Ezekiel 3:1-6,17-27 — the prophet’s call
It was around 597 BC. Thousands of dejected Hebrews were making the long trudge to Babylon. Among these vanquished exiles walked Ezekiel, a descendant of Levi and Aaron likely in his mid-twenties. As Daniel in the first Babylonian deportation less than ten years earlier, Ezekiel and other righteous suffered for the judgment of God on His idolatrous people. The destruction of Jerusalem loomed eleven short years in the future. Would Ezekiel heed the prophet’s call?
In the fifth year of his captivity, God called Ezekiel into prophetic service as a watchman for God’s people in exile. His duty would be to warn the people, let them know that God is the LORD, and point them to the coming restoration and renewal. God wanted His words to find lodging in Ezekiel’s heart. He wanted Ezekiel to listen in such as a way as to make God’s message his own.
God made very plain to Ezekiel the responsibility he had for the souls of his fellow Israelites. God put on Ezekiel the burden of the watchman: Your life for the life of your people. If Ezekiel failed to deliver God’s warning, God would require their blood at his hand. If Ezekiel faithfully delivered God’s warning and they ignored it to their death, Ezekiel was free before God.
(I excerpted the above from a lesson I wrote for the new Sunrise Edition of CLE Bible 900: Christ in the Old Testament.)
“I have made thee a watchman…therefore hear the word at my mouth, and give them warning from me. When I say unto the wicked, Thou shalt surely die; and thou givest him not warning, nor speakest to warn the wicked from his wicked way, to save his life; the same wicked man shall die in his iniquity; but his blood will I require at thine hand” (Ezekiel 3:17,18).
Excerpted from The Day of the Lord
The Prophet’s Call and Calling
Elijah was God’s messenger among His people. When God needed to get a message through to His people, He used Elijah. For Elijah, the risk issue had been settled when he accepted God’s call on his life. Elijah would run any risk to be faithful to his calling. In other words, the element of risk was overshadowed by the element of responsibility.
Elijah loved God’s people with the love of God. (That is what happens when people take to heart their messenger-for-God duties.) Elijah saw the danger and need of the Israelites…and acted to alert them. In other words, the risk to his own neck paled when compared to the risk to the souls of the people.
Then sound the warning! Clearly! Sound it with your life, making sure you never live for anyone other than God. Sound it with your lips so that on Judgement Day you do not have blood on your hand. Let me expose you again to a couple of verses that have become very compelling to me in my relationship to Jesus and to the Church of Jesus.
“So thou, O son of man, I have set thee a watchman unto the house of Israel; therefore thou shalt hear the word at my mouth, and warn them from me. When I say unto the wicked, O wicked man, thou shalt surely die; if thou dost not speak to warn the wicked from his way, that wicked man shall die in his iniquity; but his blood will I require at thine hand” (Ezekiel 33:7,8).
(The above I excerpted and adapted from God Will Punish the Wicked.)
Youth Pages to Be Republished!
Beginning in the early 1990s and into the first decade of the new millennium, I wrote the “Applications for Youth” portion of the youth Sunday School quarterly published by CLP. The preceding excerpt is from one such “youth page” (as they were known).
I have CLP’s permission to publish my material on my own as well.
I calculate I have enough to publish one 80-page ebook every five weeks for a year. I am to start work on this project this week. Please click here for more details: Boost Mark Roth in His Drive to Republish the “Youth Pages”. Thank you!
