Human Progress a Preparation for the Fuller Knowledge of God
J. S. Lidgett, M. A. Ezekiel 2:1-2 And he said to me, Son of man, stand on your feet, and I will speak to you.… I. THE WILL OF GOD IS THE UPLIFTING OF MAN. Ezekiel thought that he honoured God by falling prostrate on the ground. Be learnt that God was rather honoured by his standing on his feet. Salvation is the uplifting of man. It must be so because God is love. His aim is to lift the objects of His love into free fellowship with Himself. His glory and their exaltation are one. And the liker to Himself they are, the greater His joy. And this is true with reference to all man's powers. To stand upright is the outward sign of self-possession and of power in full development and exercise — first of all, the highest powers of faith and aspiration and conscience, but then all the powers which go together to make the man. Every human faculty has its place in the kingdom of God, and is sought out by the redemption of Christ Jesus. II. THE TEXT MAKES THIS UPLIFTING NOT ONLY COMPATIBLE WITH, BUT NECESSARY TO, THE RECEPTION OF DIVINE TRUTH. "Stand upon thy feet, and I will speak unto thee." Character can only be understood by corresponding character. If the lesser is to have fellowship with the greater, it must always be because the lesser grows until an answering faculty apprehends the greater. Take away the faculty in the receiver, and you destroy the power of the revealer to reveal himself. If the musician is to utter his soul, his instrument must sufficiently combine melodiousness, harmony, and delicacy to express his conception and to call forth all his skill. Had Mendelssohn known only the tom-tom of an African savage, we could never have had the Elijah and the Songs without Words. So we could never have had the dialogues of Plato had the philosopher had in view no audience more intellectual than a Sunday school class. And this is no mere human limitation. God can only reveal Himself to man and in man as human nature becomes lofty and deep and broad enough to apprehend and to express His mind. Further, each new power developed in man is a new point of contact with God. The world is so full of God that it is impossible to establish any new connection with it without its becoming a way of approach to some part of the mind of God, which is waiting to be revealed, when the means of receiving it are found. III. WE HAVE IN THE TEXT A SPECIAL MESSAGE FROM GOD TO THE MEN OF OUR TIMES. From every side the call is being heard — "Stand upon thy feet." Orders have been called to political and economical influence, which never exerted it before. Men are pressing forward to claim their share in the higher life of science, literature, and art, who but a generation ago were not sufficiently awakened even mournfully to say, "Such joys are not for us." What is the true prophet to say to this many-sided movement? Is he to ban it as secular and worldly? Nay, rather, he must proclaim that so long as moral earnestness is behind it, it is the inspiration of God bidding men stand upon their feet, that He may speak to them. (J. S. Lidgett, M. A.) Parallel Verses KJV: And he said unto me, Son of man, stand upon thy feet, and I will speak unto thee. WEB: He said to me, Son of man, stand on your feet, and I will speak with you.