Sermon Tone Analysis

This passage is about Ezekiel’s commissioning to serve as one of Israel’s great prophets.

What this has to do with us is not that hard to see, for we have received a similar commission.

We are called to be God’s prophets, too.

In case you think that is a bit of a stretch, consider that Moses longed for the day when God would put his Spirit in his people and make all of them his prophets (Num 11:29) and that the apostles said this is precisely what God did at Pentecost, in fulfillment of the prophecy of Joel (Acts 2:17).

Paul urges all Christians to “pursue love and to earnestly desire” manifestations of the Spirit, especially so that we might prophesy (1 Cor 14:1).

Whatever you may think of the charismatic, it is clear that, in some sense, we are all to function as prophets of God, just like Ezekiel.

So, what does it mean to be a prophet today, and how do we fulfill that responsibility?

Let’s consider this question as we study Ezekiel’s prophetic role, commission, and protection.

The Prophet’s Role

First, what is the role of a prophet?

The inaugural vision in chapter 1, where Ezekiel tells of his close encounter with God, left him flat on his face (1:28).

What happens next is a voice speaks to him, and gives him a commission.

Ezekiel is to go to his people and say, “Thus says the Lord GOD” (Ezek 2:4).

The priest has been turned into a prophet.

What purpose does a prophet serve?

Speaking for God

A prophet is simply a person who speaks for God.

That is prophet’s role.

But there are true and false prophets.

A true prophet is one who speaks rightly for God, who speaks the words that God has given him or her to speak.[1]Now, that seems obvious, but this is a critical point, because lots of people claim to speak on God’s behalf.

In fact, you most likely have made that claim, as has virtually everyone else in the world.

You see, God’s concern is for the world he has made, and you can’t help but share in that concern.

So the different claims about how the world should be—the claim that this or that is right, that something ought to be obligatory and binding—claims like this are not just differences of opinion.

They are prophetic claims.

Every president or prime minister acts like a prophet.

Every employer speaks like a prophet, as do their employees who think they know better how things should go around the office.

Every teacher and parent speaks like a prophet, as does every preacher and every politician.

In Ezekiel 13, God condemns “those who prophesy from their own hearts,” those who “follow their own spirit,” those who have had a “false vision and uttered a lying divination” by saying, “Declares the LORD” when God did not actually say anything (Ezek 13:1-7).

False prophets, beware!

But also notice, Christian that you can’t opt out of the prophetic role we’ve all been given.

We’ve been entrusted with God’s word, and we are false prophets if we don’t speak it just as much as if we speak it wrongly.

The Prophetic Goal

The task of a prophet is a tough task, but it is an essential one.

God intends to speak through his prophets.

In accordance with his plan all throughout the Bible, God intends to work through his people to achieve his purpose.

Consider some of the purposes God wanted to achieve by sending Ezekiel as a prophet.

Prosecuting Crime

In verse 3, God says he is sending Ezekiel “to the people of Israel,” whom he also calls “nations of rebels.”

It’s a loaded accusation.

The word nation is “goyim,” the word usually reserved for the Gentiles, the pagans.

When it is used in reference to Israel, it indicates that they have become indistinguishable from the rest of the nations.[2]

And Ezekiel’s goal as a prophet is to prosecute the people of Israel for becoming like the nations around them.

They are, like the rest of the goyim, rebels.

They have rebelled against God, he accuses here in verse 3 as well as in verses 7-8 and in 3:9.

This word, rebellion, is not primarily a religious term.

It’s the word used for a political revolt, like when Jehoiakim rebelled against Nebuchadnezzar (2 Kings 24:1).[3]Israel’s

rebellion against their God is not like they’ve been caught speeding and deserve a ticket.

It’s more like they’ve been caught committing treason against God and his kingdom.

Urging Repentance

And that’s why Israel’s consequences are geopolitical: the people are removed from their homeland and go into exile, the monarchy collapses.

Soon enough the capital city will be destroyed, and the temple burned down.

And this has global ramifications because, as one commentator puts it, “The chosen nation has become, appropriate to their own action, unchosen.”[4]

The whole point of God choosing Israel was to bring the light of his love and justice into the world.

Failing to do that, God has sent his prophet not only to prosecute them for their crimes but also to represent hope should the chosen people repent of those crimes.

Verse 5 indicates this hope, however slight it may be, when God says, “whether they hear or refuse to hear.”

True worship of the true God will produce a people who walk in his ways and act justly in his world.

Should Israel “hear” the prophet, they would not only repent of their idolatrous worship but also of their unjust ways.

Israel’s crime was not just religious, an act of doctrinal defiance in their worship of Baal or some other pagan deity.

Because of their idolatrous worship (Ezek 6), Israel had also begun to demonstrate unjust ways (Ezek 7), just like the nations around them, colluding with evil and bringing more injustice and inequity into the world.

The chosen people could not separate worship from practice; the two are inseparably joined together.

This is something that the secular world tries to deny, as if right behavior can come from the human heart without the heart being transformed.

But this is also something that many of us religious folk get wrong as well.

We think that if we just have our doctrine right then practice won’t matter all that much.

But the prophets won’t let us get away with it.

Representing Love

Now, in Ezekiel’s case, God made it plain how the people would respond to his call for repentance.

Look at Ezekiel 3:7.

“The house of Israel will not be willing to listen to you, for they are not willing to listen to me.”

But Ezekiel’s work will not be in vain, for God said in Ezekiel 2:5 that even if the people refuse to repent, "they will know that a prophet has been among them."

Now, this is worth our reflection.

We can see the value of people knowing a prophet, a true prophet, has been among them if they listen to him and change their idolatrous worship and unjust ways.

But what is the value if they don’t?

What good is it for people to say, “I know you are speaking on behalf of God, I even know what you are saying is true, but don’t think for a moment I’m going to do what you say”?

Why does God care about his prophets being recognized if they aren’t heeded?

It’s not so that, when the judgment comes, God can gloat by saying, “See, I told you so.” It’s so that, even though judgment comes, God can say, “See, I have loved you so.

You abandoned me, but not once did I abandon you.

You have been unfaithful, but I have not been.

And I’m still here.”

The only time the word prophet occurs in the psalms (other than in the inscription to Psalm 51) is in Psalm 74 where the psalmist laments the fall of Jerusalem like this, “We do not see our signs; there is no longer any prophet, and there is none among us who knows how long.”

Ezekiel’s presence as a prophet to the exiles would prove to the people who deserved every bit of what they were experiencing that God had not moved.

He was still the same faithful lover of his own that he had always been.

In the same way, our prophetic role as Christians is to speak on behalf of God in such a way that we both convict the world for their sin but also represent to the world that God loves the world and that this God of love is still here.

The Prophet’s Commission

Christian, if you and I are going to represent God to the world, we must always remember we’ve been sent to represent God’s love, his faithful, steadfast love, to the world.

How can we carry out this role?

Let’s consider next the prophet’s commission, beginning in Ezekiel 2:8.

Consumed with the Message

Here we find that Ezekiel is told to eat a scroll before he is commissioned to go and speak to the house of Israel.

This is one of those bizarre moments in Ezekiel; it’s hard to tell what is happening.

If Ezekiel’s encounter was objective, like Moses’s encounter with God at the burning bush, does he literally eat a scroll?

Whatever happened, it is clear this moment had a profound effect on Ezekiel.

It seems to be the experience that catapulted him into his prophetic task.[5]And the meaning of this moment is, I think, equally clear.

Ezekiel’s commissioning begins with his receiving the message he is sent to proclaim.

It is this message that will control and consume him, as God designed for it to do.

“Son of man,” he says in 3:3, “feed your belly with this scroll that I give you and fill your stomach with it.”

Ezekiel is to be consumed and controlled by the message God gave him, just like the prophet Jeremiah who wrote of eating God’s words and finding them to be “a joy and the delight of my heart” (Jer 15:16).

The Bitter-Sweet Message

Ezekiel describes the experience of receiving God’s message similarly.

In 3:3 he says, “Then I ate it, and it was in my mouth as sweet as honey.”

The message of God that his prophets are called to proclaim, his very words, are, as the psalmist writes in Psalm 19, “perfect” and “sure” (v.