“Cast Out into the Open Field”
“None eye pitied thee, to do any of these unto thee, to have compassion upon thee; but thou wast cast out in the open field, to the loathing of thy person, tn the day that thou wast born, And when I passed by thee, and saw thee polluted in thine own blood, I said unto thee when thou wast in thy blood, Live; yea, 1 satd unto thee when thou wast in thy blood, Live.”
DOUBTLESS the Lord here describes the Jewish people when they began to multiply in the land of Egypt, and were grievously oppressed by Pharaoh. Pharaoh had commanded them to cast out the male children that they might perish. Hence, the figure of an infant deserted, cast out into the open field to perish by wild beasts, by starvation, or exposure, was a very apt portrait of the youthful state of Israel, when God looked upon her in love, and brought her out of Egypt to set her in a goodly land. But all the best divines and expositors concur in the belief that we have here also a most extraordinarily apt and significant description of the human race by nature, and of the way in which God in Divine mercy passes by the sinner when utterly lost and helpless, and by the power of the Spirit, bids him “Live.”
The verse presents an infant exposed to die. All the common offices that were necessary for its life and health have been forgotten. Its heartless parents have hid it out in the open field, having no regard whatever for it; and there it lies before our eye,
* Ezekiel xvi. 5, 6.
covered with blood, exposed to wild beasts, famishing, ready to perish. Among many heathen nations there existed the barbarous custom of leaving deformed children to perish in the woods or fields. Among the Spartans it was an established regulation to abandon their weaker offspring to perish at the foot of Mount Taygetus; and in these times there are dark places of the earth which are full of this unnatural cruelty. The Jews were certainly free from this sin, but it was a practice of their near neighbours, and therefore, well known to them; and moreover, the remembrance of Egypt and their great lawgiver among the crocodiles of the Nile, and all the males murdered by royal decree, would make the metaphor very simple to them.
Here is an early ruin. It isaninfant. A thousand sorrows that one so young should be so deeply taught in misery’s school! It is an infant; it has not yet tasted joy, but yet it knoweth pain and sorrow to the full. How early art thou blasted, O sweet flower! How soon are thy young dawnings quenched in darkness, O rising sun! A ruin so terrible and so early has fallen upon each of us. Let proud man kick against the doctrine as he may, Scripture telleth us assuredly that we are “born in sin and shapen in iniquity.” We came not into this world as Adam came into the garden, without flaw, without condemnation, without evil propensities; but lo, by one man’s offence we are all made sinners, and through his desperate fall our blood is tainted and our nature is corrupt. From the very birth we go astray, speaking lies, and in the very birth we lie under the condemnation of the law of God.
The next very apparent teaching is wtter znability.
It is an infant — what can it do for itself? If it were a child of some few years it might be able, with tottering feet, to find its way to some shelter; if it had the gift of articulate speech, it might sob out its wants, and tell to the passer-by what it needed; but it is an infant, it cannot speak. It knows pain, but it has not mind enough to know wherefore the pain is there. It is ignorant; and although conscious of its ills, untutored, undevoloped intellect can neither describe the evil, nor prescribe the remedy.
Though it may cast its little eyes around, even if help were there it were not in its power to avail itself of the proffered aid. It is impotent, helpless, utterly powerless; if anything is to be done for it it must all be done by another’s hand. Not even clay on the potters wheel is more heipless than this infant as it now lies cast out in the open field. Such is human nature; it can by no means help towards its own restoration. “Dead,” saith our apostle, “dead in trespasses and sins,” and what shall the dead in their graves do towards resurrection? Shall the worm become mother of life, or shall corruption be the father of immortality? No, trumpet of God, there is no life in the dull, cold ear of death, and no hearing in the hollow skull of the skeleton; if. the graves open, a Divine hand must break the seal, upheave the mould, and uplift the mouldering corpse, If there be resurrection, it must come from God, and from God alone. It must bea miracle in the beginning and a miracle even to the end.
But, mark you — and this is a thought that may crush our boastings and make us hang our head like a bulrush evermore — this inability is our own sin.
This is laid at our door, not as an excuse for our sinfulness, but as a frightful aggravation of our guilt, that we have become so bad that we cannot make ourselves good, that our nature is so now desperately evil both by its native depravity and by our continual practice of sin, that iniquity has become our nature; so that it is as natural to us to sin, as for water to descend, or sparks to fly upward. Where vice has held its empire long,? Twill not endure the least control; None but a power divinely strong Can turn the current of the soul.” / Apparent, too, is yet a third misfortune — we are utterly friendless. “None eye pitied thee, to do any of these things unto thee.” We have no friend in heaven or in earth that can do aught for us, unless God shall interpose. Grant you that a tender parent may pity, but no parent can change his child’s nature or cleanse away the sin of his offspring. Let it be granted that there are ministers of Christ whose tearful eyes would woo you to Christ, but the most earnest evangelist cannot quicken your soul. The most thundering of all God’s Boanerges cannot awake the dead. Let it be considered that angels are anxious for your conversion, that were you saved they would clap their wings with joy and make glad holiday in heaven; but an angel’s power cannot snatch you from the grave of your sin, nor could the whole host of seraphs with their kindred cherubs combined, do aught to deliver you from the ruin into which by Adam’s sin, and your own, you have been brought. Weep and lament your kinsfolk may for you, but no lamentation can make an atonement for your sin, no human tears can cleanse your filthiness, no Christian zeal can clothe you with righteousness, no yearning love can sanctify your nature. Friendless, helpless, and ruined from our earliest state — what miserable creatures are men! Sinai thunders at us, the law condemns us, justice bares its sword, holiness is incensed, and truth is sworn to destroy. Where, where shall we fly, if thou refuse us, O God?
Furthermore, we are by nature in a sad state of exposure. Cast out into the open field, left in a wilderness where it is not likely that any should pass by, thrown where the cold can smite by night and the heat can blast by day, left where the wild beast goeth about seeking whom he may devour — such is the estate of human nature: unclothed, unarmed, helpless, exposed to all manner of savenous destroyers. Little do any of us know how exposed by nature we are to sloth, to drunkenness, to lust and pride and unbelief, to all those young lions which hunt in company with the great lion of the pit, who seeketh whom he may devour. O Lord God, Thou alone knowest the awful dangers which prowl around an unregenerate man; what mischiefs waylay him; what crimes beset him; what follies haunt him! As God only knows the fulness of the guilt of even one sin, so His infinite mind alone can grasp the number of those tremendous temptations which are planted like snares of death in the path of an unconverted soul.
It seems that this child, besides being in this exposed state, was loathsome. ‘Thou wast cast out to the loathing of thy person.” It was in such a condition that the sight of it was disgusting, and its person was so destitute of all comeliness that it was absolutely
loathed. Such is man by nature, but he will not believe it; he still flattereth himself that he is comely
as the curtains of Soloman, while he is black as the
tents of Kedar. We think ourselves angels, when we are nearest akin to devils; but when we get akin to angels, then we mourn the devil that still is within us. I know this, that when God the Holy Ghost gives a mana view of himself, he is utterly loathsome in his own esteem. One of the cardinals of the olden times — when cardinals were sometimes saints — happened to pass by a meadow where he saw a shepherd leaning on his crook, weeping. He stopped to ask the lad what made him weep. The lad replied by pointing to the ground, for just at his feet there was a toad. “I wasweeping,” said he, “tothinkthat God should have made me a creature so infinitely superior to this loathsome reptile at my feet, and that I should have made myself such a creature that this loathsome thing is superior to me, because it has never sinned.” As the cardinal went his way, he said, “Verily hath it happened that the foolish and unlearned enter into the kingdom of heaven before us, for this peasant has found out the truth.” Not vipers nor toads are more venomous or more loathsome to men than man must be to God, or would be to himself if he could see himself with the eyes of truth, and if the veil of pride were once lifted up from his eyes. The image of God in man is all obliterated; we have ashes for beauty, shame for glory, rottenness for health, and hell for heaven.
In this case, there was nothing in the dzrth of this child, in its original parentage, that could move the passer-by. We are told in some former verses, “Thy birth and thy nativity is of the land of Canaan; thy father was an Amorite, and thy mother an Hittite,” both of them belonging to an accursed race. Look unto the hole of the pit whence ye are digged. There was nothing in your birth and mine why He should have pity on us. Kings, princes, mighty men boast much of their pedigrees, but the Lord knoweth nothing of the glory of these family trees, and ancestries; nay, rather, He leaveth the mighty man in the dust, cutting down the high tree, that He cause the low tree to flourish. He poureth contempt upon princes, and knoweth no respect of persons.
Nor was there anything in this child’s deauty, for it was loathsome. Men are often affected by beauty. Doubtless Pharaoh’s daughter preserved Moses because he was a comely child. We know that Ahasuerus chose Esther because of her beauty; and there have been many who have been exalted in the world for their personal attractions; but it was not so with man in God’s sight. “The whole head is sick, and the whole heart faint. From the sole of the foot even unto the head there is no soundness in it; but wounds and bruises, and putrifying sores.”
Furthermore, as we have found no motive yet, either in necessity or the child’s birth or beauty, so we find none in any evztreaties that were uttered by this child. It doth not seem that it pleaded with the passer-by to save it, for it could not as yet speak. So, though sinners do pray, yet when a sinner prays, it is because God has begun to save him. A sinner’s prayers can never be the cause of his salvation, for, mark you, the truth is that no man ever seeks God first; God has first sought him, and began a good work in his soul
before he ever turns to God. In some cases, this is very extraordinarily proved. The old writers used to quote the instance of a man who went into a wood, having been an outrageous sinner, with the determination of destroying himself, and while he adjusted the rope, some passer-by, hearing a sound, came and expostulated with him, and the words were blessed to his salvation. Is there any preparation or preparatory process in a man who has come to such a pitch of sin, that he is about to take away his own life, to wash his hands in his own blood? Surely this was grace. There were one or two cases in Whitefield’s history, of men who came into places where he was preaching, with stones in their pockets to pelt him with, but who became themselves converted. Was there anything there for the grace of God to get hold of, anything to foster, to favour, to nourish the grace, the sovereign grace of the Most High? Nay, rather, while they were yet without anything whatsoever that could have cried after God, He was found of them that sought Him not; He called them a people that were not a people, and her beloved that was not: beloved. I know some think that the sinner takes the first step, but we know better. If he did, it were like the old Romish miracle of St. Dennis, where we are told that after his head was off, he picked it up and walked two thousand miles with it in his hand. Whereupon, some wit observed that he did not see any wonder in the man’s walking two thousand miles, for all the difficulty lay in the first step.~ Just so; I’see no dificulty im a mans getting all the way to heaven, if he can but take the first step, for all the miracle lies in that first step, the making the dead soul live, the melting of the adamantine heart, the thawing of the northern ice, the bringing down of the proud look; this is the work, this is the difficulty; and if man can do that himself, verily, he can do the whole. But when God looketh upon men to save them, it is not because they cry to Him, for they never do and never will cry until the work of salvation is begun.
It does not appear that the pity of the passer-by was shown upon this child because of any future service which was expected of it. This child, it seems, was nourished, clothed, luxuriously decorated; and yet, after all that, you will find it went astray from Him who had set His heart upon it. The Lord foresaw this, and yet loved that child notwithstanding. God knew that you and I, though He loved us when there was nothing good in us, after we were saved should still rebel. He knew that we had backsliding hearts. He knew that we should be unbelieving even to the end, but He loved us notwithstanding all. He did not love you because He foresaw you would bea preacher; nor you because He knew you would be a tract distributor; nor you because He knew that you would be an indefatigable Sunday-school teacher; He loved you although He knew that you would be ungrateful and unkind to Him; cold in your soul, worldly in your spirit.