Ezekiel 32:20

We look here into sheol and see the nations gathered there, stripped of their glory, in deepest abasement and shame. Their bodies are in the pit, the grave, and their souls in sheol, the unseen regions. God's patience with them ran out. The measure of their wickedness became full. Then judgments swept them off the earth, and they passed away and went down into sheol. And what irony there is connected with it! "Whom do you surpass in beauty? Go down and be laid with the uncircumcised."

Here it is the judgment that sweeps off the earth after long patience and sends down the boastful to the pit. There lie the finest of them, with no sign of any relationship to God, "with the uncircumcised." There lie Assyria, Elam, Meshech and Tubal, Edom, Zidon and other nations north of Palestine. They lie in utter weakness and humiliation. They are ashamed of the might they were once so proud of, and they carry their disgrace down with those who go to the pit. The Lord's terror remains, and most of all for those who spread the most terror here with the sword.

The Ephesians, as Gentiles, were called the uncircumcision — a term of great reproach. Circumcision was the sign of relationship with God, and more besides. To be uncircumcised was to be completely outside that circle of relationship and privilege.

It is a judgment, as we see, not of single people, but of nations. It is the judgment of the whole world, so far as the world had yet come into the light of revelation — the circumcised along with the uncircumcised. Egypt was outwardly a circumcised people, but for her it meant nothing. Now they are all made equal in the one thing that merges every distinction: the common lifelessness and shadow of death. This repetitive funeral song, the same for all of them, is part of the lesson it was meant to teach. It is meant to impress on us the common blank and desolation in which so many energies, and so many kinds of human character and activity, all come into one ruin where none can be told apart.

The soul away from God, having lost faith in Him, must have faith in itself, or there would be despair at once. So man's own competence steps in to make up for God's supposed incompetence. He takes freely what God has graciously given him, and then uses it to build himself up in pride and self-sufficiency. We see this clearly in Egypt, and the lesson there is as plain as it is basic. Wherever we look at it, Egypt is the land of independence, as far as heaven is concerned. Rain seldom falls there; it is not expected. The practical thing is that the river is there, always there, giving man little to think about except how best to direct the supply that is now his own.

The devout Jew knew from God the judgments that fell on the nations before, and why they came. His heart was not to be unfeeling. Still less was he to insult these fallen nations, which had been both his enemy and his snare, old and recent. The Christian feels for people in view of eternity. But, thank God, he is entrusted with the gospel, with the ministry of reconciliation. It rests on the atonement of Him who was once here revealing God in perfect grace, but despised and rejected by men.

Thank God, we are going to emerge now into brighter things! But God's lessons must be learned, and in their own order. There is no escape from this. We have to have the sentence of death in ourselves, so that we may not trust in ourselves but in Him who raises the dead. Resurrection is all of God. Here it is plain that man has no ability at all. He is out of the account, so God is free to show Himself as He desires to do. Then the grave itself is no obstacle to Him. Instead it becomes the means of a brighter display of His divine glory.