New Park Street Pulpit · Sermon No. 28
Delivered on Sabbath Morning, June 3, 1855, New Park Street Chapel, Southwark.
“And I will make them and the places round about my hill a blessing; and I will cause the shower to come down in his season; there shall be showers of blessing.”—Ezekiel 34:26.
THE chapter (Ezek. 34) that I read at the commencement of the service is a prophetical one; and, I take it, it has relation, not to the condition of the Jews during the captivity and their subsequent happiness when they should return to their land, but to a state into which they should they should fall after they had been restored to their country under Nehemiah and Ezra, and in which state they still continue to the present day. The prophet tells us that the shepherds then, instead of feeding the flock, fed themselves; they trod the grass, instead of allowing the sheep to eat it, and they fouled the waters with their feet. That is an exact description of the state of Judea after the captivity; for then there arose the Scribes and Pharisees, who took the key of knowledge, and would not enter themselves, nor allow others to enter; who laid heavy burdens on men’s shoulders, and would not touch them with one of their fingers; who made religion to consist entirely in sacrifices and ceremonies, and imposed such a burden on the people, that they cried out, “What a weariness it is!” That same evil has continued with the poor Jews to the present day; and should you read the nonsense of the Talmud and the Gemara, and see the burdens they laid upon them you would say, “Verily they have idle shepherds;” they give the sheep no food; they trouble them with fanciful superstitions and silly views, and instead of telling them that the Messiah is already come, they delude them with the idea that there is a Messiah yet to come, who shall restore Judea, and raise it to its glory. The Lord pronounces a curse upon these Pharisees and Rabbis, these who “thrust with side and with shoulder,” those evil shepherds who will not suffer the sheep to lie down, neither will feed them with good pasture. But, after having described this state, he prophesies better times for the poor Jew. The day is coming when the careless shepherds shall be as naught; when the power of the Rabbis shall cease, when the traditions of the Mishna and the Talmud shall be cast aside. The hour is approaching, when the tribes shall go up to their own country; when Judea, so long a howling wilderness, shall once more blossom like the rose; when, if the temple itself be not restored, yet on Zion’s hill shall be raised some Christian building, where the chants of solemn praise shall be heard as erst of old the Psalms of David were sung in the tabernacle. Not long shall it be ere they shall come—shall come from distant lands wher’er they rest or roam; and she who has been the offscouring of all things, whose name has been a proverb and a byword, shall become the glory of all lands. Dejected Zion shall raise her head, shaking herself from dust, and darkness, and the dead. Then shall the Lord feed his people, and make them and the places round about his hill a blessing. I think we do not attach sufficient importance to the restoration of the Jews. We do not think enough of it. But certainly, if there is anything promised in the Bible, it is this. I imagine that you cannot read the Bible without seeing clearly that there is to be an actual restoration of the children of Israel. “Thither they shall go up; they shall come with weeping unto Zion, and with supplications unto Jerusalem.” May that happy day soon come! For when the Jews are restored, then the fulness of the Gentiles shall be gathered in; and as soon as they return, then Jesus will come upon Mount Zion to reign with his ancients gloriously, and the halcyon days of the Millennium shall then dawn; we shall then know every man to be a brother and a friend; Christ shall rule, with universal sway.
This, then, is the meaning of the text; that God would make Jerusalem and the places round about his hill a blessing. I shall not, however, use it so this morning, but I shall use it in a more confined sense—or, perhaps, in a more enlarged sense—as it applies to the church of Jesus Christ, and to this particular church with which you and I stand connected. “I will make them and the places round about my hill a blessing; and I will cause the shower to come down in his season; there shall be showers of blessing.”
There are two things here spoken of. First, Christ’s church is to be a blessing; secondly, Christ’s church is to be blessed. These two things you will find in the different sentences of the text.
I. First, CHRIST’S CHURCH IS TO BE A BLESSING. “I will make them and the places round about my hill a blessing.” The object of God, in choosing a people before all worlds, was not only to save that people, but through them to confer essential benefits upon the whole human race. When he chose Abraham, he did not elect him simply to be God’s friend, and the recipient of peculiar privileges; but he chose him to make him, as it were, the conservator of truth. He was to be the ark in which the truth should be hidden. He was to be the keeper of the covenant in behalf of the whole world; and when God chooses any men by his sovereign, electing grace, and makes them Christ’s, he does it not only for their own sake, that they may be saved, but for the world’s sake. For, know ye not that “ye are the light of the world;”—“A city set upon a hill, which cannot be hid?” “Ye are the salt of the earth;” and when God makes you salt, it is not only that ye may have salt in yourselves, but that like salt ye may preserve the whole mass. If he makes you leaven, it is that, like the little leaven, you may leaven the whole lump. Salvation is not a selfish thing; God does not give it for us to keep to ourselves, but that we may thereby be made the means of blessing to others; and the great day shall declare that there is not a man living on the surface of the earth but has received a blessing in some way or other through God’s gift of the gospel. The very keeping of the wicked in life, and granting of the reprieve, was purchased with the death of Jesus; and through his sufferings and death, the temporal blessings which both we and they enjoy are bestowed on us. The gospel was sent that it might first bless those that embrace it, and then expand, so as to make them a blessing to the whole human race.