Ezekiel 33:30-33 - Homiletics

Popular preaching.

Ezekiel illustrates the characteristics of popular preaching in his own person and example. He is also brought to see how vain and delusive the attractiveness of it may be.

I. THE SECRET OF POPULAR PREACHING .

1. A good voice . Ezekiel's preaching was "as a very lovely song of one that hath a pleasant voice." The first physical condition of preaching is to be able to make one's self heard. The story of Demosthenes declaiming with pebbles in his mouth by the seashore shows how the Greeks valued good articulation in oratory.

2. A graceful manner . Ezekiel was compared to a skilled player of music. The human voice is a delicate instrument. The manner in which it is used considerably affects the attractiveness of the speaker. An audience likes to hear pleasant speaking.

3. Rhythmic utterance . The special charm of Ezekiel's speech was compared to song and music. There is a rhythm of thought as well as of words. People do not enjoy rude shocks to their prejudices.

4. Imaginativeness . We have the substance of Ezekiel's preaching, and even in the reduced form of an abstract and a translation it teems with imagery. People enjoy good illustrations. The concrete is more interesting than the abstract.

5. Fervor . The popular description of Ezekiel's preaching would do injustice to the prophet if we were not able to supplement it with is recorded utterances. Ezekiel was not an empty, mellifluous rhetorician. He put his heart into his words. Though less pathetic than Hosea and Jeremiah, and though falling short of the rapture of Isaiah, he was a preacher of power and earnestness. Pleasant words cloy if forcible words do not accompany them. Demosthenes the orator of force was greater than Cicero the orator of grace.

6. Truth . Ezekiel spoke true words—words that were true to fact and life, true to the heart of man, and true to the thought of God. There is a spell in truth. To speak truth feebly may arrest attention when to clothe error with all the charms of rhetoric fails.

7. Inspiration . Ezekiel was a prophet. He spoke under Divine influence. This was the greatest cause of his power. The preacher needs to be a prophet. He must drink of the Divine well if he would give forth words of power.

II. THE FAILURE OF POPULAR PREACHING .

1. Popularity is no proof of success . In his early preaching Ezekiel was neglected ( Ezekiel 3:7 ). But there came a turn in the tide, and then his name was in everybody's mouth, and people thronged to hear him. Yet this was not success. There is no proof that a good work is being accomplished, in the fact that crowds hang upon the utterances of a famous speaker. It may be that he is prostituting his gifts, and catering only for applause, to the neglect of truth and right, like Jeremiah's pleasant-speaking rivals ( Jeremiah 23:16 , Jeremiah 23:17 ). But even if he speaks like Ezekiel, like Ezekiel he may be to the people but a pleasant voice.

2. To be interested in preaching is no proof of truly benefiting by it .

3. Preaching fails if it does not lead to practice . Ezekiel's hearers flatter hum with lip-thanks, and make verbal acknowledgments, of what he says; but they go no further.

Ezekiel agrees with St. James, that hearing without doing is vain ( James 1:22 ). So Christ teaches in his parable of the house on the sand and the house on the rock ( Matthew 7:24-27 ).