But there is another and connected revelation. The revival of Israel as a people is not all that the prophet here learns and communicates. This was given in the first half of the chapter, not their quickening individually, however true it may be, but their national resuscitation under the operation of the Spirit, not of man's will or the world's politics, as becomes the people chosen and now finally to be blessed of Jehovah. There was a distinct fresh blessing to be conferred on them, the disappearance of an old reproach which had long dishonored Israel from the days of Rehoboam as long as it had subsisted in the land. When God sets to His hand for their restoration in the latter day, He will re-unite them as they were of old under David and Solomon, never to have their unity broken or even threatened again. This is reserved for the true Beloved when He reigns as the Prince of peace.
“The word of Jehovah came again unto me saying, Moreover, thou son of man, take thee one stick, and write upon it, For Judah, and for the children of Israel his companions: then take another stick, and write upon it, For Joseph, the stick of Ephraim, and for all the house of Israel his companions: and join them one to another into one stick; and they shall become one in thine hand” (vss. 15-17).
It is indeed no obscure proof of human perverseness that words like these should ever have been mistaken. Yet they have been and are, not among the despised Jews who cleave to their future hopes, but in contempt of their present responsibility by Christians under the gospel of God's indiscriminate grace in the dead and risen Christ to every soul that believes, be he Jew or Gentile. Thus it is then that Satan deceives all. The Jews are right in maintaining that Israel are yet to be blessed in their land under Messiah and the new covenant, and this, not vaguely nor partially, but after apostasy as well as divine judgments shall have thinned them down, all Israel that shall then be saved, gathered and united, Judah and Joseph as one whole. They are utterly, fatally, wrong now in not seeing their Messiah, the Savior, in Jesus of Nazareth, and consequently perish because they “obey not the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ” (2 Thes. 1:88In flaming fire taking vengeance on them that know not God, and that obey not the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ: (2 Thessalonians 1:8)). But Satan deceives Christendom in this that, while they rightly confess the Crucified One to be the Son of God, they not only mix up the law with the gospel and so lose all the comfort and power and certainty of God's salvation in Christ, but yearn after the predicted glories of Israel on earth as if they were descriptive of their own privileges to the almost total ignoring of their heavenly standing as well as to the denial of God's faithfulness in future mercy to Israel.
There is indeed no excuse for misunderstanding a symbol so plain as that in verses 16-17. But, as if to clench the application, we have as before an explanation appended. “And when the children of thy people shall speak unto thee, saying, Wilt thou not show us what thou meanest by these? Say unto them, Thus saith the Lord Jehovah; Behold, I will take the stick of Joseph, which is in the hand of Ephraim, and the tribes of Israel his fellows, and will put them with him, even with the stick of Judah, and make them one stick, and they shall be one in Mine hand. And the sticks whereon thou writest shall be in thine hand before their eyes. And say unto them, Thus saith the Lord Jehovah; Behold, I will take the children of Israel from among the heathen, whither they be gone, and will gather them on every side, and bring them into their own land: and I will make them one nation in the land upon the mountains of Israel; and one king shall be king to them all: and they shall be no more two nations, neither shall they be divided into two kingdoms any more at all: neither shall they defile themselves any more with their idols, nor with their detestable things, nor with any of their transgressions: but I will save them out of all their dwelling-places, wherein they have sinned, and will cleanse them: so shall they be My people, and I will be their God” (vss. 18-23).
It is as vain to wrest such language to the remnant of Jews that returned from Babylon as to the church at Pentecost. There is not even analogy. It is a union of the two long-divided houses of Israel, and nothing else. Not even a shadow of its accomplishment has appeared yet. Words cannot be conceived more explicit. Every sense but the future ingathering and union of all Israel as a single nation under one king is excluded. Never more shall they be divided, never more defiled. Nay more, they shall be Jehovah's people, and He their God. As the Jew cannot say that this has yet been, so it is absurd for any Gentile to say it of or for them. Still more absurd is it for the Gentile to claim it for himself. In no case is it applicable to the Christian body. A remnant of Jews returned from Babylon to be defiled not merely with transgressions, but with a more detestable thing than their old idolatry, even the rejection and crucifixion of their Messiah. Was this a fulfillment of Ezekiel's glowing words?
But further it is added, “And David My servant shall be king over them; and they all shall have one shepherd: they shall also walk in My judgments, and observe My statutes, and do them” (v. 24). Here again what confirmation if this were needed! For no sober believer can doubt that Christ only can be meant, and Christ, not as Head of the church in heaven, but as king of Israel when He reigns over the earth. Never, since the prophecy was uttered, has there been an approach to its accomplishment. Never since, have they all had one shepherd; nor have Israel walked in His judgments, nor observed His statutes and done them. Christians all over the world cannot be meant here, still less when they go to heaven, but Israel only. “And they shall dwell in the land that I have given unto Jacob My servant, wherein your fathers have dwelt; and they shall dwell therein, even they, and their children, and their children's children, forever; and My servant David shall be their prince forever” (v. 25).
It is, as Isaiah says, “the sure mercies of David” (Isa. 55:33Incline your ear, and come unto me: hear, and your soul shall live; and I will make an everlasting covenant with you, even the sure mercies of David. (Isaiah 55:3); Acts 13:3434And as concerning that he raised him up from the dead, now no more to return to corruption, he said on this wise, I will give you the sure mercies of David. (Acts 13:34))—that everlasting covenant Jehovah makes with Israel; and this the resurrection of Christ explains. Thus was He to reign—not merely to ascend and become the beginning and Head of a new work on high, but to reign—over Israel in their land. Indeed, in language strongly resembling the prophet referred to, Ezekiel follows with the assurance of Jehovah. “Moreover I will make a covenant of peace with them; it shall be an everlasting covenant with them: and I will place them, and multiply them, and will set My sanctuary in the midst of them for evermore. My tabernacle also shall be with them: yea, I will be their God, and they shall be My people. And the heathen shall know that I Jehovah do sanctify Israel, when My sanctuary shall be in the midst of them for evermore” (vss. 26-28). The humbling thought is that Christians could question what is here meant. Only one thing explains it all—the deep and wide-spread departure of men in Christendom from an adequate or indeed any real sense of their own blessings. From the peace and joy proper to the Christian, they have through judaizing and the influence of Babylon slipped away into doubt and darkness and error; and in their lack of comfort in the Holy Ghost, through unbelief of the grace in which the Christian stands, they are tempted to covet their neighbors' goods, to the ruin of truth and to the confusion of relationship with God, whether of the church now or of Israel by-and-by. The issue of the prophecy is of so plain and positive and glorious a nature that the very heathen shall know that Jehovah sanctifies His people, when His sanctuary shall be in their midst forever.
It is to the shame of Christians that they who know the truth and grace of God in Christ should be so beguiled, in reading the prophecies at least, as to be justly rebuked for their dark unbelief by a Jew—himself so prejudiced as Don Balthasar Orobio. I am indebted to another for the following extract—
“If it be Israel mentioned in the passages they quote, it is the spiritual (that is, the nations who have embraced the Christian religion), and not the temporal, or in the other words the Jewish seed of Abraham. If the text affirm that Israel and Judah shall return to the land of their fathers to possess it forever, they uphold that this land is heaven, and those who have acknowledged Messiah are Israel and Judah. The wars and desolation of which the prophet speaks are also taken in a metaphorical sense. We must believe, according to them, that it is the struggle of vice with virtue—impiety with justice. Thus to annihilate the proofs which we expect will mark the fulfilment of the Almighty’s promises, they confound heaven with earth, this world with paradise, the holy city with the assemblage of Christians; Israel, Jacob, and Judah, with the Gentiles; the disorder of war with the spiritual opposition of vice to virtue; the temple, evidently temporal as it is, with the salvation of souls, the religion they profess, etc.
“The prophet Ezekiel completely destroys all these chimerical opinions. The true Israelites, he says, will be redeemed—the real seed of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, and not the Gentiles. He does not say that the land which they will re-possess will be the church or heaven, but that same land which they had inhabited before they were scattered, and wherein they will dwell forever. The Lord commands him to take two sticks; on the one to write the name of Judah and his companions; and on the other the name of Ephraim, son of Joseph, and all the house of Israel; that is to say, the remnant of the tribes which were divided into two kingdoms after the death of Solomon: and to say to the children of Israel that at the time of the redemption the kingdoms shall be united never to be divided again. He was then to show these two sticks to the people and say to them, ‘Thus saith the Lord God, Behold, I will take the children from among the nations whither they be gone, and will gather them from every side, and bring them unto their own land: and I will make them but ONE nation in the land upon the mountains of Israel: and one king shall be king to them all: they shall be no more two nations, neither shall they be divided into two kingdoms any more. And they shall dwell in the land that I have given unto Jacob My servant, wherein their fathers have dwelt; and they shall dwell therein, even they and their children’s children forever. And the nations shall know that I the Lord do sanctify Israel, when My sanctuary shall be in the midst of them for evermore.’
“Can the Gentiles who have embraced the Christian faith believe that they are the Israelites to whom the prophet alludes? Are the nations ever termed Judah and Ephraim? Or have they been divided into two kingdoms? Neither reason nor plain sense is the foundation of the persuasion that the land of which the prophet speaks is spiritual; that it is the church signified when he assures the people of Israel of their return to their own land—to that happy country which they had before possessed in the land of Canaan, that which the Lord had given to their ancestors. Can the mountains where the people were to assemble be spiritual? Fiction never went so far in metamorphosis.”
Who can affirm that this is true now, either of Israel, of whom it is said, or of the church, of whom it is not?