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Ezekiel 3:1-3, 10-11  And he said to me, “Son of man, eat whatever you find here.  Eat this scroll, and go, speak to the house of Israel.”  So I opened my mouth, and he gave me this scroll to eat.  And he said to me, “Son of man, feed your belly with this scroll that I give you and fill your stomach with it.”  Then I ate it, and it was in my mouth as sweet as honey. … … … Moreover, he said to me, “Son of man, all my words that I shall speak to you receive in your heart, and hear with your ears. And go to the exiles, to your people, and speak to them and say to them, Thus says the Lord GOD,’ whether they hear or refuse to hear.”

The 3 major OT writing prophets, Isaiah, Jeremiah and Ezekiel, were all commissioned with the same task: to speak boldly and without compromise the word of the LORD God to his rebellious, unresponsive, Covenant people.  At the initial call of each of them, the Sovereign LORD left them with no illusion that their job would be easy, or that it would have any apparent success.

This is a hard call.  Any task we undertake is much more enjoyable, meaningful and fulfilling if we can see results, good outcomes from our hard labour.  Conversely, if our efforts seem to bear little fruit it is difficult to find the enthusiasm, or even the energy, to keep going.

Like the others, Ezekiel was reminded of three truths that would enable him to persevere in spite of the set-backs.  Firstly, the message he had to give to Israel, unpalatable as it was, was the LORD’s message, not his own.  The ‘eating of the scroll’ symbolised this fact.  To be faithful to his calling the prophet had to pay close attention to God’s Word, to ‘meditate on it day and night’ as in Psalm 1, to digest it so that it became part of his very being.

Secondly, the lack of response should not take him by surprise because it was part of God’s sovereign Plan that anticipated the Coming of the one true Prophet, Jesus Christ, the One through whom God would fulfil the promise given later to Ezekiel: “I will sprinkle clean water on you, and you will be clean; I will cleanse you from all your impurities and from all your idols.  I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit in you; I will remove from you your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh.  And I will put my Spirit in you and move you to follow my decrees and be careful to keep my laws.” (36:25-27)

Thirdly, all that God required of his servant was obedience and faithfulness, not success.  He had the responsibility of being a ‘watchmen’ who sounded the warning.  He was not to fail in that responsibility, but what the people did in response to the warning was on their own heads (see 3:17-19).

This is both challenging (that we don’t fail to warn) and comforting (that the response is not our responsibility).  Witnessing positively and faithfully for Christ in our contemporary culture is neither easy nor encouraging.  But keeping these three truths in mind will help us to be faithful.  Our big problem today is that our secular society is holding us to ransom, with harsh legal consequences for failing to comply with its mandates, if we say things and sound warnings that it deems are not ‘politically correct’ – a very dangerous situation where Man is defiantly ‘judging’ God, and not acknowledging that, in the end, it is God, the righteous Judge, who will judge us.  Let us continue to uphold each other in prayer, that we, like Ezekiel, might face these challenges with God’s wisdom and grace.

– Bruce Christian