060. Promised Blessings Must Be Sought.
Promised Blessings Must Be Sought.
Ezekiel 36:37. The Lord never forgets his people. He may find it necessary to rebuke, to afflict, and even scatter them among the heathen—under whose oppressions they may suffer calamities the most terrible—but his “loving kindness will he not utterly take from them, nor suffer his faithfulness to fail.”
We find, in this chapter, the foregoing gracious assurance. It contains two distinct, but cheering prophecies; both having reference to an improved condition of the Jews—the one temporal, the other spiritual.
They were now in Babylon, in captivity; and there God had decided they should remain some forty or fifty years longer. Yet the day of deliverance would come. “The mountains of Israel should yet yield their fruit to the people of Israel,” Ezekiel 36:8; the “cities” should be “inhabited;” the “wastes” should be “builded;” the “old estates” should again be “settled.” But these temporal blessings were not a moiety of what God had in store for them. Rich spiritual mercies should flow in upon them. “I will sprinkle clean water upon you;” by which imagery, God expressed the spiritual blessings he designed for them—“and ye shall be clean from all your filthiness; and from all your idols will I cleanse you. A new heart also will I give you,” Ezekiel 36:26 : “And ye shall dwell in the land that I gave your fathers; and ye shall be my people, and I will be your God.” Ezekiel 36:28. That these promises had primary reference to the return of the Jews to Judea, at the expiration of the Babylonish captivity, admits of no doubt. And they were fulfilled. The Jews were restored; and many of them may have been renewed and sanctified; and all were, from that time, preserved from idolatry. But great numbers still lived in a state of alienation from God; nor was the outward condition of the Jews so prosperous, after the captivity, as it had been before that catastrophe; and yet, according to these prophecies, and especially that in the following chapter, (Ezekiel 37) we should expect that it would have been far more prosperous.
It seems, therefore, unavoidable, that we should refer their complete fulfillment to some future event—to an era when they shall be restored to their own land—there to flourish to the end of time. “Say unto them, thus saith the Lord God,
Behold I will take the children of Israel from among the heathen, whither they be gone, and will gather them on every side, and bring them into their own land. And I will make them one nation in the land upon the mountains of Israel; and one king shall be king to them all: and they shall no more be two nations, neither shall they be divided into two kingdoms any more at all: Neither shall they defile themselves any more with their idols, nor with their detestable things, nor with any of their transgressions: but I will save them out of all their dwelling-places, wherein they have sinned, and will cleanse them: so they shall be my people, and I will be their God. And David my servant shall be king over them; and they shall have one shepherd: they also shall walk in my judgments, and observe my statutes, to do them. And they shall dwell in the land that I have given unto Jacob my servant, wherein your fathers have dwelt; and they shall dwell therein, even they and their children, and their childrens’ children, for ever: and my servant David shall be their prince for ever. Moreover, I will make a covenant of peace with them; it shall be an everlasting covenant with them; and I will place them, and multiply them, and will set my sanctuary in the midst of them for evermore. My tabernacle also shall be with them: yea, I will be their God, and they shall be my people. And the heathen shall know that I the Lord do sanctify Israel, when my sanctuary shall be in the midst of them for evermore.” Exodus 37:21—28.
These passages, and those of similar import, strengthen the opinion that, after the Jews shall be converted to Christ, as they will be, for they shall “be graffed in again,” and shall serve “David their king,” they shall be restored to their own land. (The author is well aware that interpreters of Scripture are divided on the question of the literal return of the Jews. He has here followed the popular belief.) “Then,” remarks Dr. Scott, “these promises will be fulfilled to them in their fullest sense; and the subsequent parts of the prophecy will be literally accomplished, in the sight of all the nations. And the Jews are, no doubt, preserved a distinct people, on purpose to make way for this great display of the Lord’s power and truth; and thus to demonstrate to all the world the divine original of the holy Scriptures.”
But, “Thus saith the Lord God, I will yet for this be inquired of by the house of Israel to do it for them.” Of the nature and variety of the instrumentalities, which God will employ, by which to accomplish these glorious designs, we are, in a great measure, left in ignorance. But there is one here specified—and a powerful one it will prove—namley: prayer. At the proper time, God will pour out his spirit upon them. They will begin to turn their thoughts upward to the God of their fathers. They will think of their fathers’ sepulchers, and the land which contains them; of Zion, “beautiful for situation—the joy of all the earth;” of Jerusalem, their once “happy home;” and, as they once sat by the “rivers of Babylon,” and “wept, when they remembered Zion,” so, in all lands, where they are scattered, they will weep—they will lift up their voice in supplication to their fathers’ God. And God will hear; he will direct them to “David their king;” he will turn their thoughts and affections to Jesus—long despised, and long rejected—and they will own him; and, with the wondering and admiring Thomas, they will open their eyes upon his beauty and glory, and exclaim, “My Lord, and my God!”
And, at length, converted to Christ, they will return to their own native hills. The rose of Sharon will be again seen, in all its pristine beauty. Carmel will exult in the fatness of its olives; and Lebanon glory in its cedars. And then, in those streets, where the shouts of the blind and infuriated mob cried, “Away with him!”—“Crucify him!” shall be heard the ransomed sons and daughters of Israel, crying, “Hosanna! blessed is he that cometh in the name of the Lord!” And, as to Jerusalem, the poet has described her glory:
See Salem built, the labor of a God!
Bright as a sun, the sacred city shines;
All kingdoms, and all princes of the earth, Flock to that light; the glory of all lands F lows into her; unbounded is her joy, And endless her increase. Thy rams are there, Nebaioth; and the flocks of Kedar there; The looms of Ormus, and the mines of Ind; And Saba’s spicy groves pay tribute there.
Praise is in all her gates. Upon her walls, And in her streets, and in her spacious courts, Is heard salvation.
Such is the consummation of the promises of God towards his ancient covenant people. And this consummation is to be the result, among other instrumentalities, of prayer. By prayer, they are to be prepared for it; and, by prayer, it is to be prepared for them. And, without those supplications, here alluded to, and here required, not one prophecy will be fulfilled, nor the blessings of one promise realized.
Here, then, is a great and important truth involved; and one which the children of God would do well to learn, and practice upon. The Scriptures abound with promises of good to the pious; there is no limit to the spiritual mercies they may have; but then God will be inquired of to bestow them. There is an established connection between means and ends; and a compliance with the condition .ensures the end, as a matter of course. We see this in the natural world: we may enjoy fruit, but we must plant our trees; we may reap wheat, but we must first sow our fields. So in spiritual things: if we would find, we must seek; if we would receive, we must ask.
How happy it would be, if these plain truths were more recognized by the children of God! Oh, if they would pray more—if they would, in this way, “prove” the Lord—they would as much rejoice over their spiritual blessings, as they now weep over their leanness. Can we speak in too strong terms? Are we in any danger of exaggerating the importance and efficacy of prayer? The Scriptures allow us to take almost any position we please; no matter how elevated it is. And the experience of those who have really tested prayer, adds its blessed confirmation to all that the Scriptures have said. Men do not pray enough; they do not pray sufficiently in earnest. There is a wrestling with God, which amounts to agony—a pleasing, yet painful agony, Which none but he that feels it knows. A longing of the soul, which goes up to the throne, if I may so express it, like the waves of the sea—one wave urging on another—and each one rising still higher than its predecessor. A longing, which admits of no denial; which cries, like the horse-leech, “Give! give!” and, as God gives, cries, “More, more, Lord!” and, as he adds one measure of grace, or joy, to the soul after another, it exclaims, “Yet not enough! more, more, O Lord!”
There are such longings of the soul; and blessed is the nation which has many in it, who thus long for the salvation of God. Blessed is the church, whose pastor thus longs for the grace of God for himself and people. Blessed the church, whose members cry. and blessed the individual, who himself cries, “More of thy grace. O Lord, impart!”—“As the hart panteth after the water-brook, so panteth my soul after thee, O God.”—“My heart and my flesh cry out for the living God.”—“My soul breaketh for the longing that it hath unto thy judgment at all times.”