Ezekiel 33:10 - Homiletics

A question of despair.

I. THE CAUSE OF THE DESPAIR . The prophet has just been told that his responsibility is limited to his warning the people faithfully. If the watchman blows the trumpet lustily he can do no more. The blood of the careless people will then be on their own heads. But this truth, which gives consolation to the prophet, is alarming to the people. It is meant to be so. Yet the alarm may be taken in a wrong way. Instead of rousing themselves to meet and overcome the danger, the people may sink down paralyzed in the blankness of despair. The explanation of this despair is suggested by the language of the people.

1. A consciousness of guilt . The people perceive that their transgressions and their sins are upon them. The pilgrim feels the weight of his burden. The sudden awakening of an evil conscience plunges its possesser into midnight darkness. The new thing is not to know that wickedness was done; that knowledge was always possessed, though hitherto not much considered. It is to know that the sins still rest upon their doer, i.e. it is the feeling of present guilt for past deeds of wickedness.

2. An experience of the consequences of sin . "And we pine away in them." The death-penalty of sin does not come like a flash of lightning. Sin is a slow poison. It kills by a sort of spiritual consumption. With an awakening conscience the man perceives himself to be in a spiritual decline. No perception can be more provocative of despair.

II. THE QUESTION IT AROUSES . "How should we then live?" The despair is not yet absolute, or it would not suggest such a question as this. The most awful despair does not live in Doubting Castle. It is immured in a black dungeon of certain negation. Possibly the question suggested does not expect any answer. It sees no reply, and does not believe that any can be given. The decline is so steadfast, and the disease of sin that causes it so deep-rooted, that the despairing soul cannot look for deliverance, and the question is a sort of expostulation offered to the prophet when he would take a more hopeful view. Still it is a question, and therefore it leaves room for an answer. It is much that men should be brought to ask such a question. Too many do not perceive their danger, though they live in sin unrepented and unrestrained. The question implies certain thoughts.

1. Sinners are in imminent peril of death . To those who are truly awakened the prospect must be alarming. But the danger is not the less for those who do not yet perceive it.

2. Men cannot save their own souls . These endangered people must look elsewhere for safety. Unless salvation comes from above, it cannot be had.

3. Men need light on the way of salvation . It is not visible to the eye of sense; it cannot be discovered by thinking. The world needs a gospel. The heathen pine away, not knowing the Divine source of life.

4. Christ answers the Question of despair with a gospel of hope. The answer is suggested in the next verse ( Ezekiel 33:11 ). It is completed in the gospel of Christ.