I.—THE DIVINE CALL OF EZEKIEL. CHAPS 1–3, 15
1. THE DESIGNATION OF THE PROPHET TO HIS WORK (Chap. Ezekiel 1:1-3)
EXEGETICAL NOTES.— Ezekiel 1:1. “Now,” the usual Hebrew connective particle, united to a tense which signifies an action associated with something which has already transpired. It seems to have place here, neither because the Book of Ezekiel is a continuation of that of Jeremiah, nor because a preceding portion of Ezekiel’s prophecies has been lost, but rather because of thoughts which were in the mind of the writer, and in succession to which his call came. “In the thirtieth year.” No note is given to define the point from which this date takes its origin. It was the thirtieth from the last jubilee year, or from the finding of the Book of the Law in the reign of King Josiah (2 Kings 22:8), or from the era fixed by the father of Nebuchadnezzar as the commencement of the Chaldean dominion, or from the birth of the prophet—such are the suggestions made by various expositors. The first and the last are the most improbable; still, it would be misapplied labour to discuss whether the third or the fourth is the more likely. There is no part of the prophecies depending for illustration upon a settlement of the point from which Ezekiel reckons. No doubt it had some bearing upon him and his contemporaries; it seems to have none upon us. “In the fourth”—month is omitted in the Hebrew, as frequently with Ezekiel. The fourth month of the ecclesiastical year corresponds to our June–July, when nature is prolific with storms. “In the fifth day of the month”—was this a Sabbath? So it has been affirmed because seven days after he received a further commission (Ezekiel 3:16). This is too precarious a footing from which to trace a parallel to the case of the banished John (Revelation 1:10). “As I was among the captives”—literally, “and I in the midst of the captivity.” He has not yet mentioned who he is, so by this silence he calls special attention to his environment. He sets forth that he was amongst, and was one of those Jews who had been carried away from their ancestral land, and subjected to the shame and pain of captivity. He was a troubled man along with other troubled men. Not that he was under enforced servile labour, as the Israelites were in Egypt, “the house of bondage;” he had a considerable amount of personal liberty; but he was far from the land of promise, and oppressed with a sense of his exile. “By the river of Chebar.” It is not at all certain to-day where this river was. It is not necessary to suppose that Ezekiel was beside it, because the murmur of the water might dispose to quietude, and prepare his mind for openness to God. Something less sentimental than that took him thither. He had been located in the district, through which the water flowed, by the paramount power as a district which could be easily superintended, and in which there was need of population. Such wars as Nebuchadnezzar carried on, like the wars which modern Turks have waged, could not but have been the occasion for large parts of his dominions to fall out of cultivation. It would be politic to settle an industrial people like the Jews in such places, and grant them full permission “to build houses and dwell in them, and plant gardens, and eat the fruit of them.” Abundance of water was needed for such operations. So the captive Jews were by a river. All was not pleasant there. Just as the later Jews were confined to the slums of Rome on the right bank of the Tiber, and satirised as Transtiberini, so was scorn heaped upon the earlier captives by “the rivers of Babylon.” There they were teased and tormented. “They that carried us away captive required of us a song, saying, Sing us one of the songs of Zion.” A somewhat truculent temper was engendered; but God did not forsake them, and even there did exceeding abundantly above what they thought. “The heavens were opened.” The exile perceived the sky cleft open. Perhaps it was not materially so, but only to the eye of faith. Yet as he speaks of it as an actual fact, it is preferable to consider the appearance to have been shown to “eyes open,” as was that to John the Baptist, to Stephen, to Peter. “I saw visions of God”—phenomena produced by God and relating to His Godhead; He was at once the author and the object of them. They were somewhat differently presented from those which Ezekiel received afterwards, which were “in visions” (chaps. Ezekiel 8:3, Ezekiel 11:24, Ezekiel 40:2).
Ezekiel 1:2. “The fifth year of King Jehoiachin’s captivity.” Jehoiachin had been placed on the throne of Judea be Nebuchadnezzar; but, following advice from the partisans of an Egyptian alliance, and in defiance of the protestations and threatenings of Jeremiah, he had pursued a procedure at variance with the interests of the Babylonian empire. Nebuchadnezzar soon trampled down the feeble revolt, and, in little more than three months of kingship, Jehoiachin was made captive and carried away to Babylon with the prophetic denunciation ringing in his ears that he would “die childless”—the last of the line of David which was traced through Solomon. His captivity was rigorous for years. He was kept in confinement and clothed in prison garments, and that, with their own troubles, must have made the thousands of Jews who had been transported with him to regard the date of their exile as deeply significant. So Ezekiel says to them—his contemporaries and hearers—that four years of their captivity had gone by, and then he was made cognisant of manifestations of God. This mode of dating he adheres to in his succeeding prophecies, never again referring to the thirtieth year of Ezekiel 1:1.
Ezekiel 1:3. “The word of the Lord.” Appearances were fortified, as so often in God’s revelations, by words heard. “Came expressly.” Ezekiel uses here a form of Hebrew emphasis, i.e., repeating the same verb. Such a repetition, in this connection, can scarcely mean that the word came directly to him, but rather that it was certainly, verily, really a divine word which in “coming came to him.” It needed a special attestation, and that was given to it. The same authenticating feature is exhibited in the frequent reiterations and assertions by Ezekiel that he was acting under divine impulse and authority. “Ezekiel the priest, the son of Buzi.” The order in the Hebrew, is, “Ezekiel, the son of Buzi the priest.” Of course Ezekiel was a priest by descent; but this order of the Hebrew may be intended to signify that, being in captivity, he had never fulfilled any specific priestly functions. His name, as usual among the Jews, has a meaning, and is to be translated either “God is strong,” or “God will strengthen.” Hengstenberg decides for the former, and says it is to be explained that “Ezekiel was he in relation to whom God is strong.” Baumgarten chooses the latter, and says it signifies “he whose character is a special confirmation of the strength of God.” The idea insisted on by Hengstenberg, following an older commentator, that it “is not a name he had borne from his youth, but an official name which he had assumed at the beginning of his calling,” appears to be groundless. It is true of all the prophets, both that God is strong to fulfil His purpose, and that He will give strength to His servants for that part of His work which He has assigned them. “In the land of the Chaldeans.” This topographical addition seems to be intended for a further attestation that it was the word of the Lord which really came to Ezekiel. The Chaldee version interpolates thus, “In the land [of Israel, and again a second time He spake to him in the land] of the Chaldeans.” It is believed that “the Jews had a notion that the Shechinah could not overshadow a prophet out of the Holy Land.” Perhaps a strain of this notion is to be heard in the wail of the captives “by the rivers of Babylon” when they ask, “How can we sing the Lord’s song in a strange land?” The notion was to be eradicated. God could endue a man with prophetic power even in Chaldea, and that is further witnessed to by the words “was there upon him.” “The hand of the Lord” is a frequent Scriptural expression, and indicates that the thing which was to be done was done in submission to the restraining or the impelling energy of the Lord.
HOMILETICS
(1.) GENERAL CONDITIONS OF THE DESIGNATION
I. The time to receive fuller knowledge of the Lord is uncertain. Who can tell why the call to Ezekiel came in the fifth year, and not in the first, second, &c.? The pain and pressure of exile galled, no doubt, as deeply in the earlier years as in the later, yet Ezekiel had not seen “the heavens opened.” What is uncertain to men is fixed with God. He is “the only wise God.” He sees the end from the beginning of all lives. He alone knows where it is best to lead “the brook” across the way of His people, by drinking of which they “will lift up their heads.” Though uncertain, men are not to be unconcerned. Having no criterion as to the appropriate time for special unfolding of the will of God, that does not sanction an utter indifference as to what they would have Him do. They must “wait on the Lord and keep His way,” ever hoping that He will “exalt” them to see what they do not yet see of the glorious majesty of His kingdom. Though uncertain, men should always be on the alert. Waiting for blessing is not real and valid waiting, except they who wait are sensitive to the approach of the Lord. His word comes to comfort, strengthen, open up a duty, and those are the good and faithful servants who honour Him by receiving it, no matter at what time, convenient or inconvenient to them, He may vouchsafe it. Though uncertain men must never lose faith. However long it be ere a word comes—one year or five years—they must believe in God. He has not forgotten His people. Let them trust that in some month He will bestow favour on them and His depressed interests.
II. The place is undistinguished. It has no memorable associations. The land of the Chaldeans was devoid of that instructive relation to the Jews which both Egypt and the mountains of Sinai had. The river of Chebar could not stir their thoughts as the Jordan could. But God can produce in an obscure or obnoxious place that which will be a hallowed memory. He can make communications in a garden as to Adam, in an outlying district of Luz as to Jacob, in a cave of the desert as to Elijah, in exile as to Ezekiel. He may manifest Himself anywhere—in ship or customhouse, by road or rail, in a family or alone. It has no recognised religious privileges. The captives could not make yearly pilgrimages to the City of the Great King; they could not approach to the place where His honour dwelt. For them there was no treading of His courts, no appearing before Him, no burnt-offerings and sacrifices to offer for His acceptance. Their hearts might thirst and faint for His altars, but they could not be relieved. As Nathanael in after times, they might have put a question expressive of contempt and unbelief, Can any good thing be obtained by the rivers of Babylon? They had not yet learned by experience that the Lord would make “a little sanctuary” for them in the place to which He had driven them, and there reveal His justice and His grace. So when Ezekiel was constituted an organ of new revelations, they were blessed where they did not look for blessing. Happy is it that the help of God is for the feeble who cannot, for the charged with duty who must not, for the wanderers who may not enter into the assemblies of worshippers, as well as for those who have all means of grace at their command. “In all places where I record my name I will come unto thee, and I will bless thee.” “Lo, I am with you alway, even unto the end of the world.”
III. The person is inconspicuous. So far as is known, there was nothing to give prominence to Ezekiel over other members of priestly families, or the general body of his fellow captives. “There is no respect of persons with God.” He does not limit His manifestations by any classifications which men may make. “Base things of the world, and things which are despised, hath God chosen.” The boy with a good education or the boy without it, children who are taught by their parents the truth in Jesus from their earliest days, or children who have learned no more than they learned in a Sunday-school, may equally obtain from God an entrance into “the secret of His covenant.”
This designation of Ezekiel furthermore suggests—God can provide fit agents in unexpected circumstances. He only knows when and where it is required that He should make special additions to men’s knowledge of Him and His ways, and He has the wisdom and the power to select the persons to whom that knowledge can be given. So He finds Enoch amid gigantic iniquities, Moses in the palace of Pharaoh, Ezekiel among the captives of Babylon, Paul (Saul) among the fiercest of persecutors, Luther in a monastery. Lowly places or prominent places cannot be obstacles in His path of goodness and mercy. He proves that “His strength is made perfect in weakness.”
God can bestow great boons on the person He may call. An exile amongst exiles, with none of the appointed external means of worship, in the face of political disabilities, pressed upon by social troubles, allied to men who had no heart to help him, yet Ezekiel not only found God near, but, moreover, saw heavenly things, and was touched by a hand which made him one of the forces of the world. It tells us that not any circumstances of life, not any conditions of body need to prevent us from being dignified by a faith in the unseen, and sitting in heavenly places in Christ Jesus.
God can increase His servant’s power by connecting him with an organisation. Robinson Crusoe, alone on Juan Fernandez, might have received large favours from God, but he could not use those favours for the welfare of neighbours. Power with men depends more or less upon the links which bind us to them. There is influence from a family. When the solitary are set in families it is that they may give and find help which could not have been otherwise secured. Each member has a power to affect the rest who are within the same circle. There is influence from a caste. Commercial, social, intellectual, religious interests bind men to one another, and that bond enables them to carry out schemes which could not have been accomplished individually, e.g., guilds, trades’ unions, companies, an aristocracy, an army, a priesthood, a denomination of Christians. There is influence from a nation. The members of a small nation are not so powerfully backed as those of a large. Civis Romanus sum was a phrase which gave, to the person who could employ it, greater consideration and security than were given to the citizens of any other state contemporary with the Roman. The phrase, “I am a Hebrew of the Hebrews,”—however the speaker of it might have been counted as “the offscouring of all things,”—was pregnant with mightier influences than have been wielded by the nationalities of those who derided him. The use of a nation’s influence cannot be indifferent to God who loveth righteousness; and in Ezekiel He designated a man who had received a certain education and status on account of his priestly origin, and who, because he was a Jew and could contribute to Hebrew literature, has obtained a position which commands the suffrages of the world. “This also is of the Lord of hosts, who is wonderful in counsel and excellent in working.” Organisations may be hurtful by checking the fair development of personal life, but they can also add to personal power.
(2.) PRELIMINARY STEPS TO THE DESIGNATION
I. “Ezekiel, the son of Buzi the priest” (Ezekiel 1:3).
It is sometimes argued that Ezekiel was trammelled by his connection with the priestly organisation, that his lineage induced him to weave a sacerdotal element into his prophecies, that he presents “a Levitical turn of mind, in virtue of which he sets a high value upon sacred customs.” Attempts to prove this do not appear eminently successful. When commentators say that his sacerdotalism is shown in the demands he makes for obedience to the requisitions of the Law, we seem to hear in that statement, not a simple reading of the prophecies, but a reading with interpolations from fancy or prepossession. Isaiah, Jeremiah make the same demands, and, taking account of the different circumstances of Ezekiel, he exhibits no more of a sacerdotal tendency than they do. It would have been an odd place in which to manifest “a genuine priestly turn of mind”—whatever that may mean—the place where he could not by any means fulfil the special functions of the priesthood; but a very suitable place in which to endeavour to impress the captives with the conviction that they were still “under the law to God,” even though far from the Temple of Jehovah. It would be as hard to signify where Ezekiel exhibits “a strong priestly feeling,” marking him off from other prophets, as it would be to exhibit a strong pastoral and fruit-gathering feeling in Amos (chap. Ezekiel 7:14). Yet Fairbairn writes, “In Ezekiel alone of the later prophets does the priestly element become so peculiarly prominent and prevailing as to give a tone and impress to the general character of his ministrations, and to render even his prophetical labours a kind of priestly service” (p. 8). We see—what we expect to see! God chooses prophets not to unfold their own ancestral or technical habits, but His true and broad righteousness and love. That Ezekiel, when acting in accordance with this, should employ imagery borrowed from the Law and worship of Israel was natural. He did it, however, not as one who would exalt whatever the priests had to carry out, but as one who had been taught that against the degrading tendencies of Israel there was no barrier, against heathenism there was no power, in Temple, offerings, or priests. He was taught that there was no preservative in the evil days of dire captivity save in the latent energy and intrinsic truth of “the lively oracles” given by Moses. So he sets himself, not to do a service for priestliness, but for the Law. As a priest he was doubtless one of that kind whose lips kept knowledge, and as an enforcer of the Law was “the messenger of the Lord of hosts” (Malachi 2:7).
II. “Now I was among the captives” (Ezekiel 1:1).
Ezekiel had been, apparently, by himself. His mind had been exercised upon the sad days that were passing over him and his people. He had been laying himself open to thoughts of the Lord, and then he was called into a nearer communion than he had ever experienced. Unconsciously he was stepping forward to receive competency to do actions for God. He does not tell how he had been moving—only that, while so employed, “it came to pass” that God spoke to him. They who would learn of Christ must:
1. Go alone with Him. Things pass in secret from Him which no stranger need intermeddle with, and no personal insufficiency need intercept.
2. Go with all cares. Outer circumstances may be harassing, associates may be lukewarm or ungodly, prospects may seem utterly blank, but neither ignore them nor make light of them before Him, for “He careth for you.”
3. Go in hope that He will manifest Himself. Unlooked for light may be lifted up on you, strength may be infused, faith be increased, and new scenes in your history be entered on; for “He is able to do exceeding abundantly beyond what you think.”
III. “The heavens were opened” (Ezekiel 1:1).
1. Men have faculties for realising what is beyond the earth: We dwell on the borders of the unknown, and can take interest in noticing the traces of what may be therein. God’s hands have made us and fashioned us so that this is possible. To use only animal functions, to develop only earthly aims, and to present a mutilated nature to all the influences which play upon us, is a spectacle darkened with criminality in reference to ourselves and our Maker. But to use our faculties for looking at “the things unseen and eternal,” that is the part of full and true manhood—a token that our life is a life worth living.
2. God adopts methods for acting on those faculties. As light is made to suit the organ of sight, and sound the organ of hearing, so His Spirit is able to operate upon us in order that we may discern spiritual things. The person who sees light or hears a sound cannot prove to another person that he sees of hears. He can only affirm, witness. So a person, who has “the eyes of his heart enlightened to know” what is his inheritance in the heavens, cannot give any demonstration of the change which he is conscious of, he can only affirm, witness, that he does know what he did not know. “Whereas I was blind, now I see,” is as applicable to heavenly as to earthly things. All men do not receive the benefit of God’s methods. Some deny their operation, and some their validity. Some acknowledge them only to neglect them, and some hope that they will see the heavens opened though they do not go to the only door thereinto. But whatever the reason be for their deficiency, the light has been opened up to the world, and men are judged for not believing in it. The Son of God has come from heaven and has again ascended to His Father: through Him heaven is always open, and open to every one who will. “Set your affections on things above, not on things on the earth.”
IV. “I saw visions of God” (Ezekiel 1:1).
More is meant than that Ezekiel saw grand and vast visions. His expression is not to be limited to visions given by the action of God, or to visions notifying the will of God, but embraces also the marvellousness of revelations of God. He was made a seer of God in order to be a prophet for God. Observe—
1. Thoughts of heaven must receive their character from views of God. If we could see into heaven and did not see signs of God there, we should remain in spiritual darkness. We must pass into the house to perceive the householder. We are vagrants still, as to all moral progress and undertakings, if we do not find ONE who can enlighten and guide and strengthen us. All beliefs of our interest in the heavens will be blighted unless they are steps on our way to know we have a living, almighty, perfect Friend.
2. All true views of God are given by God. “He dwelleth in light, which no man can approach unto; whom no man hath seen, nor can see.” Human power cannot make Him manifest Himself. The highest knowledge which men of themselves can reach does not embrace one of the secrets of His being. He alone opens the inward eyes and presents the aspects He wants to reveal. He may open them through some outward impulse, or by action on the heart, but in either case the ripple of sensational life is hushed by the flow of a grander life, and the reasoning faculty stands still, waiting to know what it shall receive. Then, as the light air comes to a hanging leaf and stirs it, as a father’s love and wisdom come to an erring child and prompt to confession, so the subject of visions of God knows that God has affected him—that God alone could accomplish that which has happened to him. The visions are real. The prophet did see some appearances of God; and, whether it were by an external operation or by his own inward rapt attention, he was prepared to avouch it as confidently as he would a vision obvious merely to his physical sight. How many He gives! Is there a week, a day passing in which He does not set forth something of His glory?
3. Visions of God require a conscious apprehension by men. Men can look upwards or downwards, outward or inward; but they may shut their eyes. So they decide whether they will see the things of God or not—whether they will accept the fuller manifestations of God or not. And the bowed in heart, the seeker for the truth learns that, back of the material world and its forces, is He whom they all obey, and whom hearts should believe in. They yield themselves up, not by the push of a blind necessity, but according to the laws of their own freedom, and yet they are elevated, guarded, and assured of the reality of their visions by the supreme Spirit operating.
4. Various aspects of God are presented. No man can see God, and all that is perceived by the most favoured seer is but the back parts of His goodness and glory. Parts of His ways are recognised; “but how little a portion is heard of Him? but the thunder of His power who can understand?” He is working in the earth which He has filled with good; in the heavens which declare His glory; in the movements of men’s spirits which accuse themselves, repent, trust, love; in the prosperous or depressed trade of nations, in their freedom from or subjection to calamities; in the birth, life, death, resurrection, and exaltation of the Son of His love who hath declared Him. Wonderful in number and variety are the views which God has provided for willing hearts. “They are new every morning.” It is a sign of no reverence or true knowledge when some assume to tell just what God must show of Himself, just what God must do. They forget that He gives no account of His matters—that “He dwells in the thick darkness.” It is for men to be humble before Him, even though He may let them see many a token of His will. They are to look and wait. “I will stand upon my watch, and set me upon the tower, and will watch to see what He will say unto me. For the vision is yet for an appointed time, but at the end it shall speak and not lie” (Habakkuk 2:1-3).
V. “The word of the Lord came expressly” (Ezekiel 1:3).
This is an evidence of the fact that the vision and the word were closely allied in prophetical phenomena. Isaiah “saw the word which he received concerning Judah and Jerusalem.” Amos begins his book thus, “The words of Amos which he saw concerning Israel.” Daniel was overwhelmed by a great vision, “yet heard the voice of his words.” Paul had “visions and revelations of the Lord.” John in Patmos saw one like unto the Son of man, and then listened to what He said. So was it with Ezekiel now.
Notice:
1. “God is His own interpreter.” Symbols and scenes are less capable of definite explanation than words. It is hazardous to take impressions, feelings, &c., as intimating the will of God, in the absence of His Word or of principles which His Word embraces. So He “spake in time past in the prophets,” and “in these last days in His Son.” He can make His visions, manifestations, plain, and no one who wants to know His will in sincerity can live without having some signs of what that will really is.
2. There are tests for learning “what God the Lord doth speak.” It has often perplexed men’s minds how to discern between a suggestion from God and a suggestion from some other source. There is no short and easy method applicable to all cases. Not the strength of the impression, not mere unhesitating confidence in its divineness, not its apparent conformity to what has been done, not the memory of words of Scripture which seem to sanction it, can decide the doubt. Conscience, though willing to do only the will of God, may give different promptings from those of the Spirit of God. We are left without any infallible guide; but surely no one who wants to order his conduct aright will fail to discern, sooner or later, what is of God or of man. It may be there was for His prophets a special light in which they saw that they were addressed by God, and so were both made sure and warranted to say, “Thus saith the Lord God;” but it is not likely that they could have given any explicit information on the point. They knew His voice, as the sheep of the Good Shepherd know His, yet are unable to explain how they do so. Let it be believed that God is our Father, and we shall find little difficulty in granting that He can make His children know He is speaking to them and that they are not deceived.
3. God’s servants must teach according to the Word of God. They cannot make truth; they must receive it “from above.” Their souls should be as a mirror on which He casts His rays, and which send forth a faithful reflection. They are to be as a channel through which the water of life may flow unimpeded. Each one may exhibit his own characteristic qualities of mind, as water takes the tint of the rocky bed over which it runs. No prophet is a reproduction of any other prophet. No apostle is a copy of another apostle. No believing man or woman is exactly like to any one else among “the saints of the Most High.” The Lord of all makes each seed to have its own body, and envelops therein some property which is of use to other existences, so has He constituted each soul distinct, and each is capable of acting in behalf of the King of Truth. Therefore should every one strive to grow by feeding on His Word. Only thus can they teach to profit—only thus can they expect “the demonstration of the Spirit”—when not the words of man’s wisdom but the words of the only wise God are declared.
4. We can have access to the Word of God. It is not now a gift bestowed upon a few selected individuals; it is the endowment of mankind. “The Word was with God, and the Word was God, … and the Word was made flesh and dwelt among us, … full of grace and truth.” We can come to the Light and Life, and hear Him at all times. All the history, all the psalms, all the prophecies of the Old Testament have some more or less portion of the testimony of Jesus. “Search the Scriptures, for they testify of” Him. Come to Him, for “whosoever will may come.” We are in a more lofty position than Ezekiel was, and can see and hear more fully from God and of God than he did. What manner of persons ought we to be! “Obeying the truth through the Spirit,” abiding in Christ, and the word of Christ abiding in us. “Take heed how ye hear.”
VI. “The hand of the Lord was there upon him” (Ezekiel 1:3).
“Hand is equivalent to sovereignty in its fullest meaning, and sovereignty in that meaning does not admit of degrees” (The Aryan Household). It is a symbol in Scripture of impulse, power, &c., and capable not only of laying the foundation of the earth and of spanning the heavens, but also of being laid gently on the heads of little children as well as on sorrowing, awestruck men. Its touch prepared for another stage in Ezekiel’s development. It infused strength for seeing and acting in his new vocation. It sanctified him, set him apart, so that he was constituted a true and capable prophet to Israel. Observe—
1. The real power in serving the Lord. It is contact with Him. Daniel could not hear the divine messages till a hand touched Him (Daniel 10:10). John could receive the revelation after the right hand of the Glorified had been laid on him (Revelation 1:17). Every disciple must be strengthened by the Spirit in the inner man (Ephesians 3:16), in order “to will and to do of His good pleasure.” Obstacles lie in man’s heart which have to be overcome, and the hand of the Lord presses them down or sweeps them away. When it is laid on us, then we can do all things; then, whatever may be accomplished, with money, with words, with deeds for the kingdom of God in the world, owes its success to His giving His hand to it. “Severed from me, ye can do nothing.” We must have the word of Christ, and also Christ Himself to dwell in us, else we shall fail in fulfilling the word of the truth of the gospel. Prayer, reading and hearing the Word, teaching and preaching it, are “as tinkling cymbals” if the power of Christ do not rest on us.
2. Be at the disposal of the Lord.
(1.) Implicitly. Let there be no obstructions, no reserves. The creature has no claim except in correspondence to that of his Creator, the bondsman no choice but that of his lord, the ransomed no half-heartedness towards his deliverer. Whosoever is touched so that he is impelled to say “It is the Lord,” then no hesitancy, no trouble should be regarded by him in any light but that of a temptation out of which a way of escape is to be found.
(2.) On the spot. In our own houses or lodgings, in business or worship, in health or ailments, in agreeable conditions or disagreeable, begin to obey the pressure of God’s hand there. “The one secret of life and development is not to devise and plan, but to fall in with the forces at work, to do every moment’s duty aright, that being the part of the process allotted to us; and let come, not what will, for there is no such thing, but what the Eternal thought wills for each of us, has intended for each of us from the first” (G. Macdonald).
(3.) Confidingly. Darkness may fall, weakness may be experienced, opponents may bar the way, fear not. He upholds by the right hand of His righteousness. Maintain the thought of a present Lord, in contact with your spirit, putting you forth but also going before you, and you will find a force which will more than conquer all against you. It is no dream, no cunningly devised fable, that Christ Jesus is with us.
3. Trust to receive impulses from the Lord. The life of God in the soul is not a constantly equal force. It is sometimes hardly distinguishable from the life of sense, and at other times it is as if it was more than conqueror over the world and the flesh. Prayer is now easy, but then it is a drag. Here we walk in darkness, and have no light on the ways of the Lord; and there we seem enabled to “mount up on wings as eagles, run and not be weary, walk and not faint.” The God of all grace will stablish, strengthen, perfect, settle. From ordinary earthly surroundings He can lead so that we shall, first, be made to feel that another world affects us; then, that God manifests Himself to us; and afterwards, that He imparts to us of His own strength. Thus may we be filled with the Spirit.
4. Our ordinary places of sojourn may be made memorable. Not only nations remember places where events historically important to them have occurred; not only cities and towns keep up memories of persons and actions interesting to their inhabitants; but also individual believers in God can record of one spot or another that the Lord met them there. How precious a thought it is that there is no place whatever but may become a Bethel—a house of God—to any traveller towards eternity! A private room, a church, a prison, a street, a hillside, a river-bank will be sacred, as no other place can be sacred, if they have witnessed a stimulating manifestation of what God can do. Be we where we may, we may be there with the unseen Christ, and He will be its glory.
Thus Ezekiel was designated. He was not consecrated by any enactment of the law of Moses. No oil of anointment was poured upon his head to authorise him to prophesy. No hands of predecessors were laid upon him. He is chosen and set apart by the Lord alone, and he, with all true prophets, is a type of the coming time when the children should be all taught of the Lord, for the Spirit would be poured out upon us from on high. We are under this dispensation. We must guard against supposing that human appointments to ministry for the Lord are valid if He has not called to it. There is no true ordination but that of the hand of the Lord, and there is no true service but that which opens out to more service. Vague longings for God may be turned into real manifestations; visions of God may prepare for feeling the hand of God. Such are the ways of “the God of Israel, who giveth strength and power to His people: blessed be God!” “Of His fulness have all we received, and grace for grace.”
“I saw visions of God”
THE SOURCES OF RELIGIOUS SENSIBILITY
1. Man must consider himself. Let him examine his own nature, look at the wonderful mechanism which is going on in his own breast, and he will surely awake to a sense of the high and exalted relations which his existence sustains. But he lives in the world. Material objects engross and enthral his mind. He converses not with his own spirit. He considers not what manner of being he is. Let this thoughtlessness be laid aside, and it will not be strange if he come to a living conception of that mighty Being from whom we all spring, and by whom we all subsist.
2. He must consider the wonderful works external to himself. The green earth and its diversities of scenery, the canopy above it, bright with stars and burning suns, show visions of power, wisdom, goodness transcending his utmost ability to measure and fathom. Let him think of these, and will he not feel how awful and stupendous the Author of such prodigies must be?
3. He must consider how different man is from what he might have been expected to be. With eyes to see visions of God, he bends them to the earth. He does not realise the purposes for which he is made, the character he is to acquire, the destiny placed within his reach. How much is there in the course of human affairs to trouble and perplex? Ignorance and superstition brood over a large portion of the habitable globe. In Christian countries how little is seen of that purity, faith, and piety which Christ enjoins. But all that need not destroy the conviction that we are under a wise and merciful God—that it is impossible for Him who has displayed in the frame of man, in the constitution of the outer world, in the gospel of Christ, such tokens of wisdom and love, to exercise other than a government of perfect benevolence. It is absurd to suppose that we, who are but of yesterday, should be able to interpret the many mysterious and inscrutable events in human affairs, though all will be clear when the day shall dispel the midnight vapours.
4. He must consider how God has been trusted in. We know of men who have been subjected to heavy assaults because they believed in the Word of God—of Jesus Christ, in despisal and rejection, upheld by communings with His Father; and we learn that in duties, harassments, weariness, death, our safety, strength, consolation will be obtained in those retirements of the soul where our eyes are opened to see visions of God.—MADGE (condensed).
ILLUSTRATIONS
Dates.—The Jews, if there is any truth in their history at all, were a journalising people.… The prophets keep a diary of their visions. Everywhere do they record the dates, the year, the day of the month, the attending chronological circumstances of the burdens and messages with which, as they allege, they-have been commissioned by the Lord. If these dates are put in by compilers, long after the times of the prophetic visions, then there is no reason for it, no meaning in it.… It is an easier theory that every word of the prophetic writings had been forged. There is but one other supposition: the dates and the visions are from the same persons, and these are the prophets themselves writing and speaking at the times they profess to write and speak, and in relation to actual existing events that form the subjects of their warning. The seers, the times, the nation, the national life, it is all one true picture—in its parts most truthful and natural; in its whole suggestive of an extraordinary and difficult problem. Let any man attempt to explain its natural without bringing in its supernatural, or some other supernatural—if he can.—Taylor Lewis.
Names.—What is the real historical significance of the deeply religious character of Jewish names, their strong theistic or rather monotheistic aspect, their continual expression of faith and hope, their so frequent allusions to the ideas of covenant and redemption? And why too, may we ask, do so many of these appellations end in El and Jah, ever calling up the two great divine names with their most holy ideas? Let the reader ponder well the fact, and see if he can find any other reason for this national seal, this naming after the Lord, as we may call it, than the great all-explaining fact that they were indeed “a chosen people,” “an elect people,” whom for high and world-wide reasons God had taken as His own “when he separated the sons of Adam and gave the nations their inheritance.” It is a standing memorial, handed down from generation to generation, that “this was the people whose God,” whose El or Mighty One, was Jehovah, the God of the Covenant, who had been their fathers’ God, and who had given them those glorious promises, ineffaceable by the bondage of generations, that in them and in their seed all the nations of the earth were to be blessed.”—Taylor Lewis.
Visions.—Thankfulness for being made capable of seeing this “burning west” [glorious vision of Arran], and of being so affected by its beauty, gave place to thankfulness for the spiritual eye opened in me, by which I saw the Eternal Light and the Eternal Beauty; thankfulness that was much mingled with self-condemnation, as I reflected that … that which my spiritual eye saw is an ever-present glory, to be seen wherever the eye opens on it; and yet my memories of it were of what had been seen only at long intervals … in a solemn sense of choice. I say in a sense of choice, because I do not feel in reality that the opening of the eye that sees the spiritual, so that the spirit is flooded with its proper light, is so simple a matter, or so absolutely to be determined by a mere volition, as the opening of the bodily eye. That “glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ” we do not see in its brightness simply by turning to it. For such vision beyond habitual faith we wait on the Holy Spirit, and have it not in our own hand. But still we know that he that soweth bountifully reaps bountifully.—Macleod Campbell.
Power.—The distinction is always assuming more and more importance to my mind, viz., that between the special acting of the Divine Spirit in the revelation of truth not previously revealed to men, and His acting in enabling us to apprehend that truth, and to advance in its light and the life which it feeds.… No explanation seems adequate which admits not—rather, assumes not—that God can, and when it seemeth good to Him does give the human spirit to know His own presence, and His own touch, otherwise than in that highest way which is communion with Himself in the light of life. This … the whole record of Revelation seems to me to teach as to those great events in the history of intercourse between God and men which we have been accustomed to receive as “Divine Revelation,” viz., a knowledge of being spoken to by the living God which was not an inference from the nature of that which God spake—a knowledge common to Balaam and Jonah with Moses and Samuel, and distinct from all communion in the word that came to them. What this was I know not, and may never know.… What we seek to know is, surely, the actual fact as to what God does in the earth, of which we may not make our own experience the measure; while we cannot be too thankful for that clear consciousness of seeing light in God’s light which may be our temptation to do so.—Macleod Campbell.
Experience of God.—Now and then a great experience comes unexpected and unsought. It touches the greater chords of the soul, and lifts it above the common level of emotion, outruns all former knowledge.… But what other experience is like that of the personal disclosure of God in the soul.… There comes an hour to some, to many, of transfiguration. It may be in grief; it may be in joy; it may be the opening of the door of sickness; it may be in active duty; it may be under the roof or under the sky, where God draws near with such reality, glory, and power that the soul is filled, amazed, transported. All before was nothing; all afterwards will be but a souvenir. That single vision, that one hour, is worth the whole of life, and throws back a light on all that went before. It … gives to the soul some such certainty of invisible, spiritual truths as one has of his own personal identity. When one has had this hour of divine disclosure, of full and entrancing vision, it never can be retracted, or effaced, or reasoned against, or forgotten.—Ward Beecher.