Focused Effort

God Strengthens You To Speak For Him

9.18.22 [Ezekiel 2:9-3:11] River of Life (15th Sunday after Pentecost)

(1 Pt. 1:2,5) Grace and peace are yours in abundance because God shielded and strengthened you through his powerful Word. Amen.

Help Wanted: A Watchman. Duties include being deported from your homeland. Your work will consume you. At times it will leave you unable to (Ezekiel 3:22-27) speak or (even move. Arts and crafts skills are a plus. (Ezekiel 4:15) You will bake your own bread over cow pies. (Ezekiel 5:21-17) You must be willing to shave your beard and head as an object lesson. You will be appointed to prophesy against inanimate objects like (Ezekiel 6:2) mountains, (Ezekiel 20:45ff) forests, and (Ezekiel 37:1-14) to dry bones. You will be commanded to preach against (Ezekiel 27:1ff) powerful foreign nations and (Ezekiel 3:5) personal friends and acquaintances. (Ezekiel 24:15-25) When your wife dies, you will not be allowed to mourn her death publicly. (Ezekiel 1:1ff) Onboarding will include a front row seat for the mind-blowing and terrifying visions of the glory of God (Ezekiel 3:1-3) and eating a papyrus scroll.

Can you imagine reading a job posting like that? Who would want that gig? If someone said to you: I think you’d be perfect for this, you probably wouldn’t even be polite about it. No, Thanks for thinking of me but, no thanks. It would be more like: What are you thinking?!? No way, I’m doing that! Nobody would want to be Ezekiel.

But that, and more, is what the Sovereign Lord called Ezekiel to be and do. And I do mean be and do. Ezekiel, more than any other prophet, embodied his message. He lived the Lord’s Word.

When the Sovereign Lord wanted to let his people know what was happening in Jerusalem, he would often have Ezekiel act it out in dramatic and demanding ways like we see in today’s reading. The Sovereign Lord said to Ezekiel (Ezekiel 3:1) eat this scroll and go and speak my words to the people of Israel. That kind of command is baffling & bizarre to us. But when you look at what else the Sovereign Lord commanded Ezekiel to say & do, this was small potatoes. Ezekiel 4:4-8) To demonstrate how God’s judgement would fall upon Jerusalem, Ezekiel built a diorama of Jerusalem with siege works, ramps, camps, and battering rams. Then he laid on his left side for 390 days, one day for each year that Israel had been unfaithful to the Lord. After that, for forty days Ezekiel laid on his right, tied up with ropes for Judah’s sins.

Ezekiel work as the Lord’s prophet would be physically demanding. But, as we see in our text today, that was only half the challenge. Being the Sovereign Lord’s spokesperson would be mentally, emotionally, and relationally demanding and draining, too.

Look at what God says. (Ezekiel 3:5) You are not being sent to a people of obscure speech and strange language, but to the people of Israel…. (Ezekiel 3:6) Surely if I had sent you to them, they would have listened to you. But the people of Israel are not willing to listen to you because they are not willing to listen to me, for all the Israelites are hardened and obstinate. (Ezekiel 3:9) Don’t be afraid of them or terrified by them, though they are a rebellious people.

Ezekiel was being sent to people he knew, to people the Lord knew to be unyielding, hardened, obstinate, and rebellious. The Sovereign Lord was warning Ezekiel that it would be tough sledding. Why would it be so difficult? Because despite everything that the Lord has said through Ezekiel’s predecessors—men like Moses, Elijah, Elisha, and Isaiah—the people of Judah were unrelenting fools. Even though Babylon had deported them from their homeland, they remained convinced that as long as the Temple stood they’d be headed home soon. And the Temple couldn’t fall, because it’s God’s house. They ignored the Lord’s severe & repeated warnings of judgment. They were convinced that because they knew about the Lord, that made them the Lord’s special people. You can see why Ezekiel might be intimidated or even terrified of this tall task.

But that kind of work didn’t end with Ezekiel. We've been called to speak words that we know people don’t want to hear. To people we know well.

Maybe, what first comes to mind is evangelizing our neighbors. That can be an uncomfortable conversation and it is God’s will that we speak his Word in that way. But that’s not the closest comparative. Remember Ezekiel was sent to his own rebellious people. In the same way, God calls us to go to our own brothers and sisters when they sin and patiently, gently, diligently, and lovingly rebuke them. Speak of the demands of God’s Word to those who know it, but aren’t living it.

Is there anything more difficult, anything more painful, anything more draining than having that same conversation with that same person for the umpteenth time? Knowing that it is probably going to go the exact same way it did that last dozen times. Who wants to do that?

In those moments, we are really good at giving God reasons why he should send someone else, right? Like Moses and Jeremiah, we are really good at identifying all our flaws and pointing them out to God.

We remind the Lord that we have a past, that we don’t have the right gifts, & that these people will never listen to us. (As if the omniscient, omnipresent, and holy, holy, holy Lord doesn’t already know about all those things?) We fixate on our own flaws and refuse God’s calling.

Like Samuel, we get all bent out of shape when they reject us, instead of rightly recognize that they are really rejected the one who sent us.

Or like Jonah, we become furious when God forces us to speak his words of forgiveness to someone we’re pretty sure doesn’t deserve it.

There are even times, when we actually go to speak with someone, that we edit, modify, censor, and redact the Word of God. And then, when it doesn’t work, we have the gall to blame God! To say things like See, I told you it wouldn’t work! So many times, we get caught up in our feelings; we get tied in knots by our “flawless logic”; we become paralyzed by our past experiences & stubborn reasoning.

Yet, we've never have it as rough as Ezekiel. Not really. We are sent out with a much greater chance of success and a far lower chance of real suffering. Yet, we are still prone to try to sidestep the Spirit’s calling.

God could do better than our help. Remember he has angels. They are dutiful, powerful, and faithful divine messengers. They never tell the Lord no. They never modify his message. They rejoice in proclaiming God’s un-redacted truth. So why doesn’t he send them? Why does he send us when he knows we have lesser power, marginal self-discipline, and insufficient faithfulness? (1 Cor. 1:27-28) God has always chosen the weak things of this world to combat the things that seem to be strong. God used the raised voices of the Israelites to topple the walls of Jericho. God used a single stone to fell Goliath. Each trusted in God’s power.

God has always sent "foolish" people to confound those who think they are wise. Moses felt pretty foolish when he told Pharaoh to let God’s people go. It was a servant girl who directed leprous Naaman to Elisha for healing and the unimpressive water of the Jordan River that washed him clean. God has chosen to use lowly flesh and blood to advance his kingdom.

It was King David who put this conundrum best when he asked: (Ps. 8:4) What is mankind that you are mindful of him? What is the son of man that you care for him? God has made us lower than the heavenly beings, the angels, yet he has crowned us with the glory and honor of serving as his voice in this world. He has given us his Word to speak.

God has given us his powerful Word. We do not go out in our own power. We speak of the One who called himself as (Lk. 12:8) the Son of Man again and again in his ministry. The One who himself (Heb. 2:9) was made a little lower than the angels. The One who is now crowned with glory and honor because he suffered death, so that by the grace of God, he might taste death for everyone.

Jesus is the One we are called to speak about to those who are living in exile because of the stubborn sinfulness. And our Christ is sufficient for this task. Jesus is the cornerstone that causes men to stumble in their sinful pride. Jesus is the keystone that demolishes every arrogant person who thinks they have been a pretty good person. None of us can measure up to Jesus' righteousness, Jesus' goodness, or Jesus' perfection. And we must if we are to make it into heaven. Jesus’s forehead was hard enough to shatter stony, sinful hearts. What else can explain Roman soldiers and members of the Sanhedrin confessing that he is the Son of God?

But this Jesus isn’t just the rock that causes sinners to stumble. Jesus is also the Rock of our Salvation. The Son of Man was made a little lower than the angels and became (Php. 2:8) our servant. The Sovereign Lord humbled himself to be executed as a criminal. He became sin in our place so that we might be made righteous. The Son of Man rose triumphantly from the grave and ascended into heaven so that we might see that flesh and blood is immortal.

And now we are are called to stand in his place. To proclaim the truth about sin and the one who became sin for us. To announce and identify what God hates and also what the Sovereign Lord loves to those who are heart-broken over their sins. To assure those who have lived rebellious lives that a righteousness they have not earned has been credited to their account by grace through faith. We have been called to speak of the Son of Man, the Son of God, Jesus Christ, our Savior from all sin. (Heb. 2:11-12) Jesus is not ashamed to call you his own and even sing your praises.

When we consider this task before us, we recognize that Help Wanted means something far different. We need the help of the Sovereign Lord. We feel ill-equipped for this holy calling. On our own we would be. But nourished and sustained by the powerful Word of God, we have all the help we could ever want. We have been called, positioned, & equipped to (1 Cor. 1:23-24) preach Christ crucified, the power, wisdom, and sacrificial love of God. We are called to live and speak as if we are all Ezekiels. That name means God strengthens. That is what the Lord has done for you. Through his Word and Sacraments, in good days and in bad, God strengthens you. He shows you his power, his wisdom, and his love. Amen.