Ezekiel 34:17














The wisest men detect only some of the evils that blemish a nation; they are blind to more secret delinquencies. The Almighty Ruler detects every hidden iniquity, nor will he spare any form of sin.

I. OBSERVE THE CONTAGION OF WICKEDNESS. The first part of the chapter reveals God's judgment upon evil rulers now is brought to light the wrong-doing of men in private and unofficial stations. The sins of pride and violence soon filter down from magnates to merchants, from princes to peasants. Vice is more contagious than any bodily disease we are familiar with. As children easily learn to imitate the words and ways of parents, so men in inferior stations copy the deeds of those immediately above them. As thistle-down bears an abundant crop of seed, so do also most kinds of sin.

II. MARK THE EVIL AND BITTER FRUITS OF SELFISHNESS. Selfishness is the prolific mother of a thousand sins. In a ruler selfishness becomes as a scourge of scorpions to the people, and makes the man a monster; in a private person it works a world of minor mischiefs. In any form it is a malignant and despicable thing. As night casts its black shadow over every scene of natural beauty, so selfishness blights and disfigures every relationship between man and man.

1. Here are acts of malevolence. The rich and the strong eared only for themselves. Self-aggrandizement in them had grown into ill will for their neighbors. National calamity, which ought to have brought them nearer to each other for mutual help, had generated a malevolent temper.

2. This ill will led to acts of wanton destructiveness. Such portions of agricultural produce as they could not use themselves they destroyed, so that their poorer neighbors might be reduced to yet direr straits. Never was the fable of the dog in the manger more literally realized. Landlords who destroy cottages in order to drive out the poor from the parish, walk in these men's shoos.

3. Acts of personal cruelty. "They pushed the diseased with their horns until they had scattered them." The horns were weapons provided by God for their defense against their foes, and it was a strange abuse of God's kindness to use these weapons for the injury of their suffering fellows. Every form of disease is a mute, pathetic appeal to our better nature for sympathy and help. We do ourselves a lasting injury when we refuse assistance. We turn the natural milk of human kindness into gall. Men are members of one social organism; and in injuring each other they injure themselves. The culture of benevolence is a primary duty - a fountain of joy.

4. Self-blindness. To these self-indulgent men "it seemed a small thing" to treat their weaker and suffering brethren thus. Yet it was a very mountain of wickedness. A selfish eye looks through the wrong end of the telescope, and sees real objects greatly minimized. By-and-by their eyes will be opened. By-and-by the mist of appearances will vanish, and all human actions will be revealed in naked reality.

III. RIGHTEOUS DISCRIMINATION AND AWARD ARE NOT FAR AWAY. "Thus saith the Lord God, Behold, I judge between cattle and cattle." Probably many of these rich blustering men complained bitterly enough of the selfish violence of their rulers, and never surmised that they were committing the very same sin under another guise. They saw the mote in others' eyes, yet did not suspect that a beam filled their own eye. But an unseen Judge was there, and weighed in the balance of perfect equity every deed and word of man. It is a consolation to the suffering that deliverance from the highest source will come, and will come at the best possible moment. The great Refiner sits by and watches the refining process in the furnace. His plans to us are full of mystery, for our vision is very limited, while he sees the end from the beginning. His eye skillfully discriminates between every form and every degree of human offense. Men will not be judged (as they are often now) in classes, but as individuals. Some Canaanites will be accepted; some Israelites will be rejected. Some Pharisees shall find their way to heaven; some publicans will Perish. A rich man may be saved in spite of the encumbrance of riches; some poor men will be outcasts eternally because destitute of faith and love. The balance of God is an even balance, and in his presence the smallest deception is impossible. - D.

I judge between cattle and cattle.
It presents to us the scene, far too often enacted in human life, of a selfish scramble — a scramble for position, for money, for power, for enjoyment. We find this in business, in professions as well as in trade and commerce, in art, in politics, in pleasure, and, it must be admitted, sometimes in the sacred sphere of religion. Of this selfish scramble we may remark —

I. ITS ESSENTIAL SINFULNESS.

1. Self-elevation is right and good. To make the most of our powers and opportunities; to rise by honest, patient industry, and to walk along the high level of honourable usefulness — this is admirable.

2. Emulation is allowable and helpful. The boy who has no ambition to reach the top of his class, the manufacturer or tradesman who does not care to make or to sell the best possible goods, is not likely to accomplish much. But a selfish scramble, in which we only care to secure our own comfort or enlargement, and do not care at all who is stranded or last, in which we present such a picture in life as that given in the text of cattle in the field, is ugly and evil. And if it seems thus to us, how much more guilty must it appear to Him who is Love itself, who lives to love and bless — how hateful and offensive must it be in His pure sight!

II. ITS INDURATING INFLUENCE. The struggling cattle in the field are no worse for their heedlessness, or even for their violence. They suffer no spiritual harm; they do not rise and fall, in a moral sense. But we do. He who is living the life of selfish scramble is losing all the finer and nobler elements of his nature, is sinking to that base condition in which his own wants and tastes are everything to him and all else is nothing.

III. THE CONTRAST OF CHRISTIAN SERVICE. We look at the life of our Lord, and we find Him positively declining to use His power to turn the stone into bread, though He must have sorely needed food (Matthew 4:4); refusing to accept the opportunity of self-aggrandisement at the expense of the sacrificial mission on which He came (Matthew 4:9); compelling all things to give place in order that He might give food to the hungry, and healing to the sick, and hope to the abandoned, and rest to the weary. Let us use those powers which we have from God, that we may follow where Christ is leading.

(W. Clarkson, B. A.)

I. THE OBJECTS OF THE DIVINE DISCRIMINATION.

1. He will judge between the Church of God and its enemies, the genuine professors of religion and its opposers.

2. He will distinguish between the hypocrite anti the sincere believer. Counterfeit graces will bear no comparison with sterling piety, when exhibited in the light of heaven, though for the present they may obtain a surreptitious currency.

3. A distinction will likewise be made between saints and saints; for the Lord shall call to the heavens from above, and to the earth, that He may judge His people. According to the talents they possess, the improvement they make of them, and their process in the Divine life; according to the strength or weakness of their graces, the honour or disgrace which their conduct reflects upon religion, — such will be their sentence from the supreme Judge, who will reward every man according to his works.

II. THE MANNER IN WHICH THESE VARIOUS CHARACTERS SHALL BE DISTINGUISHED.

1. Judgment sometimes signifies the same as discernment. In this sense God judgeth all men; He knoweth their inward principles, as well as their outward conduct and behaviour. He is not influenced by prejudice, or liable to mistake.

2. It implies correction, or judging in a way of punishment. God is a light to Israel, but a consuming fire to their enemies. Or if He sees fit to correct the former, it shall be in measure; He will not punish them with severity, though He does not leave them altogether without chastisement.

3. Though the Lord often makes a wide distinction between the righteous and the wicked in the present life, yet He will do it more effectually and more awfully in the last great day.

(B. Beddome, M. A.)

People
David, Ezekiel
Places
Jerusalem
Topics
Behold, Cattle, Flock, Goats, He-goats, He-sheep, Judge, Judging, Male, O, Rams, Says, Sheep, Sovereign, Thus, Truly
Outline
1. A reproof of the shepherds
7. God's judgment against them
11. His providence over his flock
20. The kingdom of Christ

Dictionary of Bible Themes
Ezekiel 34:17

     4681   ram

Ezekiel 34:7-24

     7130   flock, God's

Ezekiel 34:11-17

     4684   sheep

Ezekiel 34:11-24

     1220   God, as shepherd

Ezekiel 34:16-22

     9210   judgment, God's

Library
The Church of Christ
This, then, is the meaning of the text; that God would make Jerusalem and the places round about his hill a blessing. I shall not, however, use it so this morning, but I shall use it in a more confined sense--or, perhaps, in a more enlarged sense--as it applies to the church of Jesus Christ, and to this particular church with which you and I stand connected. "I will make them and the places round about my hill a blessing; and I will cause the shower to come down in his season; there shall be showers
Charles Haddon Spurgeon—Spurgeon's Sermons Volume 1: 1855

That None Should Enter on a Place of Government who Practise not in Life what they have Learnt by Study.
There are some also who investigate spiritual precepts with cunning care, but what they penetrate with their understanding they trample on in their lives: all at once they teach the things which not by practice but by study they have learnt; and what in words they preach by their manners they impugn. Whence it comes to pass that when the shepherd walks through steep places, the flock follows to the precipice. Hence it is that the Lord through the prophet complains of the contemptible knowledge
Leo the Great—Writings of Leo the Great

Discourse on the Good Shepherd.
(Jerusalem, December, a.d. 29.) ^D John X. 1-21. ^d 1 Verily, verily, I say to you [unto the parties whom he was addressing in the last section], He that entereth not by the door into the fold of the sheep, but climbeth up some other way, the same is a thief and a robber. [In this section Jesus proceeds to contrast his own care for humanity with that manifested by the Pharisees, who had just cast out the beggar. Old Testament prophecies were full of declarations that false shepherds would arise to
J. W. McGarvey—The Four-Fold Gospel

The Good Shepherd' and his one Flock' - Last Discourse at the Feast of Tabernacles.
The closing words which Jesus had spoken to those Pharisees who followed HIm breathe the sadness of expected near judgment, rather than the hopefulness of expostulation. And the Discourse which followed, ere He once more left Jerusalem, is of the same character. It seems, as if Jesus could not part from the City in holy anger, but ever, and only, with tears. All the topics of the former Discourses are now resumed and applied. They are not in any way softened or modified, but uttered in accents of
Alfred Edersheim—The Life and Times of Jesus the Messiah

The Everlasting Covenant of the Spirit
"They shall be My people, and l will be their God. And I will make an everlasting covenant with them, that I will not turn away from them, to do them good; but I will put My fear in their hearts, that they shall not depart from Me."--JER. xxxii. 38, 40. "A new heart also will I give you, and a new spirit will I put within you: and I will take 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
Andrew Murray—The Two Covenants

How to Make Use of Christ as the Life when the Soul is Dead as to Duty.
Sometimes the believer will be under such a distemper, as that he will be as unfit and unable for discharging of any commanded duty, as dead men, or one in a swoon, is to work or go a journey. And it were good to know how Christ should be made use of as the Life, to the end the diseased soul may be delivered from this. For this cause we shall consider those four things: 1. See what are the several steps and degrees of this distemper. 2. Consider whence it cometh, or what are the causes or occasions
John Brown (of Wamphray)—Christ The Way, The Truth, and The Life

The Shepherd of Our Souls.
"I am the good Shepherd: the good Shepherd giveth His life for the sheep."--John x. 11. Our Lord here appropriates to Himself the title under which He had been foretold by the Prophets. "David My servant shall be king over them," says Almighty God by the mouth of Ezekiel: "and they all shall have one Shepherd." And in the book of Zechariah, "Awake, O sword, against My Shepherd, and against the man that is My fellow, saith the Lord of Hosts; smite the Shepherd, and the sheep shall be scattered."
John Henry Newman—Parochial and Plain Sermons, Vol. VIII

Covenanting Predicted in Prophecy.
The fact of Covenanting, under the Old Testament dispensations, being approved of God, gives a proof that it was proper then, which is accompanied by the voice of prophecy, affording evidence that even in periods then future it should no less be proper. The argument for the service that is afforded by prophecy is peculiar, and, though corresponding with evidence from other sources, is independent. Because that God willed to make known truth through his servants the prophets, we should receive it
John Cunningham—The Ordinance of Covenanting

The Extent of Messiah's Spiritual Kingdom
The kingdoms of this world are become the kingdoms of our Lord, and of His Christ, and He shall reign for ever and ever! T he Kingdom of our Lord in the heart, and in the world, is frequently compared to a building or house, of which He Himself is both the Foundation and the Architect (Isaiah 28:16 and 54:11, 12) . A building advances by degrees (I Corinthians 3:9; Ephesians 2:20-22) , and while it is in an unfinished state, a stranger cannot, by viewing its present appearance, form an accurate judgment
John Newton—Messiah Vol. 2

The Eighth Commandment
Thou shalt not steal.' Exod 20: 15. AS the holiness of God sets him against uncleanness, in the command Thou shalt not commit adultery;' so the justice of God sets him against rapine and robbery, in the command, Thou shalt not steal.' The thing forbidden in this commandment, is meddling with another man's property. The civil lawyers define furtum, stealth or theft to be the laying hands unjustly on that which is another's;' the invading another's right. I. The causes of theft. [1] The internal causes
Thomas Watson—The Ten Commandments

That the Ruler Should Be, through Humility, a Companion of Good Livers, But, through the Zeal of Righteousness, Rigid against the vices of Evildoers.
The ruler should be, through humility, a companion of good livers, and, through the zeal of righteousness, rigid against the vices of evil-doers; so that in nothing he prefer himself to the good, and yet, when the fault of the bad requires it, he be at once conscious of the power of his priority; to the end that, while among his subordinates who live well he waives his rank and accounts them as his equals, he may not fear to execute the laws of rectitude towards the perverse. For, as I remember to
Leo the Great—Writings of Leo the Great

Covenanting Provided for in the Everlasting Covenant.
The duty of Covenanting is founded on the law of nature; but it also stands among the arrangements of Divine mercy made from everlasting. The promulgation of the law, enjoining it on man in innocence as a duty, was due to God's necessary dominion over the creatures of his power. The revelation of it as a service obligatory on men in a state of sin, arose from his unmerited grace. In the one display, we contemplate the authority of the righteous moral Governor of the universe; in the other, we see
John Cunningham—The Ordinance of Covenanting

Jesus Makes his First Disciples.
(Bethany Beyond Jordan, Spring a.d. 27.) ^D John I. 35-51. ^d 35 Again on the morrow [John's direct testimony bore fruit on the second day] John was standing, and two of his disciples [An audience of two. A small field; but a large harvest]; 36 and he looked [Gazed intently. The word is used at Mark xiv. 67; Luke xxii. 61 Mark x. 21, 27. John looked searchingly at that face, which, so far as any record shows, he was never to see on earth again. The more intently we look upon Jesus, the more powerfully
J. W. McGarvey—The Four-Fold Gospel

Second Great Group of Parables.
(Probably in Peræa.) Subdivision B. Parable of the Lost Sheep. ^C Luke XV. 3-7. ^c 3 And he spake unto them this parable [Jesus had spoken this parable before. See pp. 434, 435.] saying, 4 What man of you [man is emphatic; it is made so to convey the meaning that if man would so act, how much more would God so act], having an hundred sheep [a large flock], and having lost one of them, doth not leave the ninety and nine in the wilderness [the place of pasture, and hence the proper place to leave
J. W. McGarvey—The Four-Fold Gospel

Ezekiel
To a modern taste, Ezekiel does not appeal anything like so powerfully as Isaiah or Jeremiah. He has neither the majesty of the one nor the tenderness and passion of the other. There is much in him that is fantastic, and much that is ritualistic. His imaginations border sometimes on the grotesque and sometimes on the mechanical. Yet he is a historical figure of the first importance; it was very largely from him that Judaism received the ecclesiastical impulse by which for centuries it was powerfully
John Edgar McFadyen—Introduction to the Old Testament

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