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‘Thou shalt speak my words … open thy mouth, and eat that I give thee.’
Eze_2:7-8
II. Notice the solemnity of the prophet’s address.—It began with, Thus saith the Lord God (Eze_2:4). Let us never speak without the assurance that God speaks in and by us, and that it is not our word, but His. Let us wait before God till we hear Him speak, and then utter His words in living echoes of His voice. There lies the fault in much of the preaching of the present day. Men write essays about God, rather than speak the words of God; they argue about Him, rather than witness to Him. The voice of the prophet has almost ceased amongst us, and missing this, preachers forfeit their supreme authority in the realm of conscience, and miss its still small voice corroborating their utterance. We can never say, ‘Thus saith the Lord’ to the ear but that conscience cries, ‘Thus saith the Lord,’ in the heart.
III. But for all this we need strength.—No man can stand against the continual opposition of his fellows, or the temptation of the devil, unless his strength is renewed, as the prophet’s in vision, by eating that which God gives. ‘I found Thy words and did eat them,’ must be a sentence often on our lips. Sometimes we are hungry for comfort, sometimes we are hungry for guidance, sometimes we are hungry for a new thought.
IV. Let us remember our Lord’s example, Who, when He was an hungered, refused to use His power to change the stones into bread, but waited till the angels came to minister to Him. God gave you your wonderful endowments, faculties, and powers; and assuredly He will feed you with food convenient for you. ‘Open thy mouth wide, and I will fill it.’
Illustrations
(1) ‘Ezekiel’s career as a prophet began in the fifth year of Jehoiachin’s captivity. He was then in his thirtieth year. For seven years he denounced the continued sin of the nation at home, with which some of the exiles doubtless sympathised, and exhorted, like Jeremiah, to submission to the manifested will of God. The prophecies of this period are contained in the first thirty-two chapters of his book. Chapters 1–24 are directed against Judah, predicting its desolation; 25–32 are directed against the heathen nations surrounding Judah.’
(2) With the fall of the city the character of his prophecies changed. He now pointed to the new era that would surely come. He promised the restoration of Israel, the re-erection of David’s throne, the re-gathering of the scattered sheep into Jehovah’s fold, the resurrection of the dry and scattered bones into a great living host, and, above all, the rise of a grander temple, in which both Jew and Gentile would worship, and from which would issue a stream of living water to gladden the whole earth. Ezekiel thus united the punishment of sin with the promise of grace. As a priest he inveighed against idolatry; as a prophet he proclaimed the true spiritual temple. His teaching about the new heart, his vision of the power of the resurrection, his portrayal of the river of salvation, illustrate the way in which the spiritual ideas of Christianity emerged, under the guidance of the Spirit, out of the ruins of apostate Judaism.’