This whole lovely message of these days, in particular, will be gathered up this evening, and is found gathered up in one fragment in the prophecies of Ezekiel.
In Ezekiel 21:27:
I will overturn, overturn, overturn it:
and it shall be no more, until He come whose right it is;
and I will give it Him.
You will see, if you look, that those words have a very wide context. They have an immediate context: the life and ministry of the prophet in his time. Well, you see, the beginning, carrying forward to some quite serious degree, is the fulfilment of these words.
Now there is also an expanded context, and the expanse of that context has not yet reached its final stage. But here in the Scriptures, much of that extended context is noted and mentioned.
The overturning, overturning, overturning very soon began when the prophet was called to make this proclamation of the Lord’s intention. The immediate context, then, was Jerusalem—Jerusalem as the symbol and representation of the nation.
It was a nation which, as we have been seeing in earlier hours, was chosen, elect of God for a purpose—God’s special purpose. The nation had been so carefully, painstakingly, and patiently constituted and disciplined unto that end, and then, withal, had so solemnly, so tragically, missed the mark.
And unto that nation the words were addressed: “I will overturn, overturn, overturn.”
The reasons? Those which we have noticed: the loss of distinctiveness in their life. They had gone out for the world in illicit and forbidden relationships of a spiritual character.
And the world had been let into them in a defiling and corrupting way, resulting in that thing which, as we have said, is always and ever an abomination to God: mixture in and amongst His people.
The loss of distinctiveness in their life; the loss of vitality in the means which God had provided for the realization of His purpose.
He had provided tabernacle and temple, priesthood and ordinances, sacrifices and feasts, and much more. He made great provision in this way, but all to be vital and effective means to an end, not as an end in themselves.
But that vitality had been lost. Temple, priesthood, sacrifices, and ordinances had become a formality—a daily routine, something being kept up, something just in themselves.
A great formalism without life. The vitality in the means by which God and His purpose were to be realized in their midst had been lost.
They had lost both the sense, consciousness, and knowledge of why they were the Lord’s people. They were boasting that they were the Lord’s people. They were claiming to be a special people amongst the peoples of the earth. They were using His name, taking it upon themselves.
But the purpose for which they were the Lord’s people had been lost to their consciousness. Their vision of the great object and end of God in choosing them from among all the peoples of the earth had been lost.
You know that the cry of the prophets was along those lines. Their cry was against this mixture, this loss of distinctiveness, this corruption, this departure.
The cry was against this mere formalism. As we pointed out yesterday, through Isaiah the word of the Lord came:
Cry aloud, spare not,
lift up thy voice like a trumpet,
and declare unto My people their transgression,
and to the house of Jacob their sins.
Yet they seek Me daily,
and delight to know My ways.
Carrying on, but without vision, without purity, without vitality. All that led to this: “I will overturn, overturn, overturn.”
“I am not going to preserve mere forms, mere shell, mere profession. It is all to Me hypocrisy, unreality. I will overturn.”
Because of these things—these things that characterize the people under the true government and in the true energies of the Holy Spirit—were gone, things that really matter, there was the loss of authority in Israel, of authority in the nation, of an operative voice in their own midst.
They were not registering those who spoke in life and in words, in testimony, with authority. It is a tragic situation when the people of God lose their authority in the world, and they always do it when they mix in with the world and the world is mixed in with them.
Lost unity. Here we see the crumbling of the nation, breaking up and disintegration, till the only suitable picture is that of the valley of dry bones: very many, and very dry; unrelated, unarticulated, disintegrated. That is the result—divisions, if you like, divisions.
The loss of the position to which God had brought them. He had brought them by covenant into the land and set them there as His own place for them. God’s place for the nation was the land, and they lost their position, their God-appointed position, and were cast out of it.
Finally, prophecy leads to the lost glory—the lost glory in and over the people of God. Glory lifted up, moved right away.
The Lord says about such a state, “I will overturn, overturn, overturn. This cannot go on.”
And, dear friends, may I have your forbearance if I remind you again that these prophecies are not exclusively concerning Israel in the Old Testament and its own dispensation. There is that in the New Testament which corresponds to this immediate context.
This terrible chapter, Ezekiel 21, has been called “The Song of the Sword.” You read immediately, associated with these words, the sword—the sword, the point of the sword, God’s unsheathed sword. And by the sword He is going to overturn, overturn, overturn.
May I remind you that we have two corresponding passages in this other realm of the church in the New Testament? One is in the letter to the Hebrews:
Yet once more I will shake not the earth only, but also the heaven.
The other is in the coming of the Lord Jesus into the midst of the seven lampstands. In that comprehensive description and presentation of Him, there is this: “He that hath the sharp two-edged sword.” And He begins with it at the churches.
At the church. And His is an overturning, overturning in the church: all is pleading, dividing, finding out, searching, and judging.
And there is that which, having so largely resulted in the loss of the specific purpose, falls to the sword of the Lord. These are hard words, but suffer them for the moment.
The Lord is saying to the churches, representing the whole church, the same things as He said to Israel here: “I am not a bit interested in, or concerned with, your religious form. I am not a bit interested in your mere religious or Christian activity. I know thy works. I am not concerned with your profession.”
The thing for which you were raised up, elected, and constituted is My eternal purpose concerning My Son: that in all things He might have the preeminence—occupy the first, the full, and the final place.
And anything that either falls short of that or contradicts that comes under the sword. “I will overturn.” Judgment begins at the house of God.
Dear friends, if this is true, and if we are not mistaken, the church in general is going to meet the sword, going to be dealt with in this way. And there is going to be a whole lot—a whole lot—of activities and works and professions, and what not, that is going to the sword, going to be overturned, overturned, overturned, in order to get to that end which God has appointed.
See that? And what is true of the whole church will be true of any local company, I believe. If the Lord sees unreality, sees hypocrisy, mere formality, making His divine things just an end in themselves, turned in on ourselves and not ministering to and forging towards the great end—progressing and developing as we go on with this increasing fullness of Christ—the Lord will overturn that local company.
Upset it. He will bring the sword in, and will scatter, and break down, and overturn. The history of many a company of the Lord’s people has become merely formal and traditional, having lost their vitality and their vision.
And let us come nearer. It will be the history of individual lives. As soon as you resolve everything—teaching, doctrine, practice, meetings, and what not—into something which is just a routine being carried on, it loses that great, mighty, dynamic vision of the purpose of God and loses that tremendous impact of a sense of purpose.
Then our own individual Christian life will come under the sword, and God will devastate—devastate. We shall have to come to this place: “I have been on false ground. I have been in a false position. My position is nothing true, nothing vital.”
“All the teaching that I have received is simply something in my head, in my mind, not a vital part of my very being. All that I am associated with and do has not got the root of the matter.” The Lord must overturn.
That sounds very hard, but would we have it otherwise? Is it not His faithfulness to do that—to get to reality, and to save a remnant that has the root of the matter?
The widening context and applications, you can see here. I must remind you that Ezekiel overlaps, at one end, the ministry of Jeremiah; at the other end, he overlaps the ministry of Daniel.
You remember the word of the Lord which came to Jeremiah: “I have set thee this day over the nations,” to pluck up and to break down.
At the other end, then, we are also familiar with how Daniel and his book are set right in the midst of the nations, literally. We will come to that in a minute.
Here is a wide context in the midst of which Ezekiel is set, and there passes in review the rise and fall of world powers—the peoples and nations which have exercised power and influence in the history of this world.
Probably here Ezekiel begins with the first four: Ammon, Moab, Edom, Philistia. Oh, it is for you to go and look into. You are not expecting, for one thing, that I should trace their history and give their full meaning.
Sufficient to say that it was Ammon and Moab who conspired and joined hands to hire Balaam to curse Israel. Balak, king of Moab, said, “Come, curse me Israel.”
All right, Ammon. All right, Moab. The mills of God grind slowly, but they grind exceeding small; though with patience He stands waiting, with exactness grinds He all. Amen.
Oh, you are going to be dealt with, for God’s will will stand. The third was Edom. And what a history Edom had—a menace to Israel and the interests of the Lord.
And Philistia—oh, we are tired, we are tired and sick of reading of the interferences of the Philistines with the interests of the Lord. The uncircumcised Philistines, as they were called, were that constant and almost perpetual menace to the Lord’s interests in Israel.
These four are brought right into the path of the sword. “I will overturn, overturn, overturn,” says the Lord. And so it was. Ammon, Moab, Edom, Philistia went to the fore and are no more—and are no more.
The prophet passes from the first four to another two: Tyre and Sidon. In Ezekiel 28, you have one of the most amazing, starkly terrible things in the Bible: the king of Tyre.
And it is not difficult, it is not difficult, to see right through what is said there, right through to Satan himself:
Thou wast in Eden, the garden of God.
Thou wast upon the holy mountain of God;
thou hast walked up and down in the midst of the stones of fire.
And this is said in the first context of the king of Tyre, but you can see right through this to another one inspiring this—this exalting against God, this aspiring to be supreme everywhere.
King of Tyre—read Ezekiel 28 again. See how terrible it is. And the Sidonians are in league with Tyre. All right. The word reaches even unto them: “I will overturn, overturn, overturn.”
And where are Tyre and Sidon? What happened? Well, history will tell you what happened. The desolating power, the desolation—the tremendously, really startling story—prophecy was fulfilled.
And then the prophet moves to one. After the four and the two, he comes to one: Egypt—that empire of antiquity, that wonderful civilization, that great world power of which many other great powers were, for a long time, much afraid.
Egypt comes to the sword. The same thing is said about Egypt: “I will overturn, overturn, overturn.” We know the history. Trying, trying to recover something of its old glory and prestige, but it is a poor, feeble business. God said, “I will overturn,” and so it was.
And then we move into a still larger context as we overlap into Daniel. Before long, the great image of Nebuchadnezzar is brought into full view—that great image. There are four of the greatest world powers in history. We are with the big four here.
“See this great Babylon that I have made,” said Nebuchadnezzar. God gave him a kingdom, and all nations and peoples and tongues should bow down before him. How great was that!
Then the invasion of Cyrus the Persian, and the supplanting of the great Babylon with the Medo-Persian Empire, which is proverbial in our daily speech. We speak about “the laws of the Medes and Persians”—something that has come to stay forever and cannot be altered.
It lifts itself against Babylon, and Babylon goes down. Medo-Persia takes the ascendancy. And then another great world power comes on the horizon: Alexander the Great rises up with his Greco-Macedonian Empire and treads all other powers underfoot, and looks for new worlds to conquer.
When he has conquered all the worlds that he can find, he passes in the pageant of empires, and the greatest of them all appears on the scene: the Roman Empire.
All these are mentioned in Daniel. They are presented in the great Roman Empire, the greatest of all that had ever been, both in extent and in power. Here are the world nations; here are the world empires. And the prophecy extends to them all: “I will overturn, overturn, overturn.”
Daniel tells us of the overturning when, after describing the vision, he says:
A stone was cut out without hands,
which smote the image upon its feet,
and brake them in pieces.
And Daniel says, “In the days of those kingdoms shall the God of heaven set up a kingdom.” A stone cut out without hands—the God of heaven shall set up a kingdom, and it shall endure for ever.
It was in the very time of the Roman Empire that the stone smote it, and it crashed. And in representation, it brought all the other empires down with it. “I will overturn,” said the Lord, “overturn, overturn.”
What is the teaching? What is the teaching of all this? In the first place, over all these there is a throne—another throne.
That throne which we have seen at the beginning of Ezekiel’s prophecies: above the firmament, the likeness of a throne, the likeness as the appearance of a man above upon it.
Dear friends, over all these kingdoms, dominions, and powers, there is a throne. To use a fragment from Daniel: “Thou shalt know that the heavens do rule.” The heavens do rule. There is a throne over all.
Oh, the comfort of that! I have been saying hard things. People think I actually say gloomy, depressing things, but here—what is the question? Over all these terrible things there is a throne.
What is the explanation of the downfall of all these world powers? One explanation—one explanation, dear friends. Every one of them sought to take the place that was eternally appointed for God’s Son.
God had appointed Him heir of all things. That is the prescription. God’s Son was the destined heir of this world and His kingdom. God’s Son is the rightful ruler of our nations.
Every one of these had stretched out a hand to take to itself what belonged, by eternal covenant, to the Son of God. Spreading, spreading, from Ammon and Moab in their more limited scope, spreading out and out and out until Rome spread itself over all the world to possess it—to possess this world.
World government for its own end. And God said, “Wait. That is My preserve. That is the preserve of My Son. Do not touch that. Do not touch that. Do not lay a hand on that. That is sacred to My Son.”
“And I will overturn, overturn, overturn, till He come whose right it is; and I will give it Him.” That is history. That is truth.
Dear friends, there is still a wider context. A lot of things have happened since Rome was done. And in our own lifetime we have seen this thing happen. I do not like mentioning the name, but we have to in this very context: what about Hitler?
Hitler aspired, with his ambition and ambitiousness, to dominate all the nations of this world, bring them into subjection to his ideology and to his control—take it. And we know how viciously he repudiated Jesus Christ and His church.
All right, Mr. Hitler sets himself against the throne above—that is, the prerogative of the Son of God. Hands off. We see the awful wreckage and ruin of both Hitler himself and of his Reich.
Now, you have seen it; some of us have seen some of it: the awful devastation and the terrible story of his age. Christ’s right interferes. “I will overturn.”
And we have seen Mussolini, having made for him a great relief map to stretch the whole width of a great hall, of the ten kingdoms of the Roman Empire, and setting up a statue of himself and proclaiming himself as the last Caesar—a restored Roman emperor.
All right. Trespass the throne above. “So far shall thy proud waves come,” said God, “and no farther.” And look at the end. “I will overturn, overturn.”
But contemporary history, present time, is seeing something bigger than any of those—bigger than the biggest of the great world powers, bigger than these that I have just mentioned. Something spreading itself in the denial of God, in the denial of the Son of God, and in the denial of the church of God, to be the great world power.
And the throne above says, “If you cannot read history and learn from history, you will learn in experience.” And the same destiny and doom is coming to it. Make no mistake about it.
Why? Because this world was made for Jesus Christ. And the day is coming when the Scripture will be fulfilled:
The kingdoms of this world are become
the kingdom of our Lord, and of His Christ;
and He shall reign for ever and ever.
Jesus shall reign. You know the rest. But look: while that is a glorious prospect, it is terrible from another standpoint. And it is a challenge—a challenge to us, a challenge to our assemblies, a challenge to the church of God, as it is a challenge to the world.
The purpose of God is to gather together, to reunite all things in Christ—the things in the heavens, things on the earth, things under the earth—that He in all things may have the preeminence.
That is the purpose of God. It is of the most minute application in our lives. It is the object with which the Holy Spirit is working in our spiritual history. It is the explanation of God’s dealing with us, His people, just as it is the explanation of this world’s history: the rise and fall, the glory and the decay, of world powers, empires, and dominions.
He must reign till all His enemies are made the footstool of His feet. That is the message.
Lord, thank Thee.