Ezekiel 6:10 - Homiletics.

The consciousness of God.

To know that God is the Lord, i.e. Jehovah, is very different from knowing that Jehovah is God. In the latter case the true God is distinguished from false gods, as in Elijah's great appeal ( 1 Kings 18:21 , 1 Kings 18:39 ). But in the former case, though there is no question of what God shall be worshipped, the being and presence of the one true God need to be believed and realized. Jehovah means, "He who is," the Eternal, the one true self-existent Being. When we know that God is Jehovah we are assured of his true, present, living existence.

I. WHAT THINGS HINDER US FROM KNOWING THAT GOD IS THE LORD ?

1 . His invisibility. "No man hath seen God at any time." We sweep the sky with the telescope, but it reveals no God sitting on the circle of the heavens. His voice is not heard in the crash of the winter storm, or the whispering of the summer leaves. We feel after him in the darkness and silence, but)we cannot touch him. Can he be if no one ever sees, hears, or touches him?

2 . The disorder of the world.

3 . The earthly mindedness of men. Here is the secret of the lost vision of God. "He is not far from any one of us." But "our eyes are holden." A constant traffic with things material darkens our sight of the supersensual. Sin completes the fatal work, and turns the dim vision into total spiritual blindness.

II. WHAT INFLUENCES WILL BRING US TO KNOW THAT GOD IS THE LORD ? Ezekiel tells us that this knowledge was to be brought about by the judgment of God on Israel.

1 . The fulfilment of prophecy. God had threatened punishment. The Jews had. doubted the warning. When it was fulfilled, they would discover the genuineness of the message, and the real existence of him who sent it. The accomplished prophecies of the Bible show the working mind of God. The life of Christ confirms the presence of God in Messianic prophecy. Christian history verifies Christ's word about the leaven hidden in the meal. Moreover, the present fulfilment of ancient prophecy reveals the existence among us of the same God who inspired the prediction.

2 . The exercise of power. The foolish Jews were self confident and boastful. They thought that they were free to choose their own religion. The great invasions and the consequent breakup of the nation humbled them to the dust, and awoke in their hearts an alarmed consciousness of the higher power of God who had sent this doom upon them. We cannot see God, but we can see his work, and in this discern the energy which witnesses to his being.

3 . The vindication of righteousness. Sin does not triumph eternally. Our induction is too narrow, our survey is too brief. A wider grasp and a larger patience would teach us that God is in history punishing guilty nations and advancing what is true anti good and great, just as he is in nature raising the type of being through the very struggle for existence which, to the short-sighted gaze of the unthinking spectator, looks as purposeless as it is painful. The grand vindication of righteousness and the establishment of the kingdom of heaven in the advent of the Son of man are to us the greatest proofs that God is the Lord.