Sermon VII. The advantage of the kingdom of Christ in the shaking of the kingdoms of the world.
“And all the trees of the field shall know that I the Lord have brought down the high tree, have exalted the low tree, have dried up the green tree, and have made the dry tree to flourish: I the Lord have spoken, and have done Ezek. xvii. 24.
Although all the works of God’s providence — which are great, and sought out of all that have pleasure in them, Ps. cxi. 2 — have such a stamp and impress of his own image on them, his wisdom, goodness, power, love, that they declare their author, and reveal from heaven his kindness and wrath towards the children of men;1 yet such are the prejudices, lusts, inordinacy of affections, and interest of many, that it hath always been a long and difficult task to convince them of his presence in them, when it hath been most uncontrollably evident. The Egyptians will wrestle with many a plague, by thinking the “magicians” can do so;2 and the Philistines will try to the utmost whether it be his hand, or a chance that happened to them.3 “Lord,” saith the prophet, “when thy hand is lifted up, they will not see,” Isa. xxvi. 11. Yea, oftentimes (especially when judicial blindness is gone forth upon them),4 though they cannot but see his arm awaked as of old, and made bare, they will not rest in his sovereign disposal of things, but rise up against the works of his revenge and holiness; like wild beasts that are pursued, when all ways of escape and turning are shut up, they fly in the face of him that follows them. They repent not of their evil deeds, but bite their tongues for anger, and blaspheme the God of heaven, Rev. xvi. 10, 11. Yea, such is the power of deceivable lusts, that many will admire at the blindness of others in former generations who considered not the works of God (as the Jews in ‘the wilderness), when themselves are under actual contempt of no less glorious dispensations; like the Pharisees, who bewailed the folly of their fathers in persecuting the prophets, when themselves were endeavouring to kill the Son of God, Matt. xxiii. 29, 30. To bring, then, upon the spirits of men a conviction of the works of God, and his righteousness therein, so as to prevail with them to rest in his determination of things, is a task meet only for him who knows all their hearts within them, and can carry on the issues of his providence until to a man they shall say, “Verily there is a reward for the righteous: verily he is a God who judgeth in the earth,” Ps. lviii. 11. And this is that which the Lord here undertakes to accomplish, “And,” saith he, “all the trees,” etc.
In the preaching and prophesying of Ezekiel, this one thing among others is eminent, that he was “artifex parabolarum,” — a wonderful “framer of similitudes and parables;”5 a way of teaching attended with much evidence, clearness, and power.
In particular, he frequently compares the world to a field, or a forest, and the inhabitants of it to the trees therein; — an allusion exceedingly proper, considering the great variety and difference of condition both of the one and the other. The trees of the field are some high, some low; some green, some dry; some strong, some weak; some lofty, some contemptible; some fruitful, some barren; some useful, some altogether useless: so that you have all sorts of persons, high and low, of what condition, relation, or interest soever, clearly represented by the trees of the field; and these are the trees in my text.
This chapter, unto verse 22, is taken up in a riddle, a parable, with the exposition of it.6 The time being come that God would destroy the outward, visible monarchy of the Jews, for their false worship, tyranny, persecution, and oppression, he employs the king of Babylon in that work,7 who subdues the nation, takes away two kings, one after another, and appoints Zedekiah a titulary governor under him.8 But the wrath of God being to come upon them to the uttermost, he also closes with Egypt, rebels against him9 by whose appointment alone he had any right to be a ruler, verse 16; so way is made, by his ruin, to put an end to the kingly reign of the house of David in Jerusalem, Jer. xxix. 16, 17. The Lord had of old erected a kingly government in the house of David, 1 Sam. xvi. 1; 2 Sam. xii. 7; — not for any eminency in the government itself, or for the civil advantage of that people, — for he had long before chosen and established another, consisting of “seventy elders of the people,” Num. xi. 24, to whom he added prophets and judges, extraordinarily raised up in several generations, according to his promise, Deut. xviii. 18, (which when the people rejected, he said they rejected him, or his institution, 1 Sam. viii. 7), — but that it might be a type of the spiritual dominion of their Messiah;10 and so was a part of their pedagogy and bondage, as were the residue of their types, every one of them; — yea, the most glorious enjoyments whatsoever which were granted them (which did yet represent something that was afterward to be brought in), was part of that servile estate wherein God kept that people, that without us they should not be made perfect. But now this carnal people, beholding the outward beauty, lustre, and glory of the type, began to rest in it, to the neglect of the spiritual kingdom of Christ represented thereby.11 And thus did they with the rest of their types, until the Lord destroyed all their outward pomp and glory, Isa. i. 11, 12; Jer. vii. 4, 14, 15. So, in particular, dealt he with their kingly government, when once they began to account their bondage their glory, and to embrace the shadow instead of the substance. And this did he, to recall them to a serious consideration of the tendency of all typical institutions, and the design he was carrying on concerning the kingdom of Christ.