Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit · Sermon No. 468
“None eye pitied you, to do any of these unto you, to ha ve compassion upon you. But you were cast out into the open field to the loathing of your person, in the day that you were born. And when I passed by you and saw you polluted in your own blood, I said unto you when you were in your blood, Live; yes, I said unto you when you were in your blood, Live.” Ezekiel 16:5, 6.
Doubtless the Lord here describes the Jewish people when they began to multiply in the land of Egypt and were grievously oppressed by Pharaoh. Pharaoh had commanded them to cast out the male children that they might perish. Hence, the figure of an infant deserted, cast out into the open field to perish by wild beasts, by starvation, or exposure, was a very apt portrait of the youthful state of Israel, when God looked upon her in love, and brought her out of Egypt to set her in a goodly land.
But all the best Divines and expositors concur in the belief that we have here also a most extraordinarily apt and significant description of the human race by nature, and of the way in which God in Divine mercy passes by the sinner when utterly lost and helpless and by the power of the Spirit, bids him “Live.” At any rate, we intend to consider it so this morning.
Without any preface, for we need none, we shall, first of all, bid you look at the misery of man’s estate as set before us in the present verses. Then, next, we shall search for motives which could urge the Lord to have pity upon this miserable one. And then, thirdly, we shall pause a little while to listen to the Divine mandate by which this unhappy being is delivered from his lost estate. “I said unto you, Live; yes, I said unto you, Live.”
I. At the outset, I shall direct your contemplations to a survey of THE MISERY OF MAN’S ESTATE.
The verse presents to us an infant exposed to die. All the common offices that were necessary for its life and health have been forgotten. Its heartless parents have laid it out in the open field, having no regard whatever for it. There it lies before our eyes, covered with blood, exposed to wild beasts, famishing, ready to perish. Among many heathen nations there existed the barbarous custom of leaving deformed children to perish in the woods or fields. Among the Spartans it was an established regulation to abandon their weaker offspring to perish at the foot of Mount Taygetus.
And in these times there are dark places of the earth which are full of this unnatural cruelty. The Jews were certainly free from this sin but it was a practice of their near neighbors and therefore well known to them. And moreover, the remembrance of Egypt and their great lawgiver among the crocodiles of the Nile and all the males murdered by royal decree, would make the metaphor very simple to them.
1. At the very first glance, we remark, here is an early ruin. It is an infant. A thousand sorrows that one so young should be so deeply taught in misery’s school! It is an infant. It has not yet tasted joy, but yet it knows pain and sorrow to the fullest. How early are you blasted, O sweet flower! How soon are your young dawnings quenched in darkness, O rising sun! A ruin so terrible and so early has fallen upon each of us. Let proud man kick against the doctrine as he may, Scripture tells us assuredly that we are “born in sin and shapen in iniquity.”
We came not into this world as Adam came into the garden, without flaw, without condemnation, without evil propensities. But lo, by one man’s offense we are all made sinners and through his desperate fall our blood is tainted and our nature is corrupt. From the very birth we go astray, speaking lies and in the very birth we lie under the condemnation of the Law of God. It is not mine to defend this doctrine, to answer objections to it, or to bring arguments for it. I simply announce what God has Himself revealed by the mouth of His servant David and also more fully by the tongue of the Apostle Paul.
Man, unless God has mercy on you, you are lost and lost from your very beginning! You did not come into this world as one who might stand or fall, you were fallen already. An original and birth-sin had seized upon you in the womb, and you were even then as an infant cast out to perish and to die. There is hardly any doctrine more humbling than that of natural depravity or original sin. It has been the main point of attack for all those who hate the Gospel. And it must be maintained and valiantly vindicated by those who would exalt Christ, since the greatness and glory of His salvation lies mainly in the desperateness of the ruin from which He has redeemed us.
Man, think not to save yourself by your works. Boast not of the excellence of your character and of your nature. You are a traitor’s son, you are a felon’s child! An act of dishonor was passed upon your father’s house and you were born under the Law and under the curse—obnoxious to Divine Wrath in the very moment when your first breath was drawn. Sad heritage of sin! Miserable estate of sorrow! How deep the ruin of the Fall! Oh, to Divine Grace what debtors we are, that out of this ruin it can lift us up to heights of glory!