THE prophet saw in vision the flow of the life-giving river, and marked its wonderful and beneficial effects.
Let the chapter be read, and a brief abstract of it be given.The prophet also observed that here and there the river carried no blessing: there were marshes which remained as barren as ever.
I. THERE ARE SOME MEN WHOM THE GOSPEL DOES NOT BLESS.l. It stagnates in them: they hear in vain; learn but do not practice; feel but do not decide; resolve but do not perform.
2. It mingles with their corruptions, as clear water with the mire of the marshes. They see with blinded eye, understand in a carnal manner, and receive truth but not in the power of it.
3. It becomes food for their sins, even as rank sour grass is produced by the stagnant waters of "miry places."
These marshes are at no great distance. They constitute an eye-sore, and a heart-sore, near at hand.
1. The talkative man, who lives in sin: flooded with knowledge, but destitute of love: fluent expression but no experience.
2. Those critics who note only the faults of Christians, and are quick to dwell on them; but are false themselves.
3. Those who receive orthodox truth, and yet love the world.
4. Those who feel impressed and moved, but never obey the word. They delight to hear the gospel, and only the gospel, and yet they have no spiritual life.
5. Those who are mere officials, and attend to religion in a mechanical manner. Judas is both treasurer and traitor, apostle and apostate. His descendants are among us.
1. Because they are not aware of it: they think it is well with them.
2. Because the ordinary means of blessing men have failed in their case. That which is a river of life to others is not so to them.
3. In some instances the very best means have failed. A special river of gracious opportunity has flowed down to them, but its streams have visited them in vain.
4. No known means now remain: "What shall I do unto thee?" What more can be hoped for from the economy of mercy?
5. Their ruin appears certain: they will be given over; left to themselves, to be barren marshes.
6. Their ruin is as terrible as it is sure: much like that of the cities of the plain — given to salt; only their doom will be less tolerable than that of Sodom and Gomorrah.
1. A lesson of warning, lest we ourselves be visibly visited by gracestreams, and yet never profit thereby.
2. A lesson of arousing, lest we rest in ordinances, which in themselves are not necessarily a saving blessing.
3. A lesson of gratitude: if we are indeed healed by the life-river, let us bless the effectual grace of the Lord our God.
4. A lesson of quickening to ministers and other workers, that they may look well to the results of their labor, and not be making marshes where they wish to create fields rich with harvest.
No persons appear less likely to be saved than your religious unbelievers. They wear an armor of proof. You cannot tell them anything new and striking, their heads are helmeted with religious knowledge; you cannot touch their hearts, for they wear the breast-plate of gospel-hardening. They bow assent to every truth, and yet believe nothing; they attend to every religious observance, and yet have no religion. No other suit of plate armor is one half so effective for warding off the strokes of truth as that which is forged in the arsenals of religion. I have more hope of an avowed infidel than of a gospel-proof hearer. — C. H. S.
Either the waters came not to these marshes; or if they did, they refused them, and so were given to salt, made like Sodom, barren and accursed. Some places have not the waters of the sanctuary, the doctrine of the gospel, and they are barren, and perish for want of the same, as Tyre and Sidon. Other places have them, and because they are impenitent, and will not receive the truth with the love of it, because they will not drink in these waters, therefore they are given to salt, they are barren, and must perish. So it was with Capernaum and Jerusalem (Matt. 11:23; 23:37-38); and so is it with many places in this nation, I fear.- William Greenhill
Certain persons are to be met with, at revival services, who are the first to enter the inquiry-room, but when full inquiry is made about their history it will be found that they are old practitioners, and have under gone conversion of a sort many times before. These are the plague and disgrace of a religious awakening. Easily affected, their piety itself is an affectation: they are not exactly hypocrites, but yet there is so little depth in them that they are next door to it. We heard of one who had been healed of lameness, so he said, but within a few days he took to his crutches again, and thereby cast grave doubt upon the professed healer. Even thus do these wretched converts raise a cry against admirable movements. They are a sort of people whom even the gospel does not bless — marshes, which even the river of life does not fertilize.
Who is the most miserable man on earth, and whither shall we go to seek him? Not to the tavern; not to the theater; not even to the brothel; but to the church! That man, who has sat, Sabbath after Sabbath, under the awakening and affecting calls of the gospel, and has hardened his heart against these calls, he is the man whose condition is the most desperate of all others. "Woe unto thee, Chorazin! woe unto thee, Bethsaida! And thou, Capernaum, which art exalted to heaven, shalt be thrust down to hell." — Richard Cecil
The Latins used to say, "The corruption of what is best is the worst of all things."
Of all compounds of human weakness and depravity, the most repulsive is a bonfire of religious cant, which is all feeling and no principle, all talk and no character, all prayer and no life, all Sunday and no weekday. Ye whited sepulchers!""Ye generation of vipers? The holiest of men join the indignant outcry of the world against such nauseating hypocrisy. That is a wise and always timely petition of the Church of England: "From the deceits of the world, from the crafts of the devil, good Lord, deliver us!" — Austin Phelps