Ezekiel’s Commissioning and Ours

Ezekiel’s Commissioning and Ours

Ezekiel 2:1–3:27

Main Idea: God provides everything His messengers need to take His entire message to all the places and peoples to which He sends them.

We do not know many things about Titus, but one thing we do know is he was given a tough ministry assignment. Paul left Titus in Crete to set right what was left undone. He was among many rebellious people who were full of empty talk and deception and who were also liars, evil beasts, and lazy gluttons (Titus 1:5-12). Sounds delightful, doesn’t it? I wonder if he wished Timothy had been given the opportunity instead? Before we throw a pity party for Titus, we should realize that few of God’s messengers have been sent to receptive audiences. Isaiah, Jeremiah, and even Jesus preached God’s message to those who were looking but could not see and hearing but not understanding (Luke 8:10). Ask Stephen, Peter, and Paul about how much their audiences loved to hear God’s message, and they would have stories to tell you and scars to show you.

As the second chapter of Ezekiel opens, the prophet is going to be commissioned to take God’s Word to God’s rebellious people who are obstinate, hardheaded, and hardhearted. Ezekiel is not to be afraid though because God will provide both the message and the means to proclaim it. Ezekiel’s commissioning is not that different from ours (Matt 28:18-20). Like Ezekiel we’ve been called to take God’s Word with the promise that God will be with us. Unlike Ezekiel we’ve been called to take God’s Word to every nation and make as many disciples in as many places as possible.

As chapter 1 in Ezekiel came to a close, we were drawn in not by what Ezekiel saw but by what he heard. He told us he heard a voice speaking (1:28) and then, like our favorite TV drama, the words “to be continued” flashed across the page. We now get to find out what Ezekiel heard. It was a message that left him stunned for seven days and changed the rest of his life. Let’s turn to that message now.

As Ambassadors of God, We May Be Given a Difficult Ministry

Ezekiel 2:1-7; 3:4-7

Discipline alone does not always guarantee repentance. How do I know? After five years in exile, God’s people were still rebelling against Him. God told Ezekiel His people transgressed against Him “to this day.” The Israelites may have been burdened over their situation (Ps 137), but they were not yet broken over their sin. At this point we learn the vision given to Ezekiel is not just so he can have the greatest quiet time in the history of daily devotions. No, God has an assignment for him. If God’s people are to be convicted of their sin, then someone is going to have to communicate God’s word to them (Acts 2:37).

God’s solution for His people, who are hardheaded and hardhearted, is to send His messenger with His message through His means. God informs Ezekiel, “I am sending you to the Israelites, to the rebellious pagans who have rebelled against Me. . . . I am sending you to them, and you must say to them, ‘This is what the Lord God says’” (2:3-4). And again, God says, “Son of man, go to the house of Israel and speak My words to them. . . . You are not being sent to many peoples of unintelligible speech or difficult language, whose words you cannot understand” (3:4,6). The great news is Ezekiel is commissioned to take God’s word to just one nation—his own. The bad news: they do not want to hear it.

God didn’t paint a rosy picture for Ezekiel. He told the prophet his audience was a rebellious house and at times their words might cause him to be afraid and their looks would tempt him to be discouraged. Insert your best deacon joke here. In all seriousness, sticks and stones may break our bones, but apparently words cause our hearts to fear. What do you think those listening to the prophet would say that would tempt him to fear?

Ezekiel’s audience will not want to listen to him because ultimately they do not want to listen to God (3:7). In case Ezekiel is still not grasping the difficulty, God uses the word rebellious six times and throws in the word rebelled once for good measure. If God described us seven times with one word, what would that word be? How would He characterize our desire and receptivity for His Word?

Have you ever not wanted to go to someone and share what the Lord asked you to share with him or her? I’m sure Nathan was not overly excited about the message he was asked to deliver to King David (2 Sam 12). I know Ezekiel was not initially pumped about his ministry either, since he admitted having bitterness and an angry spirit (3:14). Who can blame him? In a seemingly ordinary day God showed up and gave him an unordinary task of taking His message to people that didn’t want to hear it. As God’s ambassador Ezekiel did not have authority to change his assignment or his audience. Neither do we. Ministry is difficult because people are difficult. The only hope for breaking people’s hardness of heart and head is the same as it was in Ezekiel’s day: God’s Word. Jesus’ ministry audience said awful things about Him, and as His ambassadors we should not expect anything less (Matt 10:25).

What is your ministry audience like? How much do your coworkers love to hear about Christ? What about your non-Christian family members at holidays? Are they asking you to share with them the message of Christ one more time? Don’t be discouraged. And don’t be afraid. Overcoming minds that are hostile (Col 1:21), futile (Eph 4:17), and darkened (Eph 4:18) is what God does every day and what He did for us. We were once a difficult audience ourselves, but His grace overcame all of the hardness of our hearts (Eph 4:18). Remember how He rescued you, and run to those outside of Christ with His words of life.

As Ambassadors of God, We May Be Given a Difficult Message

Ezekiel 2:8–3:3

Knowing that our audience does not want to hear what we are going to share with them may tempt us to change the message. But like Ezekiel we have no authority to change the message we’ve been given. Besides having a difficult ministry, Ezekiel was entrusted with a difficult message that included words of lamentation, mourning, and woe (2:10). Yay! That’ll draw a crowd. The prophet’s responsibility was to listen carefully to all of God’s words and take them to heart (3:10). He was then to say to the people, “This is what the Lord God says” (3:11).

Paul exhorted the church at Colossae to let God’s word dwell richly in them as they were teaching and admonishing one another in wisdom (Col 3:16). Internalization of the message would not be a problem for Ezekiel. God made sure His prophet consumed His word. He fed Ezekiel the scroll with lamentations, mourning, and woe written on it, but surprisingly it was sweet as honey (3:3). With this action, Thomas contends, “The Lord was teaching Ezekiel that to be really effective for God in our Christian lives, His Word has to become a part of us” (Thomas, God Strengthens, 38).

Let’s pause for a moment and ask: Is God’s Word flowing out of us into our daily conversations? When others ask what we think about a topic, do we bring God’s Word to bear on the situation or just our accumulated years of wisdom? Jesus told us, “The mouth speaks from the overflow of the heart” (Matt 12:34). What’s our plan for internalizing the Word? Are we intentionally hiding the Word in our heart? For God’s ambassadors Psalm 119:11 has to become more than just a Vacation Bible School verse. For each disciple he made, Dawson Trotman said,

We taught him how to fill the quiver of his heart with the arrows of God’s Word, so that the Spirit of God could lift an arrow from his heart and place it to the bow of his lips and pierce a heart for Christ. (“Born to Reproduce”)

The best way to ensure we are taking the right message to a lost world is to consume it like Ezekiel and find it to be just as sweet.1

God also wanted Ezekiel to know he was not responsible for the receipt of or reaction to the message but only the delivery of it. Whether they listen or refuse to listen, Ezekiel’s only task was to deliver God’s word so that the people would know that a prophet has been among them (2:5). The messenger’s job is to get the message to the ear of his audience, but only the Lord can get it to the heart (Acts 16:14).

Ezekiel would prove to be a faithful messenger. More than 50 times he would say, “The word of the Lord came to me,” and more than 122 times he would say, “This is what the Lord says.” No matter the audience, Ezekiel refused to change the message. God always knows what His people need to hear. Our task is not creativity but faithfulness when it comes to delivering His message.

In our day some want to change the gospel to make it more palatable. Not everyone likes the exclusivity of the gospel or the thought of an actual hell. Others are repulsed that Christ’s death could be considered voluntary, much less substitutionary. Even in Christian circles some have an aversion to singing of God’s wrath; people prefer to sing of His love (Stocker, “Wrath of God”). Like Ezekiel, however, we are to take all of God’s words to heart. In our commissioning Jesus told us we are to teach others to observe everything He has commanded us (Matt 28:20). We do not have the authority to alter the message. My prayer is always to be able to join Paul in saying, “I am innocent of everyone’s blood, for I did not shrink back from declaring to you the whole plan of God” (Acts 20:26-27).

If our confidence is anywhere besides the cross of Christ, we will be tempted to adjust the gospel message God has entrusted to us. If the approval of God we have received in Christ is not precious to us, then we may adjust the message seeking man’s approval. If the love of God that we have received in Christ is not first in our mind, then we may hold back some element of the gospel hoping our audience will like us. In altering or withholding parts of the gospel, we run the risk of changing the one life-saving message into a word of death. Paul has strong words for those who want to change the message (Gal 1:8-9). May the cross of Christ free us to speak the gospel boldly, clearly, faithfully, and without compromise.

As Ambassadors of God, We Will Be Given Divine Means

Ezekiel 3:8-15

A friend of mine once opined that 90 percent of a successful home improvement project is having the right tools. I’m a living asterisk to that folksy statistic. I often need more home improvement after I finish my projects. Graciously, God does not give His people tasks without giving the tools necessary to complete those tasks. The two greatest resources He gives are His Spirit and His Word.

Imagine for a moment that you are Ezekiel. You’ve just been asked to take a difficult message to a difficult group of people. Now imagine God closing His assignment by saying, “Good luck! Give it your best shot.” If left to his own power, Ezekiel would have had his own Mission Impossible. Fortunately, all that God expects from us, He provides for us.

God told Ezekiel, “I have made your face as hard as their faces and your forehead as hard as their foreheads. I have made your forehead like a diamond, harder than flint” (3:8). God would not send Ezekiel against difficult words and discouraging looks without supplying all he needed to fulfill the mission. His very name, Ezekiel, means, “God strengthens” (Taylor, Ezekiel, 68). As hardheaded as his audience would be in rejecting the message, Ezekiel would be even more determined in delivering it. Their obstinacy was at their own peril, but his was for their eternal good.

A picture of God’s empowering presence is seen in the opening description of chapter 2. Ezekiel testifies that as God spoke to him, “the Spirit entered me and set me on my feet, and I listened to the One who was speaking to me” (2:2). Without the Spirit’s help, Ezekiel could not even obey God’s command to stand in His presence.

One of my favorite parts of the movie Facing the Giants was when the coach challenged one of his players to carry another player on his back, all while being blindfolded. With the coach encouraging him, the young man bear-crawled the entire length of the football field. What God does for us with His Spirit, however, is not just stand on the side encouraging us, but He indwells and empowers us.

The Spirit is just as necessary in our own ministries as He was for Ezekiel. McLaughlin noted,

General semantics, cybernetics, field theory, group dynamics and all other communication theories and methods may be likened to the sails of a ship; all of the equipment stands useless without the motivating winds of the Holy Spirit. (McLaughlin, Communication, 194)

The delivery of God’s message is efficacious only if the Spirit attends it. In short, “everything depends on the Spirit”(Marcel, Preaching, 91).

Acts is full of examples of God’s messengers being filled with the Spirit for the purpose of proclamation (Acts 4:8,31; 6:10; 13:9-10). The apostle Paul confessed he labored in proclaiming Christ but “with His strength that works powerfully in me” (Col 1:28). Lloyd-Jones saw the Spirit’s anointing as

an access of power. It is God giving power, and enabling, through the Spirit, to the teacher in order that he may do this work in a manner that lifts it up beyond the efforts and endeavors of man to a position in which the teacher is being used by the Spirit and becomes the channel through whom the Spirit works. (Lloyd-Jones, Preaching, 305)

Our problem is not receiving the Spirit but relying on Him. Azurdia contends,

The greatest impediment to the advancement of the gospel in our time is the attempt of the church of Jesus Christ to do the work of God apart from the truth and the power of the Spirit of God. (Azurdia, Spirit Empowered Preaching, 29)

Twice God told Ezekiel, “Don’t be afraid” (2:6; 3:9). Realizing the magnitude of the task he’d been given would cause any heart to quiver. The Lord, however, would replace Ezekiel’s fearfulness with faithfulness. He would supply all Ezekiel needed to fear disobedience to God more than he feared discouragement or death from man. If you struggle in this regard, then I cannot commend highly enough Welch’s When People Are Big and God Is Small.

Like Ezekiel we’ve been given a difficult assignment. Our King has charged us to go to every nation and to make disciples. He wants us to teach them to obey everything He has commanded. We can know, however, that we will have every provision necessary because He has promised His presence (Matt 28:18-20). Our King does not wish us bon voyage and just wait to hear reports, but He goes with us every step of the way. David Livingstone found great hope in this promise (Kimbrough, Words, 121). May we as well. Is the Spirit’s empowering evident in what you are doing and saying?

As Ambassadors of God, What We Do Definitely Matters

Ezekiel 3:16-27

The Proclamation of the Message (3:16-21)

We are blessed in our city to have a great meteorologist. Last spring, days before a deadly storm system rolled through our area, Matt Laubhan warned our city to be vigilant and to make preparations for possible tornadoes. On the day of the storm, both Matt and the local tornado warning system sounded the alarm for us to seek refuge. Thanks to God’s protection and Matt’s pronouncements many lives in Tupelo were saved.

In his day Ezekiel was called to sound an alarm as well. The Lord said to him, “Son of man, I have made you a watchman over the house of Israel. When you hear a word from My mouth, give them a warning from Me” (33:7). Ezekiel would be held accountable for what he did with the word of the Lord.

The question for Ezekiel and us is not whether we are watchmen but whether we are good ones. Ezekiel was given the message, but it was up to him what he did with it. If he withheld the message, it meant certain peril for the people and their blood would be on his hands. If he proclaimed the message but they still failed to repent, then their blood would be on their own hands, but he would be saved.

What are we doing with the message we have been given? Do we see God as making His appeal through us (2 Cor 5:20)? Because we know those who do not seek refuge in Christ will be destroyed (Matt 7:13; Phil 3:19), why would we not warn everyone? No one will be held more accountable for the people who live in our cities during our generation than Christians. Who in your city still hasn’t heard that Christ has not only come once but is also coming again (Ps 96:13)? How many moms and dads will tuck their children in bed tonight across our globe but be unable to share with their little ones the hope of Christ because they’ve never heard of Him? We are not responsible for someone hearing the gospel and rejecting it, but we are responsible for making sure they hear it.

The Preparation of the Messenger (3:22-27)

As the third chapter of Ezekiel draws to a close, the prophet shares how God planned to prepare him for his assignment. Does anyone else find it strange that after Ezekiel has been assigned as the watchman for his people, he is then told he will be mute and bound in his home? In fact, his muteness would last almost seven and a half years (33:21-22). Why would God choose to use this method of preparation? So that Ezekiel’s peers would know he was not his own anymore, and when they saw him and heard him, it was because he had a message for them from God (Thomas, God Strengthens, 40).

I wonder if our friends would testify to our similarity with Ezekiel. When they see us, are we on mission for God? When they hear us, are we speaking for God? Probably not, but it’s not because God wants less of us than He required of Ezekiel. It’s because we do not fully grasp what it means to be Christ’s slave (Eph 6:6). We often live as if we are still our own rather than living for the One who died for us (2 Cor 5:15). I want to be more like Ezekiel. Whatever God needs me to say, wherever He needs me to go, and however He needs to prepare me, I am His.

As difficult as Ezekiel’s ministry and message may have been, no one has had a more difficult assignment than Christ. In reflecting on God’s preparation of Ezekiel and all that he endured, Duguid has said it best:

Our example in all of this is the self-sacrifice of Jesus Christ. Was Ezekiel confined to his house? Jesus was “despised and rejected by men, a man of sorrows, and familiar with suffering” (Isa 53:3). Was Ezekiel made dumb? Jesus was “led like a lamb to the slaughter, and as a sheep before her shearers is silent, so he did not open his mouth” (Isa 53:7). Was Ezekiel bound with ropes? Jesus was nailed to the cross and suffered there not for any transgressions of his own but for ours. The shackles of death designed for our wrists were placed on his. Thus has the greater “Son of Man” fulfilled the ministry of the earlier “son of man,” giving us the good news of the gospel, which is the antidote to the bad news of our natural state. What price, then, can be too great for us to play our part in the great work of the triune God, bringing to himself a harvest of men and women from every tribe, nation, and language group, that they too might receive eternal life in Christ Jesus? (Duguid, Ezekiel, 86)

Reflect and Discuss

1. Is there someone with whom God has asked you to share His Word but you are hesitating? What’s holding you back?
2. Is there anywhere you are hesitant to take the gospel in your city, state, or the world? Are there places you hope He sends someone else? Why?
3. Have you ever been tempted not to share with someone all that you believed God was asking you share with them?
4. Why are some people tempted to change the gospel? Why should we not change the message God has given us in Christ?
5. What’s your current plan for memorizing Scripture?
6. How would you feel if God gave us the Great Commission without giving us His Spirit and His Word?
7. When was a time you truly knew the Holy Spirit was empowering you to testify about Christ?
8. How often do you think about your role as a watchman for your city? How often are you sounding the alarm and calling for people to seek refuge in Christ?
9. In what ways are you challenged by Ezekiel’s willingness to do whatever God asked of him?
10. In what ways do you think people have difficulty seeing that you “completely” belong to Christ?