Ezekiel 44:23 - Homiletics

The difference between the holy and profane.

I. THERE IS A REAL DIFFERENCE . Men have been much concerned with wholly fictitious distinctions, and a most artificial line has been drawn between what has been accounted sacred and what has been regarded as profane. But this is only the abuse and the degeneracy of what should be discovered in its high and true condition as a genuine difference. The formal distinctions of the Jewish Law were all intended to symbolize moral and spiritual differences. Some of them were obviously concerned with matters of common cleanliness and decency; some had a more immediate bearing on sanitary laws; others, perhaps, were too suggestive of Jewish exclusiveness or conventional propriety; but even these latter regulations could not but impress upon the minds of thoughtful men the separateness of true holiness. The one real distinction is moral. It is the line of demarcation that separates sin from righteousness. This, and not the supposed distinction between the secular and the sacred, is the real difference between clean and unclean. St. Peter was taught to call none of the creatures of God common or unclean ( Acts 10:15 ). It is not they that are so, but the uncleanness is in us, in our use of them. "Unto the pure all things are pure: but unto them that are defiled and unbelieving is nothing pure; but even their mind and conscience is defiled" ( Titus 1:15 ). Similarly, men make an artificial distinction between sacred and profane history. Coming from the pen of a Josephus, the history of Israel is profane; written by an Arnold, the history of Rome is sacred. He who sees God in history beholds a sacredness in it. To him who is worldly and untrue in heart all that he touches is profane.

II. THIS DIFFERENCE IS TO BE LEARNT BY SPIRITUAL EDUCATION . The priests were to teach the people the difference between the clean and the unclean. No doubt the elaborate external regulations of the Jewish Law required careful study, and men needed to be thoroughly instructed in regard to them, in order that they might avoid even unconscious offences. This was a necessary adjunct of a ceremonial religion. A religion of law needed lawyers for its priests. Now that system is wholly swept away. We live in the glorious liberty of the sons of God, and there is no need for us to be instructed in elaborate rules of ceremonial purification. Still, moral education is now needed, though in another direction. Conscience must be educated, so that it may be sensitive and keen to discern what is right, and separate this from what is evil. This education is not to be a drilling in casuistry, which would be a return to the old bondage of the Law; but it is to be an enlightening in regard to the great principles of Christian righteousness, and still more a quickening of the soul to feel the force of those principles, and to apply them without delay to every case as it arises. It is important that the religious teaching of children should be directed more to this end. One great function of the pulpit is to awaken men's sense of the great distinction between sin and purity. We live too much by compromise. We need to learn more of the absolute claims of righteousness.