Ezekiel’s Commissioning and Ours

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