Then the word of the LORD came to me, saying, Sermons
I. MAN'S NEED OF A DIVINE ORACLE. The elders of Israel may be taken as representatives of mankind generally. They approached the prophet in order to inquire of the Lord. And in this they were right. 1. For human ignorance needs Divine enlightenment and teaching. 2. Human uncertainty and perplexity need Divine guidance, wise and authoritative. 3. Human sinfulness, clouding, as it does, the spiritual vision, needs authoritative precept as to the path of duty. 4. Human fear and foreboding need the consolation of Divine kindness and the promise of Divine support. II. GOD'S WILLINGNESS TO REPLY FULLY AND GRACIOUSLY TO THE APPLICATION OF EARNEST INQUIRERS. if there is one lesson more than another inculcated with frequency and constancy in the pages of Scripture, it is this - that the eternal Father is accessible to his children, that there is no need which they can bring unto him which he is not ready to supply from his infinite fulness and according to his infinite compassion. Revelation itself is a proof of this. The commission given to prophets and apostles was with a view to a suitable and sufficient response to the inquiries of men. The supreme Gift of God, his own Son, is just a provision intended to meet the wants, the deep spiritual cravings, of the human heart; he is "God with us." To question God's willingness to receive those who inquire of him is to cast a doubt upon the genuine: hess of the economies alike of the Law and of the gospel. III. THE MORAL CONDITIONS INDISPENSABLY NECESSARY IN ORDER TO RECEIVING A RESPONSE FROM THE ORACLE OF GOD. Two such conditions may especially be mentioned. 1. Teachableness and humility; the disposition of the little child, without which none can enter the kingdom of heaven; the new birth, which is the entrance upon the new life. 2. Repentance. Whilst living in sin and loving sin men cannot receive the righteousness, the blessing, which the heavenly Father waits to bestow. "Your iniquities have separated between you and your God." Sin is as a cloud which hides the sunlight from shining upon the soul; it is like certain conditions of atmosphere, it hinders the sound of God's voice from reaching the spiritual ear. This is the action, not of arbitrary will, but of moral law. IV. THE PRACTICAL LESSONS TO BE LEARNT BY APPLICANTS. 1. Here, many, in the same position as that occupied by the elders of Israel who came to Ezekiel, may learn the reason of their rejection. "As I live, saith the Lord God, I will not be inquired of by you!" 2. Here all suppliants may learn a lesson of encouragement. It is not in God's ill will that the obstacle to our reception is to be sought; lot there is no ill wilt in him. "Wash you, make you clean!" Draw near with a sense of need, with confessions of unworthiness, with requests based upon the revealed loving kindness of the heavenly Father; draw near in the name of him who has himself shown the vastness of the obstacle of sin, and who has himself removed that obstacle; and be assured of a gracious reception and a free and sufficient response. In Christ, the Eternal addresses the sons of men, saying, "Seek ye my face!" and in Christ the lowly and penitent may approach the throne of grace with the exclamation, "Thy face, Lord, will I seek!" - T.
I gave them My Sabbaths. Let two remarks be premised. We enforce not the duties of the Jewish but of the Christian Sabbath. Everything in the Christian Sabbath is tender and considerate on the one hand, everything is spiritual and elevated on the other; and is, in both views, adapted to the real state and exigencies of our nature, under the last and most perfect dispensation of religion. But then the determination of what is really spiritual, of what is really for the welfare of man, of what ale the real duties and employments of the day, must be taken from the Scriptures themselves, and not from the opinions, much less from the inclinations and fashions, of a corrupt world.I. Keep ever in view THE GREAT END OF THE INSTITUTION — which is to be a visible sign of the covenant between God and us, and a principal means of that sanctification which it is one object of that covenant to produce. What an exalted end and design of the institution! Sanctification is the work of God's Holy Spirit by His secret but effectual influences upon the heart, separating man from the love and service of sin, and turning him to God and holiness. And how important is the thought, that the design of the Almighty in sanctifying and hallowing a day of Sabbath was that man, His moral and accountable creature, might be sanctified and dedicated by means of it — that the external consecration of the season ends in the internal consecration of the heart of man to his Creator and Redeemer! We awake to the true importance of the institution when we feel our fallen and sinful state, when we receive the covenant of grace as proposed in the Gospel, when we seek to be sanctified, body, soul, and spirit, to be the Lord's. A Divine life infused into the soul of man — a perception of the nature and excellency of spiritual things — a view of the glory and majesty of the great Redeemer — a reliance upon His death and resurrection — a dependence upon the influence of His Holy Spirit — these bring the Sabbath and the human heart together. II. THE PUBLIC AND PRIVATE DUTIES OF IT. 1. The public exercise; of God's worship, and the fellowship of Christians with each other in common acts of prayer and praise, are the leading business of this holy season. 2. The care of our families must not, however, be neglected, whilst we first discharge our public duties. 3. The private and personal duties must prepare for and succeed the public and domestic. 4. The duties of the Christian Sabbath extend to our dependents — to "the stranger within our gates" — to all over whom we have any natural influence — and even to the irrational creatures who subserve our comfort, and whose repose is commanded both for their own sakes and to render more completely practical the duty of religious rest enjoined upon man, their lord. III. In order to keep holy the Lord's day, we must carry THE TRUE SPIRIT OF THE CHRISTIAN DISPENSATION INTO THESE DUTIES. We must not celebrate a Jewish but a Christian festival. We must imbibe that spirit of rest and delight in God, that sense of refreshment and repose, in His more immediate service, which the liberty of the Gospel breathes, and without some degree of which we can never discharge these duties aright. Can any picture be more inviting than that of a family, a neighbourhood, a parish, honouring the day of God with cheerful and grateful hearts — meditating on that sanctification which is the great design of the day of rest — filling up its hours with the various and important exercises of public and private devotion — and imbuing every act of duty with the Christian temper, with the filial spirit — the spirit not "of bondage again to fear, but the spirit of adoption, crying, Abba, Father"? IV. Especially glorify God for THOSE MIGHTY BLESSINGS WHICH ARE APPOINTED TO BE COMMEMORATED ON THE LORD'S DAY — Creation, Redemption, Heaven. (D. Wilson, M. A.) II. ITS BEARING UPON THE KINDLY FEELINGS AND THE MUTUAL CHARITIES OF THE NATION IN WHICH IT IS OBSERVED. How much depends upon the internal magnetic attraction and influence of kindliness and benevolence and mutual good will! If you could take out from the community all that tends to soften mutual asperity and knit heart to heart, all that tends to make the poor man feel a sense of honest independence accompanied with unfeigned humility, and the rich man to feel that his external condition is as nothing in comparison with the moral distinction that differences one intelligent being from another — who can tell what would be the frightful result? But how beautifully does the Sabbath day prove the medium of the circulation of kindly and tender feelings! Much as the day is broken, and often as it is spent in savage and in sensual scenes, yet nevertheless it does wonderfully tend, with its balmy hebdomadal influence, to calm ruffled spirits, to allay feverish anxieties, and to soften petulant and foolish tempers. III. ITS BEARING UPON THE MORALITY AND THE RELIGION OF THE PEOPLE. Take away that one purchase, on which rests all the spiritual and moral machinery in the land — let that be gone, and the whole moral and religious machinery in the land falls rapidly to pieces, because it has no fixed ground, no standing point on which to be placed. It cannot go on; it must suffer disturbance, disorganisation, and rapid destruction. Let there be no national Sabbath; where were our Sabbath ceremonies? Let there be no national Sabbath; in vain almost would our houses of prayer be thrown open, and the bell that used to sweetly tell the day of rest was come send out its notes, drowned amid the din and the uproar of the never-checked deluge of worldly anxiety, tumult, conflict and struggle, gathering fresh force and fury because the only barrier that at all checked their onward progress was withdrawn, and rushing headlong on without an obstacle to impede their current. IV. ITS BEARING ON THE FAVOUR OF GOD TOWARDS A PEOPLE. I look upon the Sabbath, in its national observance, as the most direct and plain and palpable index of a nation's relationship towards God. It is (if we may so speak) the standard of heaven waving from the battlements of our national Zion, and telling that this great people recognise God, and in testimony and tribute of their loyalty they pay Him that which is His own, and give Him the seventh of their time, secured to Him by whom their sovereign reigns and on whom all their blessings depend. And as the observance of the Sabbath by the nation is an outward and visible sign of their fealty and fidelity to God, so is it an outward and visible sign of God's gracious faithfulness and love towards them. While that broad seal, therefore, remains intact and unbroken, how confidently may the people rest upon God! V. THE GROWING DIFFICULTIES OF MAINTAINING THE OBSERVANCE OF THE SABBATH DAY AND AT THE SAME TIME THE GROWING IMPORTANCE OF MAINTAINING IT IN OUR LAND. 1. We find in the spread of infidel sentiment and spirit in the land, a fearful source of difficulty to the maintenance of the due observance of the Sabbath day. 2. The latitudinarian and unhallowed speculation indulged in by many who bear the name of Christian, and sanctioned and smiled at by others, who ought to raise the voice of holy and wholesome reprobation. 3. The increasing excitements and the increasing facilities for the violation of the holy day. 4. The lamentable spiritual destitution of masses of our people, and the consequent spiritual ignorance, utter demoralisation, and absolute barbarism which exist throughout wildernesses of human beings in this baptized and nominally Christian country. VI. THE GROWING IMPORTANCE OF MAINTAINING THE OBSERVANCE OF THE SABBATH DAY IN OUR LAND. (H. Stowell, M. A.) II. IT HAS ITS OWN PECULIAR EMPLOYMENTS: "Hallow My Sabbaths." They are to be days of rest from labour, and refreshment for the soul. Let them be sacred days; devote them to the praise and cause and glory of God. III. THERE WAS A MOST BLESSED DESIGN IN ITS INSTITUTION: "Hallow My Sabbaths; and they shall be a sign," etc. 1. They were to be a sign between God and His people — a sign more frequently brought before them than the bow in the clouds. That told they should not be destroyed; but this tells of eternal life — is a type and symbol of the Sabbath of rest in His everlasting kingdom. 2. Another design mentioned is the edification and instruction of His people, "that ye may know that I am the Lord." (G. Phillips, M. A.) I. HOW PROPERLY THE SABBATH IS A SIGN OF THE TRUE GOD.II. THE INSTITUTION OF IT IS OF THE GREATEST USE AND ADVANTAGE TO MAN, CONSIDERED UNDER WHAT RESPECT AND CIRCUMSTANCES SOEVER. III. WHAT IS MEANT BY "HALLOWING THE SABBATH," or in what manner we are to observe it, so as to answer the end of its institution, so as to reap the advantages which were proposed by it. 1. To hallow the Sabbath is to set it apart to God's honour and service; and, of course, implies that we should abstain from all the ordinary employments of life, from all such things as would be apt to debase our minds, and hinder them from fixing upon heavenly objects. 2. We should, this day above all, make Him the constant subject of our thoughts and our desires, of our prayers and of our praises. We should meditate upon His nature and His attributes, His Word and His works; and particularly upon those two grand instances of the Divine power and goodness which the institution itself, more especially, directs us to commemorate — the creation of the world, and the redemption of mankind. IV. TO NEGLECT PAYING GOD SO EASY A TRIBUTE AS ONE DAY OUT OF SEVEN MUST AT LEAST IMPLY A FORGETFULNESS OF OUR OBLIGATIONS; as that must, necessarily, imply ingratitude. Shall we grudge the seventh day to His use, when He hath, so freely, allowed us the other six for our own? Shall we refuse so small a part of our time to Him, who had so just a right to the whole? (D. Lloyd.) Those who have served a battery upon the battlefield tell us that, at intervals, they are forced to pause, that the guns may cool, and that the smoke may lift to furnish accurate aim; yes, and because ammunition is exhausted. No Christian can fight the battle of the week without the quiet Sabbath to cool off his guns. He needs repose of soul. He wants heavenly breezes to lift the earth-lowering shadows. He must replenish his store from the secret place of prayer and meditation.(E. J. Haynes.) People Ezekiel, Israelites, Jacob, TemanPlaces Babylon, Bamah, Egypt, NegebTopics SayingOutline 1. God refuses to be consulted by the elders of Israel4. He shows the story of their rebellions in Egypt 19. in the desert 27. and in the land 33. He promises to gather them by the Gospel 45. Under the name of a forest he shows the destruction of Jerusalem Dictionary of Bible Themes Ezekiel 20:1-3Library Ten Reasons Demonstrating the Commandment of the Sabbath to be Moral. 1. Because all the reasons of this commandment are moral and perpetual; and God has bound us to the obedience of this commandment with more forcible reasons than to any of the rest--First, because he foresaw that irreligious men would either more carelessly neglect, or more boldly break this commandment than any other; secondly, because that in the practice of this commandment the keeping of all the other consists; which makes God so often complain that all his worship is neglected or overthrown, … Lewis Bayly—The Practice of Piety Manner of Covenanting. Tithing Questions About the Nature and Perpetuity of the Seventh-Day Sabbath. Covenanting Sanctioned by the Divine Example. The Old Testament Canon from Its Beginning to Its Close. A Sermon on Isaiah xxvi. By John Knox. 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