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Introduction
The Preacher’s Preparation
What does it mean to serve God?
What drives us to serve God?
What is our motivation?
It seems that there is a perception in the world (and maybe even in the church) that there is great glamour and glory in serving the one True God in far off exotic lands.
Missionaries get to go and serve the Lord in the sun and the sand.
Pastor’s – preachers serve God as they work one day a week.
Being a full time servant of God means having a title and some even believe that it demands respect.
When you become a Christian – all your cares and worries pass away and you live a trouble less life of blessing and bliss!
What does God tell Ezekiel it means to serve God . . .
Read 2:1-10.
Ezekiel’s call in the two chapters before us shatter all possible false conceptions concerning what it is to serve the living and the true God.
What we have before us shakes our motivations and the reason why we serve God in the first place.
All this said, I do not deny that the one who seeks to serve God day by day, whether in full time service or just in everyday life, that there is no better life.
It is, in fact, the best life as we live in Christ lives that are truly blessed.
But it’s far from an easy life.
It is certainly not a comfortable life.
So we must ask the questions: What drives us to serve God?
What is it that motivates us to serve the true and the living God, to preach the Gospel, to come to worship and to fellowship and hopefully to contribute to the work of the body of Christ in throwing the Gospel light into a darkened world?
What is our motivation?
What is the reason that we serve God?
Is it to be a winner of hundreds and thousands of souls?
It is purely to have our name put down in the Christian history books as a great Bible teacher, as a passionate preacher, as a multitalented missionary?
Is it so we might be considered the best blogger or a terrific theologian?
Are we called into God’s service to bless God’s people?
Is to be appreciated by the sheep of God’s flock, to be loved by them because you feed them, tend them, look after them and care for them?
Whatever our service – our motives may be, if they are these things I have just mentioned they are questionable.
If our only motivation for service is to see souls saved.
It is questionable.
If my ministerial motivation is to be in the Lord’s work solely to bless God’s people and to feed the flock under my care, my motivation is questionable.
These things are not questionable in a bad sense – only in a misguided and maybe even a naïve sense for often we have false expectations as we seek to serve God.
It is these false expectations that lead to frustration and disillusionment for so many in Christian service.
How many of you here have been in the position where the cry of your heart is: ‘No one appreciates me!
I feel like I’m taken for granted!
People never say ‘Thank you’; people don’t realize in this church what I do in the background.
They don’t see it, they don’t appreciate it!’
I think, if we truly stepped back and looked at our hearts concerning this question of what motivates us to serve God, we would find that even in our service for Him there is selfishness and sinfulness.
We want something in return.
Ezekiel’s Call
I wonder if we had been called like Ezekiel was what our answer would be.
If you look at chapter 2 and chapter 3 of this book, and imagine God calling you in this way, and then imagine you going before the church session or a committee of presbytery - would you admit to them that God had called you, but God had also told you that no-one would be converted through your ministry?
That you were going to be a useless evangelist in terms of numbers and success?
The question we need to ask, as we come to a passage that portrays for us the call of God in a man's, or for that matter in a woman's, life - we must ask: what is the realistic expectation of what it is to serve God?
What are we in the service of God for?
How do we balance not expecting too much from ourselves with attempting great things for God, and expecting great things from God?
Is there a place in between where we can be satisfied that God is using us, and we have a holy discontent and thirst after God and holiness, yet at the same time we're not a obsessed with what some call a 'Messiah complex'?
In other words: we feel that we are God's chosen one, that we believe that 'God is going to use us to overthrow the world for Him'.
We need to ask two questions:
1) What are God’s Servants Called to Do?
2) What is the Goal of a Servant’s Service?
Our goals will be determined by what God has actually asked us to do!
If we don't realize what He has asked us to do, our goals will be beyond what we can possibly reach!
We need to realize what the truth is about service, and what the misconceptions are that make men and women become shattered and disillusioned in the service of God.
I believe, in this call of Ezekiel, we can learn a great deal about what it is for God to call you and I, as believers, into His work within the church of Jesus Christ.
I believe these two chapters teach that there is a balance concerning the results that we can expect.
Just in case we sit on our laurels, and say: 'As long as we sow the seed, that's alright', He also brings in at the end of these chapters a great responsibility upon the prophet to proclaim God's message.
Called to Serve
The first thing that we find is Ezekiel's calling.
Look at -
Ninety times or so in the book of Ezekiel you find this title 'Son of man'.
The other prophetic book in the Old Testament you find it in is the book of Daniel, and the only other place in the Bible you find it is in the New Testament - and that where the Lord Jesus Christ calls Himself the 'Son of man', and then later in the epistles the apostles call Him the 'Son of man' too.
It was the favorite title of the Lord Jesus Christ for Himself.
Around 86 times He speaks of Himself as the 'Son of man'.
There are a few things that are common to each of three individuals.
First is REJECTION.
They were rejected by their own people for preaching the message of God’s Kingdom.
The second thing is HUMILIATION.
Daniel was cast into the lion’s den.
As we go through the rest of Ezekiel we are going to find that he is subject of great humiliation for obeying the word of God.
Jesus, as the son of man, lived his entire live in a state of humiliation – being born, and that in a low condition, made under the law, undergoing the miseries of this life, the wrath of God, and the cursed death of the cross, in being buried and continuing under the power of death for a time (WCF SC Qu #27).
The term ‘son of man’ refers to humiliation, but it also refers to rejection.
The one called to serve God is called to a live of humiliation and rejection before exaltation.
God speaks to this prophet and priest, Ezekiel, of the cost that he will have to pay as the prophet of God.
What is he being called to?
He is being called to a life of humiliation.
Anyone called to serve God is called to live this way.
In verses 3 and 4 the Holy Spirit outlines for him what that humiliation will be:
'You are to be a prophet to a rebellious people.
That word 'rebellious' occurs frequently throughout this book - Israel is called a rebellious nation.
This is something unusual, because the word 'nation' - if you look at verse 3 and 4 - the word 'nation' is not the word that God usually uses for His chosen people.
In fact it is the word that He often uses for the Gentiles, and the Israelites used for the Gentiles.
In other words, the traditional language of election had been changed.
God is no longer calling them 'My people', and if you go into chapter 3:11 - He describes them as 'the sons of your people, Ezekiel.
They are your people'.
No more does He call them: 'My people, Israel'.
This is something unusual, because the word 'nation' - if you look at verse 3 and 4 - the word 'nation' is not the word that God usually uses for His chosen people.
In fact it is the word that He often uses for the Gentiles, and the Israelites used for the Gentiles.
In other words, the traditional language of election had been changed.
God is no longer calling them 'My people', and if you go into chapter 3:11 - He describes them as 'the sons of your people, Ezekiel.
They are your people'.
No more does He call them: 'My people, Israel'.
Look at 2:3, see here that He calls them there 'the sons of Israel'.
What He is pointing out to them is the hereditary nature of their rebellion: 'Your sons, and your son's sons, and your grandsons and your great grandsons - and as far as you can go back, Israel, the sons of Israel are a people of rebellion!’
You remember that Israel was Jacob - whose name was changed to 'Israel' and Jacob was that one who had the nature to wrestle with God, and God is saying: 'You're all like your father Jacob, you are wrestling with Me, you are rebelling against Me!'
Israel had sunk to a level of the heathen nations.
When Israel sinks to the level of pagan heathenism, and the Gentile world, God calls them by the name that describes their way of life.
They had sunk to an all-time low, and they were beginning to live just like the people that were all around them.
If you want to put it in our terms: the world was seen in the church, and the church had become like the world.
They were head strong children - it reminds me of the words of Jesus in Matthew chapter 11:16, 17 - ‘What shall I liken this generation to?
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