Ezekiel 2:8-10

Be not thou rebellious.

Ministers exposed to corruption by their people

This was the same as to say, “I know the degeneracy of the times. I know the corruption and obstinacy of the people. I know they will stop their ears and harden their hearts against Divine truth. And I know that for this purpose they will use every method, by words and looks, to corrupt your heart, poison your sentiments, and destroy your influence. But I warn you to beware of men; and never suffer yourself to be corrupted by those whom you are sent to reprove and reform.”

I. Ministers are exposed to be corrupted by the people.

1. Ministers have been corrupted by the people. This was the unhappy case of Aaron. The same thing happened to the sons and successors of Aaron; for we find that they were always corrupt, when the people were corrupt. God Himself complains of the people for being always disposed to corrupt their teachers (Amos 2:10). They meant to corrupt the friends of virtue, and the ministers of religion, on purpose to destroy the influence of their example, and the force of their instructions and admonitions; and they very rarely failed of accomplishing their malignant purpose.

2. The bare example of the people, in a day of declension, has a natural tendency to corrupt ministers. The prevailing spirit and practice of the times naturally tend to cool their zeal, weaken their virtue, and injure both the matter and manner of their preaching.

3. They are in much greater danger of being corrupted, by the positive endeavours and exertions of the people to draw them into sin. A corrupt people feel themselves obliged to take this course, in order to resist the energy of plain and faithful preaching.

II. It is their indispensable duty to guard against it.

1. God has expressly commanded ministers to guard against the attempts of those who would corrupt their hearts, and draw them aside from the path of duty.

2. They will forfeit the Divine presence and protection, if they suffer themselves to be corrupted.

3. If ministers suffer themselves to be corrupted by the people, it destroys their usefulness. Time-serving ministers generally have but few hearers. All men, whether good or bad, inwardly despise loose and unprincipled ministers, let their talents be what they may. And the same degree of criminality, which would be scarcely observable in other men, is sufficient to destroy the character and usefulness of those who sustain the sacred office of the ministry.

4. If ministers suffer themselves to be carried down the stream of corruption, they become destructive to the people. Corrupt ministers are always corrupters. Though they have lost the power of doing good, yet they retain the power of doing evil. They can do more than other men, to pull down the kingdom of Christ, and build up the kingdom of Satan. And as they are more capable, so they are more disposed, than other men, to stifle the spirit of religion, oppose the doctrines of the Gospel, and strengthen the hearts and hands of the wicked.

Reflections--

1. It is now a very dangerous day to ministers. The people have fallen into a great and general declension, As they have increased, so they have sinned. How many ministers neither preach nor practise according to their own sentiments, through fear of offending, and through desire of pleasing, the people! This conduct weakens the hands of faithful ministers, and strengthens the hands of those who wish to corrupt them.

2. Ministers need, at this day, to be well qualified for their office. Though religion has decayed, yet knowledge has increased. The people in general are much more capable now, than they were formerly, of judging of the talents and qualifications of ministers. And as they are more critical in discerning, so they are more severe in censuring, every ministerial defect or imperfection. But prudence, as well as knowledge, is a necessary qualification for a minister. He needs this to enable him to exhibit Divine truth in the most profitable manner, and to escape those snares which the enemies of truth will always endeavour to lay for him. But ministers of the Gospel, at this day of declension, need large measures of grace, as well as of knowledge and prudence. They need to be crucified to the world, and the world to them, by the Cross of Christ.

3. It is the duty of all good men, at this day especially, to aid and assist the ministers of the Gospel in the discharge of their office. If Christian professors would unite with Christian ministers, in the common cause of Christianity, we might reasonably hope that religion would gain ground, and vice and infidelity would everywhere fall before it. (N. Emmons, D. D.)

The God-made minister

(with Revelation 10:8):--In the case of Ezekiel we for the first time see in a most impressive and instructive symbol that Divine way of choosing, and calling, and inwardly and increasingly preparing and maturing a prophet, that same way which is repeated in the case of the Apostle John; that same way, moreover, which is still taken with every true New Testament preacher. Now, first, we see in that fine symbolical scene God’s own immediate way of making a minister. A book plays a great part in the salvation of man; a book is brought down from heaven to earth. A book written in heaven lies open in the hand of a heavenly minister. And the salvation of many peoples, and nations, and tongues, and kings lies wrapped up in that heavenly book. “Take the Book and eat it,” said the angel of the Lord. You will observe that the angel did not say, “Take the Book and read it.” Clearly, then, this is not an ordinary Book. Clearly this Book is like no other book. Our ordinary language about books all falls short and breaks down before this Book. “Eat it,” said the angel, holding the Book up to the exhausted mouth--“eat it till it is both sweet in thy mouth and bitter in thy belly.” A most extraordinary thing to say to any man about any book! Yes, about any book but this Book; but this is the usual, nay, the universal, and, indeed, the necessary, thing to say always about God’s Book. Show me the minister to whom, pulpit preparation apart, God’s Word is his first thought every new morning, and he shall be all but God’s absolute prophet to me. He shall always pray for me when God’s wrath is kindled against me; for him, God has said, He will accept, as he will always be accepted, both for himself and for other men, who can, like Job, before God, say: “Neither have I gone back from the commandment of His lips; I have esteemed the word of His mouth more than my necessary food.” Eat, then, the same heavenly meat; and eat it for your first food every morning. It will do for you what no earthly food, the best and most necessary, can do. See that all its strength and all its sweetness fill your heart before you eat any other meat, and before you read any other writing. Read God’s Book, and keep it next your heart to defend you against the evil one. “Enough of that; bring me my Bible!” one of my old elders used to say, as they read to him all morning and down into the forenoon the newspapers. The Word of God was more to that saint of God than his necessary food. But what does this mean? “It was in my mouth sweet as honey; but as soon as I had eaten it my belly was bitter.” The best way, the only way, to find out what all that means is to eat the same roll ourselves, and then to observe what comes to pass within ourselves. Religion is an experimental science. Just you eat the Book now before you as Ezekiel and John ate it, and then tell me what takes place within you. I will tell you what will take place. The Word of God will in your mouth also be sweet as honey. The grace and the mercy of God that are in His blessed Word are always passing sweet to a genuine sinner, as is the truth, and the power, and the holiness, and the heavenly beauty of God’s Word to all His saints. All that is the daily and sweet experience of all those who make the Word of God their earliest and most necessary food. But afterwards, when this sweet Book descends into their “inward parts,” when the holy and the just and the good Word of God enters their guilty consciences and their corrupt hearts--ah, then, what bitterness is that! For a “sense of sin,” as we so lightly speak, is then awakened in the soul, and with that new sense comes a new bitterness, compared with which the waters of Marah are milk and honey, and aloes are a child’s sweetmeat. Yes, angel, clothed with a cloud, you may well say that it will make “our bellies bitter”; for our belly will be bitter, first with our own sin, and then with the sin of all other men. God’s Word taken long enough and deep enough every day, as his necessary food, at last made Job from a sheep farmer into a sacrificing priest. Now, you all know what a priest is, a priest is a sinner who has not only all his own sin on his hands and on his heart, but the sins of all other men in addition. A priest sees sin in everything and everybody. His belly is always bitter with a bitterness such that all the honey and all the spices of Lebanon will not sweeten it. There was written thereon lamentations and mourning and woe. At the same time, the true priest has a secret and compensating sweetness in his office all his own; and every true minister has it deep down within him. Every true minister of God’s Word has a sensibility to sin and to grace; a palate and a heart both for the sweetness of God’s Word, and for its bitterness; a sensibility that makes him who has it the true successor of prophets and psalmists and apostles, like Ezekiel, David, Job, and John. “Son of man, eat that thou findest,” said Jehovah in a vision to Ezekiel. “Take it, and eat it up,” said the angel, in like manner, to John. Observe, that neither the prophet nor the apostle was asked nor allowed to pick and choose, as we say. They were not to be let eat the sweet and spit out the bitter. They were not to keep rolling the sweet morsels under their tongue, and to keep their inward parts a stranger to this bitter share in the Divine Book. Now this Scripture will not be sweet to all that hear it. But, even if it is at first bitter, it must not on that account be spat out. We must submit ourselves to read and to preach and to hear the whole Word of God. The book of the Bible, the preacher, the circle of doctrines that we like best may not be best for us. It is a fine study to take up the Old Testament and to trace all through it how prophet follows prophet, and psalmist psalmist; each several prophet and psalmist taking home to himself all that the prophets and psalmists have said and sung before him. And then, having made the book their own by reading it and praying over it and singing it in their own souls, then when the call came they stood up and prophesied prophecies and sang psalms new and present, as the people’s need was new and present; never contenting themselves with just repeating what any former psalmist had sung, however great and however good that former prophet and psalmist might have been. And then, as providence after providence arises in the history of Israel, inspiration and experience keep pace with providence, the exodus, the wilderness, the conquest, the captivity, the restoration, and so on, so prophet after prophet and psalmist after psalmist--Moses, and Gad, and David, and Solomon, and Isaiah, and Daniel, and Zechariah--arise, till we have in our Old Testament the accumulated faith and repentance, attainment and experience of that whole Church of God. And this same docile reception, personal appropriation and personal possession of God’s Word has always given an unshaking assurance, a masterful authority to all true prophets and preachers--Moses before Pharaoh, Nathan before David, Elijah before Ahab and Jezebel, Daniel before Nebuchadnezzar and Belshazzar, Peter and John before the rulers of Israel, Luther before the Legate, and Knox before Mary. And then with what passion that prophet will preach, and with what pathos that psalmist will sing, who has taken home to his own mind and to his own heart, to his own conscience and to his own imagination, the whole word of Almighty God, both in its awful terrors and in its surpassing mercies! (A. Whyte, D. D.)

There was written therein lamentations.

The Bible: a record of human sorrows

I. Sorrow is mightily present in our world. Here is a book--

1. The product of many lands and ages, expressing in manifold forms the sorrows of those lands and ages.

2. Intended for all lands and times, speaking in the tones of sorrow constantly, and yet expecting to be understood, anticipating that to none will sorrow be a foreign language.

This reflection should--

1. Stir our thought. Sorrow is meant to startle, to arouse, to prompt the questions, “How? Why? What?”

2. Cultivate our soberness, “Rejoice with trembling.”

3. Quicken our sympathies. We cannot, if we rightly know this book, be self-contained.

II. Sorrow is present in the world because of size.

1. Sorrow is here as the result of sin.

2. Sorrow is the penalty for sin. This rises in individual cases, to the clearness of a demonstration.

3. Sorrow is one means of purification from sin. (U. R. Thomas.).