Ezekiel 9:3-6 And the glory of the God of Israel was gone up from the cherub, whereupon he was, to the threshold of the house… I. SOME OF THE GROUNDS WE HAVE FOR HUMILIATION BEFORE GOD, FOR SIGHING AND CRYING, BECAUSE OF INIQUITY. God is entitled to the love and service which He receives from us. He made us, and in requiring that we should devote those powers and faculties with which He has endowed us, to Himself and to His service, He only requires that property which is His own, and which should be employed in a way that is agreeable to the great Author and Owner of that property. Jehovah is also infinitely worthy of the supreme love and devoted obedience of His people. He is possessed of every possible perfection — He is distinguished by every moral excellence in a degree that is infinite. God has also been exceedingly kind to us. He has heaped upon us unnumbered benefits. He supplies our daily, our hourly, wants, and He has not only made provision for us in time, but at the expense of His own Son's life; He has provided also for our eternal happiness. Besides all this, the service to which God calls us is not only obedience to which He has a right, but it is also obedience of a kind that is calculated to confer upon those who render it the highest degree of satisfaction. This, then, being the case, this the relation in which we stand to God, these the benefits we have received at His hand, this the nature and character of the service He demands from us, how utterly inexcusable on our part any kind, any degree, of transgression! One transgression is directly opposed to the nature of His kingdom. Thus, then, have we ample grounds of humiliation were we this day chargeable in the sight of God, with having only once deviated from the moral path of God. But, oh! how often have we wandered from it! Never once have we given to God the holy sense of love He is entitled to receive at our hands. Every moment of our conscious or waking existence we have been guilty of coming short of what it was our imperious duty to have rendered. But besides these shortcomings which have been thus innumerous, oh! how numerous, and also how aggravated our actual positive transgressions! Seek, oh! seek the contrition, the humiliation of soul, which a sense of sin ought to inspire. But besides iniquities within, do not iniquities also prevail around us, of a very heinous and aggravated character; iniquities in a high degree insulting to the name of God; iniquities in a high degree calculated, if we would have the Lord's indignation averted, and if we would be distinguished by the state of mind with which such prevailing iniquities should be contemplated by us all, to lead us to sigh and cry because of them? II. A MARK IS STILL STAMPED UPON EVERY CHILD OF GOD. They have the impress of God's own image upon their character, — they have those moral lineaments of character stamped upon them by which God Himself is distinguished; they are thus marked as Jehovah's property, as in a very peculiar and special manner His own; and, regarding all such, it may unhesitatingly be affirmed, that because of prevailing abominations they sigh and cry. Oh! how desirous that we should seek to have the spirit that is here adverted to by the Lord! Is calamity at any great distance from us? Are there no threatening clouds lowering above us? (J. Marshall, M. A.) Parallel Verses KJV: And the glory of the God of Israel was gone up from the cherub, whereupon he was, to the threshold of the house. And he called to the man clothed with linen, which had the writer's inkhorn by his side; |
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