Ezekiel 12:3-7

Prepare thee stuff for removing.

A drama of exile

I. The vision in its historical fulfilment.

II. The vision in its practical lessons for the present.

1. The consequence of sin is moral exile. All evil, not only in act, but in thought and in wish, involves in greater or less degree a going away from the holy--is a self-exileship, not perhaps, as in the vision, from a holy place, but from the holy God.

2. This moral exile is awfully sad.

(1) This exile is burdensome. The man goes with the baggage of an emigrant. He carries as much as he can. And he who goes away from God into any sin goes burdened. Responsibility, an accusing conscience, a growing fear; these, as with Cain, load guilty souls.

(2) The exile was severed from social ties. With what solitariness of soul, as though he were utterly alone and in the dark, does each man have to say, “I have sinned”!

(3) The exile went out into wild uncertainties. Whither he should hurry when once beyond the city walls he could not tell. And into what unexplored regions of wrong-doing, or what abysses of consequent remorse a sinner may wander, who can tell?

3. This moral exile is stealthy. Not through a gate, but by a hole dug through the wall; not at noon, but at night, the exile gets away from the holy city. So with the beginnings of all sin. The excuses, the concealments, the artifices of the selfish, the impure, the mean, breathe the stealthy spirit of the father of lies. Evil chooses the dark first, and then gets blinded.

4. This moral exile is shameful. The exile, ashamed to look on the ground, is a true type of those who, first with blush of shame, and whitened lip, and trembling voice or hand, do wrong; and who at last “will wake to shame and everlasting contempt.” (Urijah R. Thomas.)

It may be they will consider.--

The Divine expectation

I. The subject to which this expectation refers.

1. Men do not consider that they are sinful creatures.

2. Nor that they are dying creatures.

3. Nor that they are immortal creatures.

II. The means employed for bringing about the expectation which is here expressed.

1. The Divine forbearance.

2. The afflictive dispensations of Divine Providence.

3. The ministry of the Gospel. (J. C. Gray.)