Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit · Sermon No. 3087
“I will seek that which was lost, and bring again that which was driven away, and will bind up that which was broken, and will strengthen that which was sick: but I will destroy the fat and the strong; I will feed them with judgment” Ezekiel 34:16.
IT is a great mercy that God never leaves His Church. He has not made a Church as a watchmaker constructs a watch, which, after being wound up, is left to depend upon the strength and fitness of the machinery, but He has made a Church which, though fitted with the best of machinery, needs His hand every moment to keep it in motion. He has lighted the lamps, but He walks among the golden candlesticks. He has fixed the pillars of the Temple, but His own almighty shoulders are the actual support thereof. He has not left the Church to His ministers, but He, Himself, is the great Bishop and Shepherd of souls. Even if, as some affirm, there were no immediate Divine interpositions in the works of Providence, we know that there are such interpositions constantly in the works of Grace.
We have direct experimental evidence of God’s ever-watchful care over His Church. He does not deal with His people only through instruments, but He Himself takes the Church in His own hands. This is His own declaration, “I the Lord do keep it; I will water it every moment: lest any hurt it, I will keep it night and day.” Thus does He speak of His vineyard. So, too, in this chapter, for a while, the shepherds had domineered over the flock. Evil shepherds had crept into the office, fed themselves, but not the sheep. It would have been an ill day for the Church if Divine interposition were not the rule of His government, but because it is so, God said, “Away, you shepherds! I am against you; and I will require My flock at your hands. Behold I, even I, will both search My sheep, and seek them out. Away, you that have dispersed and scattered My flock! I am about to make bare My arm. As you have proved unworthy servants, your Master, Himself, is coming; as you have not fed the people of My pastures and have not gathered together My flock, I Myself will grasp the crook in My own hand.” He speaks in His wrath to the foolish shepherds, yet He mingles His threats with pity for those He elsewhere calls “the flock of slaughter.” He says, “I will feed even you, O poor of the flock! I will seek that which was lost, and bring again that which was driven away, and will bind up that which was broken, and will strengthen that which was sick.”
Ah, Beloved, if the Lord did not continually interfere in His Church, the Church would cease to exist! If the Doctrines of His holy Word had been left to man’s teaching, they would, by degrees, have so degenerated that the Church would not have had a particle of the Truth of God in its midst. If God had not stretched over His Truth the broad aegis of His own Omnipotence, Truth would have ceased out of the land and those who profess to be its ministers would all have prophesied lies in the name of the Lord! The preservation of the Truth of God in our midst is owing to the direct and immediate interposition of the Almighty. And mark it well, the inward witness of the Truth in the heart of every individual Believer is an instance and evidence of the same unceasing care, inasmuch as only He can apply it to the conscience with quickening power. There is not force enough in the Truth of God to convert souls without the influence of the Holy Spirit. The minister may be a good under-shepherd and he may endeavor to feed the flock, but God’s flock cannot be fed, nor can God’s wandering sheep be gathered home unless the Chief Shepherd, the great and mighty Archbishop, even Jesus Christ, shall interfere and Himself do the work! The Divine interposition of God in the midst of His Church is her great bulwark, her hope, her shield, her stay. What we need just now is not so much more shepherds, perhaps not other shepherds—albeit, when the Lord sends laborers into the field, it is because the crops are to be
gathered in—but we need the great Master, Himself, to visit us and say, “I will do My own work; since you will not faithfully and fearlessly preach the Truth, I will come and interfere, that My Word may be fully and boldly proclaimed.”
Now notice what God has promised to do. In this text there is a character very graphically and minutely described— and we shall look at the four sentences as descriptive of that one character— “that which was lost; that which was driven away; that which was broken and that which was sick “Then we shall look at the sentences, one by one, as being very possibly descriptions of four different characters. We shall also endeavor to speak of the sweet promises appended to each character and conclude with a solemn warning to “the fat and the strong.”
I. First, then, notice the four features of character here—“that which was lost; that which was driven away; that which was broken and that which was sick.” Sometimes we say that all four of these meet in one individual.