Ezekiel 24

Ezekiel 24:4-13

Gather the Jews, especially their great men, kings, princes, and rulers in church and state, into Jerusalem, that there my kindled wrath may render them and their people inexpressibly miserable, by sword, famine, or pestilence. Since they continue obstinate in wickedness, let them be destroyed, one after another, by diversified judgments. By their open and avowed wickedness they have provoked me to punish them with public, correspondent, and destructive judgments. Let resentment and hope of plunder animate the Chaldeans utterly to destroy the inhabitants, and even burn up their city; to see if that will cure them of their vain hopes, heathen confederacies, and obstinacy and impudence in wickedness, notwithstanding all my reproofs, threatenings, and lesser judgments

Ezekiel 24:21-23

I will give up the temple, that magnificent structure, on which ye rely for security and indemnity, to be defiled and destroyed by the Chaldean Heathens; and your friends left at Jerusalem to be murdered; and yet ye shall not dare to make any open discoveries of your mourning for them, but shall secretly, in your own breasts, or with one another, bewail your misery, and pine away in sorrow

REFLECTIONS UPON CHAP. XXIV.—All times, places, and events, are under the immediate inspection of God: and it is useful to keep an exact account of his remarkable providences. But men only weary and ruin themselves by following after lying vanities. And inviolable are the threatenings, and tremendous the judgments, of God against obstinate sinners. Daring sinners must be made a spectacle to angels and men. They, who harden themselves against God’s means for their conversion, must perish without remedy: and they, who obstinately indulge their lusts, must at last be abandoned to them. Agreeable marriage connections are very delightful. But our dearest created comforts are always on the wing to depart from us; and if they be taken from us, let us eye the hand of God, and hear his language therein;—and by faith, let us take himself and his fulness, to supply their room. Such submission will exceedingly sweeten our wormwood and gall. The removal of other men’s comforts ought to make us think of parting with our own. But, if men hate the power of godliness, it is just that God should strip them of their beloved forms of it, and make them to mourn for their sufferings who never would mourn for their sins, 98 109* Yea, that he should make hardened sinners to feel the truths which they slighted when preached to them. But dreadful is the situation when miseries are so heavy as to stupify and overwhelm the mind. And still more so when men under terrible calamities pine away in their sin