Ezekiel 21:6-7

Wherefore sighest thou?

.. .For the tidings.

Sighing because of sorrowful tidings

“The tidings” were, in the first place, of dishonour done to God, and, in the second place, of ruin which the transgressors were bringing upon themselves; and we think to show you that the tidings were such as might well justify the prophet as he looked upon his nation in “sighing with bitterness before their eyes.”

1. If you know anything of the relationship subsisting between the Creator and the creature, you must know that we lie absolutely at the disposal of God, depending for every thing upon His bounty, and bound to live wholly to His glory. God’s laws are binding without exception and without limitation; and if He only issue an announcement of His will, it should be received with the deepest reverence and obeyed with unhesitating compliance throughout every department of His unbounded empire. And if this obedience be withheld, who can fail to see that the very greatest insult is at once offered by the finite to the Infinite? Now, consider what effect this insult will have--or at least ought to have--upon a man who loves God, and whose prime effort it is to obey His every word. If a man of warm loyalty were living amongst traitors, it would wound him to the quick to hear the king whom he honoured continually reviled. If a man of warm friendship were with the enemies of his love, it would sorely grieve him to observe how his friend was hated and despised. And what are such feelings in comparison of those which should rise in the man of real piety, when he beholds on all sides dishonour done to his God? Oh! as such a man thinks on the unlimited right which God has to the services of His creatures, and yet more as he thinks how God draws those creatures to Himself by every motive of interest and attraction, supplying their wants, offering them happiness, bearing with their perverseness; and then, when there come to him tidings of the return which God receives--His authority defied, His promises despised, His threatenings laughed to scorn, so that it almost seems the universal object to expel Him from His own world, and set up some usurper in His stead--as the man, we say, of real piety observes all this, and meditates on all this, would there be any cause of wonder were he to exclaim, “For the tidings! for the tidings when asked to explain a manifestation of grief which should be similar to that of the prophet--“Sigh, therefore, thou son of man, with the breaking of thy loins, and with bitterness sigh before their eyes”?

2. But let us go on to consider the ruin which transgressors are bringing on themselves; for here at least we shall find “tidings” which, in the judgment of you all, might vindicate Ezekiel’s mighty manifestation of anguish. It is not the moment of absolute shipwreck; but “it cometh”--“it cometh.” “The tidings” make him as certain of the shipwreck of thousands as though already were the sea strewed with the fragments of the stranded navy. It is with him no matter of conjecture or speculation whether a life of wickedness will terminate in an eternity of misery; he so surely anticipates the future that he is as though he beheld the casting of the wicked into a lake of fire, and could not be more assured of their terrible doom if the last day were come, and the dead were raised, and “the books were opened.” And who are these victims of Divine justice? Are they not his fellow men--his brethren after the flesh--those for whom he would bitterly sorrow, if he knew them exposed to some temporal calamity? Shall he--can he--be unmoved by their everlasting wretchedness? (H. Melvill, B. D.)