Ezekiel 33:32

Thou art unto them as a very lovely song.

Ezekiel

These words are spoken of the prophet Ezekiel; he is as the lovely song, as the pleasant voice, as the instrument of music, all this even to the worldly mind; yet we might have thought otherwise; so full is he of woe, of the wrath of God; and how dark and obscure are his visions! It might then at first sight appear inconsistent with tiffs that the prophet Ezekiel should in style be considered so engaging, that even to those to whom he was sent with heavy tidings he should be as one that had a “pleasant voice”; in like manner, that although the roll which is given him is “written within and without,” “with lamentations and mourning and woe,” yet it should be in the mouth of the prophet, that is, to the natural man, “as honey for sweetness.” Yet this is in accordance with much we find in Scripture; for instance, what could be more sternly severe and full of reproof than St. Stephen’s speech at his death? But on that occasion, “looking steadfastly on him, they saw his face as it had been the face of an angel.” Thus God arrested their minds till His martyr should speak to them all his burden of sad admonition. Again, such types and figures have a life such as no mere words of themselves can have, they clothe themselves with form and spirit, and continue. Thus the images of Ezekiel not only speak of themselves in the place where they are found; but they come up again and are of frequent occurrence in the Apocalypse, as if still waiting for their fulfilment. Thus, indeed, much that is in Ezekiel is also in St. John; things which already have been in some sense fulfilled; but even now are fulfilling themselves, and yet to be more largely and worthily fulfilled. The vision of the four living creatures, for instance, in Ezekiel, is found again in St. John; it is still before us; still new; we know much of what it means, but we have much more yet to learn. The glory of the Lord coming from the East; His voice like the noise of many waters; the earth shining with His glory; these and many such things in Ezekiel are reproduced in St. John. In both the angels of judgment are represented as waiting till the children of God are sealed with His “mark upon their forehead.” Gog and Magog with their armies are both, alike in Ezekiel and in St. John, as about to come forth in the times of the end. The assembling of the fowls to the great sacrifice is in both. And especially that subject of many Chapter s in Ezekiel, the measuring of the Temple and the vision of the Holy City, is marked in both as yet to be. Now, I have said that one effect of types and similitudes such as these is, that they may not die away and be forgotten; thus if we look to those subjects of Holy Writ which arrest at this day most attention in the world, we shall find it is such figurative prophecies. Such are some reasons for the symbolic language of Ezekiel; it is a language suited for all times and countries, that never grows out of date or loses its power. Add to which it may be naturally accounted for by the character and circumstances of the prophet, and the heavy tidings he had to bear. Strong feeling does always naturally express itself in figures and similitudes; it gives vent to itself in burning words that take form and are full of life. Thus as a plant which when crushed gives forth its sweetness, as from the grape trodden under foot is the Wine of God; and from the corn thrashed and ground is the Bread of Life: so was Ezekiel stricken of God that he might speak the more powerfully in the likeness of Christ. And oh, the blessedness of that suffering, the inestimable value of that affliction which gives us power to speak the words of God! And well did he need visions and words of power, for nothing else would reach the hearts of those to whom he was sent. For these reasons the prophecies of Ezekiel, like our Lord’s own miracles and parables, present things more to the eye than to the ear; for thus they more powerfully reach the mind. Hence the whole style and character of Ezekiel; where another prophet persuades, Ezekiel sees a sign or symbol and leaves that to speak. He is set as a watchman to watch for the morning, and descries its light from afar, while fires as of Mount Sinai blend with the milder radiance of Pentecost. He is the Prophet of Christ’s second coming no less than of His first. As in the Day of Judgment, amidst sights and signs the most sublime and terrible, will be manifested wonderful depths of God’s wisdom, the reach of His Providences, and the scales of eternal justice; so throughout this prophet, amidst visions and imagery, great, striking, and awful, there occur full and clear enunciations of God’s mercy and truth, the rising of His temple, the sublime and wonderful but most beautiful order of His ways on earth, bearing onward the throne of the Incarnate Son of God. St. Jerome says that he was used when young to go on the Lord’s day into the caves at Rome where the Apostles and Martyrs were buried; and there, in silence and darkness amid the chambers of the dead, to meditate on the visions of Ezekiel; and that thus he learned to approach them with awe and reverence, not with idle curiosity, and so in some measure to understand them; seeing light, he says as in the dubious obscure, and exclaiming, “I have found Him whom my soul loveth, I will hold Him fast and will not let Him go.” Thus, “in the cloudy and dark day,” in the times of affliction, we may understand him better than now we do. One word more of caution; a holy bishop, who has written largely on Ezekiel, the great St. Gregory, has applied it to the examination and correction of our own heart, and building up the soul in righteousness. Thus we know that the temple of God of which so much is said in Ezekiel is in one sense our own soul. Happy he who mourns for all pollutions and abominations that have been there, who puts out from thence all idols, and makes it fit for the indwelling of God. Blessed is he who keeps his heart tender and low to understand His prophets, whether the plaintive voice amidst the ruins of Israel or the dark harp by the waters of Babylon. (Isaac Williams, B. D.)

The songs our lives sing

I. Our lives sing various songs.

1. Some lives are set to wailing music, the lives that are far away from God, and separated by the great gulf of sin from all things good and holy. When the measure of such a song falls on our spiritual ears we are depressed and feel like weeping.

2. There are other life songs set to joyful music. They are sent to brighten up the earth, and, like the flowers, to make it more beautiful. These songs are the lives of those who love the beauties of the world, climb above its mists, and revel in the sunlight. They look on the bright side of life, feeling that it is better to laugh than to cry, to pluck the rose and leave untouched the thorn.

3. There are other songs given forth by lives that are fired with a sublime purpose to make the world better, and to lift it to a loftier plane of living. Such lives are set to stately music that broadens and deepens the hearts of those who hear.

4. But the sweetest song that ever fell on mortal ears is one that flowed out from Calvary two thousand years ago, and sounded down the ages to bless the fallen race, a song that rose to heaven, and angels climbed the everlasting hills to hear. Now and then a human life, a song from God, catches the metre of Jesus Christ, and when its music is heard hearts soften, nerves thrill, and teardrops fall.

II. We hear, but often do not heed, these life songs. In the days when the heart song of Ezekiel sounded out there were many who heard, and yet they heeded not. When the heart song of Jesus Christ sounded out there were many sordid souls who heeded not the music. God says to all such today, as to those who heard Ezekiel, that if they hear and fail to be benefited their blood shall not be required at the hands of the singer, but shall be on their own heads.

III. Inferences.

1. Our life songs always seem feeble to ourselves. When we are nearest to Christ there is deeper music in the heart than can be uttered by the lips or the life.

2. We must first learn to sing life’s songs here if we expect to sing them yonder. In the sight of God our lives upon this earth must be like the limping songs of childhood, but up yonder we shall be prima donnas and master singers in the choir of the skies. (Homiletic Review.)

Ezekiel’s popularity

Ezekiel had by this time become a successful preacher. He had not always been such; on the contrary, he had been for a long time disbelieved and disliked. Now, however, he had come to be highly regarded, partly on account of the singularity of his preaching, partly on account of the striking and unexpected fulfilment of his prophecies. He was the great sensation of the day; men thought it the proper thing to go and hear him, to listen with rapt attention to the impetuous torrent of his words, and, when they went away, to discuss his message in the gates or on the housetops. Yet was the alteration but a sensible one, the reformation only superficial; and in the text the Lord exposes the hollowness of it all. I need not say how exactly this state of things is reproduced in the case of every popular preacher. Men whose lives are cruel or impure, whose hearts are covetous, whose thoughts are bitter, crowd to hear the preacher of the day, because his words are sweet, because his eloquence is full of melody, because they feel themselves for the moment fascinated, captivated, carried out of, lifted above, themselves. And then they talk about “getting good,” not because they have the slightest practical intention to reform, but because they have had pleasurable emotions, and their religious feelings have been gently excited by the skilful touch of the preacher. In our own Church eloquence is so rarely heard that we are in little danger of such delusion. Ezekiel in his popularity is a type not only of all lesser preachers, but emphatically of Him who is the great Prophet and Preacher of the world, the Master of all ages, the Incarnate Word of God. A very lovely song it is which the Saviour sings; no poet, no prophet, no bard ever sung or ever dreamed, or even ever strove (and striving, failed) to express anything half so sweet, so full, so soul-subduing as the Gospel of the Grace of God. And He that sings it hath indeed a pleasant voice, for sweeter is the voice of Christ than the voice of any angel or archangel, or of any of the heavenly choirs--grander it is in itself, and sweeter far is it to us, because it is a Brother’s voice, and we can feel the sympathy, we can understand the finest, softest shades of meaning which are woven through its melody. And so it is true of the people now, as of old, that they hear Him gladly; if anyone will speak feelingly, if anyone can speak eloquently of the love of Jesus for sinners, they will crowd to hear him, they will listen with satisfaction and go away pleased,--but they will not do His words. Men love to hear the Saviour’s gracious invitation, “Come unto Me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest,” but they will not come to Him in the practical ways which He has pointed out. They love, above all things, to listen to the melodies of that last holy and tender discourse with His own, recorded in the Gospel of St. John, but they will not follow His practical counsels to such as wish to be His own. There is nothing more gladly heard by the sick and dying than that passage which begins, “Let not your heart be troubled, neither let it be afraid”; there is nothing, alas! more persistently forgotten, even by the dying than the fact that these things were spoken only to those who had continued with Christ in His temptations, who had showed that they loved Him by keeping His commandments: they hear His words, then, eagerly, but they do them not. (R. Winterbotham, M. A.)

On the slender influence of mere taste and sensibility in matters of religion

You easily understand how a taste for music is one thing, and a real submission to the influence of religion is another--how the ear may be regaled by the melody of sound, and the heart may utterly refuse the proper impression of the sense that is conveyed by it. Have you ever heard any tell, and with complacency too, how powerfully his devotion was awakened by an act of attendance on the oratorio--how his heart, melted and subdued by the influence of harmony, did homage to all the religion of which it was the vehicle; how he was so moved and overborne as to shed the tears of contrition, and to be agitated by the terrors of judgment, and to receive an awe upon his spirit of the greatness and the majesty of God; and that, wrought up to the lofty pitch of eternity, he could look down upon the world, and by the glance of one commanding survey pronounce upon the littleness and the vanity of all its concerns? It is indeed very possible that all this might thrill upon the ears of the man, and circulate a succession of solemn and affecting images around his fancy--and yet that essential principle of his nature, upon which the practical influence of Christianity turns, might have met with no reaching and no subduing efficacy whatever to arouse it. Amid all that illusion which such momentary visitations of seriousness and of sentiment throw around the character of man, let us never lose sight of the test, that “by their fruits ye shall know them.” The faithful application of this test would put to flight a host of delusions. It may be carried round amongst all those phenomena of human character where there is the exhibition of something associated with religion, but which is not religion itself. Religion has its accompaniments; and in these there may be a something to soothe and to fascinate, even in the absence of the appropriate influences of religion. The deep and tender impression of a family bereavement is not religion. The love of established decencies is not religion. The charm of all that sentimentalism which is associated with many of its solemn and affecting services is not religion. They may form the distinct folds of its accustomed drapery; but they do not, any or all of them put together, make up the substance of the thing itself. We call for fruit, and demand the permanency of a religious influence on the habits and the history. How many who take a flattering unction to their souls, when they think of their amiable feelings and their becoming observations, with whom this severe touchstone would, like the head of Medusa, put to flight all their complacency! The afflictive dispensation is forgotten--and he on whom it was laid is practically as indifferent to God and to eternity as before. The Sabbath services come to a close, and they are followed by the same routine of weekday worldliness as before. The instances may be multiplied without number. A man may have a taste for eloquence, and eloquence, the most touching or sublime, may lift her pleading voice on the side of religion. A man may love to have his understanding stimulated by the ingenuities or the resistless urgencies of an argument; and argument the most profound and the most overbearing may put forth all the might of a constraining vehemence in behalf of religion. A man may feel the rejoicings of a conscious elevation, when some ideal scene of magnificence is laid before him; and where are these scenes so readily to be met with as when led to expatiate in thought over the track of eternity, or to survey the wonders of creation, or to look to the magnitude of those great and universal interests which lie within the compass of religion? We will venture to say that as much delight may emanate from the pulpit on an arrested audience beneath it as ever emanated from the boards of a theatre--ay, and with as total a disjunction of mind too, in the one case as in the other, from the essence or the habit of religion. We recur to the test. We make our appeal to experience; and we put it to you all, whether your finding upon the subject do not agree with our saying about it, that a man may weep and admire, and have many of his faculties put upon the stretch of their most intense gratification--his judgment established, and his fancy enlivened, and his feelings overpowered, and his hearing charmed as by the accents of heavenly persuasion, and all within him feasted by the rich and varied luxuries of an intellectual banquet! We want you to see clearly the distinction between these two attributes of the human character. They are, in truth, as different the one from the other as a taste for the grand and the graceful in scenery differs from the appetite of hunger; and the one may both exist and have a most intense operation within the bosom of that very individual who entirely disowns and is entirely disgusted with the other. The mere majesty of God’s power and greatness, when offered to your notice, lays hold of one of the faculties within you. The holiness of God, with His righteous claim of legislation, lays hold of another of these faculties. The difference between them is so great that the one may be engrossed and interested to the full, while the other remains untouched and in a state of entire dormancy. Now, it is no matter what it be that ministers delight to the former of these two faculties; if the latter be not arrested and put on its proper exercise, you are making no approximation whatever to the right habit and character of religion. The religion of taste is one thing. The religion of conscience is another. We recur to the test: What is the plain and practical doing which ought to issue from the whole of our argument? If one lesson come more clearly or more authoritatively out of it than another, it is the supremacy of the Bible. If fitted to impress one movement rather than another, it is that movement of docility, in virtue of which man, with the feeling that he has all to learn, places himself in the attitude of a little child, before the book of the unsearchable God, who has deigned to break His silence, and to transmit even to our age of the world a faithful record of His own communication. What progress, then, are you making in this movement? Are you, or are you not, like newborn babes, desiring the sincere milk of the word, that you may grow thereby? With the modesty of true science, which is here at one with the humblest and most penitentiary feeling which Christianity can awaken, are you bending an eye of earnestness on the Bible, and appropriating its informations, and moulding your every conviction to its doctrines and its testimonies? (T. Chalmers, D. D.)

A very lovely song

This is a very lovely verse, but a very solemn and awful sentiment is attached to it.

I. A description of the Gospel message. The subject of our preaching is the Word of God. And oh, what a sweet, sweet song is that blessed word! Take--

1. The history and stories of the Bible. Begin with the creation of the world. It is told in brief, all details are omitted, but the grand outline is perfect, and scientific investigation is only filling up the details; and when all the details are filled up, the grand old story will be found firm as a rock.

2. The life stories of Bible heroes, the romance of our early progenitors, the population of the world, the fall, the deluge, the touches of human nature, and the goodness and sins of man, all brought out in the vivid pictures of realism.

3. The story of our Saviour’s birth, His early days, His mighty manhood, broken by the wail of agony at His cruel death. Then swell the notes to the sky, and a jubilant strain tells of victory over sin and death and the grave. The song goes on in recitative till comes the final crash of the concluding chorus.

II. A description of the effect which this song produces.

1. It is listened to. The most obdurate and hardened will gaze at a lovely landscape. Beauty hath a charm; it is the most powerful of all human influence. Is it any wonder, then, that the world is attracted by the beauty of the Gospel message?

2. It is criticised. The human mind will criticise everything great. Now, there is nothing so great as the Gospel, and nothing has provoked so much criticism and controversy. Its history, its poetry, its truths, its message, its plan of salvation have all been the objects of unnumbered attacks.

3. It is approved. Not indeed by everyone, but by the generality. Reason, common sense, sound judgment, intellectual attainments, all must concur in approving its excellence. The wants and necessities of our own minds, the cravings of our souls, bring the truths it proclaims into harmony with human nature.

III. A description of the way in which it is generally received.

1. It is a sweet song, and nothing more. “They hear thy words and do them not.” How sad this picture of the world, and yet how true! Under the preaching of the Gospel you have often said, “Almost thou persuadest me to be a Christian.” But what are you the better now? Nothing at all. The echoes of the song died away in the distance, you went to your daily toil, and the whole thing was forgotten.

2. The reason is plainly stated. You have heard, but you have not been doing. Salvation is a work just like any other work; it does not come of itself. Fancy a man who wanted to make a fortune listening to the life of Stevenson, and settling down to sleep. He would only die in the workhouse. Fancy a young man who desired to become a statesman, like Disraeli or Gladstone, spending his time in riot and dissipation; he would end where he began. And fancy an immortal soul, hearing the sound of the Gospel and the invitations of God, passing life in callousness and neglect.

3. A few words of inquiry as to why is this.

(1) It is for want of understanding. At the performance of a grand oratorio there are very few who have sufficient musical knowledge to understand the details of the composer’s work. So among the larger part of our congregations, the Gospel has no meaning beyond its pleasant sound.

(2) It is because of the hardness of the heart. The sound of the music, the voice of persuasion, the earnestness of invitation, fall on hearts as dead and seared as the rocky mountains of the desert. Not a seed can enter, for there is no soil to receive it.

(3) It is from love of the world. There are two forces which are ever acting on the soul--one would draw men to heaven, the other to earth. The generality of mankind are found between the two. Whichever predominates will determine the man’s destiny.

IV. A suggestion as to the remedy to be applied.

1. Awakening. Remember that pleasant as the Gospel is to bear, it is something more than a song. It is a power; it is the voice of God; it is the destiny of your soul; it is your heaven or your hell.

2. Labour. Lay hold of eternal life; get rid of the deadly idea that religion is something merely to amuse or employ your time. (J. J. S. Bird.).