Ezekiel 35:5 - Homiletics

The end of iniquity.

I. INIQUITY MUST HAVE AN END . God will not permit it to run on forever unchecked and unpunished. The sinner has a long leash, but it is not interminable. God steps in at length and puts a stop to the awful succession of wicked deeds. Wicked cities and nations have had their end. So must it be with sinful lives.

II. THE NATURAL END OF INIQUITY IS DEATH . Sin is the great destroyer. It is a raging fire which will ultimately fade away into dull ashes by consuming all the fuel on which it feeds. The sinner is a suicide. His evil is a slow but sure poison, that eats out the very fiber of his soul. This awful fate does not come on with a sudden shock so that men can be roused by its approach. It is like a creeping paralysis, and its insidious advent is least readily recognized by the very persons in whose experience it is taking place.

III. INIQUITY MAY HAVE AN END IN REPENTANCE . There is an alternative. We are not bound to let the sin run through all its fatal course to the final silence and desolation. We must end the sin or it will end us; but the former may be done. The warnings of the fatal consequences of sin are set before us for the express purpose of urging us to cast off the deadly thing before it has completed its awful work.

IV. CHRIST HAS COME TO PUT AN END TO INIQUITY . He works in common with the fundamental moral law in regard to the ending of sin. No lawgiver could be more stern in the denunciation of sin than the gracious Savior. He gave it no quarter. From the first he declared himself its deadly enemy. He came "to destroy the works of the devil" ( 1 John 3:8 ). There is no shadow of excuse for the notion that we can find in Christ a shelter from the rigorous requirements of morality, so that we need not be so strictly righteous if we are Christians, as we should need to be it we were not. Christ expects a higher righteousness than that of the Law. ( Matthew 5:20 ) But when we perceive that our sin is our utter undoing, we are prepared to welcome Christ as cur Savior from this chiefly.

V. IT IS WELL TO CONSIDER THE END OF INIQUITY . It has not yet arrived. All is now calm and apparently prosperous. We may say that there is time enough to consider the evil day. But the end may come before we expect it. Its slow and gradual approach leads to our failing to perceive how near it may be. Then the nearer it is the more difficult is it for us to draw back. The descent becomes more steep as it approaches the precipice; the rapids grow swifter as they near the falls; the poison more effectually pervades the system as death comes on. The longer we postpone repentance, the harder it is to repent. But apart from such thoughts of warning, sin that leads to so awful an issue should be accounted hateful in itself. Its present vile character is revealed by its end. With such fruit the plant must be odious.