Ezekiel 33:11 - Homiletics

God's desire for the world's salvation.

This is a Divine oath. God swears by his own life (see Hebrews 6:13 ). This shows how certain are the words spoken, how earnestly God desires men to accept them, and how difficult it is for men to believe them.

I. MEN HAVE FOUND IT DIFFICULT TO BELIEVE THAT GOD HAS NO PLEASURE IN THE DEATH OF THE WICKED . Doctrines of reprobation were once popular. People thought that God destined the greater part of mankind to eternal misery before they were born, in order to magnify his own glory. The heathen have had ideas of gods who delighted in blood. Christians have thought that there is a certain Divine satisfaction in taking vengeance on the sinner. Consider the causes of these views.

1. Divine warnings . God warns sternly. Hence he is thought to will harshly. It is supposed that he desires to do what he threatens.

2. The analogy of human passions . With man "revenge is sweet." Therefore it is thought to be so with God. Men act too much in order to please themselves. Therefore they imagine that God does the same.

3. The experience of Divine judgments . They are at times so sweeping and wholesale, and escape from them seems to be so hopeless, that their victims are tempted to regard them as the outcome of God's own desires.

II. IT IS A FACT THAT GOD HAS NO PLEASURE IN THE DEATH OF THE WICKED .

1. This is positively affirmed . Here it is stated on oath. No truth of revelation is more clear or positive than this.

2. It is true to the character of God . God is love, and love can have no pleasure in suffering and death. God is our Father, and a true father can have no pleasure in the death of his children.

3. It is confirmed by the action of God, who has sent his Son to save the world. While death is the wages of sin, the gift of God is the opposite-eternal life. The New Testament is a grand contradiction to theological pessimism.

III. THE DEATH OF THE WICKED IS DUE TO THEIR OWN WILLS . "Why will ye die?" He wills to die who wills the means of death. The man who takes poison takes his life. When the process is revealed this is done openly. When it is not seen it is still done. The sinner then wills his own death, though unwittingly, by deliberately choosing the course that will certainly issue in it. Now, this is a matter of a man's own volition. So absolute is the territory of will that the wicked may yet die in their sins, although God not only does not desire their death, but earnestly desires their salvation. The awful freedom of man's will—this is the rook on which universalism breaks.

IV. GOD ENTREATS MEN TO TURN AND LIVE .

1. It is possible for all to live . As the sinner chooses his own death, so the means of life-deliverance are within his reach. He cannot save himself, but he may choose whether he will be saved.

2. The condition of life is conversion . "Turn ye from your evil ways." This is true repentance. It means more than regretful tears. It takes place in the will, not merely in the emotions. A tearless change is true conversion, while weeping without change is worthless sentiment. Yet this does not require perfect conquest of evil and a full recovery from it before God will have mercy. We are to turn round. The progress up the hill to light and life has yet to be made. Repentance sets cur faces in the right direction.

3. God urges and entreats sinners to turn and live . This shows

Thus God still pleads in infinite pity with his lost children. Happy are they who hear his gracious call and respond to it!