Page 193 - NOTES ON EZEKIEL

CHAPTER XXXVII. 187
want, 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 ut­
terly, fatally, wrong now in not seeing their Messiah, the
Saviour, in Jesus of Nazareth, and consequently perish
because they obey not the gospel of our Lord Jesus
Christ. 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 cer­
tainty 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 and future mercy to Israel.
There is indeed no excuse for misunderstanding a
symbol so plain as that in verses 1G, 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 shew 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