Ezekiel 11:11

About the judgment they said, "It is not the time to build houses; this is the cauldron and we are the flesh." They knew of Jeremiah's letter to the elders taken away as captives. In that letter Jeremiah believed God's Word about the long captivity, and he advised them, "Build houses and live in them" (Jer. 29). They laughed at that God-given advice. They still thought themselves safe in Jerusalem. The phrase "this is the cauldron" means the city of Jerusalem; and "we are the flesh" means themselves. The cauldron itself keeps the flesh inside it away from the fire, and in the same way they felt secure in the doomed city.

They set themselves against the true prophets. They even turned Jeremiah's picture into a joke, using it as a phrase that suited their own policy. That is why God called Ezekiel with such emphasis to prophesy against them. Jehovah's Spirit is said to fall on him, and Jehovah charges him again to speak in His name, for their secrets were out in His light. Jehovah lists their murderous doings, then throws their own proverb back at them. It was their slain who were the flesh and the city the cauldron. He tells them to get out — but not to escape as they expected.

Already the prophet sees the slain in the city, slain at the hands of those who have misled them. These would fulfil the figure, and be clearly enough the flesh in the cauldron. But for the deceivers of the people themselves, a harsher judgment still waited. God would not allow the city to be even the tomb of such men. They defied the sword, even while they trembled at it, and Jehovah would bring it on them. He would take them out of the city they had profaned, to fall by the sword at the border of Israel. Before their own death they would see the disasters they had brought on the people.

Cast out of the city, they would face judgment at the border of Israel. There they would learn, to their utter confusion, that it was Jehovah who had been speaking to them. They had broken His ordinances, while they claimed the privileges belonging to His elect and followed the ordinances of the nations around them.

No doubt salvation was always of God and in sovereign grace, and Christianity makes this clearer and more certain than ever. But from the first God kept His right to judge every departure from Him. No one should be so ready and so thorough in confessing their sins as those who admit that all they enjoy and boast in comes from His grace. Yet the diseased spot in Christendom, as in Israel, is this: it claims the safety that belongs to God's purposes of grace for its most guilty state, a state fallen away from God. Judah was never higher in its claims or louder in its sense of security than on the eve of unsparing judgment.

A message of mercy follows the message of judgment. Verses 14-21 are still to be fulfilled in that nation.