Ezekiel 16:53-54 When I shall bring again their captivity, the captivity of Sodom and her daughters, and the captivity of Samaria and her daughters… The argument of this passage is very original. The prophet reaches past all limitations to the universal grace of God, and not so much by way of revelation as of inference. He has spoken of Israel's past — how like a newborn child it was thrown out, the prey of any passer-by. God's mercy found it, and reared it to strength — filling all the years with His goodness, but the nation answered with disloyalty, wanton and flagrant. In spite of chastisement and in spite of grace she sought the lowest; and in Ezekiel's day, stripped of wealth and power and land, a disgraced and abandoned people, Israel seemed to have come back to where she was in the beginning when God found her. Is the story to be repeated without alteration? Ezekiel looks at the nations around, kindred in blood and language and custom, partners also in sin, and he sees that either all must perish together or all must come in together. And as he knows that God cannot cast off His people, his instincts of justice assure him that in bringing Israel back God must bring Sodom back, the most sunken and the most execrable of the race, and yet not so sunken as Israel. Sodom and Samaria, and such as they, must be pardoned for the sake of a city worse than themselves. It is substitution upside down. If there is room found in God's mercy for Jerusalem, there must be for Sodom, and Sodom may come covered by the blackness of Jerusalem's guilt. Our text is one point in the conclusion; it is the humiliation of success. Jerusalem brings in her train the evil cities in a day of jubilation — a day of the growth of the kingdom of God; but she herself is humbled, because everything reminds her of her sin. I wish to speak of the sobering and humbling quality of even the smallest success, which makes it a means of grace to those who enjoy it aright. 1. From the greatness of the work itself. Whatever view we may take of human nature, it must seem to us a great work to bring a man to God — to establish in him a new kingdom of desire and hope, so that he whose heart was narrow now regards the world with Christ's eyes. That is a great work. It is the beginning of hope, the beginning of usefulness, and it is the end of sin. And constantly this great work is done by men: an impulse is given, a word spoken, a truth pressed. The more personal in this sense the impulse is, the deeper is the humiliation of the originator of it. He feels how little he has done, how feebly he has spoken; he has only flung words at One radiant idea of which he caught sight, and which he has not expressed. His work, he knows, has been so erring, so partial, so spasmodic, and God has sent this reward. On the one side, you feel how simple and how near such results are, that but for your indolence and inexpectancy they might have been more than they are; on the other, you know that, simple as they are, they are by the diameter of worlds out of your reach. It is not I that live, but Christ who lives in me; it is not I who work, but God. But whilst we cast upon God the burden, we must not miss the purifying efficacy of success. Of course, it is God who works; but it is also you or I. It is your idiosyncrasy, your peculiarity of temper, your happy knack which accounts for the immediate result. And it is just as you do set all you have against this result that you see the want of measure between them, and you are ashamed because of all you have done, in that you are a comfort to men. 2. Seeing self in another. We wish for men that they might see themselves as others see them, which is one inference of self-deceiving. We do not know how our qualities look, for custom and self-love blind us. We scarcely suspect how much alike we are until we think a man speaking in a certain way is describing us, whilst probably he is describing himself. The story is told of a ruffled baronet who complained to George Meredith of having been put into his "Egoist" as the egoistic hero. "I had no thought of you; I thought of myself — of us all," is the answer reported. And as we do not know our likeness to men we turn from, we do not know our own ugliness. In this very chapter Ezekiel exhibits a thought of this kind. The Jews pointed with loathing at Sodom; the name of it had become proverbial, because God had blotted it out. It at least is worse than we; we may fairly shrink from that as a lower depth of which we know nothing, to which we have no proclivity. And the prophet says, What was the sin of Sodom? (ver. 49). Behold this was its iniquity — pride, fulness of head, and prosperous ease, and she did not strengthen the hand of the poor and needy. There is nothing exceptional in it, nothing in Sodom which is not in you, he says. You meet with an ignorance, wilful and self-complacent; you struggle in another against that spiritual stupidity to which every worldly advantage is apparent, and to which none but a worldly advantage can be demonstrated. You find your efforts for some man thwarted by his intense sensuality, or by his doubleness and suspicion. You cannot advance, you cannot outwit his cunning or convince him of your sincerity. That stagnant and slumberous humour you cannot awake. To that pure animalism it is hopeless to speak of the glory of Christ. It is painful, disappointing, wearisome; but you come to know in striving with them what these things mean — sensuality, sloth, anger, envy: to many of us they are the too severe names of pleasant vices. But when for some man's good you set yourself to free him from them, you realise the ugliness, the tenacious and wasting energy of them. And at the same time you see yourself. It is myself I am fighting in that man: these are my faults. It is in that real dealing with men that we come to understand the humour of a saint who could say of an abandoned criminal, There, but for the grace of God, am I. 3. It is a discovery of the meaning of the grace shown to us. When habit has made a certain level of conduct easy, or when our past shows no heights or depths, we may easily imagine, that the work of grace was not very great in us. We were almost born Christians, born and baptized and bred in Christian homes, with ample knowledge and wise restraint and sedulous training. Not far from the kingdom of God at any time, we were lightly and easily brought within it. In strong contrast is another life, gone far astray, full of heat and passion, in which the lights burn sullenly: a man lost to decency, to hope, to God — what have you to say to him whose life has run in so orderly and honourable a course? Out of the depths he looks with some faint gleam of hope to you as you talk of Christ. What can you say to him? I never was very bad, and God has mercifully pardoned the little wrong there was: is that all you know? The occasion widens your heart. You want to help him, and that eager desire sends your thoughts back into God's dealing with you. For the first time you know your sin; it was very great — the Pharisee's sin an isolating, loveless self-complacency — and God came to me. Then you can say in answer, Your sin is not mine wholly; our lots have been different, and our temptations, and our falls; but God abundantly pardoned me, and He will pardon you. (W. M'Macgregor, M. A.) Parallel Verses KJV: When I shall bring again their captivity, the captivity of Sodom and her daughters, and the captivity of Samaria and her daughters, then will I bring again the captivity of thy captives in the midst of them: |
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