To glorify God in our spirits and in our bodies, which are alike
redeemed, is our reasonable service. In Jehovah is our trust, our joy, our
glory.
3. Our joyful confidence in our Immanuel--God with us. Leave out the
word am, which is in italics, and you get it, “God with them.” What is this but
“God with us”? Has there not been a Divine nearness between our souls and
Christ since that first day when we touched His garment’s hem and were made
whole?
II. Our proof from
God. If God work among us, then shall even our adversaries say,
“Jehovah-Shammah,” the Lord is there. A tree is known by its fruit, and the rule
applies even to God Himself.
1. The first mark is the gathering in of the scattered (verse 11).
Conversion is the sure sign of the immediate presence of the Lord. Glory be to
His name, His hand is stretched out still for miracles of grace.
2. A second token of the Lord’s presence is the feeding of the flock.
The Holy Spirit seems to lay great stress upon that (verse 15). Have not your
Sabbaths been times of holy festival? Has not the King Himself banqueted with
us? At the communion table have we not been transported with such joys as can
never be excelled until we behold the Chief Shepherd face to face?
3. Another token of the presence of the Good Shepherd is the healing
of the sick; I mean the spiritually sick, for there is this promise given, “I
will seek that which was lost,” etc. It is a rare joy to restore such as have
been overtaken in a fault. The God of our salvation hath devised means to bring
home His banished, and therefore He is still in the midst of us. Glory be to
His condescending love!
4. A further Drool of the presence of God in a church is when the
Lord Jesus Christ is greatly honoured; for here it is written, “I will set up
one shepherd over them,” etc. If your faith rested anywhere but in the glorious
person and finished work of the Son of God it were a worthless faith. If He be
indeed the Lord of whom we are the loyal subjects, then the Lord our God is
with us, and we are His people.
5. A further evidence of the Lord’s presence with a people is found
in their prevailing peace of mind. “I will make with them a covenant of peace,”
etc. Do not many of you realise that deep peace, the peace of God which passeth
all understanding, so that you are free from all fear, and happy amid grievous
poverty and trial?
III. Our description
by God.
1. God calls His Church His flock. A flock is the shepherd’s
treasure, it is his living wealth; but it is also the shepherd’s care, it is
his constant anxiety. A true Church is therefore a very precious thing, it is
not a mere human society banded together for certain objects, but it is a
community which God Himself hath formed, and over which He doth watch with an
unsleeping eye.
2. Observe that it is added, “The flock of My pasture.” There is a
different idea here. It shows that God’s people are not only peculiar in other
things, but they are peculiar in their feeding. You may know a child of God by
that which his soul lives upon. God’s people know their Lord, and they know the
kind of food which He gives them. They know the truth from a lie. They will
have nothing but clean provender, and the more evidently it comes from the
great Shepherd’s own hand the better it is to them.
3. It is a very singular thing, but it is added, “Ye My flock, the
flock of My pasture, are men.” “Ye are men”: then God knows what kind of
persons we are, whom He has loved with an everlasting love. We are Adams, not
angels. God’s people are but men; yet they are men and not brutes. There are in
human form many who are hardly so good as brutes; but the saints are gentle,
compassionate, and gracious. God’s people are true men: when the Spirit of God
is in them they quit themselves like men; they come to the front and bear the
brunt of the battle.
4. But then He adds this blessed assurance, “And I am your God.” God
is not a man, that He should lie; nor the son of a man, that He should repent.
I hear that poor soul seeking after God, say, “Oh, but I am so unworthy.” Just
so. The Lord knows it. He says you are men. But then He is not unworthy; he is
worthy to receive honour and power Divine, for He is our God. (C. H.
Spurgeon.)
──《The Biblical Illustrator》