Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit · Sermon No. 1289
“And I will establish My Covenant with you; and you shall know that I am the Lord: That you may remember, and be ashamed, and never open your mouth anymore because of your shame, when I am pacified toward you for all that you have done, said the Lord God.” Ezekiel 16:62, 63.
A VERY extraordinary chapter this 16th of Ezekiel! A minister could scarcely read it in public—he certainly would not like to explain its metaphors to a general audience, nor are we called upon to do so. To read it in private is another thing. And to have it read for you by the Holy Spirit and to be made to see and to feel its meaning, not merely as describing the Israelites, but as very much setting forth yourself, is a very different matter. Believe me, it is a lesson which, if it is well learned, will never be forgotten. It is a part of the Holy Spirit’s business to convict us of sin and when He takes a chapter like this and puts us through our paces, verse by verse, and makes us eat the bitter herbs which each verse con-tains—and as He makes us feel as if we were drinking the water into which the dust of our idols had been cast when they had been broken and ground down, like the golden calf of the Israelites—when He makes us feel the grit between our teeth in every drop we drink, I say it is a lesson well worth receiving and one that is likely to stick by us all our days.
There are two very amazing things in this chapter. Which is the more amazing is hard to tell. The first is the extraordinary sin of Israel. God speaks of it in the strongest imaginable language. He represents Judah’s sin as being greater than the sins of Sodom and Gomorrah, though both Sodom and Gomorrah had been destroyed for their abominations. He compares Judah’s backslidings to the lewdness of a woman who forgets her marriage vows and sins blatantly with many lovers, adding filthiness to filthiness. And so He makes sin to appeal exceedingly sinful, as a violation of the heart’s love to God and the soul’s chastity towards the Most High. A very dreadful thing is sin as set forth in this chapter!
The other amazing thing is God’s Grace—how, when He began with Israel, He found her like an infant cast out in her blood, naked and unwashed. And He took her up in all her filthiness and said to her, “Live,” and washed, cleansed and clothed her. He hung her ears with jewels and when she grew to riper years she turned aside from Him—turned His mercies into occasions of provocation and made His blessings to be instruments of sin. He describes Himself as pardoning her again and again and yet she continued to invent new sins, looking down, all the while, upon her sisters Sodom and Gomorrah and reckoning herself very superior to them. And yet she was behaving worse then they and going deeper and deeper into rebellion against the Lord.
Yet His mercy follows her. His love still pursues her and He makes the chapter to culminate in mercy with such words as these—“Nevertheless I will remember My Covenant with you in the days of your youth, and I will establish unto you an everlasting Covenant. And I will establish My Covenant with you; and you shall know that I am the Lord: that you may remember, and be ashamed, and never open your mouth anymore because of your shame, when I am pacified toward you for all that you have done, said the Lord God.” Two words, if you can learn them, will teach you the deepest practical wisdom—sin and Grace. No one ever measured either of them—except One, and He, when He measured them, was in a bloody sweat and poured out His soul unto death.
George Herbert quaintly sings—
“Philosophers have measured mountains, Fathomed the depths of seas, of states, and kings. Walked with a staff to Hea ven, and traced fountains, But there are two vast, spacious things, The which to measure it does more behoove: Yet few there are that sound them—— Sin and Love.”
Only our suffering Lover, the Lord Jesus Christ, knows the two to their perfection. May we be helped to enter a little further into the double secret while we commune together. The first exercise to which I shall invite you is this—let us think of the condition into which the Grace of God has brought all Believers. God is pacified towards them. “When I am pacified toward you for all that you have done, said the Lord God.” Then, secondly, let us think of the knowledge which has been imparted thus to all Believers—they know the Covenant, they know the Lord and they know themselves. And they are made to remember and to be ashamed. Finally, in the third and principal place, let us dwell upon the silence which, from now on and forever is induced in all Believers. “You shall never open your mouth anymore because of your shame, when I am pacified toward you for all that you have done.”
I. So, then, first of all, let us review THE BLESSED CONDITION INTO WHICH EVERY BELIEVER IN THE LORD JESUS CHRIST HAS BEEN BROUGHT BY THE SOVEREIGN ACT OF GOD’S MERCY. He has been brought into such a condition that God can say to him, “I am pacified toward you for all that you have done.” The Hebrew word which here sets forth forgiveness and pardon properly signifies to cover a thing with that which adheres and sticks to the thing covered—not with dry dust or leaves, which could be easily removed—but with glue or pitch, so that the thing hidden cannot easily be brought to sight again.