And it is when we look to God as He is manifested in Jesus Christ that we can see why God should speak with such earnest- ness as is expressed in the text before us. Jesus of Nazareth have pleasure in the death of the wicked ! Jesus of Nazareth leave men to perish when He could as easily save them as He could move His finger ! Jesus of Nazareth, who could not suffer a reproof to a mother bringing to Him her infant that He might lay His hands upon it, and bless it ! Jesus of Nazareth, who could not see the widow and her dead son, without His heart being moved
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and melted with compassion ! Jesus of Nazareth, who could not hear the blind man crying to Him for sight without stopping the procession of His triumphal entry, and calling for the man to be brought to Him! Jesus of Nazareth, who, when He felt the bloody sweat drop from His brow, in the terrific agonies of the curse that was wringing His heart, and said, "Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me," had love enough for the souls for whom He had died to say, " Nevertheless, not my will, but thine, be done" — and who took that cup and held it to His lips until He could say, "It is finished," and bowed His head, and died. Jesus of Nazareth having pleasure in the death of the wicked ! If we take God as He is seen in Christ, and understand Him as He is there seen, we can have no diffi- culty in perceiving how natural and reasonable it was that He should serd a message like this to a people, like the Jews in Ezekiel's time, who complained that they could not help themselves, and that God could help them, but did not care to do so.
Tf The battle is virtually won if you come to believe that in Jesus of Nazareth God was manifested in the flesh, and that it is your first and highest duty to bow before Him with penitence for your sin and trust in His mercy. And I can promise you, on the strength of the experience of one who, like yourselves, once saw his early faith covered with a boundless sea of darkness, that if you once reach a firm belief in this fundamental fact, the waters shall some day begin to ebb — shall drain down to the depths whence they came ; and, as the flood retires, that solitary truth — the manifestation of God in the person of Christ — shall gradually be surrounded by province after province of Divine revelation, beautiful with fresh verdure and pleasant streams, and rich with yellow harvests ; and, hidden deep beneath the soil, there shall be a secret treasure of wisdom and of joy : the gold and the crystal cannot equal it, and the exchange of it shall not be for jewels of fine gold.1
It is the greatness of Thy love, dear Lord, that we would celebrate With sevenfold powers. Our love at best is cold and poor, at best unseemly for Thy state, This best of ours.
1 R. W. Dale, From Doubt to Faith (Exeter Hall Lectures, 1864), 12.
EZEKIEL xxxiii. ii 203
Creatures that die, we yet are such as Thine own hands deigned to create:
We frail as flowers, We bitter bondslaves ransomed at a price incomparably great
To grace Heaven's bowers.
Thou callest: "Come at once" — and still Thou callest us: "Come late, tho' late"— (The moments fly) — "Come, every one that thirsteth, come" — "Come prove Me, knocking at My gate" — (Some souls draw nigh !) — "Come thou who waiting seekest Me" — "Come thou for whom I seek and wait" — (Why will we die?)— " Come and repent : come and amend : come joy the joys unsatiate " — — (Christ passeth by . . .) — Lord, pass not by — I come — and I — and I.1
II.
A Divine Appeal.
41 Turn ye, turn ye from your evil ways."
The declaration of the text that God has no pleasure in the death of the wicked is followed by the converse statement that God's desire is that the wicked should turn from his way and live. An urgent appeal is then made to the sinner, " Turn ye, turn ye from your evil ways." This importunity on the part of God proves yet more fully His real desire. It is like one vehemently enforcing an invitation upon an unwilling listener, making a last effort to save the heedless or resisting. He lifts up His voice ; He stretches out His hand ; He exhorts ; He commands ; He expostulates ; He entreats, " Turn ye, turn ye from your evil ways." Must not He who thus reasons and remonstrates, repeating and re-repeating His entreaty, enforc- ing and urging home His message with every kind of loving argument, as well as with every form of solemn appeal, — must
1 Christina G. Eossetti, Some Feasts and Fasts.
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not He be truly in earnest in His desire for the salvation of the sinner ?
1. "What is the turning from our evil ways which is here signified ? It is not shedding a few tears of sorrow and remorse. It is not forming a few serious resolutions. It is not leaving off a few bad practices. It is not attending to religious duties more constantly, or more strictly, than formerly. By the expression " turning from our evil ways " is meant a deep and total change of the heart and life, a conversion of the whole soul, a turning from sin to God. The person who is turned from his evil ways is a " new creature " ; he has a new heart and a new spirit : " old things are passed away : behold, all things are become new." He has new desires and dispositions, and these lead him to walk in newness of life ; so that henceforth he proves, in a manner which cannot be mistaken, that he has indeed turned out of " the broad road of destruction" into "the narrow way that leadeth unto life."