I send thee to the children of Israel.
The commission of Ezekiel
I. The commission. Is it not an act of infinite condescension, that God should take any notice of us? For what are we? Poor finite creatures; of limited capacities, with tendencies to evil, tendencies to the very thing that God Almighty hates, detests, and abhors. Not only with tendencies to these things; but in the actual perpetration of sin; committing crime upon crime. And yet God sends His message to us. Why? Because He knows the original dignity of the soul of man; He knows what it was before he fell; He knows what it was capable of then; and He knows what the soul of man can yet be made through the blood of the Cross and through the power of the Holy Ghost: and, therefore, God sends messages to man. “I do send”; “thou shalt say.” We have no business to go and preach unless God send the outward call of the Church and the inward call of the Spirit. And hence our own Church asks all its candidates for holy orders--the bishop puts the question--“Dost thou believe that thou art inwardly moved by the Holy Ghost to take upon thee this office?” Oh, solemn question! But what shall they speak? They shall speak, “Thus saith the Lord.” The authority for the message is “I do send”; the nature of the message is what the Lord hath said.
II. The way in which this message, which the prophet had been commissioned to deliver, is treated. A twofold way: some receive it; others reject it. Concerning the apostolical ministry, concerning the word preached by the apostles, some believed the thing spoken, and some believed not.
III. They who receive this message, and they who reject it, shall both know at last that it came from the Lord. They who receive it, knew it long before. The indwelling Spirit of the living God testifies with your spirits that these things are true. But take the case of those who reject the Gospel. Oh, they find out also that it was all true. I appeal from the present to the future. You know there is a story in history of a poor woman who considered herself aggrieved, and applied to Philip, King of Macedon. She found him in a state of intoxication: I appeal, said she, “from Philip, under the influence of wine, to Philip, sober and able to judge.” And so I say, if the world, with its allurements, enchant and ensnare you now, and intoxicate your spirit. I appeal from that state to the hour when you shall turn your pale face to the waft, when friends and kindred and medical men shall whisper, “It will soon be all over”: then you shall find, as true as that there is a God, that the Bible is a Divine revelation, that the things which we said to you, concerning which you thought us too much in earnest, are all perfectly true. (T. Mortimer, B. D.)
Proximity not identification.
He was a prophet though the house was rebellious. Can the Lord find no better place for His prophets? Can He not make them a second garden? He made one: can He not make two? Can He not cause His prophet to stand in some high tower where he will be untainted by the pollution of place and time, and whence he can thunder out the Divine word? Has the prophet to mingle with the people, to live with them, to touch their corruptness, to feel the contagion of their evil manners? Might he not have a pedestal to himself? No. The Son of Man when He comes will go on eating and drinking, a social reformer, a brother, a fellow guest at tables; He will take the cup after we have partaken of it, and we may cut Him what morsel of bread He may eat, or He will hand them to us; He will be one of His fellowcreatures. And yet Ezekiel was a prophet. So is the Son of Man. Nothing could mingle Ezekiel with the rebellious house, so as to be unable to distinguish between the one and the other. Proximity is not identification. We may sit close to a murderer, and be quite distinct from him as to all our proclivities, and desires, and aspirations. We need not be corrupt because we live in a corrupt age; we need not go down because the neighbourhood is bad. It is poor pleading, it is irreligious and inexcusable defence, which says it could not resist atmospheric pressure, the subtle influence of social custom and habitude. It is the business of a prophet to stand right up from them, apart from them, and yet to be so near as to be able to teach them, exhort them, rebuke them, and comfort them, when they turn their face but a point towards the throne, the Cross, and the promised heaven. (J. Parker, D. D.)
Commission given to ministers
1. To declare God’s will;
2. To assert His authority;
3. To seek, notwithstanding all our discouragements, the salvation of their souls.
Learn hence--
1. The importance of the ministry;
2. The duty of those who are ministered unto. (G. Simeon, M. A.)
Sin a treason
How does any man know but the very oath he is swearing, the lewdness he is committing, may be scored up by God as one item for a new rebellion? We may be rebels, and yet neither vote in Parliament, sit in committees, or fight in armies. Every sin is virtually a treason, and we may be guilty of murder by breaking other commandments besides the sixth. (R South.)
Rebellion against God
“There is as much felony in coming pence as shillings and pounds” (Manton). The principle is the same, whatever the value of the coin may be: the prerogative of the Crown is trenched upon by the counterfeiter, even if he only imitates and utters the smallest coin of the realm. He has set the royal sign to his base metal, and the small money value of his coinage is no excuse for his offence. Anyone sin wilfully indulged and persevered in is quite sufficient to prove a man to be a traitor to his God. The spirit of rebellion is the same whatever be the manner of displaying it. A giant may look out through a very small window, and so may great obstinacy of rebellion manifest itself in a little act of wilfulness. (C. H. Spurgeon.)
The preacher’s duty
Like as the fountain, though no man draw of it, doth still send forth his springs; or as a river, though no man drink of it, yet doth it keep his course, and flow nevertheless; even so it behoveth him that preacheth the word of God, to do what lieth in his power, though no man give any attentiveness, or have any care to follow the same. (J. Spencer.)
Impudent children and stiff-hearted.
Impudence and stiff-heartedness
1. Progress in sin makes impudent. It is an exceeding evil to be past shame, to be impudent in sinning. If ever God show mercy to such sinners, they must be ashamed.
2. Where there is an impudent face there is a hard, stiff heart. And this is one of the greatest evils.
3. God sends His prophets and ministers about hard services, such as are full of discouragements when looked upon with a carnal eye.
4. Ministers should not so much look at the persons they are sent to, or the event of their ministry, as at their call. God’s will and command must content us, support us. What if we be scoffed at, reviled, made the offscouring and filth of the world; yet here is the comfort of a true prophet, of a true minister, Christ sent him; and He that set him to work will pay him his wages, whether they hear or hear not to whom he is sent.
5. Those who are sent of God must deliver, not their own, but God’s message. (W. Greenhill, M. A.)
A ministry to the unresponsive
“We may preach and preach,” said a great bishop once to his ordinands, “and our words will seem to fall upon a stone, and not upon a man’s heart.” Under any such trials of patience and hopefulness, Ezekiel’s experience will prove helpful. How awful is the reason assigned! They “will not hearken unto thee, for they will not hearken unto Me.” As our Lord said long afterwards (John 15:18), the servant could not expect to be welcomed when the Lord had been in effect rejected, The exiles’ hearts were not right with God; therefore, of course, they could not appreciate God’s envoy. What they said, as he reports it, exhibits human perversity in some very advanced forms, which are by no means obsolete; it is only too easy to translate their objections into language which is anything but dead. Hear some of them complain that the fathers have eaten sour grapes, and the children’s teeth are set on edge. “We are punished because our fathers sinned; is that fair? Can the way of the Lord be called straight: It is not straight, but twisted, contorted, and our sense of justice is shocked”: as many nowadays declare that the inequalities of human condition, or other natural facts which “cannot be smoothed over or explained away,” have made them incapable of believing that the world is governed by a righteous Providence. Or there are these who openly say, “We will be as the heathen”: it is the cry of that wild impatience which would fain get rid of the responsibilities avowedly involved in the profession of religion. Or if the mood is not so distinctly rebellious, it is that of a sullen despair which masks itself under an apparent acknowledgment of sin: “Our hope is lost, we are cut off, we pine away in our transgressions,--how then should we live?” The gloom, we see, is faithless, even if it does not reach the point of revolt. Again, there are others who reject, as we might say, on the grounds of “common sense and common experience,” the supernatural character of prophecy; “every vision faileth” predictions are disproved, or, to quote a modern dictum, “miracles do not happen.” Ezekiel is, in effect, bluntly told that “facts are against him.” Or even, say others, “if there is something in his prophecies, the vision is of times far off”: things will last our time we need not disturb ourselves--as a comfortable selfishness has often persuaded itself before some great “Day of the Son of Man,” e.g., in the years that ushered in the French Revolution. Or others have their own prophets, much better worth hearing than Ezekiel, who tell them what is pleasant to think of, with no austere requirements, no rigid prohibitions, no croaking “bodements” of a dismal, intolerable future; the result of which is, that “the hands of the wicked are strengthened to go on in their evil way” by “visions of a peace that is no peace.” Or the style and contents of Ezekiel’s preaching are cavilled at: the misgivings which it secretly awakens are silenced by critical remarks on its obscurity: “They say of me. Doth he not speak parables?” Practical men, they assume, may web dispense with attending to a voice that cannot put plain meaning into plain words. Or there are others, probably among the younger sort, who at first sight seem more promising; they listen to the prophet with real enjoyment, as they might to one who can sing pleasantly and “play well”; only it is a mere aesthetic pleasure, a gratification of the sense of beauty for its own sake, with no moral movement of the will: “they hear thy words, but they do them not.” Or, lastly, there are men grave and “highly respectable,” who come with all appearance of seriousness to sit before Ezekiel as pupils, and inquire, through him of the Lord; but he is bidden to repel them as self-deceivers who have set up, and retain, “their idols in their hearts”: favourite sins with them prove stumbling blocks to bar all progress upward; therefore on them shall come the doom of being “answered according to their idols.” Ezekiel’s ministry was, as we thus see, preeminently a ministry of penetration into character. Its leading feature is a close, severe, persistent dealing with conscience; he has been truly called “the prophet of personal responsibility.” He shows that if, to some extent, heredity involves very real disadvantage, if children suffer because parents or ancestors have sinned, yet in the last resort no one soul will be spiritually rejected from the mercies and blessings of the Divine covenant simply on account of the sins of other persons, which he has not personally shared in or made his own. So does Ezekiel prepare the way for that Saviour who, while He built up His Church as a spiritual home for all believers, conferred a new dignity, sacredness, preciousness, on each individual soul for whom He died. What a thought it is, the interest that the Most High God takes in each one of us singly! That fact has a twofold bearing: it imposes on us the obligation of walking in the fear of the Lord, of standing in awe and striving not to sin, of recognising that the revelation of a true God, as culminating in the incarnation of a Son of God who gave Himself up for us all, must needs have a stern side. But the other aspect of our personal relation to God is that in which the Gospel mainly presents Him--that which was illuminated by the Cross and summarised in St. John’s assertion that He is Love. (Canon Bright.)
Shall know that there hath been a prophet among them.--
Wicked men left without excuse
God will leave wicked men without excuse. It is God’s intention; they shall never be able to challenge Me, nor to justify themselves. God’s primary intentions, where He sends prophets and means of grace, are the good of His elect, their comfort, sanctification, and salvation; but His secondary intentions are the iuexeusableness of the wicked, and their just damnation. When God sends His word to any place, it shall and must prosper in the thing whereunto He sends it (Isaiah 55:11); be it to win and draw, or to harden and make inexcusable. See Isaiah 6:9-10. (W. Greenhill, M. A.)
Prophets are witnesses for or against their hearers
“They shall know there hath been a prophet amongst them”; his person, his pains, his truths, his life, his sufferings, his death, will all come in for witnesses one day. Every prophet, every preacher that Christ sends, is a witness, as well as an officer or a minister; I have made “thee a minister and a witness” (Acts 26:16). All faithfnl ministers are Christ’s witnesses (Acts 1:8). They bear witness of Christ and His doctrine; and if we receive not Him and His doctrine, they will be Christ’s witnesses against us. As for Me and My prophets, My ministers, you despised, or only gave the hearing, and that was all: and My charge is not false; here are My witnesses. What say you to it? Speak, you ministers of such a city, and such a place. What, did you not preach many a sermon, shed many a tear, sweat many a drop, make many a prayer for them? did ye not early and late watch for the good of their souls? etc. Yea, Lord, but they would not receive us, they would not believe our report we made of Thee, they would not take Thy yoke upon them, etc.; we shook off the dust of our feet against them. This will be dreadful, when such witness of the prophets comes in against hearers. (W. Greenhill, M. A.)
The preacher a correcter of consciences
The verification of the compass is a matter of serious importance in navigation.” The vessel is moored, and by means of warps to certain government buoys, she is placed with her head toward the various points of the compass, one after another. The bearing of her compass on board, influenced as that is by the attraction of the iron she carries, is taken accurately by one observer in the vessel, and the true bearing is signalled to him by another observer on shore, who has a compass out of reach of the local attraction of the ship. The error in each position is thus ascertained, and the necessary corrections are made. Now in the Church your people are like that observer on board ship. Their consciences have been all the week affected by the influence of things immediately around them, so that they are in danger of making serious mistakes even in their reading of the Book of God. But in the pulpit, you are like the observer on shore. You are away from the magnetic agencies--mostly metallic--which so seriously affect them; therefore you can signalise to them their ‘true bearings,’ and thus prepare them for the voyage of the week which is to follow.” (W. M. Taylor.)