And when this cometh to pass, (lo, it will come,) then shall they know that a prophet hath been among them.
When this cometh to pass - when thy predictions are verified.
(Lo, it will come) - rather, 'lo, it is come' (see Ezekiel 33:21-22).
Shall they know - experimentally, and to their cost.
Remarks:
(1) The duty of the spiritual watchman is to warn faithfully the impenitent of their imminent danger and of (1) The duty of the spiritual watchman is to warn faithfully the impenitent of their imminent danger, and of the willingness of God to receive them graciously and save them freely, if they will repent. Whosoever hears the watchman's warning, and yet takes no heed to it, shall perish, and his blood shall be upon his own head (Ezekiel 33:2-5; Ezekiel 33:9). But the minister who knows the danger that is before sinners, and yet neglects to sound the faithful note of warning, shall not only be in part the cause of their ruin, but shall also bring on his own head an awful condemnation. They no doubt justly perish on account of their neglect to watch and pray continually; but he incurs at once the guilt of his own and that of their disobedience to God (Ezekiel 33:8). What a heavy account they shall have to render who make excuses for sin, flatter sinners, and promise them pardon and peace without penitence and faith!
(2) Lest, however, the sternness of God's threats against the disobedient should drive to despair those who, like the Jews, are conscious of transgressions and sins (Ezekiel 33:10) which deserve the wrath of God, Ezekiel assures us that God has "no pleasure in the death of the wicked," but that what gives our loving God pleasure is, "that the wicked should turn from his way and live" (Ezekiel 33:11). Nay more, the great God of heaven, so far from desiring that sinners should "pine away" in their iniquities, as the Jews thought (Ezekiel 33:10), actually deigns to plead with the guilty worms of the dust not to destroy themselves, as though He were imploring for some favour for Himself, "Turn ye, turn ye ... for why will ye die?" Oh what infinite compassion, tenderness, and love! Who can harden himself against such an appeal? And how much it will add to the bitterness of the misery of the lost, to remember that they slighted such an invitation!
(3) It is He alone who endureth to the end that shall be saved. Past acts of seeming righteousness will not avail anything to him who backslides into sin, and dies in it (Ezekiel 33:12). Many who made a fair profession, and who seemed to themselves and others saved men, have "trusted in their own righteousness," and presumed upon their own sufficiency, and so have fallen into iniquity which has proved their ruin.
(4) On the other hand, the sinner who has taken heed to the warning of God, and turned from sin to righteousness, and given real evidences of faith and repentance by "walking in the statutes of life" (Ezekiel 33:15), shall surely live, and not die. It was thus that Zaccheus, once guilty of the usual bad practices of Roman tax-collectors, when converted by the grace of Christ, at once gave evidence of a real change of heart by restoring four-fold whatever he had unjustly gained, and so received the immediate assurance of salvation (Luke 19:8-10). Not one of the past sins of believers shall be mentioned against them (Ezekiel 33:16). God "will cast all their sins into the depths of the sea" (Micah 7:19). Let us therefore never forget, if we be in Christ, that we were "purged from our old sins" (2 Peter 1:9).
(5) When men find fault with the ways of God as "not equal," it is because their own ways are not equal (Ezekiel 33:17). On the other hand, God saith, "Do not my words do good to him that walketh uprightly?" (Micah 2:7.) God "meeteth him that worketh righteousness; those that remember God in His ways" (Isaiah 64:5). The cause of sceptical cavils at the ways of divine providence and grace lies in the unbeliever's faulty state of heart, which corrupts the understanding.
(6) At length the fatal stroke so long threatened, but suspended through the long-suffering of God, fell on Jerusalem, and the sad tidings reached the captives at the river Chebar (Ezekiel 33:21). Such was the infatuation of the escaped remnant in the now-wasted lands of Judea (Ezekiel 33:24) that they were even still full of self-sufficient confidence. Had this confidence been resting on the restoration of God's favour, through their repentance, it would have been a reasonable confidence; but it rested on utterly false reasonings as to the relation in which they stood to Abraham. Abraham, they reasoned, obtained from God the inheritance of Canaan (Ezekiel 33:24), and we are his children, and therefore are entitled to succeed to his inheritance: Abraham was but "one" when he obtained the grant of the land, much more shall we retain it as our own who are "many." But they utterly shut their eyes to the fact that Abraham pleased God in all his ways, and was therefore called "the friend of God:" they, on the contrary, displeased God in all their ways by "working abominations," and "standing upon their sword" as if might made right. Therefore, in just retribution "they should fall by the sword" (Ezekiel 33:27), and those who escaped it, and got into "caves" to hide from the foe, should "die of pestilence" there (Ezekiel 33:27); and "the pomp of their strength should cease," and their land be "most desolate" (Ezekiel 33:27-28).
(7) The captive Jews at the Chebar, though not so openly, yet betrayed substantially the same spirit as their unbelieving brethren in Judea. While professing great admiration for Ezekiel's earnestness and eloquence, they talked against him both in their places of public resort and in their private houses (Ezekiel 33:30). It is true they agreed together to "come and hear what was the word from the Lord;" but God looks to the inward motives, and these were far from being such as God approves. Curiosity and the idle wish to hear some new thing influenced some, as in the case of the Athenians in ages long subsequent (Acts 17:19-21). How many there are in our days who go to places where the Word of God is faithfully preached, from no better motive! "May we know what this new doctrine whereof thou speakest is?" Others again go to criticise, as the Jews at the Chebar criticised Ezekiel's manner and enigmatical style in an unfriendly and self-sufficient spirit. They discuss religion as a mere matter of taste, not as a matter of life or death eternal to themselves.
Thus they make some trifling defect in the mode of the preacher their means of parrying off the home-thrust which the sword of the Spirit, the Word of God, aims at their conscience. They come, indeed, to the minister of God as if they were the people of God; they sit before him as obedient disciples: but while they hear, they will not do the will of God; for pastime and gratification of the ear, not spiritual profit and renewal of the heart, are what they seek. With all their loud mouth-professions of love to God and His ordinances, the love which reigns in their heart is love of self and love of fame, pleasure, and gain (Ezekiel 33:31). "Covetousness" is a grand rival to the love of God; so that where the love of mammon is, there the love of God is not. An eloquent and holy preacher like Ezekiel may please the fancy of carnal hearers, but their hearts are not reached, because they listen not as if the subject-matter was one in which they are personally and everlastingly interested, but as if they were listening to a piece of vocal and instrumental music (Ezekiel 33:32), in which the melody is the chief thing, and the truth contained in the words a matter of very secondary importance.
But whether men take heed to and obey the Word, or do not, the event will prove the truth of God: and they who will not now know the preciousness of their privileges, by using them aright, shall be made to know it hereafter in their eternal deprivation of them (Ezekiel 33:33). Lord, do thou give us the spiritually hearing ear, the seeing eye, and the understanding heart! (Proverbs 8:5; Proverbs 20:12).