Bible Commentaries

Divine Expostulation

[an evangelistic address]

Ezekiel 33:11

We ought now and then to have an address from every pulpit that is distinctly evangelistic By an evangelistic address I mean one that is specifically designed to show men the way of salvation, and to induce them to enter it and prosecute it to the end. In a stated ministry we cannot always have such addresses; we must have steady, persevering, sober, devout exposition of the divine Word. Occasionally, however, there ought to be a change, and that change ought to express itself in an ardent attempt to persuade men to come to the Saviour.

What is the Christian idea? Christian teachers are always talking to men about conversion, change of heart, and consequent change of habit The Christian teacher seems to be intent upon pressing upon the attention of men a certain scheme of thought. He will not speak to us so much about practical life, conduct, habit, manners, and the like; he persistently addresses himself to the exposition and enforcement of certain abstract or metaphysical arguments. The plea is in part good; if good, it is very good. This is the only way worth proceeding, attempting the prosecution. The Christian idea is that if you can really alter a man's thought, you at the same time alter the man's life. The Christian teacher, therefore, if really sent from God, begins with the heart. He does not come to wash the hands, but to cleanse the soul; knowing that when the heart is really clean, thoroughly purified, the hands cannot be foul. He would make the fountain good that he may purify the stream. Why, then, this irrational and ungrateful aspersion upon the Christian ministry, that it is always dealing with thoughts, conceptions, intellectual and spiritual attitudes, and not addressing itself to social oppressions, and political considerations and exigencies?

For the reason I have given, we believe that the Christian method is the most fundamental; it carries everything before it; it is only abstract that it may become concrete; it only comes down with celestial power and grace upon the heart that it may work out all manner of social reconciliations and duties. Are we right? We want to be right; we do not want to be as they are who simply beat the air. We know we could make a show of greater progress, but we also know that it would be but an appearance, a vain and transitory ostentation, because we believe that until the heart is right the hand cannot be clean, and we further believe that when the heart is right the hand will be industrious in all manner of kindly, gracious, helpful service. Are we right? How persons do under-estimate the power and the value of right-thinking! Who pays any attention to mere thought? Who in reality cares for the truly and lastingly spiritual? The carnal man likes to see demonstrations; he is fond of banners; he likes to see that something Ezekiel 33:30-33

When it is said, "The children of thy people still are talking against thee," we must not misunderstand the word "against." The prepositions are variously used in English, and especially perhaps in old English. When the Apostle Paul says, "I know nothing by myself," Ezekiel 33:31).

The people come to hear the letter only, and there is no letter so disappointing as the letter of the Bible. If you stop at a certain point you miss everything; you are surrounded by mountains, but they are so high that you cannot see any sky beyond them, and, therefore, they become by their very hugeness prison walls. To profess or to attempt to read the Bible without the spirit of the Bible is to plunge into one mystery after another, and to return from the disastrous exercise stung with disappointment. The people were artistic, not penitent; they were students of vocal exercises; they actually formed an opinion of the man's voice: to think that Ezekiel's ministry should have sunk to that humiliation! But Christ's own ministry was brought down to a similar degradation,—"They," the people, "wondered at the gracious words which proceeded out of his mouth"; they remarked upon his personality and his method, his voice, his action; they were artists, not penitents. And we want no artists in their professional capacity in God's house; we want no millionaires in the sanctuary; we expel all pedants from the altar: in God's house we are simply sinful, necessitous, repentant men and women; we have left all else outside; we do not know how the man is talking, we have no care about his method of speaking to us; we say with the heart's concern, What is it? deliver the message; tell us the news from heaven; bow goes the march eternal? what would the Lord our God have us be and do? Great questions will elicit great replies; solemn looks will make a solemn ministry; a visible hunger will make the steward of the household bring out all the bread the King has given him.

Ezekiel's hearers were formal, not vital. The congregation addressed by the Prophet might have met this morning—for with their mouth they shew much love, but their heart goeth after their covetousness. This is not ancient history, whatever else it may be. If Ezekiel could have lived upon "loud cheers," he would have been living now; if he could have satisfied himself with popular applause, he would have reigned as a king; but he said, I do not want your mouth-worship, I want to find you at the Cross. For in the Old Testament, as certainly as in the New, there is the Cross by which alone men are saved. You can find the Cross in the Old Testament if you want to find it. It is the glory of God sometimes to conceal a thing, but that Cross always projects its shadow across the human history of the Old Testament.

Here is misdirected admiration:—

"And, lo, thou art unto them as a very lovely song of one that hath a pleasant voice, and can play well on an instrument" ( Ezekiel 33:32).

When we get no further than the voice we soon become weary. There are very few persons who know anything about voices: there are incarnate stupidities to whom all voices are alike; the voice of a public bellman and the voice of the finest speaker that ever uttered his native tongue are both alike. There are spheres in which it is right to study the voice and cultivate the voice, and in which it is right to play well upon the instrument—for there is no instrument like the human voice. Instrumental music—even the mighty organ—has its limitations; but the human voice has in it tears, entreaty, passion, living solicitude: if men would therefore attend to the fact that they are called upon to preach by the voice, they could have no competitors in journalism. Journalism is by the necessity of the case all writing: it has no voice, no heart-tone; it has a simulation of it, and sometimes when the words are written with the heart rather than with the hand they have a strange and mighty palpitation: and some things cannot be spoken until they have been written—notably the Bible. It was to be written, set down in such form as was possible, yet all the while it was throwing itself beyond its literal limitations; and in the Bible you have a thousand Bibles, a thousand revelations. What is wanted in every congregation is earnestness. Let the people have a subject as well as the preacher; and no man should come to church except to hear God's word, and so to hear it as to be compelled to do it. For religion is an action as well as a thought: Christianity is a sacrifice as well as a theology. Many men who cannot understand Christian metaphysics can do Christian charities, can exemplify Christian tempers, and so can interpret concretely the subtlest, profoundest metaphysics of divine thinking. There are great doers as well as great speakers; there are men mighty in holy deed as well as masters in sacred thought; there are heroes as well as metaphysicians: we cannot be both, but we can be the one or the other. The true metaphysician will by the degree of his truthfulness be compelled to be earnest as well as subtle, and the hero who knows nothing about spiritual metaphysics will see that in doing God's will he is becoming a great scholar in God's school. "What doth the Lord require of thee, but to do justly, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with thy God": there is a school in which there are hoary-headed scholars and little children just spelling their first little lesson.

The text presents us with the possibility of a too-late discovery.

"And when this cometh to pass (lo, it will come), then shall they know that a prophet hath been among them" ( Ezekiel 33:33).

But the man is dead! It is no use building a granite monument to him; he does not know what you are doing: if you had shaken hands with him warmly whilst he lived you would have helped him in his work. Do not let the man pass away, and then grave his name on memorial brass: a cup of cold water, part of the five loaves and two fishes you were keeping for yourselves, would help him to love and think, and would cheer him into richer, broader prayer than even he has uttered in the night of his trouble. Who does not know what it is to make a discovery too late? Parents say, If we had brought up our children upon another basis they would have been a comfort to us in our old age. The talk is too late; no other parent will heed it: every man must make a fool of himself. Who has not heard men complain that they have neglected their educational advantages? They played truant when they were children; they did not attend to the instruction that was given to them; they had an opportunity of becoming really well informed and highly instructed, but they allowed the opportunity to pass by without improvement Too late! the greatest realisation of loss is that a prophet has vanished, a prophet has been here and gone. Will he not return? Never. Foolish are they who stretch their necks to look over the horizon to see if the prophet is not coming. John rebuked that irrational expectancy when he said to those who were asking questions concerning the Messiah, "There standeth one among you whom ye know not; he it is." The prophet is never far away if you really want him. If you are looking out for a prophet of your own invention, or that shall correspond with your own nightmare which you impiously call a dream, that prophet is miles upon miles beyond the widest horizon which any possible heaven ever made. Your mother could be a prophetess to you if you wanted to pray: your father, who is probably not a great scholar in the literal sense, could speak things to you that would open your imagination to new universes if you really wanted to be guided in upward thinking and heavenly action. There is no prophet, how poorly gifted soever, who cannot hand you the key of the kingdom of heaven if you want to go in; and no Ezekiel that ever flamed like a constellation in the prophetic heavens can help you if you do not want him.