And I saw six men coming from the direction of the Upper Gate, which faces north, each with a weapon of slaughter in his hand. With them was another man clothed in linen who had a writing kit at his side. And they came in and stood beside the bronze altar. Sermons
I. MARK THE SUPREMACY OF GOD'S JUDICIAL VOICE. The last chapter finished with the declaration, "Though they cry in mine ears with a loud voice, I will not hear them;" this chapter begins with the statement, "He cried in mine ears with a loud voice." 1. The season for prayer was exhausted. Examination of Israel's case had terminated. The verdict had passed, and nothing now remained but execution. Prayer on the part of the condemned, at this point, would be merely a selfish thing. It would bring no good. It would be out of harmony with God's plans and with righteous law. 2. The voice of God subjugates and overpowers all other voices. It is a voice of creation: "He spake, and it was done." It is a voice of life: "Awake thou that sleepest!" It is a voice of judicial destruction: "Depart, ye cursed, into outer darkness!" The voice that Ezekiel heard was a loud voice. The prophet could not question its reality nor mistake its utterance. It overcame the prophet's unwillingness to hear judgment pronounced. It drowned all dissentient voices. Nothing was heard save this. "The voice of the Lord shaketh the mountains." II. GOD'S SERVANTS ARE FOUND AMONG ALL ORDERS OF CREATURES. This earth is not an isolated kingdom; it is a province of God's great realm. The persons hers summoned to appear for the execution of Jehovah's will are, without doubt, angels, though to the prophet's vision they seemed in form like men. As we read of angels who are appointed the guardians of little children, so we learn that certain angels are ordained guardians of cities and nations. To Daniel the angel spake of "Michael, your prince" - "the great prince that standeth for the children of thy people." The history of the Hebrew people is full of instances in which the angels of God were despatched either for the rescue or for the destruction of men. The Most High is unchangeable; and inasmuch as a destroying angel had executed God's vengeance on the idolators of Egypt, so now angels are employed to slay the idolaters in Israel. Yet there is singular economy in all God's arrangements. The number of these officers of justice was six, so that one might issue from each of the six gates of the city. The ministers of vengeance shall neither be too many nor too few. Eventually the Chaldean armies should he God's agents in the punishment of the Hebrews; still, these would act under the generalship of the heavenly principalities and powers. III. THE WORK OF JUSTICE PROCEEDS SIDE BY SIDE WITH THAT OF MERCY. Along with the six officers appointed to destroy was one differently clad, whose work was to save. His clothing was the attire of peace - white linen - i.e. the dress of a true priest. Against six destroyers there was one protector, which denoted how few was the number of the faithful. They were to have a distinguishing mark in the most conspicuous place - in their foreheads. The owner of the flock will take care to put his own sign-manual on his sheep. "The Lord knoweth them that are his." In every time of trouble "he has hidden them in his pavilion - in the secret of his tabernacle will he hide them." Noah and his family in the ark; Lot and his daughters in Zoar; the early Christians sale in Pella when Jerusalem was destroyed; - these are evidences of God's special care of his chosen. He accounts them his jewels, and in times of danger holds them in the hollow of his hand. Not only had they not connived at the idolatry, but their souls were distressed on account of it. They had besought with tears their brethren to desist from the evil thing. Their holy zeal shall have a conspicuous reward. IV. GOD'S SERVANTS HAVE LIKE DISPOSITIONS WITH HIMSELF. God had described the emotions and purposes of his mind thus: "Mine eye shall not spare, neither will I have pity." And now he requires his officers to cherish the selfsame sentiments: "Lot not your eye spare, neither have ye pity." To be a servant of God, and the executioner of his will, we must be like minded with himself. Only such does God employ on work of high importance. Eye and heart must be as God's. Following the tendencies of natural temperament, some servants of God would be too lenient, some too harsh. In such matters we must be sure that we arc doing God's will, not indulging our own. Private spleen, and merely natural bias, must be completely repressed. Our feeling and temper and will must be chastened by almighty grace, in order that we may be the servants of God. His will must find a full response in our will. V. RETRIBUTION IS EQUITABLE AND COMPLETE. There is no miscarriage of justice in God's court, and in his retributions there is no excess. The equity of the destruction is seen in that it begins at the sanctuary. The ringleaders in rebellion shall be foremost in the punishment. That sacred place is sacred no longer. God has withdrawn his presence; therefore all privilege is extinguished. It had been a sanctuary for the oppressed, for the unfortunate, for the fugitive in war; but it shall be no refuge for rebels defiant against God - no refuge for sin. Mere sentiment about the traditional sacredness of the place must yield to sterner virtues - must yield to practical and primitive righteousness. Better that every sanctuary of religion be defiled with bloodshed, than that they be nests of immorality, cesspools of vice! If the reality be gone, it is a common injury to maintain the appearance. And God's retributions will be complete. They will spare none. We may hesitate respecting the justice of destroying "little children;" yet we can repose confidently on the bosom of the eternal Father, and say, "Will not the Judge of all the earth do right?" To our limited view the administration of supreme justice may sometimes be veiled in "clouds and darkness;" but we can afford to wait the fuller disclosures of the truth. "What we know not now, we shall know hereafter." - D.
One man among them was clothed with linen. 1. Elect Jews under the law were saved by the mediatorial work of Christ incarnate, as we are under the Gospel. Christ frequently appeared as man, intimating thereby His future incarnation, and that that nature must concur to the making up of His mediatorship: He did not mediate for them as God, for us as man; but He mediated then as man promised, now He mediates as man manifested.2. The Lord Christ is the chief commander of all angelical and human forces. He was in the midst of these six military angels that were to bring in the Chaldean forces at the several gates of the city; He was their General. 3. When judgments are abroad, and the godly are in danger, Christ mediates and intercedes for them. 4. Christ hath a special care of His in times of trouble; He appears with an inkhorn to write down what is said and done against them, to make known the mind of God to them, to seal and discriminate them from others. 5. Those who are upon great and public designs should begin with God, and consult with Him. These seven here go in and stand by the altar, inquire of God what His pleasure is. So have the worthies of God done (Ezra 8:21). 6. Those who are employed by the Lord must be careful that they countenance no corruptions in worship. Neither Christ nor the angels would come at the false altar, which Ahaz had caused to be set up; but they go to God's altar, the brazen altar; by this they stood, not the other. 7. In times of judgment, as God discountenances false worship, so He discovers and countenances His own way of worship. (W. Greenhill, M. A.) With a writer's inkhorn. (to young men): — This man with the inkhorn may stand for a class — the whole class of writers and literary men. I would start from the position that the powers of literature belong of right to Jesus Christ, and that literature is included among those things of which Paul said to the Christian man: "All are yours, for ye are Christ's, and Christ is God's."I. THE CLOSE RELATION THAT EXISTS BETWEEN CHRISTIANITY AND LITERATURE. 1. One fact that meets us on the very threshold is this, that, humanly speaking, the Bible itself is a literary product. Had there been no such thing as literature there never could have been a Bible; for no one would have been able either to write or to read. As our Lord Jesus glorified the human body by His inhabitation of it in the Incarnation, so we may say literature is transfigured and glorified by this special inhabitation of the Divine Spirit in the books of the Old and New Testaments. 2. But, passing beyond the pages of the Bible, we see again how Christ-loving men have used the powers of literature for the advancement of God's kingdom in the world. In the early days of the Church, Christianity owed very much to the literary gifts of men like and , and . And when we see the great days of the Reformation dawning upon Europe, there is no doubt that we must associate that marvellous spiritual revival with the previous Revival of Letters. Luther was indebted for his knowledge of Greek to those Greek scholars who, after the Fall of Constantinople, came flocking to the West, and who spread abroad that interest in the Greek language and literature which by and by sent men back once more to the neglected pages of the Greek New Testament. And so we see Luther sitting all alone through the midnight hours in his high tower of the Wartburg Castle, in the very heart of the great Thuringian Forest. Before him lies his open Bible, and from the closest study of its pages he is seeking to apprehend the very mind of his Lord. When I was in the Wartburg some years ago I was shown the place on the wall which was struck by the famous inkhorn that Luther flung at the Devil. Luther did discomfit the devil with an inkhorn; but it was by that translation of the Bible which came from his pen, and which is still one of the masterpieces of German literature, and by those other writings which shook the hearts of men like a mighty trumpet blast, and destroyed, in most European lauds, the awful domination of Rome. 3. But, when we speak of literature, we have to go beyond the Bible, and beyond all purely religious writings. We have to think of that great world of books which includes history and science, philosophy, poetry, and fiction. And may we not say that the best books in those various departments, whether written by Christian men or not, are all of them full of facts and principles that really illustrate and corroborate the teaching of the Bible? II. SOME FRIENDLY COUNSELS WHICH ARE SUGGESTED BY THIS SUBJECT. 1. First, let me put the old apostolic injunction which Paul addressed to a young friend, "Give attendance to reading." All around us there is a great and growing devotion to athletic interests, which threatens in many cases to swallow up all interests of a higher kind. Now, bodily exercise is profitable, without doubt; but it cannot be profitable to exercise the body until we have no time or strength left for the cultivation of the mind. You must read diligently, eagerly, carefully, if you would enlarge and enrich and strengthen your mind. And let me exhort you here to begin to form a little library of your own as early as possible. Do not be content with borrowing books, but have your favourite authors around you in your own room. "A young man," says one, "may lodge in a very small room. But what do you mean by a small room? When I go into a young man's room, and see on the wall a shelf of books; when I take down Shakespeare, or Dante, or Tennyson, or Carlyle, I do not know the size of that room. The walls are nothing, for that man holds the ends of the earth. For every taste like literature, or art, or science, or philosophy, is a window in the smallest room, and through the windows a man can see anything, right on to the throne of God." 2. Next, I would say, take heed what you read. The world is full of bad books, as well as of good books, for the man with the inkhorn, in not a few cases, has sold himself to the service of the Devil. Beware of bad books! If a book fills your mind with evil thoughts, or leaves a bad taste in your mouth, cast it from you at once. Why should a man feed his soul on filth and garbage, when he is free to walk through the garden of the Lord, plucking all manner of pleasant fruits? And, apart from what is positively bad, do not spend too much time on what is scrappy or ephemeral. There are diversities of gifts, and diversities of taste. Provided you confine yourself to what is wholesome, whatever interests you most will be likely to profit you most. But do not forget that the Bible must come first. 3. Let me remind you that, as Christian young men, you should consecrate to Christ all the knowledge that you gain, and should use it as far as possible for the benefit of others. Remember, after all, that life is more than literature, and that Christianity is greater even than the Bible. Mohammedanism is the religion of a book, for above Mohammed himself stands the Koran. But Christianity is not the religion of a book: it is the religion of a life. Jesus Christ Himself is the Alpha and Omega of it, and it is love to Jesus, loyalty to Jesus, the service of Jesus, that are the true marks of a Christian. (J. G. Lambert, B. D.) 1. First, I mention that which is purely domestic. The inkstand is in every household. It awaits the opportunity to express affection or condolence or advice. Father uses it; mother uses it; the sons and daughters use it. It tells the home news; it announces the marriage, the birth, the departure, the accident, the last sickness, the death. That home inkstand, what a mission it has already executed, and what other missions will it yet fulfil! May it stand off from all insincerity and all querulousness. Oh, ye who have with recent years set up homes of your own! out of the new home inkstand write often to the old folks, if they be still living. A letter means more to them than to us, who are amid the activities of life, and to whom postal correspondence is more than we can manage. As the merciful angel of my text appeared before the brazen altar with the inkhorn at his side in Ezekiel's vision, so let the angel of filial kindness appear at the altars of the old homestead. 2. Furthermore, the inkstand of the business man has its mission. Between now and the hour of your demise, O commercial man, O professional man, there will not be a day when you cannot dip from the inkhorn a message that will influence temporal and eternal destiny. There is a rash young man running into wild speculation, and with as much ink as you can put on the pen at one time you may save him from the Niagara rapids of a ruined life. On the next street there is a young man started in business, who through lack of patronage, or mistake in purchase of goods, or want of adaptation, is on the brink of collapse. One line of ink from your pen will save him from being an underling all his life, and start him on a career that will win him a fortune which will enable him to become an endower of libraries, an opener of art galleries, and builder of churches. 3. Furthermore, great are the responsibilities of the author's inkhorn. When a bad book is printed you do well to blame the publisher, but most of all blame the author. The malaria rose from his inkstand. The poison that caused the moral or spiritual death dropped in the fluid from the tip of his pen. But blessed be God for the author's inkhorn in ten thousand studies which are dedicated to pure intelligence, highest inspiration, and grandest purpose. They are the inkstands out of which will be dipped the redemption of the world. The destroying angels with their swords seen in Ezekiel's vision will be finally overcome by the merciful angel with the writer's inkhorn. Among the most important are the editorial and reportorial inkstands. You have all seen what is called indelible ink, which is a weak solution of silver nitrate, and that ink you cannot rub out or wash out. Put it there, and it stays. Well, the liquid of the editorial and reportorial inkstands is an indelible ink. It puts upon the souls of the passing generations characters of light or darkness that time cannot wash out and eternity cannot efface. Be careful how you use it. While you recognise the distinguished ones who have dipped into the inkstand of the world's evangelisation, do not forget that there are hundreds of thousands of unknown men and women who are engaged in inconspicuous ways doing the same thing! How many anxious mothers writing to the boys in town! How many sisters writing encouragement to brothers far away! How many bruised and disappointed and wronged souls of earth would be glad to get a letter from you! Stir up that consolatory inkhorn. All Christendom has been waiting for great revivals of religion to start from the pulpits and prayer meetings. I now suggest that the greatest revival of all time may start from a concerted and organised movement through the inkhorns of all Christendom, each writer dipping from the inkhorn nearest him a letter of Gospel invitation, Gospel hope, Gospel warning, Gospel instruction. The other angels spoken of in my text were destroying angels, and each had what the Bible calls a "slaughter weapon" in his hand. It was a lance, or a battle axe, or a sword. God hasten the time when the last lance shall be shivered, and the last battle axe dulled, and the last sword sheathed, never again to leave the scabbard, and the angel of the text, who Matthew Henry says was the Lord Jesus Christ, shall from the full inkhorn of His mercy give a saving call to all nations. That day may be far off, but it is hopeful to think of its coming. Is it not time that the boasted invention of new and more explosive and more widely devastating weapons of death be stopped forever, and the Gospel have a chance, and the question be not asked, How many shots can be fired in a minute? but how many souls may be ransomed in a day? Hail, Thou Mighty Rider of the white horse in the final triumph! Sweep down and sweep by, Thou Angel of the New Covenant, with the inkhorn of the world's evangelisation! (T. De Witt Talmage.) People EzekielPlaces JerusalemTopics Altar, Axe, Behold, Beside, Brasen, Brass, Brazen, Bronze, Case, Clothed, Deadly, Destruction, Direction, Doorway, Faces, Facing, Gate, Higher, Inkhorn, Ink-horn, Inkpot, Kit, Lies, Lieth, Linen, Loins, Midst, North, Places, Scribe's, Shattering, Six, Slaughter, Slaughter-weapon, Stand, Stood, Towards, Upper, Weapon, Writer's, WritingOutline 1. A vision, whereby is shown the preservation of some5. and the destruction of the rest 8. God cannot be entreated for them Dictionary of Bible Themes Ezekiel 9:1-2Library The Evil and Its RemedyISHALL HAVE two texts this morning--the evil and its remedy. "The iniquity of the house of Israel and Judah is exceeding great;" and "The blood of Jesus Christ his Son cleanseth us from all sin." We can learn nothing of the gospel, except by feeling its truths--no one truth of the gospel is ever truly known and really learned, until we have tested and tried and proved it, and its power has been exercised upon us. I have heard of a naturalist, who thought himself exceedingly wise with regard to the … Charles Haddon Spurgeon—Spurgeon's Sermons Volume 4: 1858 First, for Thy Thoughts. Parable of the Pharisee and Publican. The Life and Death of Mr. Badman, The Upbringing of Jewish Children Ezekiel Links Ezekiel 9:2 NIVEzekiel 9:2 NLT Ezekiel 9:2 ESV Ezekiel 9:2 NASB Ezekiel 9:2 KJV Ezekiel 9:2 Bible Apps Ezekiel 9:2 Parallel Ezekiel 9:2 Biblia Paralela Ezekiel 9:2 Chinese Bible Ezekiel 9:2 French Bible Ezekiel 9:2 German Bible Ezekiel 9:2 Commentaries Bible Hub |
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