One built up a wall, and lo, others daubed it with untempered mortar.
The wall daubed with untempered mortar
I. The text speaks of a wall. Men look about them to discover some sort of wall or other behind which to shelter from conscience and Divine threatening. I suppose this is because conscience is not quite dead in any man. In some men it has been so drugged and chloroformed that it never seems to act with anything like vigour, and when it speaks it is only with a still small voice, and not at all with the thunder which its voice ought to have to the mind of men; yet that little relic of conscience, which with a microscope you can detect in all men, needs to be pacified, and men are glad if by any lie, however barefaced, they can create an excuse by which they may go on quietly in their sins.
1. Perhaps the greatest wall behind which men shelter themselves is that of utter indifference to anything like Divine truth. Some silly dancer at the opera, some new invention, some novel trick of legerdemain, some fresh anything or nothing, and the world is all agog; but as to things which will outlast sun and moon, and stand fast when yon blue heaven, like a scroll, has been rolled up and put away--these all-important things our wiseacres think but trifles, and they continue trampling God’s eternal truth beneath their feet, as swine do trample pearls, and rushing madly after the bubbles of this world, as though they were all that men were made to hunt after.
2. Numbers, however, are not quite so stupid, so besotted, so blind, so brutalised as to put up with this. Like a crying child, their conscience will be heard. Like a horse leech, it ever cries “Give, give,” and will not be content. Who comes next? Who is the anointed one of Satan to quiet this spirit? Who will yield a quietus to a mind alarmed? See the wall of ceremonies behind which many rest so contentedly.
3. You may be building another wall, namely, that of self-righteousness. How many have been piling up their wall, and gathering their wood, their hay, their stubble, with which to erect a defence to screen themselves from God by their own doings?
II. Whenever a man tries to build a wall behind which to shelter, he always finds a volunteer band of ready assistants.
1. For instance, a man who is easy in his pleasures, how many will help him to continue at his ease! “He is right,” says one; “You are a good fellow,” says another; and they both try to keep him in countenance by their company.
2. Another company of scoffers will loudly boast themselves, and cry, “Yes, you are all right in continuing in neglect of God and of Divine truth, because the saints are no better than they should be. I remember what So-and-so did once--he was a deacon; and I know the inconsistencies of Mr. Zealous, and he is one of the parsons.”
3. A numerous body of daubers gather at the sign of the “Sneerer,” in Atheist Street; and with their doubts, or their supposed doubts, of inspiration and biblical authenticity, are ready to daub and plaster any amount of wall an inch thick.
4. If the wall be built of ceremonies, how many are busy daubing that! What multitudes of books are streaming from the press, books of ability, too, all going to show that salvation is infallibly connected with a mechanical process, conducted by specified officials, and not a spiritual work independent of all outward performances!
III. The Word of God declares that this wall will not stand. The wall to which Ezekiel alludes is one of the cob walls in the East, daubed with bad mortar, which had not been well tempered, that is to say, not well mixed with the straw which they use in place of the hair which we use in England; when the rain comes, it softens the whole structure of such a wall, melts it, and washes it quite away. Such a deluge as that is coming ere long to try and test every human hope.
1. It comes to some men when they enter upon times of spiritual trial.
2. But if the test come not thus it will usually come at death.
3. And if death does not do it--for some men die like lambs, and like sheep are they laid in the grave; but the worm shall feed upon them--if death does not do it, the judgment shall.
IV. If we shall be found lost at the last, it will be an everlasting reproach to us that we once accepted the false helps of our friends. “Where is the daubing wherewith ye have daubed it?” That voice may proceed from many lips.
1. It may come from the lips of Jesus. “I said unto you, ‘Come unto Me and live,’ but you would not come; you refused the refuge which I presented to you, and you chose your own works, and rested in ceremonies of your own devising, and now where is the daubing wherewith ye have daubed it?”
2. I could imagine such a voice as that coming from a faithful minister, or other Christian labourer, who may have honestly pointed out to you the one and only way of salvation.
3. And there shall come another voice, with quite another tone-a hoarse and horrible voice--a voice full of malice and grim laughter, which shall say, “Where is the daubing wherewith ye have daubed it?” You shall understand it to be the voice of him who once deceived you--the fallen spirit, the devil.
4. There shall be heard amidst that thick darkness and horrid gloom, that never shall be broken by a ray of light, another voice which once you knew. Perhaps the husband shall hear the voice of the wife, who shall say, “Ah! where is the daubing wherewith ye have daubed it? You would not let me go to the house of God; you laughed me out of my religion. I was once a young woman unmarried, who cared for the things of God in some respects; you courted me and enticed me away from my father’s God, and then you laughed me out of my prayers and Sabbath worship; you have laughed me into hell, but you cannot laugh me out of it again.”
5. And then, last of all, your own conscience, from which you never can escape, which is, perhaps, the worm that never dies, and the flame which kindles the fire of remorse that never shall be quenched, your conscience will say to you, “Where is the daubing wherewith you have daubed it?” (C. H. Spurgeon.)
Prophets feeble and yielding
The figure incisively describes the futile projects of the people and the feeble flattery and approval of the prophets. When a weak man cannot originate anything himself, he acquires a certain credit (at least in his own eyes) by strong approval of the schemes of others, saying, “Right! I give it my cordial approval, and, indeed, would have suggested it.” What made the prophets whitewash the wall which the people built was partly the feeling that from the place they occupied they must do something, and maintain their credit as leaders even when being led; and partly, perhaps, that, having no higher wisdom than the mass, they quite honestly approved their policy. Being sharers with them in the spirit of the time, they readily acquiesced in their enterprises. (A. B. Davidson, D. D.)
False hopes
I. What are the foundations of this fabric?
1. It is built upon falsehood. Observe, it is here imputed to these false prophets that they led the people to suppose that their state by nature was not one of enmity with God,--that, in fact, they were at peace with Him. Now, this falsehood is manifest. We are not at peace by nature. We all know that God has a strife with man, a righteous ground of controversy with every man born into the world. Our first conscious thoughts are those of disaffection and dislike to holiness; and our first voluntary actions are to take up arms against God. We, then, are not at peace, but at enmity with God. How was this breach to be made up? Usually, a vanquished foe expects to buy peace at a large price; but we had nothing to pay. It remained, therefore, that the benignant Being with whom we had been carrying on this fruitless and ungrateful warfare should Himself originate a scheme of reconciliation. We know that Christ is our peace, and our only peace. He brings peace, He preaches peace, He bestows peace. “To as many as received Him, gave He power to become the sons of God.” “Being justified by faith, we have peace with God.” This is the foundation, and other can no man lay. He who shall dare to build on any other shall see the fabric perish before the overflowing shower, and the stormy wind shall rend it.
2. It is not laid deeply enough. In the fourteenth verse it is said, with regard to this foundation, “The foundation thereof shall be discovered,” laid bare, open to the sight of the beholder. The image is commonly used in Scripture to denote that which is superficial and unsound. Everything that is to be firm strikes deeply into the ground. Job speaks of having “the root of the matter” in himself; and the stony ground, hearer, fell, we are told, because there was in him no depth of earth. What is the kind of foundation here spoken of? Doubtless, we must take it as applying here to a religion which rests upon slight convictions of sin,--little sense of its heinousness and guilt. The Spirit convinces of sin, to lead to Him that shall take all sin away. The Spirit of God opens no wounds, except with a view the more effectually and kindly to bind them up.
3. Another element of this unstable foundation is presumption, an unwarrantable appropriation of the promises; as if the benefit of an amnesty could be extended to those who were still in an attitude of rebellion; as if the promises of salvation could still be held out to those who continued in unrepented sin. This is strongly marked in the latter part of the twenty-second verse. It may be a grievous error in a teacher, according to the first part of that verse, to make the hearts of the righteous sad, whom God hath not made sad; but surely it is a much more grievous error to hold out the promise of life to those to whom, as yet, God has not given peace. Our Lord must be our example here.
II. What are the walls of this fabric? In other words, by what supports and excuses do men keep this unsound and unscriptural hope together? “One built up a wall, and others daubed it with untempered mortar.” The meaning of the prophet’s allusion will be best explained by a reference to Jewish domestic architecture. Although hewn stones were employed for the purpose of very large buildings, for small houses a tile was commonly used, formed of white clay and baked in the sun. These tiles were cemented together by mortar, which, as among ourselves, was made to acquire a certain adhesive property by means of straw and chaff. Travellers tell us that whole villages are formed of houses built with this white clay or tile, and they tell us, further, that after rain the filth occasioned by the dissolving of the cement will make the ways in front of the houses perfectly impassable; whilst, if the mortar which has been used has been very badly tempered, that is, very imperfectly mixed with the straw or the chaff, it is no uncommon thing to see the house fall down entirely, under the violence or dissolving action of the rain, the very effect which we see alluded to in the text. What a picture have we here of the refuges which worldly men make for themselves against that day, when judgment shall be laid to the line and righteousness to the plummet! Oh, how many of these slight walls are people running up every day! There is the wall of evil example, by which a man fortifies himself in his low standard of personal and practical godliness by what he sees in someone around him. There is the wall of pretended necessity; the urgent claims of daily life making it, as he alleges, impossible for him to attend to the cares of his family and the interests of his soul. There is the wall of constitutional impediment, the pretence that something in our peculiar temperament and constitution or circumstances makes it so difficult for us to attend to the things of our salvation. There is the wall of perverted doctrine, where men, waiting for some impulse from above, knowing that Divine grace must begin the work, say, they can do nothing themselves, they must wait till God by His Spirit changes their hearts. And then there is the wall of good intentions, the purpose of serving God, but not now, the miserable promise that we will give to God the remnant of our days, that He shall have the reversion of our “convenient season.” Oh, how many of these flimsy fabrics will fall, and do fall daily, before the first breath of the Divine displeasure. But observe, further, it is said that when one built the wall, another daubed it with untempered mortar. This seems to intimate to us that foolish and unconverted men are in the habit of encouraging each other in their foolish hopes: justifying one another in their vain excuses; each confirming the reasonableness of the other’s pretences, and then going away confirmed and strengthened in his own.
III. These false hopes shall be thrown down. This false builder shall wake and see the crumbling of his own wretched wall; this mere dauber shall see the melting and dissolving of his own untempered mortar, that God alone may be exalted in that day, and that every unscriptural and unauthorised, unsanctioned hope may perish. And oh, will not the weakness and instability of this wall appear before this hurricane of Divine indignation comes upon us? When the silver cord is loosed, and the golden bowl is broken; when the pitcher is broken at the fountain, shall we not then perceive that we have been building upon a treacherous foundation? But then, if we feel it in that day, what shall we feel in that remoter time, when the storm of the Divine indignation shall come upon the whole world? (D. Moore, M. A.)
The false prophet
The false prophets are much in evidence up to the point of the fall of Jerusalem. Ezekiel accuses them of the crime of the hireling shepherd: they used the flock to make wages, and so became the type for all time of those who make
“The symbols of atoning grace
An office key.”
The false prophet gained favour with the military party in the nation, by his telling advocacy of a vast and well-prepared army and of brilliant foreign alliances, he won favour with the clerical party by not demanding too much virtue, either from the individual or from the State. As a class they had a ready apology for every shifting policy. True, the apology, although always ready, was only an apology--or, to use the prophet’s own figure, it was only a daubing of the ill-built wall with untempered mortar (Ezekiel 13:8-16)--“that is to say, when any project or scheme of policy is being promoted, they stand by glozing it over with fine words, flattering its promoters, and uttering profuse assurances of its success.” The daub, in hiding the infamy, hurries the disaster. “Ye, O great hailstones, shall fall; and a stormy wind shall rend it.” When the scheme has failed, when God has suddenly intercepted a people’s mad pride, the false prophet may be--may be--called to account: “Lo, when the wall is fallen, shall it not be said unto you, Where is the daubing wherewith ye have daubed it?” But it may happen, in a nation’s downfall and the daze of its calamity, that the moral collapse is so complete that the man who daubed the wall escapes unblamed--but not the man who was honest enough to say plainly from the first that it was a mere daub! But, blamed or not of the men he has misled, the false prophet shall not go unpunished. “I the Lord will answer him by Myself.” Above all things, may God’s mercy save us from having, under such conditions, to bear God’s answer, by Himself! (H. E. Lewis.)