Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit · Sermon No. 1852
“The waters shall be healed.” Ezekiel 47:8.
Ezekiel is robed in dreadful tempest and his whole book is “as the terrible crystal” for brightness and for mystery, yet he often gives us visions of exceeding comfort. For instance, who can think without joy of that tender branch of the cedar which is to be planted by God in the mountain of the height of Israel—which shall grow so exceedingly that all fowl of every wing shall dwell in its branches? Do we not all rejoice that, whatever may become of the institutions of modern society, we have received a Kingdom which cannot be moved? The Kingdom of our Lord Jesus, which began as a tender slip, is yet to increase till it is likened to a goodly cedar “upon a high mountain and eminent”—is not this an unspeakable joy? Think, also, of that other vision, so weird and strange, of a valley full of dead bones, “very many” and “very dry.” What an answer does that vision give to the question of unbelief! “Can these dry bones live?” How plainly does the Lord answer—“I will put My Spirit in you and you shall live”! When I think of that goodly cedar, I see that the Kingdom will come unto Christ. And when I think of the valley of dry bones, I am comforted concerning the masses around me. We, too, as we walk through this morgue of a city, may hope that life will conquer death and an exceedingly great army, quickened by the Spirit of our God, shall yet rise from these dry bones!
The remarkable vision which lies open before us, is exceedingly reassuring to those who are troubled by reason of the dreadful condition of the times—and which of us is not? The Prophet bids us think of those waters, dreary and dreadful, known by the suggestive name of the Dead Sea! This was the “Chamber of Horrors” of the land of Canaan! Travelers describe it as a place of utter desolation. Lying in a deep hollow, some 1,300 feet below any other sea, the Dead Sea may be described as a deep sunken into the earth, like the mouth of the abyss. Masses of bitumen float upon its surface and line its shores. Sulfurous exhalations abound and on its banks are hot sulfuric springs. Bathing in its thick brine is not pleasant, for it causes the skin to tingle with its acrid salts long afterwards. Neither is it desirable to linger upon the brink of it— there is nothing to attract you to do so. Very scanty is the vegetation; few are the birds and rare the living things. It is the domain of destruction! The sea is so salty that no fish can live in it and though it has been asserted that smaller organisms exist in it, these have seldom been found—on the contrary, the fish that come down into it from the Jordan die at once—and drifted shellfish are washed up dead upon the bank. Nothing of life loves the brine, the sulfur and the bitumen of the Dead Sea. The slimy lake is, at seasons, dangerous to health, and even to life. Travelers have, of late, crossed it safely at the right season—but formerly those who made a voyage upon it rarely returned to tell the tale, or, before long, sickened and died.
The doomed lake bears dark mysteries in its bosom—down deep in its depths lie the drowned cities of the plain, whose infamies provoked the wrath of Heaven and brought upon them a fire-shower such as earth has never known before or since. It may be that the briny waters hide mysteries of sin which were better hidden—for modern crime is fertile enough in inventions of filthiness and needs no aid from the rottenness of antiquity. Thus, the Dead Sea is a place most dread and dismal—the bath of death, the haunt of despair, the home of desolation—and in these respects it is a fit picture of our fallen humanity, a truthful symbol of the whole world which lies in the Wicked One. The world of men is cursed by evils of dreadful name. “The dark places of the earth are full of the habitations of cruelty.” There are no mysteries of love in this lost world, but mysteries of sin, of judgement and of the wrath of God are plentiful! The world is a veritable Dead Sea upon a gigantic scale!
Such, also, is the city in which we live—must I call it “modern Sodom”? Every wave that breaks upon the shore of this human lake now seems to wash up remains of monstrous things unearthly, inhuman, beastly, devilish! Fair islands, here and there, rise out of its dark deeps—the bright creations of God’s Grace—but all around them the waters cast up mire and dirt. God is at work creating new heavens and a new earth and, in the process, forms of beauty are developed. But to this day the old unrenewed city remains a reeking copy of the Hell which burns below. Those who have dared to look into its depths return with horror upon their faces to say that it were not lawful for a man to utter what they have seen! London is a simmering cauldron of vice and crime. O God, how long shall it be?
In certain respects, such is every man’s natural heart until he is renewed by Grace. The heart is deceitful above all things and desperately wicked—and may be well typified by the Sea of Death. If we could but look into it with such eyes as God has, what would we not see? When we are led to gaze on it through our tears because the Holy Spirit has anointed our eyes with eye salve—and we perceive things in their naked truth—we are distressed beyond expression. What a thing is human nature! Mr. Whitefield used to say that man is half beast and half devil. But to my mind he is all beast and all devil if God does not hold him in check by the restraints of fear and the fetters of Law. Let him alone and who can imagine what man would grow to? All manner of iniquities, such as lust, greed, oppression, drunkenness, falsehood, cruelty and murder lurk within the human heart, like wild beasts in the jungle! No man knows what villainy he is capable of—he only needs to be placed under certain circumstances and he will develop into a very fiend!