2. The Prophet Interceding in Vain (Ezekiel 9:8-11)
EXEGETICAL NOTES.— Ezekiel 9:8. Ezekiel recovers from a passing surprise while the slaughter in the city was proceeding, and then realises his solitariness. “And remained I,” the frequenters of the Temple all dead, the only one spared alive there, his perturbed mind was found in a temporary oblivion of what he had heard in reference to such as were to be marked, and then loomed before him the obliteration even of the promised remnant. In intense sympathy for the people; in fear and sorrow, “I fell upon my face;” with his mouth in the dust he burst forth into an appeal for forbearance—speaking not in name of the exiles, but in name of the inhabitants of Judea, “and said, Ah! Lord God, destroyest Thou all the remnant of Israel,” as would be done, “in the pouring out Thy fury upon Jerusalem?” The captive sin Assyria and Babylon are undergoing their punishment: all that is left of Israel as a nation is here, and therefore Ezekiel’s cry is to the Lord God for the latter.
Ezekiel 9:9. The answer to his appeal is decisive. “And He said unto me, The iniquity of the house of Israel and Judah is great exceedingly.” The criminality was not all of the same character: in the landward parts, crimes of “blood-shedding” were most common; in the city, crimes of “perverting rights.” Religious declension and rebelliousness are not mentioned here, but moral corruption is, as constituting the evil which is to be severely punished. And the terms in which the people form an excuse for their sins correspond with the predominance of the moral element: “for they say, The Lord hath forsaken the earth, and the Lord seeth not.” The difference between this and that in chap. Ezekiel 8:12, where the religious aspect was prominent, lies here: the latter verse puts “seeth us not” first—religion is primarily a matter between God and man. The verse now before us puts “hath forsaken the earth” first—as if the Lord had gone away from all regard of the conduct of men to men. They imagine they have free scope to act as they choose towards each other, no one is taking oversight of them. “The source of all transgression is denial of the providence of God.”
Ezekiel 9:10. The people had taken the position that they only had rights, and yet that position is commanded by another. “And I also, my eye shall not spare … their way I put (give) upon their head.” The path of life which they are walking on turns up to smite their head with punishment. Ezekiel’s appealing question is not directly answered. The Lord “merely vindicates His justice by showing that, whatever amount of vengeance He might inflict, it did not exceed their sin. He would have us humbly acquiesce in His judgments, and wait and trust” (Fausset). The prophet sees that a people laden with iniquity go to meet their doom, and he makes no further cry for consideration of their case.
Ezekiel 9:11. Scarcely had the answer of the Lord been received when “behold the man clothed in linen,” the chief of the guardians of the city, appearing by himself seemingly, “brought word, saying, I have done as Thou hast commanded me.” The marks have been affixed on as many as and in the manner in which he had been commissioned. Probably the other six were still carrying on their work (chap. Ezekiel 11:13). “The counsel of the Lord, it shall stand.”
HOMILETICS
UNSATISFIED PRAYERS (Ezekiel 9:8-11)
When God spares His servants at a time during which calamity overtakes others, or saves them when many go on in the broad way to destruction, they deeply grieve and earnestly pray for those who are thus overtaken. What they ask for seems not to be assured. They have prayed and wept in vain, they suppose, and a sore heart-trouble is produced. They wonder if the Lord has shut up His compassions; if prayer is nothing but a cry. They doubt if they have prayed aright; if they have misconceived the ways of the Lord. To such questions Ezekiel’s case here may suggest direction and solace about unsatisfied prayers.
I. Such prayers may come from true sympathy with misery. Men, who have learned to love their fellowmen because of love to their Father, do not take precautions merely for their own safety in the face of impending suffering. If they are secure themselves they cannot be at ease while their neighbours are in danger of being swept away as with a flood. The sins, sorrows, deaths of others cast a heavy burden upon their souls, and they bow down in utter self-abandonment before God to besecch Him to take pity on the impenitent and doomed. They place themselves between the living One and the condemned to death, and put forth the energies which love can command into their supplications. They weep with them that need to be wept for.
II. Such prayers may use the most effective grounds of appeal. They appeal to God as God. “Ah, Lord God!” They have no cure in such need. They can help only by prayers, and they present them to Him who hears prayer as to Him who alone is able to do what they long for. In weakness and in conscious self-unworthiness they come boldly to the throne of grace and plead, “Wilt Thou act in such severity, Thou who hast made us and fashioned us, and who knowest our frame? Wilt Thou forget the work of Thine own hands and let it perish? Wilt Thou not show thyself to be the Lord mighty to save?” They appeal to His promises. “Israel,”—that was a name to touch the heart of God. For He had chosen the people, had nourished and brought them up as children, and in them meant to bless all the families of the earth. Were, then, all to be cut off—men women, and children? The remnant, to which so much has been pledged, would it too be discarded? Would He thus suffer His faithfulness and truth to fail? They appeal to His interests. “Jerusalem,”—those who have stood in the area of His manifested glory, who have been hearers of His word, who are the chief representatives of His people in covenant, who seem best adapted to maintain His way upon earth,—if they are sent down to darkness and death, where will He find a people to show forth His praise and saving health? His nature, His truth, His kingdom are grounds of prayer in which man’s selfish pleas have no part. “Do not disgrace the throne of Thy glory!”
III. Such prayers may be presented in submissiveness. “I fell upon my face.” God’s ways are beyond even a prophet’s comprehension. They trend too high and also too deep for us. We are disposed to count that to be confused which is only farther off than we can define, or to charge that with hardness which is only covered with a thin crust. Thus when deprecating the sufferings which befall our persons, our churches, the nations, we may take to questioning God, if not dictating to Him, Wilt Thou not take other steps? Wilt Thou not have regard to the prayers of the destitute? Wilt Thou not have respect to Thy great name whose glory is dearer to Thee than it can be to us? We are but of “yesterday and know nothing.”
IV. And such prayers may be based on misconceptions of God. As to His mercy. Sympathising friends think they would show pity, they would spare, when God does not, and their tendency is to count Him severe. This conclusion is unreasonable. When once we grasp the idea that He has no pleasure in the death of the wicked, we learn that they do not take in all the elements involved in divine mercy who surmise that the mercy of God is limited to the surveys of sense. We must rise beyond the range of the earthly for an ampler view of His rule. For Him, as righteous ruler, to spare those who reject His authority, who will not turn to Him in spite of all His endeavours, would be to connive at His own eternal dishonour. They would go on adding sin to sin. They would produce influences which would shake the loyalty of those who had been faithful to Him. There could be no mercy in a course which would cause such results.
As to His patience. We would have Him check the process of degeneracy in individuals, in churches, in states, at the very outset. We would have Him strike down the man who was leading others into evil as soon as he acquired a bad preeminence. We would not have Him wait till sin is excessive. Therefore do we fancy He has been too patient, and yet, with strange inconsistency, when He is punishing, we fall down and urgently ask if He will not stay His hand! We cannot measure out His patience thus. Both the deferring of punishment and the execution of punishment are ordered in wisdom and love. They must be, for the Lord reigneth, and we should stay on Him, let the darkness about Him be what it may.
As to means of carrying out His will. We acknowledge that the law which binds penalty to guilt is just and good, and can be nothing if it is not irrefragable. We grant that the doom should somehow be in correspondence with the sin. But what will be wisest and most impressive way of manifesting the connection which thus subsists? We are utterly unable to tell, and our prayers might be offered against the very method which we would assent to as right and best, if we knew all. But assuming that there are two chief classes of sins to provide against—inhumanity and denial of God’s interference with the doings of men—we should look for a wonderful variety of treatment according to men’s circumstances and place in the world’s development. It is for us not only to pray for the mercy we wish for troubled souls, but also to wait on the Lord so as to see His goings. “Those who take heed to the signs of the times can hardly but observe the tendency of our age to ignore the God of special providence, saying, ‘Where is the promise of His coming?’ ” Nor can we fail to mark a prevalence of dishonesty, brutality, self-pleasing, which indicate sad disregard of love to man. What may follow we leave with God while we cry for His grace. Only we do well to remember that judgment will begin at the house of God, and that the sufferings of unfaithful Christians will be more awful than those of rebellious Jews. “What manner of persons ought we to be in all holy living and godliness!”
V. Yet such prayers are answered, but otherwise than directly. We are too disposed to conclude that many of our prayers are not granted—prayers in which we had not regard to iniquity but to Christ. It may be, it is true that often they are not granted in accordance with the express form which we had hoped for, and we become like thoughtless children who complain that their wishes for good are not attended to because their father does not give them the very thing they want and at the time they ask it. We ought to have more confidence in our Heavenly Father than that complaint implies. He who says, “Call upon me and I will answer thee,” “Whatsoever ye shall ask in my name that will I do,” is true and faithful. What He has said He will do, only it lies with Him to settle both the form and the season of the answer. He brought the man who had been setting a mark upon the mourners in Zion in view of Ezekiel, and that appearance told Ezekiel that his prayer was really answered. He said to Paul, in response to his thrice-told entreaty, “My grace is sufficient for thee; for my power is made perfect in weakness;” and though that was not what the Apostle besought for—the removal of the thorn in the flesh—it was tantamount to that, as the promise secured him against being overcome by his infliction. Were we able to see better, we might come to say of many of our apparently unsatisfied prayers, “Verily God hath heard me; He hath attended to the voice of my prayer.”
Wait for the unfolding of the sealed book, and then will many rejoice to learn that they had not prayed in vain when they besought that God would glorify Himself by saving men. They died in the sorrow of hopes disappointed; they live in the joy of better things than they could conceive. Let us learn to trust God as revealed in Jesus Christ, His Son, and endeavour to observe more closely how He responds to our prayers.
FAITHFULNESS IN STEWARDSHIP (Ezekiel 9:11)
In fulfilling any work for the manifestation of the Lord’s will—
I. There should be regard to the Lord who appoints it. A position in His service is wished for sometimes because it is counted honourable and respectable, or because it is profitable, or because it is best to take it even if we have no interest in its duties. All such motives are condemned. The only one which can stand in the light is that which prompts us to act because we have been directed by considerations of His will, and are desirous to please Him to the utmost. “He that regardeth the day regardeth it unto the Lord.” This is capable of being an ever-present motive to faithfulness. It may influence us everywhere, whether we eat or drink, buy or sell, worship alone or with others. He is always at our right hand where we are and where we are called to serve, and we can do whatever we do as before Him. An elastic motive. When we need much power we are moved towards the treasures of Almightiness; when we need little, we come to the same Mighty One who is wise to measure out the adequate supply. He will furnish us for a gentle or a stern service, for presenting a reward or a threat, for expressing a sentence of mercy or of condemnation. We serve not ourselves but Christ Jesus the Lord,—that will regulate us in our “daily round,” and in dying for Him if need be.
II. Regard to the manner of obeying. “As Thou hast commanded.” Faithfulness is shown not in doing the appointed service with slovenliness, as if any way of fulfilling it would be sufficient; not in self-regard, as if the way we would like to do it would be satisfactory; not with deference to the opinions and habits of any men, as if they had authority to curtail or enlarge the commands of God; not with limitations, as if we could stop at any point but the point which the Holy One has defined. No; the work of the watcher is not done till he has reached, taught, comforted, saved all whom the Lord has characterised. “He will have all men to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth.”
III. Regard to the account to be rendered. No faithful servant need go in fear to the tribunal of the Great King. They who obtain mercy to be faithful have boldness in the day of judgment, are not ashamed before Christ at His coming, give in their account with joy, and are enabled to say, in reference to the charge which had been committed to them, “Lord, it is done as Thou hast commanded.” He is the pattern of perfect faithfulness who did always that which was pleasing to the Father; who could say at the close of the day in which he did His work, “I have glorified Thee on the earth, I have finished the work Thou gavest me to do,” and who will meet the consummation of all things with the words, “Of all that Thou hast given me I have lost nothing.” Let us imitate Christ Jesus in doing the will of our Father, not negligently, or equivocally, or incompletely, but so as “to be counted worthy of that world, and to stand before the Son of Man.” Let us, in all we do, for the glory of Christ’s name, follow His example, and report every matter to our God in prayer and supplication.