It is not too strong a thing to say that, in human life,
everything hangs on a sense of purpose. Lose that, and we lose
all motive and incentive in living and working.
A distinguished psychologist
and psychiatrist has said that about a third of his cases are
suffering from no specific neurosis, but from senselessness and
emptiness of their lives. He says: 'Among my patients from many
countries, all of them educated persons, there is a considerable
number who come to me, not because they are suffering from a
neurosis, but because they could find no meaning in life.'
Someone else has said: 'The outstanding feature of our time is
confusion, a depressing consciousness of futility and
helplessness, and secret despair.' This, and much more is all too
true, and, for this reason, there is a primary demand to return
to that realm where 'Purpose' is a dominant feature. It is not
wrong to say that the revealed truth that the world is not going
to be an easier and better place to live and work in as we
approach the end of the age, constitutes the main battle for
faith where God's people are concerned, and it would be a very
easy thing to let hands hang down, and for the knees to become
feeble.
Over against all this, then, it
is to some point that we have been led to the consideration of
the 'Horizon of Purpose'.
A third specific point has to
follow on and fit into our previous chapter, but we must
continually keep in view the full setting and context. What we
have pointed out is that the idea of Purpose stands over the
whole Bible revelation. This all-governing idea explains all
God's activities and interests in creation and men. In the
Scriptures it is clear that God's Son, now known as Jesus Christ,
our Lord, is the inclusive and ultimate sphere of all that Divine
Purpose: that His Coming into this world; His life, death,
resurrection, and exaltation are all immediately and exclusively
related to the realisation of the Purpose: that the Holy Spirit
has come as the age-long custodian of God's Purpose concerning
His Son.
Further, it is revealed that
the Church is the eternally elect vessel and instrument in which,
and through which that Purpose is to be - in the first place -
realised, and then administered in larger realms in "the
ages to come": that it is the Church, as the Body of Christ,
which is "called according to his purpose", and "chosen
in him before the foundation of the world": and that
individuals can and will only come into the realisation of that
Purpose in an organically related way in the Body corporate.
Again, this "on high
calling" explains the particular and peculiar spiritual
history - the discipline, suffering, and trial - of those who are
so called. Any truly spiritual ministry unto this Purpose, and
any representation of it in companies of committed people of God
do experience and suffer every wile, stratagem, and malicious
effort of the evil powers to break them up, wear them out, pull
them down onto earthly ground, force them to compromise, and so
on. They are the object of every kind of misrepresentation,
treachery, cruelty, ostracism, and discrediting.
All the above is more than
amply revealed in Scripture. Israel was elect to illustrate and
demonstrate all this in an earthly and historical way, and
their history is just the history of Divine Purpose on two sides,
one positive, when they were on the line of the Purpose; the
other negative, when they got away from it, as they now are.
The Church is that in which the
principles of the Eternal Purpose are taken up in a spiritual,
heavenly and eternal way. All this has been implicit in what we
have said earlier.
We have been in 'Ezekiel'
because there in a way more definite and clear the two sides
mentioned above are embodied and represented. There certainly is
the temporal and historic side as to Israel, and the spiritual
principles are clearly observable in the symbolisms, figures,
signs, and mysteries. But there is much in 'Ezekiel' which is
super-historical, extra-local, -temporal, -earthly; and which
cannot be realised in an earthly nation without doing serious
violence to the first advent of Christ, the meaning of His Cross,
and present position and work. The Letter to the Hebrews, the
Letter to the Galatians, and other vital and categorical
statements as to the fulness and finality of Christ's work
- the "once for ever" sacrifice and redemption - cannot
be set aside because of a failure to discern and discriminate
between what was only intended to be an earthly object lesson -
which forfeited its calling and vocation - and that eternal,
heavenly reality which, in principle, is implicit
in God's methods in every age.
Now then, back to 'Ezekiel'. In
this book we have - in the main - two things. In relation to
Purpose - which is so evidently characteristic and dominating
throughout - there is, firstly, the instrument and vessel, elect
and dealt with on the sole basis of vocation. That vocation being
universal (unto all nations) for a witness (what they were) and a
testimony (what they declared). It was the failure in this by
exclusiveness, making themselves the limit or 'horizon', and by
pride, jealousy, bigotry, and fear, withholding from the nations
the knowledge of God and His concern for their salvation; it was
this self-centredness and self-sufficiency which lost them their
place and purpose. By judgment, discipline, warning, entreaty,
and the voice of all the prophets, God sought to recall them to
their position with Him in order to make them a blessing among
the nations. This they finally and fully refused when the
greatest of all the prophets - and more than a prophet - appeared
among them, "whom they slew, hanging him upon a tree".
What we said at the beginning
of this chapter about the malady of frustration and
meaninglessness afflicting so many, has been literally true of
the Jewish nation, ever since they were set aside, and the Church
inherited what they forfeited - in a spiritual way. Let the
Church take note of this solemn warning and avoid like a plague
anything that would militate against its heavenly calling and
vocation; and let it realise that it is 'horizoned' by Purpose,
which "calling and election" must be made sure. Too
many things have started out in the glorious emancipation and
release of Christ in resurrection and have in course of time
become something in themselves, jealous for themselves, fearful
of being touched in their resources or 'work', or
community; the result being that their original vitality and
effectiveness has been largely lost. It is eventually some thing,
whereas it was once the Lord.
Having seen the election of a
corporate vessel, the other thing in 'Ezekiel' is the specific
nature of its ministry. This we have seen as represented by two
of the three designations of the Prophet, in this book, i.e.,
"son of man" and "a sign".
We now proceed to consider the
third.
"A
Watchman"
This is what
Israel ought to have been to all the nations (illustrated, e.g.,
by Jonah and Nineveh). This is what the Church ought to be to the
world. This is what every local church ought to be to its
locality. But, in 'Ezekiel' where things are bad in the nation,
the designation and its meaning apply to the people of God
themselves; and in this connection we consider it here. It must
now - while still being a call to the Church and churches as such
- be a call for specific ministries within the Church. What we
say then is, in the first place, to the servants of God.
"Son of man, I have
made thee a watchman to the house of Israel" (Ezekiel 3:17;
33:1-9).
This is not an altogether new
idea or title for the Lord's servant. It occurs more than once in
Isaiah in an objective and kind of abstract way. No one else but
Ezekiel is mentioned as having been specifically appointed to
this position.
It will be noted that this
appointment took place very early in his ministry.
What then was the particular
function of the Watchman, and what were his essential
characteristics?
Firstly, and supremely, he was
the custodian of the elect purpose of the people to whom he was
appointed. The very existence of those people as related to
the Divine purpose was very largely in his hands. In this
respect, perhaps one of the most clamant and urgent needs of our
time is of this prophetic function. There are Evangelists, whose
function is related to the unsaved, and positively not the
oversight of a local church. For the Evangelist to get - or be
put - into such a position will sooner or later mean that he
frustrates the full purpose of God by keeping God's people
to a very limited and elementary measure of Christ. This is the
tragedy of any evangelistic work which stops at itself. It is the
tragedy of many so-called Gospel Missions and Mission Halls. They
often serve to abort full purpose and spiritual maturity. Let the
Evangelist - anointed of God - do his work, but let him - and all
others - recognize that his work is only relative and not
something in itself apart.
The world is now seeing the
terrible spectacle of Christians and a 'Church' unable to meet
and go through the awful fires of testing, and without the
tremendous impact of an authoritative witness and message. In a
day of spiritual declension or weakness, it is the Prophetic
function that is needed.
The
Watchman's Vocation is at Night
Firstly then, the Watchman must
have a deep sense of the essential purpose for which God's people
exist. He must know, with a heart-consuming 'burden' what
one immense phrase means - "according to his purpose".
It is his mission to instil into God's people this supremely
important matter of "the on high calling of God in Christ
Jesus" (Phil. 3:14). The servant of the Lord is essentially
one who has had his eyes opened, and that to the superlative purpose
of salvation, grace, redemption.
This man must be one who can
see in the dark.
He compasses the whole Horizon
of Christ. He is alert to all that invades that Horizon to
destroy or spoil the vocation of God's people. He cannot force
them to heed his warning or obey his entreaty. His it is to see,
to proclaim, to be faithful, to know.
We have heard it said without
due thought that a people are the expression and representation
of the ministry they receive. This is only half the truth. They
may not lay it to heart; they may "hear and not give
heed", "see and not perceive". They may be in the
presence of the best that the Lord can give, and be a very poor
expression of it. The point here is that the Watchman must be
exonerated by his faithfulness. This is the message of Ezekiel
33. A people may disintegrate, lose out, and be a denial of all
that God has said, but it must never be rightly laid to the
charge of the Watchman.
It is costly, lonely, and
wearisome work, this vocation of the Watchman. A psalmist said.
"My soul looketh for the Lord, more than watchmen look for
the morning" (Psalm 130:6). Often a watchman had to do a
day's work and then be called to go on duty at night. How he
longed for the first rays of dawn so that he could creep away for
a little rest before the day's work began again. The Watchmen of
God often long for the darkness to pass, but they must not sleep
while it lasts. Within the meaning of this vocation there lies
the necessity to discern and be able to interpret the portents,
the processes, the implications of developments and events,
especially as they affect the people of God.
His Horizon is Christ, and his
supreme and inclusive business is to see the significance of
Christ in God's eternal purpose.
The Watchman in the Prophets
was a man depicted or described as a man with a 'burden' -
"the burden of the word of the Lord".
So great are the issues of
Purpose, so vital to life and work is the meaning of the Church's
eternal vocation, that anyone who enters into it in reality will
be one who has a deep sense of heavy responsibility. What
he says is what he has seen! But it is unto the seeing that
God would bring all His people, for only as they see can
they fulfil their heavenly calling. The Church itself is meant to
be a Body with eyes wide open. The quest of the Great
Church-Apostle must be the quest of the Church itself - "a
spirit of wisdom and revelation in the [full] knowledge of
him" (Ephesians 1:17).