Ezekiel 36

The honor of God is asserted in the gathering together and the purification of His people. Dispersion is the breaking up of nationality. The first step toward the re-establishment of a kingdom must be the gathering together of the scattered members. As the dispersion of the children of Israel was far wider and more lasting than the sojourn in Chaldea, so the reunion here predicted is far more extensive and complete. The dispersion yet continues, the reunion will be in those days when Israel shall be gathered into the Church of God. The reunion shall be accompanied by repentance and conversion by the working of the Holy Spirit making them indeed the people of God. B. C.

22,23. It was vital to the best moral impression upon the people that they should see that this interposition of God to deliver them from their captivity and restore them to their land was not done for their sake—had none of its causes or grounds in their goodness or merits; but was done entirely for His own holy name’s sake, to redeem His character and throne from dishonor before the nations. These statements uniformly rest the case here, although (as suggested above) we may well go deeper, even to the eternal love of God for lost men and to His glorious purpose of redeeming a people unto Himself. H. C.

22. Have you ever thought what a wonderful and blessed truth there lies in the old words of one of the Jewish prophets, “I do not this for your sakes, O house of Israel, but for mine holy name’s sake”? The foundation of all God’s love to us sinful men, that passage tells us, lies not in us, nor in anything about us, not in anything external to God Himself. He, and He alone, is the cause and reason, the motive and the end, of His own love to our world. And unless we have grasped that magnificent thought as the foundation of all our acceptance in Him, I think we have not yet learned half of the fulness which, even in this world, may belong to our conceptions of the love of God—a love that has no motive but Himself; a love that is not evoked even (if I may so say)

by regard to His creatures’ wants; a love, therefore, which is eternal, being in that Divine heart before there were creatures upon whom it could rest; a love that is its own guarantee, its own cause—safe and firm, therefore, with all the firmness and serenity of the Divine nature—incapable of being affected by our transgression, deeper than all our sins, more ancient than our very existence, the very essence and being of God Himself. If you seek the source of Divine love, you must go high up into the mountains of God, and learn that it, as all other of His (shall I say) emotions, and feelings, and resolutions and purposes, owns no reason but Himself, no motive but Himself; lies wrapped in the secret of His nature, who is all-sufficient for His own blessedness, and all whose work and being is caused by, and satisfied, and terminates in His own fulness. “God is love:” therefore beneath all considerations of what we may want—deeper and more blessed than all thoughts of a compassion that springs from the feeling of human distress and the sight of man’s misery—lies this thought of an affection which does not need the presence of sorrow to evoke it, which does not want the touch of our finger to flow out, but by its very nature is everlasting, by its very nature is infinite, by its very nature must be pouring out the flood of its own joyous fulness forever and ever! A. M.

25. The conception of cleansing by sprinkling clean water comes from the Mosaic ceremonial system. (See especially Num. 19: 17-19 and also Ps. 51: 9.) As looking to the exiles in Chaldea to be restored to Canaan, it makes prominent the filthiness and abominations of idolatry. From these the Lord would effectually cleanse them. This became a great historic fact. The nation as such was cured of idolatry, at least during several generations. But this promise is good against all the filthiness and all the abominations of human hearts. The gracious promise of the Lord covers all. And there is a wealth of blessedness in this broad, magnificent promise! By what power performed and how applied, the Lord proceeds to show.

26,27. Compare chap. 11: 17-20, where in briefer statements the same general ideas appear. The “heart” and the “spirit” represent what is most radical in human character—what is farthest removed from hypocrisy or from the merely external life. Comprehensively they embody man’s deepest purposes and intentions—the governing will that animates his whole activities, and morally constitutes the man. To make these wholly new is to breathe into the soul of man a new moral life. It changes the great drift and aim of his endeavors; gives him a new object to live for; inspires his soul with new motives, and brings him under new influences. It is made prominent here that this change is wrought by the Spirit of God; “I will put My Spirit within you, and (so) will cause you to walk in My statutes,” etc. God Himself becomes a controlling power in the hearts of men unto a holy life. This is the great doctrine of the New Testament, taught forcibly by our Lord Himself in His statements respecting the new birth (John 3:3-8), and everywhere presented as pre-eminently the work of the Spirit of God. The heart of stone, contrasted with the heart of flesh, is forcible imagery, yet wonderfully true to human consciousness. Its significance applies appositely to the sensibilities—cold and dead, apart from the living, quickening power of God in the soul—but tender, flowing and free when the Spirit touches the soul and even makes His abode there. And yet we must not restrict the Spirit’s work to the sensibilities. The intellect also—the mind’s apprehension of Divine truth—is by no means unaffected in this great change from stone to flesh. The dullness of apprehension, the resistance to truth, which appears where God is not in the heart, may fitly be called “stony,” while the sharpened thought, the quick apprehension, and the genial welcome of truth attach the qualities of living flesh even to the intellect. Yet these terms were never intended to be acutely metaphysical. They address the popular mind. Considered as so addressed, they are exceedingly forcible and happy. I cannot forbear to add that they reveal a most blessed, glorious truth—viz., that God Himself becomes an effective power in the souls of men unto real holiness. While all merely external agencies forever fail, this Divine agency is forever efficacious. It does for man the very thing he needs. His own unaided endeavors, his firmest resolutions, prove unavailing. Under his bitter experience of their failure, this promise comes to his soul as the dawn of day upon the thickest darkness. When God says, “I will put My Spirit within you and will cause you to walk in My statutes,” his heart responds, That meets my soul’s great want. It is enough. If God will grant me that effective spiritual aid under which I shall wholly obey and please Him, I can ask nothing better; I aspire to nothing higher and nobler. As already suggested, this is the Gospel. These are the provisions of Gospel grace for the reregeneration and sanctification of unholy men. They are large promises. Nothing larger, broader, or richer appears in the whole New Testament. H. C.

God would give them a new heart; a disposition of mind excellent in itself, and vastly different from what it was before. God will work an inward change in order to a universal change. All that have an interest in the new covenant and a title to the new Jerusalem have a new heart and a new spirit, and these are necessary in order to their walking in newness of life. This is that Divine nature which believers are by the promises made partakers of. Instead of a heart of stone, insensible and inflexible, unapt to receive any Divine impressions and to return any devout affections, God would give a heart of flesh, a soft and tender heart, that has spiritual senses exercised, conscious to itself of spiritual pains and pleasures, and complying in everything with the will of God. Renewing grace works as great a change in the soul as the turning of a dead stone into living flesh. Since, beside our inclination to sin, we complain of an inability to do our duty, God will cause them to walk in His statutes, will not only show them the way of His statutes before them, but incline them to walk in it, and thoroughly furnish them with wisdom and will and active powers for every good work. In order to this He will put His Spirit within them; as a Teacher, Guide, and Sanctifier. God does not force men to walk in His statutes by external violence, but causes them to walk in His statutes by an internal principle. And observe what use we ought to make of this gracious power and principle promised us and put within us: Ye shall keep My judgments. If God will do His part according to the promise, we must do ours according to the precept. The promise of God’s grace to enable us for our duty should engage and quicken our constant care and endeavor to do our duty. God’s promises must drive us to His precepts as our rule, and then His precepts must send us back to His promises for strength, for without His grace we can do nothing. H.

It would be to form a very false idea of the conversion of the heart to imagine that the finest examples and the gravest lessons are able to convert any individual. If conversion is at once a death and a birth, the death of the old man and the birth of a new man; if conversion is in principle and in fact a victory over the world; if conversion, giving us eyes to discern things invisible, makes us strangers on the earth by convincing us that so we are by origin and destiny : if conversion is all this and nothing less, it supposes so complete and serious an abjuration of all the principles of the natural man, an abjuration not merely of his vices, but of his virtues ; it supposes such a general, unreserved, and unqualified sacrifice, without any expected recompense from God excepting God Himself, that it would be absolutely irrational to attribute to any instruction and example, of what kind soever, the power of producing a revolution so thorough and fundamental. Vinet.

Self-culture is what a man may do upon himself ; mending his defects, correcting his mistakes, chastening his faults, tempering his passions, putting himself into the charities he has learned from Christ, perhaps to admire, finishing himself in the graces that have won his approval or commanded his respect. But the work is a far more hopeless one than he imagines, and is almost sure to result, even visibly, in more affectations of character than are likely to be much approved. Besides, it holds him to a continual self-contemplation which is selfish, and keeps him all the while filing and polishing on his nature by his will ; which is, in fact, the most wearisome possible, or rather impossible, kind of self-attention. The old faults conquered, too, will be coming back on him just when he is conquering another set. And turning round to fight them off, he will find the whole swarm loose upon him again ; till, finally, getting worried and vexed and soured and discouraged, he virtually, though perhaps not consciously, gives over his whole undertaking. Oh if he could have gone up to Christ, or to God, in a true faith-culture, and let his faults fall off, as blasted flowers fall off the trees, dislodged by the life principle in them, his beautiful thought of finishing a character would have been how easily put forward—without a care, too, and in the sweetest liberty. No man finishes a character who does not go above himself and take the culture of God’s own Spirit ; by that growing out a character from within, which cannot be manipulated inwardly from without. If there be any good gift that cometh from above, and cannot be made below, it is character. Bushnell.

There is but one Being that can make a change in our position in regard to God, and there is but one Being that can make the change by which man shall become a “new creature.” And He has come, and He has dwelt with us, and He has walked in the midst of this world, and He knows all about our human agonies and depressions and lowliness, and He has carried in the golden urn of His humanity a new spirit and a new life which He has set down in the midst of the race ; and the urn was broken on the cross of Calvary, and the water flowed out, and whithersoever that water comes there is life, and whithersoever it comes not there is death ! A. M.

The spiritual change upon which the Bible insists is a change of feelings and passions, hopes and joys, rules and ends of action. The Spirit of the living God, in translating a man from the kingdom of darkness into that of His dear Son, does not give him a heart, but a new disposition of heart—does not give a man affections, but new objects of affections. The Spirit acts upon the heart, and man becomes “willing in the day of God’s power”—and the difference between what he is and what he was, the secret of his wondrous change lies in this, that he loves what formerly he hated, and hates what formerly he loved. E. M.

There is no goodness without the impulse and indwelling of the Divine Spirit, and there is no Divine Spirit to dwell in a man’s heart without that man trusting in Jesus Christ. The condition of receiving the gift that makes men good is simply and solely that we should put our trust in Jesus Christ the Giver, that opens the door, and that Divine Spirit enters. There are convincing operations which He effects upon the world ; but these are not in question here. These come prior to and independent of faith. But the work of the Spirit of God, present within us to heal and hallow us, has as condition our trust in Jesus Christ, the Great Healer. If you trust in Jesus Christ, He will give you the new life of His Spirit, which will make you free from the law of sin and death. That Divine Spirit “which they that believe in Him should receive” delights to enter into every heart where His presence is desired. Faith is desire, and desires rooted in faith cannot be in vain. Faith is expectation, and expectations based upon Divine promise can never be disappointed. Faith is dependence, and dependence that reckons upon God, and upon God’s gift of His Spirit, will surely be recompensed. A. M.

O Christian ! renewed by grace, dost thou indeed believe that God inhabits thee with His holiness and makes thee His temple ? Be thou, then, a temple indeed, a sacred place to Him. Exclude covetousness ; make not thy Father’s house a house of merchandise. Deem every sin a sacrilege. Let all thy thoughts within, like white-robed priests, move round the altar and keep the fire burning. Let thy affections be always a cloud, filling the room and enwrapping thy priest-like thoughts. Let thy hallowed desires be ever fanning the mercy-seat with their wings. Bushnell.

The comforts of the Gospel in the New Testament have their rise from the Old. The great promise of the Messiah is in the Old Testament, “A virgin shall conceive and bear a son.” Nay more, the moral law speaks Gospel, “I am the Lord thy God;” here is the pure wine of the Gospel. The saint’s great charter, where God promised to “sprinkle clean water upon them, and put His Spirit within them,” is to be found primarily in the Old Testament (Ezek. 36: 25, 26). So that they who take away the Old Testament do as Samson, pull down the pillars; they would take away the pillars of a Christian’s comfort. Watson.

28. Ye shall be My people. (Cf. 2 Cor. 6: 16-18; Heb. 8: 10.) The writers of the New Testament appropriated these and similar phrases of the Old Testament to the Church of Christ. The restoration of the Jews to their native soil which did actually take place was a step, a preparation, as well as a type of the establishment of the kingdom of Christ; and so the hills and the valleys of Israel, in the most enlarged sense of prophecy, are that better land which is to be the seat and the possession of the universal Church of Christ. Between the restoration of the Jews (the first step) there are many steps toward the end—the spread of Christ’s Church throughout the world, the conversion of the Gentiles, and the acknowledgment of the true God—and we are justified in looking forward to a time when the Gospel shall be preached in all the world, and the earth become the kingdom of God in a fuller sense than it has ever yet been. But all these are steps. Our prophecies look beyond all this to the kingdom of God in the heavens. The reference to the Garden of Eden, the condition of the earth before man’s fall to be renewed after his recovery, confirms us in this view of our prophecy—which is further supported and illustrated by the closing Revelation of John, when a new heaven, and a new earth, and a new Jerusalem marked the time when the tabernacle of God shall be with men, and He will dwell with them, and they shall be His people (Rev. 21: 3). B. C.

33-36. In these verses the temporal side (so to speak) of these promises stands forth prominently. They needed to have a temporal side for the special encouragement of the exiles in Chaldea, and perhaps I might add, for the verification of the promises themselves. But the spiritual side furnishes the richer installments and stands guaranteed to us by the fulfilment, already past, of the temporal part in the restoration from Babylon, and in the external prosperity which succeeded that great event.

37,38. It is fully implied that the people were to pray for the great blessing just promised, a point of great moral significance. Definite promise should encourage prayer and never be held to relieve God’s people from the duty, or exclude them from the privilege. But while this is implied here as often elsewhere, the precise thing affirmed in the text is that the previous prohibition of prayer for Jerusalem is now removed, and God is again accessible “to be inquired of by the house of Israel.” In the words that follow stress is laid upon the great increase of population as being the central thing. It was central among the temporal blessings here promised. The word “flock” comes from the previous figure which accounts the people as the Lord’s sheep and Himself as their shepherd. The population would crowd the cities densely, as the throng filled Jerusalem in the great national feasts. The general import is, You may rest assured it is in the heart of your God to do great and glorious things for His cause and people. If He names Canaan and corn and hosts of men, let it be that He thereby condescends to an earthly condition of things then present—to a style of wants then pressing and uppermost—but really means not these things alone, but things far purer, higher, and better. (See also Amos 9: 13-15.) H. C.

37. To the arguments against prayer, that God knows our requests already, and that God’s decrees are immutable and cannot be altered by our prayers, I answer, prayer is not for God’s information, but the creature’s submission; we pray for His permission and His blessing. Gods decrees do not exclude the duty of creatures and the work of second causes. The Lord, by the prophet Ezekiel, says, “I will yet for this be inquired of by the house of Israel;” and in Jeremiah (29: 11, 12), “I know the thoughts of peace that I have toward you, yet ye shall call upon Me, and I will hear you.” Manton.

I will yet for this be inquired of by the house of Israel. God has spoken and He will do it, and He will be sought unto for it. They must pray for it, for by prayer God is sought unto and inquired after. What is the matter of

God’s promises must be the matter of our prayers. By asking for the mercy promised, we must give glory to the Donor, express a value for the gift, own our dependence, and put honor upon prayer, which God has put honor upon. H.—Prayer is the channel through which the Lord is graciously pleased to convey spiritual blessings to the soul. He knows all our wants, and without our asking Him, could supply them in the best possible time. But He will be inquired of by the house of Israel to do for them according to the exceeding great and precious promises He hath given. Hannah More.—Power, with God and with men for God, whether in the preaching of the Word, in the service of Christ’s poor, or in the varied ministries of every private disciple, comes always and only in the measure of faith and of the Holy Ghost, in answer to prayer. The word of Christ stands unchanged to-day: According to your faith, be it unto you! And, How much more shall your heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to them that ask Him! B.

The clouds of revival which pass from land to land, who can predict their course or trace their laws, and say why they pass on, and why they fall in blessing? This one thing we do know, and it is the most practical, that prayer is closely connected with the outpouring of the Spirit. He who has bidden us ask our daily bread from our heavenly Father, and the rain that is to give it, has bidden us ask, also, from Him this good gift of His Holy Spirit, and has assured us that He will not deny it. The spirit of prayer is itself, indeed, the spiritual rain begun, but we may detain it, and increase the refreshing showers. We can lift up our voice to the clouds, that abundance of waters may cover us. Ker.

Prayer touches the only spring that can possibly ensure success. By speaking we move man; but by prayer we move God. It is through the medium of prayer that the littleness and meanness of man prevail with Omnipotence. “The prayer of faith” is the only power in the universe to which the great Jehovah yields; He looks upon every other power as more or less opposed to Him; but He looks upon this as a confession of man’s dependence, as an appropriate homage to his greatness, as an attraction which brings down His Divine agency to the earth. Here every one may assist missions; and every tear in the closet, every pang in the heart over the miseries of those who are dead in their sins, every prayer lifted up in that retirement where no eye sees but the eye of Him “which seeth in secret,”

affords a most important benefit. These are the elements of success; these the pledges of final triumph. R. Hall.

The promise is, “According to your faith, be it unto you.” Feeble infrequent, formal prayer will not meet the demand. It must be earnest, fervent, persevering, mighty in faith, abundant in strong crying and tears, the offspring of a deep spiritual agony. The ministry needs to confide with more childlike simplicity in the Divine promises. If they pledge what is impossible with men we are not to stagger at it, but believe that with God all things are possible. He can bring light out of darkness, make the parched ground a pool, give songs in the night, harvests in the desert, and turn the shadow of death into eternal day. This needs to be seen and felt in order that the throne may be boldly approached, the horns of the altar seized, and held fast till the heavens open and pour down righteousness. Such a thing as the salvation of a world is not to be achieved without fervent, effectual prayer, travaillings in spirit and groanings unutterable. E. Thurston.

If thou canst not help the great cause of God in any other mode, at any rate there is open to thee that of fervent prayer. How much may be done for the Master’s kingdom by the “king’s remembrancers,” who put Him in mind day by day of the agonies of His Son, and of His covenant and promise to give Him a widening dominion! I doubt not that many sick-beds in England are doing more for Christ than our pulpits. Oh, what showers of blessings come down in answer to the prayers and tears of poor godly invalids, whose weakness is their strength, and whose sickness is their opportunity! Spurgeon.

Little do we know often of the secret origin of the dews of blessing that descend on the churches of God. In the recesses of some lowly cottage, in the depths of some humble heart, may be going on the work of pious intercession, in answer to which the grace of heaven descends on us and on our children, on the labors of the wondering and joyful pastor, and on the hearts of the far heathen, until the wilderness and solitary place are glad for them. The time is to come when from every home such prayer shall arise. Let us sustain and swell, in our day, the ascending volume of supplication that is yet to roll around the globe, and never to fail, until over a world regenerated and purified the morning star shall again shout for joy, and the earth, emerging from her long and disastrous eclipse of sin and wrath, shall yet again walk the heavens in her unsullied brightness—a new heaven and a new earth wherein dwelleth righteousness. Till then we have no reason, no right to intermit our supplications; and it is only when, in the final accomplishment of David’s prayer, His greater Son shall have come to reign over all lands and to have dominion from sea to sea—it is not until that prayer shall have been made for Him continually, and He shall daily have been praised, that the believer remaining on earth will be warranted to adapt to his own lips the touching and triumphant close appended to the supplications of the crowned singer of Israel: “The prayers of David the son of Jesse are ended.”

The real reason of our reluctance to practise intercessory prayer is a want of sympathy with others, a want of love. He who prays with the largest sympathy, he who embraces in his prayer the widest circle of his fellow-creatures, is most in sympathy with the mind of God when he prays, has the key of God’s heart, and therefore of God’s treasury. Goulburn.

Here is a declaration and a pledge of the living God concerning a great duty resting upon His people; a declaration and pledge whose truth has borne the test of many centuries; which has stood, which stands to-day firm, fresh, which is uttered still to us and for us, a special incentive and leading encouragement to meet this specific leading duty. “Thus saith the Lord God, I will yet for this be inquired of by the house of Israel, to do it for them; I will increase them with men like a flock, as the flock of Jerusalem in her solemn feasts.” To apprehend fully all that is included in the “this” which He will be inquired of to do, look at the context before and after. First, read the words before and central in the whole connection: “I will sprinkle clean water upon you, and ye shall be clean: from all your filthiness and from all your idols will I cleanse you. A new heart will I give you, a new spirit will I put within you: and I will take away the stony heart out of your flesh, and I will give you an heart of flesh. And I will put my Spirit within you, and cause you to walk in my statutes, and ye shall keep My judgments and do them; and ye shall be My people and I will be your God!” Then read on in the words that follow after.

Read through the strange vision of the multitudinous skeletons parching in the open valley, how sinews, flesh, and skin came upon and covered them, and how the breath from the four winds came upon them and they lived, read through all until you reach the plain words in which are interpreted and repeated the truths set forth in the vision. “Thus saith the Lord God, Behold, O My people, I will open your graves, and cause you to come up out of your graves. And I shall put My spirit in you, and ye shall live!”

This, then, is the thing which He will be inquired of to do, the exertion of His quickening Spirit upon stony, dead hearts to make them live, the application of His sanctifying Spirit to unclean hearts to make them clean, the putting His guiding, strengthening Spirit within quickened, cleansed hearts, and so enabling them to know and causing them to walk in His statutes; thus making them His people, and so increasing His spiritual house of Israel with men like a flock, in number as the multitude that thronged the sacred city at the solemn yearly festivals. This is the thing promised, and for the fulfilment of the promise the simple declaration is, “For this I will be inquired of, be besought by the house of Israel to do it for them”—the plain meaning being that He ordains such inquiry, such fervent entreaty on our part as the condition of His so doing. B.