Ezekiel 32:17-32 It came to pass also in the twelfth year, in the fifteenth day of the month, that the word of the LORD came to me, saying,… The prophet is a man of power. He is a king bearing an invisible scepter. As a monarch wields only a borrowed power - a power lent by God - so a true prophet is God's vicegerent. Here he unfolds a terrible vision, the outline of a woeful reality. He leads the Egyptian king to the mouth of a vast abyss, in which lie multitudes of the vanquished and the slain. He is invited to contemplate the condition of those thus dishonored by the King of Babylon. And he is forewarned that such will be his doom. Escape was just possible, but it was almost a forlorn hope. I. DUTY OFTTIMES IS EXCEEDINGLY PAINFUL. God's servant is called upon to wail He is even an agent, though a subordinate agent, in casting king and people into the abyss of death. He is under obligation to act for God. The path of duty is often severely rugged; yet no other path is smoother, though another path may seem to be. The course of righteousness will be in the end peace, but in the process there is strife and hard discipline. The harvest will be plentiful, but severe exertion is required, and faith is put to the strain. The pain of travail must precede the joy of young life. Through toil we pass to honor. II. SIN ALWAYS LEADS TO TERRIBLE DEGRADATION. Sin is already real degradation, although very often men do not see it. But the disease will appear by-and-by on the exterior circumstance. The seed will come to the fruitage. Sin is no "respecter of persons." Even "the daughters of the famous nations" - eminent for strength and beauty - "shall be cast down into the nether parts of the earth." There shall be visible a terrible downfall, an unmitigated degradation. As the lower orders of creatures cannot sin, neither can they suffer such degradation. The balances are in the hands of supreme justice, and the hour of final retribution draws on apace. "Though the mills of God grind slowly, yet they grind exceeding small." III. SELF-ESTEEM IS NO SAFEGUARD AGAINST JUST RETRIBUTION. "Whom dost thou pass in beauty? Go down, and be thou laid with the uncircumcised" The spirit of vanity may tempt us to say, "We are better than they. The doom of others will not be our doom" It is marvelous how men are taken in the web of self-deception. Yet no external circumstance has ever yet saved men from the effects of unrighteousness. Riches have not saved them. The beauty of Cleopatra did not protect her from a terrible doom. The honor of our contemporaries cannot save us. Posterity will easily reverse the present judgment of men, and the hand of justice will tear in pieces our flimsy reputation. Present fame may be future disgrace. IV. ASSOCIATION WITH OTHERS WILL BE DETERMINED BY MORAL AFFINITIES. In the present state, men are associated by natural affinities and by external circumstances. But such arrangements are temporary and provisional only. Children nursed at the same breast and fed at the same table will have their final portion as separate as the poles asunder. Now kings consort with kings, nobles with nobles, poets with poets; but in the final apportionment, the righteous of every social grade will consort with the righteous; vile kings will consort with vile beggars. Earthly circumstance and pomp will have disappeared. Only moral distinctions will remain. Association in sin must terminate by association in woe. Human beings and all beings gravitate to that state for which they are fitted. No affinities are so deep and strong as moral affinities, and, though for a time suppressed, they will by-and-by be uppermost. V. THE RUIN OF OTHERS IS IMPOTENT TO DETER FROM SIN. "The strong among the mighty shall speak to him out of the midst of hell" If only men would be warned by the fall and ruin of others, we might hope that all future generations of mankind would be saved. There are beacons without number to frighten men away from the rocks and quicksands of peril, yet all to no purpose. We think others to be in peril, not ourselves. Alas! "the heart is deceitful above all things." Nothing will turn us away from the fascinating eye of sin but the working of almighty grace within. Beacons become to us what scarecrows do to birds - they soon cease to alarm. VI. SELF-INFLATION IS THE PRELUDE TO ETERNAL SHAME. "They were the terror of the mighty in the land of the living;" "With their terror, they are [now] ashamed of their might." After all, what a frail reed is the mightiest scepter or the most martial arm! What real weakness is at the heart of him who brandishes the gory sword! Like the frog who attempted to inflate himself to the magnitude of an ox, so the paltry man who assays to play the tyrant soon collapses. One sharp prick, and the windbag soon collapses. As a child feels overwhelmed with shame when he sees in the clear light of morning the tree or the gate-pest that terrified him in the darkness; so men at length discover the emptiness of the monarch, whose frown was for a moment their terror. All pretence to power and authority shall presently be hurled to the ground, ay, cast into the pit of oblivion. All real power shall abide. VII. GOD'S TERROR IS SUPREME OVER MAN'S. "I have caused my terror in the land of the living." There is such a thing as power in the universe - an infinite power - before which it becomes every man to tremble; but this power is in the hand of God. "Jehovah reigneth, therefore let the people tremble." "Before him the inhabitants of the earth are as grasshoppers; they are like the small dust of the balance." His power is real, all-pervading, all-enduring. No being in the universe can diminish it nor resist it. Being a real power, it is becoming that it should inspire us with awe. The terror which tyrants and warriors awaken is only for a moment. The sham soon gets exposed. But presently the King of kings will make even tyrants shake, and the hearts of warriors melt. "Vengeance is mine," saith God; "I will repay." When Jehovah appears, tyrants hide themselves "in dens and caves of the earth." "Fear him, ye saints, and ye will then Have nothing else to fear." D. Parallel Verses KJV: It came to pass also in the twelfth year, in the fifteenth day of the month, that the word of the LORD came unto me, saying, |
    |