Ezekiel 12:21
Again the word of the LORD came to me, saying,
Sermons
The Snare of UnbeliefJ.D. Davies Ezekiel 12:21-28
The Word of the Lord Discredited and VindicatedW. Jones Ezekiel 12:21-28














Faith has the power to make the distant near. It obliterates distance of time and space. But unbelief reverses the effect. It looks in at the wrong end of the telescope, and reduces realities to a mere speck. Unbelief corrupts all blessing; it makes sour the very cream of God's kindness. "Because judgment is not speedily executed," incorrigible rebellion makes a mock of retribution.

I. THE ANNOUNCEMENT OF DISTANT JUDGMENT IS GREAT KINDNESS. The ancient Greeks had an adage: "The gods have feet of wool." But this does not describe the character of the living God. Instead of overtaking men hastily, "he is slow to anger." He does not willingly afflict. "The axe is often laid at the root of the tree," and that for a long spell; and if repentance and fruitfulness appear, the sentence is gladly revoked. The aim and purpose of our God are not destruction, but restoration. If it is within the range of possibility to awake the slumbering conscience, and save the man, God will do it. To announce beforehand ordained judgments is kindness infinite.

II. DEFERRED JUDGMENT OFTEN LEADS TO MISPLACED CONFIDENCE. The best blessings, when corrupted, become our direst curses. Neither the bitter experience of sin, though long continued, nor the royal clemency of God, produces any beneficial effect on some men. They seem deaf to every appeal of prudence, insensible to every overture of kindness. All tender feeling appears to have vanished; they have reached already a state of hopeless reprobation. If the severity of justice for a moment should relax, they put it down to cowardice, or weakness, or irresolution. They say, "We shall have peace, though we walk after the imagination of our own hearts." "Give a loose rein to lust," say they; "God doth not regard us."

III. UNBELIEF PUTS FAR OFF THE DAY OF RECKONING. Its shallow line of reasoning is this: "No punishment has fallen upon us as yet. Today will be as yesterday, and tomorrow as today. Probably," say they, "punishment will not come at all; or if it should, it is so far away that for all practical purposes we may disregard it" There is a strong force of inertia in every man's nature. What has been, he thinks, will continue to be. "Where is the promise of his coming?" The wish becomes father to the thought, that punishment is dubious, problematic - a mere ghost of probability. All the evidence of Divine rule and Divine interposition unbelief rejects as hypothetical craze. What cannot be seen and handled and touched unbelief despises as unreal.

IV. THE HOUR OF DOOM AT LENGTH SUDDENLY STRIKES. To men it often seems a sudden event; not so to God. He has seen he elements preparing stage by stage, and "suddenness" forms no part of his experience. So it has been with all the great calamities that have overtaken men. In the period of Noah's deluge, men saw no prognostication of coming danger. "They bought, they sold, they married, they were given in marriage, until the very day that Noah entered into the ark." On the day of Sodom's doom, the sun rose over the eastern hills with his usual splendour and tranquillity; yet before noon the smoke of the devastation rose and smothered in silence the cries of its dying population. "So shall the coming of the Son of man be." When profligate men least expect it the storm shall break upon their heads. Whensoever the long suffering kindness of God is made an occasion of fresh licence, be quite sure that retribution is not far away. "In such an hour as ye think not, the Son of man cometh." - D.

Son of man, thou dwellest in the midst of a rebellious house, which have eyes to see and see not.
Homilist.
Eyes and ears are for many reasons the most important and valuable organs of the human body, the chief "gates" — to use the language of Bunyan — to the famous town of Mansoul. The one brings us into contact with form, the other with sound; the one has relation to space, the other to time. No part in the human frame is so wonderful in their execution as these. "The eye," says one, "by its admirable combination of coats and humours and lenses, produces on the retina, or expansion of nerve at the back of the socket or bony cavity, in which it is so securely lodged, a distinct picture of the minutest or largest object; so that, on a space that is less than an inch in diameter, a landscape of miles in extent, with all its variety of scenery, is depicted with perfect exactness of relative proportion in all its parts." Nor is the ear less wonderful. "It is a complicated mechanism lying wholly within the body, showing only the wide outer porch through which the sound enters. It conveys the sound through various chambers to the inmost extremities of those nerves which bear the messages to the brain. So delicate is this organ, that it catches the softest whispers, and conveys them to the soul, and so strong that it hears the roll of the loudest thunder in the chamber of its mistress." Now, the text — as well as other parts of Scripture — teaches that man's spiritual nature has organs answering to those organs of the body. The text calls us to notice the spiritual disuse of these faculties.

I. It involves the greatest DEPRIVATION.

1. The disuse shuts out the grandest realities of existence. What are the immutable principles of rectitude, what is the great spiritual universe, what is God Himself, to the man who is morally blind and deaf?

2. The disuse shuts out the sublimest joys of existence. What are the charms of physical to moral beauty, the beauty of holiness and God? What are the charms of physical harmony to those of that great moral anthem that fills the spiritual universe with rapture and delights the ear of God Himself? How great then the deprivation of the spiritually blind and deaf! God is with them, His pure, happy heavens lie about them, and they know it not.

3. The disuse deteriorates the faculties themselves. Unused organs often die out.

II. It involves the greatest WICKEDNESS.

1. It is an abuse of talent. All the powers we possess, we possess as trustees, not as proprietors; they are entrusted to us for a specific purpose.

2. It is an abuse of the greatest talents. These spiritual faculties are the highest we have — higher than bodily power, higher than intellectual ability, higher than natural genius.Conclusion —

1. The sad condition of the unregenerate world.

2. The deeply needed mission of Christ.

(Homilist.)

You cannot commit sin and be as clear-minded as you were before you committed it. The obscurity of mind may not be immediately evident; but let a man allow one bad thought to pass through his brain, and the brain has lost quality, a tremendous injury has been inflicted on that sensitive organ; by and by, after a succession of such passages, there will be no brain to injure. Sin tears down whatever it touches. Your habit is bringing you to imbecility, if it is a bad habit. You must name it; preachers may not speak distinctly and definitely, but they create a standard by which men may judge themselves, and by which preachers may also judge their own aspirations and purposes. You are losing your eyesight by your sin; you are becoming deaf because you are becoming worse in thought and desire and purpose; you are not the business man you were a quarter of a century ago, when you were a disciplinarian, a Spartan, a self-critic, when you held yourself in a leash, and would not allow yourself to go an inch faster than your judgment approved; since then you have loosened the reins, you have allowed the steeds to go at their own will, and the consequence is that you miss one-half of what is spoken to you, and you fail to see God's morning and God's sunset; they are but commonplaces to you, mayhap but broad vulgarities. Men should be good if they wish to keep their genius. The bad man goes down. His descent may not be palpable today or tomorrow, but the process is not the less certain and tremendous because it is sometimes imperceptible.

(J. Parker, D. D.)

People
Ezekiel
Places
Babylon, Chaldea, Jerusalem
Topics
Saying
Outline
1. Under the type of Ezekiel's removing
8. is shown the captivity of Zedekiah
17. Ezekiel's trembling shows the Jews' desolation
21. The Jews' presumptuous proverb is reproved
26. The speediness of the vision

Dictionary of Bible Themes
Ezekiel 12:21-25

     5481   proverb

Library
A Common Mistake and Lame Excuse
'... He prophesieth of the times that are far off.'--EZEKIEL xii. 27. Human nature was very much the same in the exiles that listened to Ezekiel on the banks of the Chebar and in Manchester to-day. The same neglect of God's message was grounded then on the same misapprehension of its bearings which profoundly operates in the case of many people now. Ezekiel had been proclaiming the fall of Jerusalem to the exiles whose captivity preceded it by a few years; and he was confronted by the incredulity
Alexander Maclaren—Expositions of Holy Scripture

The End
'1. And it came to pass in the ninth year of his reign, in the tenth month, in the tenth day of the month, that Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon came, he, and all his host, against Jerusalem, and pitched against it; and they built forts against it round about. 2. And the city was besieged unto the eleventh year of king Zedekiah. 3. And on the ninth day of the fourth month the famine prevailed in the city, and there was no bread for the people of the land. 4. And the city was broken up, and all the
Alexander Maclaren—Expositions of Holy Scripture

The Last Agony
'In the ninth year of Zedekiah king of Judah, in the tenth month, came Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon and all his army against Jerusalem, and they besieged it. 2. And in the eleventh year of Zedekiah, in the fourth month, the ninth day of the month, the city was broken up. 3. And all the princes of the king of Babylon came in, and sat in the middle gate, even Nergal-sharezer, Samgar-nebo, Sarse-chim, Rab-saris, Nergal-sharezer, Rab-mag, with all the residue of the princes of the king of Babylon.
Alexander Maclaren—Expositions of Holy Scripture

The Purpose in the Coming of Jesus.
God Spelling Himself out in Jesus: change in the original language--bother in spelling Jesus out--sticklers for the old forms--Jesus' new spelling of old words. Jesus is God following us up: God heart-broken--man's native air--bad choice affected man's will--the wrong lane--God following us up. The Early Eden Picture, Genesis 1:26-31. 2:7-25: unfallen man--like God--the breath of God in man--a spirit, infinite, eternal--love--holy--wise--sovereign over creation, Psalm 8:5-8--in his own will--summary--God's
S. D. Gordon—Quiet Talks about Jesus

'As Sodom'
'Zedekiah was one and twenty years old when he began to reign, and he reigned eleven years in Jerusalem. And his mother's name was Hamutal the daughter of Jeremiah of Libnah. 2. And he did that which was evil in the eyes of the Lord, according to all that Jehoiakim had done. 3. For through the anger of the Lord it came to pass in Jerusalem and Judah, till he had cast them out from his presence, that Zedekiah rebelled against the king of Babylon. 4. And it came to pass, in the ninth year of his reign,
Alexander Maclaren—Expositions of Holy Scripture

A Believer's Privilege at Death
'For to me to live is Christ, and to die is gain.' Phil 1:1I. Hope is a Christian's anchor, which he casts within the veil. Rejoicing in hope.' Rom 12:12. A Christian's hope is not in this life, but he hash hope in his death.' Prov 14:42. The best of a saint's comfort begins when his life ends; but the wicked have all their heaven here. Woe unto you that are rich! for ye have received your consolation.' Luke 6:64. You may make your acquittance, and write Received in full payment.' Son, remember that
Thomas Watson—A Body of Divinity

Ezekiel
To a modern taste, Ezekiel does not appeal anything like so powerfully as Isaiah or Jeremiah. He has neither the majesty of the one nor the tenderness and passion of the other. There is much in him that is fantastic, and much that is ritualistic. His imaginations border sometimes on the grotesque and sometimes on the mechanical. Yet he is a historical figure of the first importance; it was very largely from him that Judaism received the ecclesiastical impulse by which for centuries it was powerfully
John Edgar McFadyen—Introduction to the Old Testament

Links
Ezekiel 12:21 NIV
Ezekiel 12:21 NLT
Ezekiel 12:21 ESV
Ezekiel 12:21 NASB
Ezekiel 12:21 KJV

Ezekiel 12:21 Bible Apps
Ezekiel 12:21 Parallel
Ezekiel 12:21 Biblia Paralela
Ezekiel 12:21 Chinese Bible
Ezekiel 12:21 French Bible
Ezekiel 12:21 German Bible

Ezekiel 12:21 Commentaries

Bible Hub
Ezekiel 12:20
Top of Page
Top of Page