THE
PLANT OF RENOWN.
SERMON I.
Ezekiel, xxxiv. 29.
And I will raise up for them a Plant of Renown.
If we cast our eyes back upon the foregoing part of this chapter, we shall find a very melancholy scene casting up; we shall find the flock and heritage of God scattered, robbed and peeled by the civil and ecclesiastical rulers that were in being in that day; a day much like to the day wherein we live: the ruin of the church of Christ in all ages and periods of the world, has been owing to combinations betwixt corrupt churchmen, and corrupt statesmen; and so you will find it. In the preceding part of this chapter there is a high charge brought in against the Shepherds of Israel, and a terrible and awful threatening denounced by the great and chief shepherd against them, for the bad treatment that the flock of Christ had met with in their hands: However the sheep of Christ may be fleeced, and scattered, and spoiled, yet the Lord looks on them; and many great and precious promises are made for their encouragement in that evil day; you may read them at your own leisure, for I must not stay upon them just now. But among all the rest of the promises that are made, Christ is the chief; Christ is the To-look of the church, whatever trouble she be in. In the 7th chapter of Isaiah, the church had a trembling heart, God’s Israel was shaken as ever you saw the leaves of the wood shaken by the wind, by reason of two Kings combining against them: Well, the Lord tells them, “A Virgin shall conceive and bear a Son, and call his name Immanuel.” But, might not the church say, what is that to us? What encouragement doth this afford in the present distress? Why, the Messiah is to come of the tribe of Judah and the family of David; and therefore that tribe and family must be preserved, in order to the accomplishment of that promise. Whatever distance of time, suppose hundreds or thousands of years, may intervene before the actual coming of the Messiah; yet the promise of his coming, as it is the ground of your faith for eternal salvation, so it is a security for the present, that the enemy shall not prevail, to the total ruin of Judah and the royal family of David. In all the distresses of the church, Christ is always presented to her, in the promise, as the object of her faith, and the ground of her consolation; and accordingly, “They looked to him,” in the promise, “and were lightened; and their faces were not ashamed.” He is here promised under the notion of God’s Servant; and, in the words of the text, he is promised as a Renowned Plant, that was to rise in the fulness of time. And, blessed be God, he has sprung up, and is in heaven already, and has overtopt all his enemies, and all his enemies shall be his foot-stool.
First, Here then, you have a comfortable promise of the Messiah; where, again, you may notice the promiser: I, I will raise up, &c. It is a great I, indeed; it is Jehovah, in the person of the Father: It was he that in a peculiar manner, sent him; “God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.—In the fulness of time he sent forth his Son, made of a woman, made under the law, to redeem them that were under the law, that we might receive the adoption of Sons.” God promised to send him, and accordingly he has actually fulfilled his promise. Again,
Secondly, We may notice the blessing promised, and that is, a Plant of Renown.—Christ gets a great many metaphorical names and descriptions in Scripture:—Sometimes he is called a Rose, sometimes he is called a Sun, and sometimes he is called a Door; sometimes he is called the Tree of Life; sometimes he is called one thing, and sometimes another; And he is content to be called any thing, to make himself known to us; and here he is called a Plant, and a Renowned Plant; but more of this afterwards. But then,