A Sermon by John Kennedy
Ezekiel 33:11. Say unto them, As I live, saith the Lord God, I have no pleasure in the death of the wicked, but that the wicked turn from his way and live: turn ye, turn ye from your evil ways; for why will ye die, O house of Israel?
Second, He tells us what He has pleasure in: “that the wicked turn from His way and live”. The repentance of the wicked is an occasion of delight to God; for it is the first acknowledgment that He is “the true God”; the first tribute to His godhead from His creature; the first movement of a lost one from “the wrath to come”; the first rupture between him and that abominable thing which God hates; the first act of homage to His Anointed, who is also His Son; the first fruit of the Spirit’s work of grace. It is grace returning to the fountain whence it came and bringing a “wretched and miserable, and poor, and blind, and naked” sinner back to be “filled with all the fullness of God.”
Repentance is the turning of the wicked “from his way”. To this way he was attached before, for in this he gratified the evil desires of his heart. But from “his own way”, as well as from all else that is sinful, the true penitent turns to God. But he cannot do so without bringing the guilt and the source of his wandering with him when he comes.
He turns to God. To Him he desires to come, to be a debtor to His mercy for forgiveness, and to His grace for salvation, and to consecrate himself without reserve to His service. He comes through Christ to God, for He is “the way, and the truth, and the life,” and “no man cometh to the Father but by” Him. He, as “the way”, is all that God, in the interests of His glory, can desire, and all that is required to make Him perfectly suited to the sinner’s case. He who is “the way” is “the Word . . . made flesh”, made sin and made a curse. Through His flesh, rent because of sin and by the execution of the curse, “a new and living way” was opened unto “the holiest”.
The entrance of this way is near to sinners in the gospel – so near that, though the sinner can be brought nearer to it, it cannot be brought nearer to him. No one but a sinner of our race may enter this way. It suits no one else, and no one besides is called. That he is a sinner is all that the one who returns to God knows about himself. It is not as a penitent; it is not as a loved one; it is as a “wicked” one, with all the guilt of his evil ways, and with all the corruption of the old heart, that he comes. And when, as such,
1Taken, with editing, from The Modern Scottish Pulpit, vol 1, (Edinburgh, 1883). The heads are (1) the declaration and (2) the call in the text. Last month, in considering the declaration, Kennedy spoke of what God has no pleasure in. Here he speaks of what God does take pleasure in, before going on to the form of the declaration, and then the call.
he comes to God through Christ for salvation from all sin, “there is joy in heaven over” him.
It is pleasant to God that the penitent should “live”; and God secures that he shall live, and live for ever. Finding the Son, the penitent finds life, for he finds in Him a righteousness through which he is set free from condemnation and has a right to all the bliss that flows from the favour of God. He has now a principle of spiritual life, and the Spirit of life Himself to preserve and perfect it. Even now, foretastes of eternal life may be his through faith; while beyond, in the full view of God and before the wistful gaze of his own dimmed eye, are the rest and bliss and glory of the perfect life in heaven.
There are three reasons, each infinitely strong, why this should be pleasing to God. As our greatest pains and pleasures reach our hearts through our love, the measure of love must indicate the capacity for joy. But who can conceive what must be the gladness, resulting from the gratification of infinite love! There is a threefold love of God, through the gratification of which He receives pleasure from the penitence and life of the wicked.
(1) His infinite love to His people. He embraces one whom He infinitely loves when the repenting sinner reaches the bosom of His mercy. The loved one was lost, and the loved one was dead; and now the loved lost one is found, and the loved dead one is alive. It was only because this was ever present to His eternal mind that Jehovah could have rested in His love to His chosen. But now the event is actual, and the divine joy is made known throughout all heaven. O think of joy in heaven over one whose sins made the Son of God “a man of sorrows”!
(2) His infinite love to His Anointed One. Each case of conversion is an instalment of reward to the Son for doing the will, and glorifying the name of the Father who sent Him. The Father loves Him because He laid down His life that He might take it again; and the Father expresses this love in fulfilling the promise, “He shall see of the travail of His soul and shall be satisfied”. This Christ sees when He sees “His seed” – when the Father draws sinners unto Him and follows this up by giving them, in Christ, “all spiritual blessings” according to His intercession. The bestowal of such a reward, on such a One, must be the occasion of infinite delight to God.
(3) His infinite love to Himself and to righteousness. “God is love.” He is so when contemplated in the unity of the eternal Godhead. But love requires an object; and God Himself, who is love, is the first object of the love He is. It is because, in His omniscience, He is always conscious of His own infinite moral glory, that it yields to Him who is “over all” such delight that He is “blessed for ever”. And “God is love” as subsisting in a Trinity of Persons. “The Father loveth the Son,” and that Son is, and ever was, “daily His delight”. “I love the Father,” says the Son, and was “rejoicing always before Him.” And the Holy Spirit, who “proceedeth from the Father” and from the Son, lovingly fulfills the purpose of the Father through the Son. O infinitely holy sphere! O sphere of infinite loving – the unapproachable sphere of the interrelations and fellowship of the Father, Son and Holy Ghost.
“God is love” to righteousness in His relation to His moral government. And when He shows that He is love to His people, He does so in such a way that all which He loves shall appear in their salvation, to His infinite delight. He does so in order to afford an opportunity of expressing what He is as love to Himself, what the mutual love of the Trinity is, and how He loves righteousness.
How the beauty of His holiness, which He loves, appears in its having pleased Him to bruise His Wellbeloved, that there might be healing to diseased sinners and peace to the guilty. His delight in this display of His glory must be truly infinite, and how intent He must be on the salvation which occasioned this joy! Never did so much of His glorious character appear in any of His works as in the cross of Christ; but all this came forth in the prosecution of a scheme which bore on the salvation of sinners.
True, all redemption work is before us in the cross. But the ulterior bearings of that work must be considered. Actual salvation is the final part of the divine scheme of grace, and each step of it must be brightened with the glory that shone forth in the course which led to it. If “truth met with mercy” in the cross, it was with a view to their coming forth together, from the presence of God on His throne, in the glad tidings of the gospel, to guide a sinner unto “the holiest”, where alone He can obtain the blessing. If “righteousness and peace embraced each other”, it was with a view to His being righteous to Christ in giving peace, for His sake, to those who deserved to die. The infinite display, already given, finds its complement in a work of grace. To this new occasion of expressing Himself, He comes in all the glorious brightness of His name, as revealed in the cross. And in how many ways, in His work of grace that results in penitence and life for the wicked, He manifests the glory of His power, wisdom, faithfulness, holiness and love!
How salvation furnishes an opportunity of exhibiting the mutual love of the Persons of the Godhead! The Father’s love to the Son appears in having delivered all things into His hand; and you are called to look, in the light of the gospel, on this demonstration of that wondrous love. And the Son desired that the world should know how He loved the Father, by His obedience unto death, even the death of the cross. O infinite wonder that the blood, which tells you there is peace for a sinner, is the demonstration which the Son has given to the universe of His love to the Father. And the Spirit, as the Comfort-
er, takes the things of Christ and of the Father and, in fulfilment of the Father’s purpose and of the design of the Son’s death, shows them to the sinners who are made heirs of salvation!
How exhaustive, even as a revelation of divine glory, is the expression of His love of righteousness given in the death of His Son! The sins of a people eternally beloved are imputed to Him who is His only-begotten Son; and for those sins, even He dies the death of the cross! How could any other exercise of justice, or all acts of justice that can occur in the course of His moral government together, express His love of righteousness as the atoning death of His dear Son has done? Only once did He, in the exercise of retributive justice, deal with One who was “His fellow”, and only then could He, in one final transaction, give an exhaustive display of His righteousness. O sinner, all that God is, as He “is love”, takes the side of His mercy, when He receives and blesses him who, at His call, comes to Him through Christ crucified!
(2.) The declaration is in the form of an oath: “As I live, saith the Lord”. It is right that such a declaration should have such a form; thus only could earnestness, springing from infinite love, express itself fitly in words. What a proof this gives you of God’s intense desire that you should believe what He declares! He swears by Himself, in declaring to you that He has no pleasure in your death, but that He has pleasure in the repentance and life of all who turn to Him. Ought you not to fear remaining an unbeliever after all?
Is this divine earnestness to be met by indifference? Does this oath strike on adamant when it reaches you? Can you dare to present a heart of stone to it? Are you to be unmoved and callous before this display of God’s infinitely-intense earnestness? Are you to sleep on, while this oath from heaven, uttered by the voice of God, strikes on your ear? Does He not give Himself, in all the reality of His being and glory and blessedness, as security for the truth of His declaration? How real to God He Himself is! But as He consciously lives in what He is as infinite, glorious and blessed, so He is true in the declaration of the text. What higher, firmer ground of assurance can even God give you than this? O sinner, it is enough! You might suspend on this ten thousand times ten thousand souls, each one as lost as the one soul you have, and you would run no risk. Do not yield to the unbelief that would dare to make a charge of perjury against Him for whom it is impossible to lie!
And does He not give Himself, in all the infinite resources that are His as God, as a pledge of action, as the text declares? Does this not suffice? Can more be asked? He shall cease to be, before He can fail to be the God of salvation to you, if you return to Him at His call. O what condescension is here! How can you be at ease while the infinite Jehovah is thus bending over you in intensest earnestness? Lie in the dust before Him, as He approaches you in
this marvellous act of condescension, and allow Him to lay the weight of His oath on your heart, to press out of it all its doubts about His truth and grace! 2. The Call. From the midst of divine glory, from the divine throne of grace, and intense with divine earnestness, comes the call to the house of Israel: “Turn ye, turn ye, from your evil ways”. Whence, whither and how to turn are the questions which these words require us to consider.
(1.) Whence? “From your evil ways.” Every way in which you depart from the fellowship and service of God is “evil”. Forsaking God is the great evil. It appears so to God as He looks on His infinite glory, and on the provision of His everlasting love. Why? Because of His love to Himself and of His zeal for His own glory, His holy indignation must rise into infinite flame against that sin on the part of the creature He has made. How wonderful it is that, in the full view of all that evil and in His immovable resolution to deal out to all sin a full retribution according to justice, He should call the sinner from his evil ways, to be embraced on the bosom of His mercy!
The call is issued through the rent flesh of His own dear Son. The precious blood of His Lamb is before Him, as He calls the sinner from his evil ways. And to the praise of His name, He can call the sinner to His mercy seat. What the great High Priest presents meets all God’s holy indignation in inflicting the curse. And in gracious dealing with the wicked for Christ’s sake, God’s indignation is brought to bear, as consuming fire, on the sin from which the guilt sprang which atoning blood removed.
“From” all “your evil ways” you are called to turn, for there can be no turning to God if any sin is reserved. Each evil way is infinitely contrary to the will of God. Sometimes the conscious reserve is reduced, under pressure of conscience, to one evil way. What eager cries come from the flesh for that one reserve, and only that one! What attempts are made to come to terms with God, while still cleaving to some darling sin! But all sin must be forsaken by the will that inclines Godwards. How can God’s holiness allow any reserve? To cover any sin is to place yourself naked before the sword of God. He must strike at sin. Beware lest He strike at sin through you! Come in your desire, out of all sin, to God. Cut off your right hand, pluck out the right eye, rather than pass on to the fire that never shall be quenched.
How can God’s grace admit of reserve? Salvation from all sin is the boon which grace confers. Nothing less than this can express its bounty, and nothing less than this can suffice for you. Less than this you cannot have from the hand of God. He cannot give you salvation to the dishonour of the law of Christ, as the one authoritative rule of life. His holy grace undertakes yet to give to the law its claims in full; and it begins to do so by bringing a sinner, with a heart broken from all sin, under its holy yoke.
But must I rid myself of my guilt and of my evil heart before I come back to God? No indeed. You are called to come as you are, in the midst of your evil ways, with all the guilt that lies on you and with all the fountain of evil in you. You are called to come burdened and filled with sin, having no righteousness to cover you, and no excuse to hide your guilt. While there is nothing in all your consciousness but sin, all over and all through – with no ability but the deadly power to transgress – you are called to receive all the pardoning mercy and all the saving grace you need.
(2.) Whither? To Himself God calls you – to Himself as revealed in the declaration going before, to Himself as on His throne of grace, to Himself through Jesus Christ. Beware of a Godless Christianity, as well as of a Christless religion. Souls that have only the uneasiness caused by the fear of death are anxious only for something that will take their blind dread away. They have not known God in His awful glory as Lawgiver and Judge, and they do not care to realise Him in the person of the Saviour. They do not feel their need of a divine Saviour to remove the guilt of sin and to subdue its power. They do not ask to be admitted, under the Spirit’s teaching, into the mystery of the cross, to see a way for sinners to come to God. The glory shining from the face of Jesus does not draw them through the Mediator unto God. And they shrink from the pressure of God’s authority on their conscience.
But “he that believeth on Me,” Christ says, “believeth not on Me, but on Him that sent Me”. By Christ you must “believe in God that raised Him up from the dead and gave Him glory, that your faith and hope might be in God”. “If thou shalt confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus, and shalt believe in thine heart that God hath raised Him from the dead, thou shalt be saved.” Believing thus, God will be before you – in such an aspect of His character, in such a relation to sinners through Christ, in such marvellous love, and in such readiness to bless you when you come – that you will be sweetly subdued into compliance with His call and you cannot but choose to come.
Divine glory, shining from the face of Jesus on a soul that is made alive, melts the heart and brings it to the footstool of the throne of mercy. And the very view of God which wins his confidence, secures the homage of the penitent. He must appreciate God’s awful righteousness as displayed in the cross, as well as realise His majesty, before he can have hope. And what he needs to encourage him suffices to subdue him into an unreserved surrender of his whole being to God. The life that moves towards Him, in hope, bows to His sovereign will and lies in adoring worship at His footstool.
(3.) How? In willingness to accept the terms proposed by God, as terms of salvation and of service. You may feel that you cannot come back to God – that, unless He, in His almighty grace, comes for you, you cannot come to
Him. Yes, you may shrink from asking Him to come, but if you only turn in the distant darkness to Him who is the way, and to God through Him – willing to owe Him the turning and drawing power so that you may come, as well as the blessing when you have come – He “will pour out” His “Spirit unto you, and make known” His “words unto you”. Turning thus, you will indeed be debtors to His grace for all you need. Though debtors, you may have hope, for He raises the poor from the dust; He brings the fallen out of the horrible pit and He gathers, as He calls, outcasts from the very ends of the earth.
Surely, then, God may ask the question, “Why will ye die?” You have this question to answer. The reason for your dying is not on God’s side. He has abundantly shown this. And on your side it is not found in your fall in Adam, nor in the ruin resulting from that fall. It is not in your helplessness, for you are called to lie under the gracious power of God to be saved by Him. It is not in the influence of the world, insidious and mighty though that is, for it cannot constrain you to be aliens from God. It is not in the might of the great enemy, nor in the multitude of his hosts, nor in the depth of his cunning, nor in the greatness of his cruelty, for though he is a “strong man” and a “murderer”, he cannot for one moment keep you away from Him who calls you, if you are disposed to come.
Then, “Why will ye die?” God meets you in the face, where you are and as you are, with this question. You are bound to give an answer, for only your own unwillingness to return can slay you. And are you to remain unwilling? If so, how can you justify yourself. My unwillingness, you say, is just the lack of something which I can only have from God, and if He does not bestow it, then what can I do? But, friend, do not think of your unwillingness as a mere negation – a blank for God to fill up. It is positive wickedness; it is sinful madness. It is an insult to God, implying contempt of His love, of His Son’s precious blood, of His great salvation and of His glorious name. To remain unwilling is to remain a rebel, disowning God’s authority, and defying His power. And are you to choose this, rather than submit to be saved, ruled and filled by God?
But my unwillingness is the result of being in a state of death as an alien from God, under the guilt and power of sin. How then can I help myself? But, friend, the question is not, How can you help yourself? But, Will you be indebted for all help to God? Will you die in your pride, even when confessedly helpless, rather than let Christ be “all in all” to you – rather than let the grace of God do all for you? To this point you are shut up, and this leaves your unwillingness exposed in all the nakedness of excuseless rebellion.
“Why will ye die?” “Precept upon precept . . . line upon line . . . here a little, and there a little,” have been given you, and is death to be your end?
But the gospel has been preached to the Gentiles, and God has granted repentance unto life to Gentiles also. To each gospel-hearer, God therefore addresses this question. “The Son of man”, who came “to seek and to save that which is lost”, has come to you in your sinful helplessness, offering Himself to be to you all that you need, in order to your everlasting salvation. And, after all this, “will ye die?”
And “why will ye die”? What is there in death that you should choose it rather than life? And yet every sinner who remains impenitent is charged with choosing death. God charges you with this when He addresses to you this question. And you are charged with choosing death because you love it, for He says, “he that sinneth against Me wrongeth his own soul; all they that hate Me love death”. Rejecting the gospel is sinning against Christ. You cannot do so without wronging your own soul. And this you do because you hate Christ. Not because you are merely indifferent. You would not sin against Him as you do, if you were merely indifferent. A consideration of your own interest would turn the scale, if there was an even balance. But it is not indifference, but hatred, that is your state of feeling towards Christ. And you cannot hate Him without loving death.
No, you say, I cannot love death; I shrink from shame and agony, and both are implied in death. True, what you regard as death you would wish to escape from. But, in the view of Christ, it is death to be away from God. And you do love to be away from Him. In loving this, you love death. Such is your love of this that you will not abandon it, though God tells you, and your conscience whispers to you that, if you abide an alien, you must perish for ever. You know that the death you love is linked to the death of woe from which your conscience makes you shrink and you know that you cannot cleave to the former without holding both in your grasp. You never have at once any portion of time but the passing moment, and on that narrow foothold you always stand at the brink of hell. What you do there is always finally done, for it is done by you in all you have of time, and you are keeping fast your hold of what must bring you down.
“Why will ye die?” Is there aught in “outer darkness” to commend it to you, so that you would choose to pass into the midst of it? Or is there aught in the “devouring fire” and the “everlasting burnings” to induce you to “dwell” with them for ever? Do you care to be in the bonds of despair and under the fang of the “worm” that “dieth not”? Why will you thus die? To God, who puts the question, give an answer if you dare. And if you have no answer to give, fall silenced before the footstool of Him who calls you. But break the silence of excuselessness by a prayer for mercy, and continue to cry, “Turn Thou me, and I shall be turned,” till an answer comes from the mercy seat.