08 Sep 2024
The Watchman
Passage Ezekiel 2-3
Speaker Chris Haley
Meeting Morning
Series Ezekiel: Glimpsing His Glory
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Passage: Ezekiel 2-3
Transcript
Introduction
Okay, did you know that for many years Yorkshire was responsible for protecting the whole Western world from nuclear Armageddon? It's true. Up on the North York Moors between Whitby and Pickering, there's an RAF base called Fylingdales. It sort of looks a bit like a box now, but back in the day, it used to look like three giant golf balls, which we would have up on the screen just to sort of jog your memory. But for many years, they sort of stood there on the hill. Yep, if you didn't know, there were more golf balls than just the ones up the road at Menwith Hill.
And the base's primary purpose was to provide a warning should ballistic missiles be launched at the West. It would give a four-minute warning to the UK and pass the warning to the rest of the Western world. A system of sirens was set up across the UK, and when the warning went out, the sirens would sound, and people would be warned. You could go and find shelter in the minutes that remained. The golf balls then stood as watchmen, guardians of the skies in the event of a nuclear attack. Their warning was an essential part of the West's defence. Lives depended on their message of impending danger.
And then, in our passage this morning, Ezekiel is told that he must act as a watchman for the people. That's what we find out in chapter 3, verse 17: "Son of man, I have made you a watchman for the house of Israel." He must speak out a warning to the people of God of the impending judgment. Now that was Ezekiel. That was what he was to do, but I warn you, the implications go far beyond the book of Ezekiel. If we know God's judgment is coming, then we all bear the responsibility of warning others.
Famous Baptist preacher C.H. Spurgeon put it this way: when the camp is in imminent danger, every man should turn watchman. Every man should turn watchman. So it can be easy to detach ourselves from Ezekiel, but in the end, despite all the big visions that we saw last week, he is a believer. He's a believer who hears God's word and then must speak it, and in that sense, we're no different, are we, from Ezekiel? So let's listen in as God speaks to Ezekiel and see what he has to say to us today.
So our first point today—so these are quite long headings—the first point is: our job as Christians is to digest and speak God's word.
Our job as Christians is to digest and speak God's word.
Ezekiel is given a two-fold task here. He's to take in, and he's to give out. The taking in is sort of put in the middle section, and that normally highlights its importance in Hebrew writings. So we're going to look at that one first. So firstly, he is to take in. He's told to eat a scroll.
Now you might have heard the expression, you know, "I'll make you eat your words" or "I'll eat my words if" etc. But this is meant pretty differently to that. He's given a scroll by a hand—probably the hand of one of those angelic beings that we saw last week, because they mentioned that they had human hands that would then fit with being handed it with a hand. And the scroll is written on front and back. They're not a Friends reference there if you're into Friends, but it's supposed to be full. That's the idea, with words of lamentation and mourning and woe.
In other words, this is going to be a tough message until chapter 33, but we'll deal with that next year. It's quite a long book. This is not the sort of section of Ezekiel that you get printed on calendars and, you know, you write in cards. I don't think I've ever seen one of those quotes on one of those inspirational calendars from the early chapters of Ezekiel. It's a hard message that he must inwardly digest. He's got to do that first before bringing it to the people. The words need to go into him before they go out to others. He needs to absorb them, which he does—he eats the scroll.
Now some commentators see some reluctance on his part. He's literally told "fill your belly," as though there's a lot to eat—like I said, there are a lot of chapters in Ezekiel. But you'd expect that you'd find this scroll bitter and unpleasant with those words in him, wouldn't you? But instead, he finds it sweet, sweet as honey. It may be a hard message, but it's still God's word. Psalm 119, verse 103: "How sweet are your words to my taste, sweeter than honey to my mouth." There can be sweetness, can't there, even in the words of sadness, of mourning, and lamentation?
When this incident is repeated in Revelation—as quite a few of the things in Ezekiel are—John is told to take and eat a scroll before he prophesies again, and it has a similar effect with an extra detail. It says this in Revelation 10: "And I took the little scroll from the hand of the angel and ate it. It was sweet as honey in my mouth, but when I had eaten it, my stomach was made bitter. And I was told, 'You must again prophesy about many people's nations and languages and kings.'" Do you see there? There's a sweetness to it, but there's a bitterness deep down too—not bitterness of attitude, but bitterness of taste.
It's a sad task for Ezekiel. Even though he is speaking God's word, a lot of what he must share saddens him. And that's true with God's word in general, isn't it? There's a sweetness to it, but there are parts of that message that bruise deep down, affect us in an unpleasant way. Let me put it this way: it's not always a comfortable experience to read God's word, to dwell on it. It gets at us in the guts, doesn't it, sometimes, and it should do. If we leave Ezekiel by the end of the book unmoved, unaffected, then we've not understood Ezekiel. It's supposed to affect us.
So the prophet is to digest God's word, and so are we. Are we taking time to digest God's word, to absorb it, to think it through? If you hear this morning and you don't know God's word, have you believed it first? Because before you can take it out there, you have to have it in here first. Do you know the truth of the gospel—all of it, the good parts and the harder parts? Because you need that before you can take it out to other people.
And that's what he's got to do. He's got to speak it, to give out. That's the second thing he is to do. That's what most of the rest of chapter 2 and chapter 3 are about. The Spirit enables him to stand up after he's fallen on his face—that was what happened at the end of last week. He's given supernatural strength to stand, to be commissioned by God. He is to be to the people as though God is speaking to them. He's to take God's word to them: "Thus says the Lord." Verse 4 is what he is to speak. So he's not to speak his own words, but God's words to them. Have a look again at verses 10 and 11 of chapter 3: "Moreover, he said to me, 'Son of man, all my words that I shall speak to you, receive in your heart and hear with your ears. And go to the exiles, to your people, and speak to them and say to them, "Thus says the Lord God," whether they hear or refuse to hear.'"
He is to speak to them whatever the outcome, whether they listen or not. And that brings us to our second point. So we're to digest God's word and speak it, but then secondly, we're not responsible for the outcome of speaking God's word.
We're not Responsible for the Outcome of Speaking God's Word
Again and again in our passage, there's the refrain: chapter 2, verse 5, "And whether they hear or refuse to hear"; verse 7, "You shall speak my words to them, whether they hear or refuse to hear"; chapter 3, verse 11, "Go to the exiles, to your people, and speak to them and say, 'Thus says the Lord,' whether they hear or refuse to hear"; verse 27, "He who will hear, let him hear, and he who will refuse to hear, let him refuse." That's his job.
And the Lord goes as far as telling Ezekiel in chapter 2, verse 7, to the house of Israel that "the house of Israel will not be willing to listen to you, for they are not willing to listen to me, because all the house of Israel have a hard forehead and a stubborn heart." So Ezekiel is to speak to them. He's going to warn them. He's going to preach to them. But the people won't listen. In fact, they're going to speak out against him in chapter 2, verse 6. Their words are going to hurt him like thorns and briars, like scorpions. They're going to look at him with looks of disgust and anger, again and again.
We're told that the people that he's speaking to are a rebellious people. You might have noticed that in the reading—over and over again, "a nation of rebels who have rebelled." That word, in one form or another, is used 10 times in this passage. In the Hebrew, two slightly different words are used. One's more the action of rebellion, revolt against a ruler, but the more common one there has to do with a bitter attitude of rebellion—something deep down that is unpleasant and unruly, an attitude that hates authority, legitimate or not. And this is the group of people that Ezekiel is called to.
So it's not going to be a pleasant time for the prophet. His ministry, it would appear, will seem mostly fruitless. But God tells him he is to speak God's word nonetheless. Why? Because he's not responsible for the outcome of his message. He's to do this whether they take it to heart or not. I mean, think about it. This is what we see all the way through Scripture, isn't it? Jesus was the greatest preacher ever. He had the greatest message ever. No issue at all with what he said. And yet, most people in Jesus' day ignored him. When he died, his followers numbered only about 120 after three years. In earthly terms, that was not a great success.
You could imagine if he were today and, you know, a PR agency comes up to him and says, "Jesus, people just don't want what you're preaching. They don't want to hear about repentance. They don't want to hear about things like gouging your eyes out to avoid sin. You need to make your message more accessible, palatable, easier. Instead of calling the Pharisees a brood of snakes, how about trying to be nice to them, get them on your side?" Can you imagine that, couldn't you? And that's the danger, isn't it?
You see books on Amazon: "Preaching That Gets Results," "Ministry That Multiplies in Four Easy Steps." And it's tempting, isn't it, to just go with what works, what seems to gather a crowd? I remember years ago reading a book by a guy called Mark Driscoll in America. And he's writing about how he tried to get his ministry off the ground. And he wrote this as a quote: "I figured out how to do church successfully by reading lots of books, visiting lots of churches, and copying whatever was working." Now think about it. You might copy good stuff. You might copy bad stuff. But what's the approach? Well, it's all about results. The question isn't "What is right and biblical?" The question is "Does it produce results? Is it working?"
But the Bible knows nothing about that kind of unprincipled pragmatism. In 2 Corinthians 4, verses 1 and 2: "Therefore, having this ministry by the mercy of God, we do not lose heart. But we have renounced disgraceful, underhanded ways. We refuse to practice cunning or to tamper with God's word, but by the open statement of the truth we would commend ourselves to everyone's conscience in the sight of God." It's not about what works or might work. It's what's right that matters.
That said, I don't want to push this too far. There is such a thing as biblically driven pragmatism. So in 1 Corinthians 9, Paul talks about his ministry: "For though I am free from all, I have made myself a servant to all, that I might win more of them. To the Jews I became as a Jew, in order to win Jews. To those under the law I became as one under the law, that I might win those under the law. To those outside the law I became as one outside the law, that I might win those outside the law. To the weak I became weak, that I might win the weak. I have become all things to all people, that by all means I might save some. I do it for the sake of the gospel, that I might share with them in its blessings."
Paul is willing to change his style. He changes the way he preaches to different groups of people. There's a reason that he preaches in marketplaces and synagogues and larger towns in an area. But the reason is not results. It's opportunity. It's strategy to see the most people hear the gospel and be given the chance to respond. Strategy is not wrong. All things being equal, if you can preach to a full room versus an empty one, you preach to the full room. There are more effective ways of impacting people with the gospel and less effective ones, and they will vary from culture to culture, from time to time.
But we need to make sure that that's the reason we're doing those things—doing it one way and not the other—that it's not due to fear or a lack of confidence in God's power to act. There's a danger, isn't there, that we pick the less direct approaches to evangelism not because they're more effective, but because they're easier? Speaking to my own heart here as well. It's a conversation we all need to have with ourselves.
The Lord clearly knows that fear might be a factor here. He mentions it several times in verses 4 to 11: "Don't fear their looks. Don't fear their words. I'll give you a skin as thick as granite"—probably a dynamic translation of verse 9 where it talks about foreheads and things like that. "If you think they're tough," he's saying, "I'll make you tougher." Now this might just be a promise to the prophet Ezekiel, but God does tell us elsewhere in Scripture that he's given us a spirit not of fear, but of power and of love and of self-control. So I think we can pray for thicker skin—as long as it doesn't mean harder hearts. We don't want to be unfeeling, but we do want to be unwavering, don't we?
But Ezekiel and we are to speak whether we get results or not. That's his commissioning, and with his commissioning over, he's lifted up. He's carried away by the Spirit. He hears the noise of the living creatures behind him, their voices raised, bringing glory to God. He's deposited in Tel Abib—probably a small settlement near the canal where the vision started. Like other prophets, like Daniel, he's overwhelmed for several days before he can finally return to some normality.
But before he can, God speaks to him again a final time. He has more to tell him of what speaking God's word will involve. And so our last point: we're not responsible for the outcome of speaking God's word, but we are responsible for speaking God's word.
We're not Responsible for the Outcome of speaking God's Word, but we are Responsible for Speaking God's Word
Have a look at verses 16 to 20, or I'll just read you a few verses from verse 16: "At the end of seven days, the word of the Lord came to me: 'Son of man, I have made you a watchman for the house of Israel. Whenever you hear a word from my mouth, you shall give them warning from me. If I say to the wicked, "You shall surely die," and you give him no warning, nor speak to warn the wicked from his wicked way, in order to save his life, that wicked person shall die for his iniquity, but his blood I will require at your hand. But if you warn the wicked, and he does not turn from his wickedness, or from his wicked way, he shall die for his iniquity, but you will have delivered your soul.'"
The famous evangelist D.L. Moody was once challenged at one of his rallies by a woman who told him that she did not like the way he did evangelism. He replied, "I agree with you. Sometimes I don't like the way I do it either. Tell me, how do you do it?" The woman replied, "I don't do it." So he replied, "Then I like my way of doing it rather than the way that you don't." There's a lot of truth to that, isn't there?
Ezekiel is to be a speaker of God's word to the people, and God will hold him accountable if he does not speak. God uses the image of a watchman—one who would stand on a tower and look out on an approaching enemy. It was his job to warn the town or village or city of impending danger—an army, a group of bandits, a stampede. And his was a crucial role for the survival of the place. If he didn't sound the warning, the whole town or city could be destroyed.
And that's your job, says the Lord. "I'm coming in judgment," he says, "on the wicked and the backslider. And Ezekiel, it's your job to warn them that I'm coming. Warn the wicked, and if they turn to me in repentance, I'll forgive them. They'll be saved. If they don't turn, then they will perish. But if you don't warn them, you'll be partly responsible for their loss. 'His blood I will require at your hand.' Also, warn the righteous who stumble. If they turn to me in repentance, I'll forgive them. If they refuse to turn back to me, they will perish in their way. But again, Ezekiel, if you don't warn them, 'their blood I will require at your hand.' You've been a part in their fall."
Now that is very, very sobering stuff, isn't it? This is not hard to understand, like last week with all the visions, but the application is tough, isn't it? It's hard. We can see where this is going. If Ezekiel doesn't speak, he'll be held responsible for his silence. Now the passage is clear: the wicked will perish for their own actions, their own wickedness, their own sin. But Ezekiel is also responsible for his actions—whether he speaks the warning or not. If you like, Ezekiel is not responsible for the ears of the wicked, whether they listen or not, but he is responsible for his own mouth, whether he speaks or not.
And we today, we might not be responsible for the outcome of speaking the word, but we are responsible for teaching the word, both in church and outside of it. We're not hyper-Calvinists who hold that we bear no responsibility for our actions. We're told in Scripture that we will give an account for how we have lived as believers, including our ministry inside and outside the church. Paul, writing to believers, writes in Romans 14, verse 12: "So then each of us will give an account of himself to God." The writer to the Hebrews writes in Hebrews 13:17: "Obey your leaders and submit to them, for they are keeping watch over your souls, as those who will have to give an account."
Now I don't think on Judgment Day there'll be a sort of separate queue for pastors—you know, they'll have to give an account, but everyone else won't. No, all of us will give an account. Leaders are just also partly responsible for those under them. 1 Corinthians 3 really spells this out powerfully in verses 10 to 15. This is Paul writing again to believers: "According to the grace of God given to me, like a skilled master builder I laid a foundation, and someone else is building upon it. Let each one take care how he builds upon it. For no one can lay a foundation other than that which is laid, which is Jesus Christ. Now if anyone builds on the foundation with gold, silver, precious stones, wood, hay, straw—each one's work will become manifest, for the Day will disclose it, because it will be revealed by fire, and the fire will test what sort of work each one has done. If the work that anyone has built on the foundation survives, he will receive a reward. If anyone's work is burned up, he will suffer loss, though he himself will be saved, but only as through fire."
Now I don't claim to fully understand what the reward is here or the loss that it speaks about, and it would take a long digression to get into that. But it comes down to this: we can duck our responsibilities under the guise of a high view of God's sovereignty, but you wouldn't use God's sovereignty to justify inaction in any other sphere of life, would you? You wouldn't stand by a river while someone was drowning and say, "It's okay. God has foreordained who will survive and who won't in this river. If they're supposed to be saved, God will send somebody else to save them, so I don't need to jump in the river." Now, do you know what? In one sense, the theology of that is correct. But what foolish nonsense about it is the heartless application. Do not think that attitude will be commended. It will be condemned.
Mordecai, trying to convince Esther to speak to the king in favour of the Jews, says this in Esther 4:14: "For if you keep silent at this time, relief and deliverance for the Jews will rise from another place, but you and your father's house will perish." Now if you think I'm veering away from a high view of God's sovereignty here, telling us that we need to speak, this is John Calvin on this passage, okay: "God holds nothing more precious than the souls he created in his own image and of which he is both the redeemer and the father. Seeing these souls are so dear and so precious to God and their salvation the same, from there we can gather the concern and diligence those who speak God's words should follow in their duties. Now we see that the negligence in prophets and pastors is close to treachery. They allow poor souls to be lost because they close their mouths and don't say a word."
Sure, God is sovereign. No one will be lost who shouldn't be. John 6:37: "All that the Father gives me will come to me, and whoever comes to me I will never cast out." But that doesn't mean remaining silent is an option for the Christian. The sovereignty of God is a comfort in this—knowing that God will save his people—but it's supposed to be the comfort of a safety net as we boldly step out in faith. It was never supposed to be the comfort of a blanket or a sofa as we lay back and slumber. We cannot hide behind the sovereign will of God when his revealed will says that we should speak. That would be like Judas saying he was only doing God's will by betraying Jesus. No, he's responsible for his own actions.
One of the distinctives of our church is that we believe in God's sovereignty in all things, but not in a way that negates human responsibility. Whether we're a prophet or a pastor or whether we don't hold an office at all, we are all responsible to share the gospel in our own contexts. Though saying that, he makes it a bit harder for Ezekiel—it starts to get back into some of the strange sections. In the last part, he’s struck dumb, unable to speak. His mouth will not be reopened until after the fall of the temple in chapter 33. All he will be able to say in between is what God directs him to say. All his speech will be the word of the Lord.
That means, in verse 26, that he’ll be unable to reprove them. More likely, the phrase means that he'll be unable to speak to God for them. God's not going to allow Ezekiel to do a Moses or an Abraham and plead for the people that God is bringing under judgment. No, the die is cast. The people will be judged, and God will not turn back this time. And Ezekiel, therefore, must warn them as a watchman warns a city.
And the same is true for us. This time, Jesus will return—not as a suffering saviour, but as judge. There is no turning back from that day. It is coming. And in the meanwhile, we must warn people. We must answer the call. We must go forth and tell. We must serve as watchmen, like the golf balls on the North York Moors.
Let me give Spurgeon the last word on this. This is what he preached to his church on this passage, way back in 1878: "We feel glad to think that Christ’s battles are not such as require strength of muscle and bone, nor do they need great mental capacity. Even the appointed watchman is set only to warn the people. He has not to charm them with eloquence, nor to electrify them with novelties of oratory. He is simply to warn them, and the plainest language may suffice for that. You may never deliver sensational discourses, but you can give men warning from God. You can warn children. You can warn your neighbours. You can warn all who come your way. For that is simply to tell of the danger and to recommend the way of escape. Brethren, with slender knowledge and stammering utterance, we can warn them. And we will warn them."
Let's pray:
Father God, help us to be watchmen. Help us to be those who warn all that we can of the impending judgment that is coming. Father, it’s not a pleasant message, as we were hearing. It’s not a nice message, but Father, we do have the sweetest words. We do know that Jesus has the words of eternal life. So Father, let’s not only point them to the danger, but also point them to the escape. Father, help us to speak wisely in the context that you’ve put us in, but help us to be bold and not have an attitude of fear, but of power and love and self-discipline. We ask it in Jesus’ name. Amen.
Father God, help us to be watchmen. Help us to be those who warn all that we can of the impending judgment that is coming. Father, it’s not a pleasant message, as we were hearing. It’s not a nice message, but Father, we do have the sweetest words. We do know that Jesus has the words of eternal life. So Father, let’s not only point them to the danger, but also point them to the escape. Father, help us to speak wisely in the context that you’ve put us in, but help us to be bold and not have an attitude of fear, but of power and love and self-discipline. We ask it in Jesus’ name. Amen.