Encouragement in exile.
Israel was in a very deplorable condition. It was away from its native land, in the power and in the service of the enemy; its own "inheritance" was peopled by a poor and weak remnant; it was the prey and the butt of the merciless mocker; its fortunes were low, its heart was sad indeed; it could not sing the Lord's song in such a strange land as that in which it was exiled. But after words of condemnation comes the language of hope. The prophet of God is commissioned to break into their gloom with some beams of promise. Here are gracious words from his mouth; here is a prophecy delivered to "the mountains of Israel," which may well have filled the hearts of the people of God with great joy and gladness. The lessons we glean from the passage (Ezekiel 36:1-15) are—
I. THAT SOMETHING HAS LEFT US WHEN AN ENEMY HAS DONE HIS WORST. As Matthew Henry well remarks, the mountains, the hills, the rivers, and the valleys, the desolate wastes and the forsaken cities (verse 4) "remained to be spoken to …these the Chaldeans could not carry away with them." They might deport and depopulate, but they could not destroy the land which Jehovah had given to his people. Still the mountains stood, and still the rivers ran, and still the valleys stretched beneath the sun and received the rains of heaven.
1. Our human enemy may do much to harm us, but his power is very limited after all. At the most and the worst, he can but kill the body; after that he hath no more that he can do." He cannot kill the soul; he cannot take away faith, or love, or peace, or hope from the human heart; he cannot rob us of our real inheritance.
2. Or if our spiritual enemy injures us in a more deadly way than the tyrant or the persecutor can do; if he gain dominion over us and rob us of our rectitude, and so of our peace and rest in God; even then there remains a spiritual nature which is capable of redemption; the soil remains, which, sown again with the good seed of the kingdom, may yet bring forth very precious fruit.
II. THAT THE TENDENCY OF SIN IS TO A DANGEROUS EXTREME. Edom and other heathen lands carried their enmity and their cruelty so far that they brought down upon themselves the righteous anger of God. "Because they have made you desolate, and swallowed you up on every side," etc. (verse 3), "therefore, thus saith the Lord, surely in the fire," etc. (verse 5). These persecuting nations had succeeded only too well; they had filled their hands with spoil, and their souls with spiteful pleasure (verse 5); and the extremity to which they pushed their triumph led to their discomfiture. Such is sin everywhere. It leads to extravagance and excess; to a most guilty and ruinous indulgence; or to a high-handed arrogance and blasphemy which call forth the deep displeasure of the righteous God, and bring down the strong, stern hand of judgment. When we once give way to temptation, of whatever kind it be, we enter a path which leads and lures us on much further than we at first meant to go; and the end of it is condemnation and doom.
III. THAT GOD PITIES HIS PEOPLE, THOUGH THEY SURFER AT his OWN HAND. It was God who caused the children of Israel to lose their heritage and to be carried away as they were. Their sorrows were the penalty of their sin; it was the hand of the Lord that was laid upon them. Yet their distressing condition called forth the Divine compassion. It was in mercy, in true pity, that he saw them "bearing the shame of the heathen' (verse 6; see verse 15). Even though it is in virtue of God's own righteous laws that we "are minished and brought low," that we suffer in the flesh or in the spirit, in circumstance or in soul, as the consequence of our wrongdoing, even then, in our straits and in our misery, in our bondage and in our degradation, we are the objects of Divine compassion. God likes not to see his children suffer and "bear shame" as they do. And he sends the messenger of mercy that bids us rise from our wretchedness and ruin and return unto himself.
IV. THAT EVERYTHING MAY BE RECOVERED WHEN GOD IS ON OUR SIDE. (Verses 8-15.) When God says, "I am for you, and I will turn unto you," what is there that we may not hope for? Then the land of Israel might look to be retilled and resown, to yield its fruit as in the best days that were; to be repeopled by those who had a right to walk upon its hills and to cultivate its villages; it should no longer be a grave for the dead, but a home for the living. And when we turn in penitence and in faith to God, and he turns in mercy and in grace to us, what is there that we may not hope for? What glorious spiritual restoration is within our reach!—the peace which no earthly good can either give or take away: the joy which abides and which blesses while it lasts; the excellency of character and of life which makes us take rank with the children of God everywhere; the hope which is full of immortality.—C.