“MINISTRY AS GOD SEES IT”

Ezekiel                                                                                                                                          Chapters 2 & 3

It is interesting to observe the focus of peoples’ lives. There are wholesome priorities some folk wrap their lives around. There are some very wayward, distracted goals which some people build into their lives. As we discovered last week, the great God of the universe has revealed His absolute truth in His written Word, the Bible. Each of us must regularly visit our aims, our goals and our focus for life, with His word in mind. We especially come to such a time as we begin a new calendar year. Far from making New Year’s resolutions, however, it is best for us to give our attention to an ever-present God, Who lays ministry on the heart of His people.

We spent November 2008 looking at how God communicated His call to Jeremiah. In December we looked at God’s commissioning of Isaiah for ministry. Now, in January 2009, our messages guide us in seeing the ministry God chose to give Ezekiel. We just read the second and third chapter of this incredible book. There we saw God talk to His choice servant. And it becomes obvious to anyone reading these chapters perceptively that God tells His prophet to make ministry the focus of his life. I submit to you that God, being the same yesterday, today and tomorrow, gives the same message to each Christian. Therefore we can learn a lesson from these verses. I, at the same time, need to qualify what we are going to point out, by bursting a couple of myths that cloud our understanding of ministry as Christians.

I.) Our first observation is that God gives ALL of His people a message to proclaim. In fact, the Bible from cover to cover shows God’s expectation that His children deliver a message which they have experienced personally. The goal is for others to receive the message. It is one of hope, peace, faith and love. Notice in chapter 2, verse 7; God tells Ezekiel, “You must speak my words to them, whether they listen or fail to listen, for they are rebellious.” Do you understand what God is asking of this man? He is telling Ezekiel, as He tells us today, that His children must speak God’s message to people. It is not optional! It is not up to personal choice! It is a command from God, Himself!

As we move into chapter three God presents that He knows a person has to experience the message before they share it. In particular God asks Ezekiel to “Open your mouth and eat what I give you”. (Chapter 2: verse 8) By asking Ezekiel to eat a scroll, God is expecting him to actually bring His message into his own life so it is the core of his identity. Isn’t that what happens when a person who is lost in sin comes to a saving experience of salvation in their life? You can’t deliver a message you haven’t yet received personally. And look at 3:3! Ezekiel tells us “So I ate it, and it tasted as sweet as honey in my mouth!” Down through the years I have watched people come to know the Lord. I have never yet met someone who did not experience an incredible “sweetness in their life”. When someone enters into a personal, life-changing conversion they are overwhelmed with the realization that things are different now. All has now changed and they have received the greatest gift in life itself.

God’s message fixes things. It handles the sin problem a person has in their life. It provides a solution to the isolation this person has from God. The substance of this message pays the penalty for individual sin, gives a new nature to this person, brings about an indwelling Holy Spirit and places this person in the Family of God. That is not a complete list of the things occurring at the moment of justification. But it describes an experience almost as sweet as tasting honey. If you belong to this great God of the universe you have “eaten the message”. I hope and pray you have already eaten the “scroll of God”! Please, (by the way) notice that this message is the reason God’s people continue to exist in this world following their conversion. We live to share what we have experienced with others. This brings us rapidly to the second observation we make from these Bible verses.

II). Our second observation is that God does not expect us to fix people! God clearly defines the people Ezekiel was sent to as a prophet. We see several things. For one thing, they were exiles in Babylon. Isaiah and Jeremiah had their ministry before God sent judgment on His people. They were living in Israel. Ezekiel and Daniel are called to minister in the midst of captivity. God had previously told His people that captivity would be His discipline because they were disobedient. Now Ezekiel comes along to minister to the captives who should have recognized God’s judgment and responded in obedience to Him. It didn’t happen!

God tells Ezekiel that “The people to whom I am sending you are obstinate and stubborn…and whether they listen or fail to listen – for they are a rebellious house – they will know that a prophet has been among them. Do not be afraid of them or their words. Do not be afraid, though briars and thorns are all around you and you live among scorpions.” (2:4-6)

What a thrilling word for this servant of God: right? (I am being sarcastic!) God is telling him that the folk he is to minister to are going to be hostile, unreceptive and belligerent. They need to be fixed. In order to be fixed they need to hear Ezekiel’s message. Yet, they will be opposed to it! Ezekiel is not responsible for their reception of the message. His responsibility is to give out the message. Now listen to chapter 3, verses 5-7! God tells His prophet, “You are not being sent to a people of obscure speech or difficult language, but to the house of Israel – not to many peoples of obscure speech and difficult language, whose words you can’t understand. Surely if I had sent you to them, they would have listened to you. But the house of Israel is not willing to listen to you because they are not willing to listen to me, for the whole house of Israel is hardened and obstinate.”

Do we get this word from God to His messenger? God has chosen Ezekiel to go to people he can relate to, as He gives the prophet a message. God even decides to prepare His servant with specific preparation. He tells Ezekiel, “But I will make you as unyielding and hardened as they are. I will make your forehead like the hardest stone, harder than flint. Do not be afraid of them or terrified by them, though they are a rebellious house.” (3:8-9)

Remember I told you that God doesn’t expect us to fix people. The person who shared the message with you did not have the responsibility for your response. Neither do we have the responsibility for people to accept the message. We are to tell the message. God is responsible for how they respond! That destroys a second myth that Christians have to be perfect in our presentation of the message and fix people. Listen to the content of God’s word to His prophet in this third chapter. In verses 16-21 God tells Ezekiel that if he does not share the message with people who need to hear it, and thus, they don’t accept it, their blood will be on him. It is not because they didn’t respond, but because he didn’t tell it to them. If he tells it to them and they don’t respond, then their blood is on their own shoulders, because Ezekiel did his job of communicating the message of God.

Do we see the application this commission from the Lord places on us, as Christians? If we are sharing our Lord and His message with people, God considers us to have done what He asked. BUT, if we keep the message to ourselves and are not the “watchmen” signaling the warning to people, God will hold us responsible for their destruction. The reason is that we did not give them the opportunity to hear the message.

Our service today has been all about getting out the message of God. Who in your life has not heard the word of the Lord? Why haven’t you shared it? God’s children are to make ministry the focus of their lives. That is why the Lord, Himself, told His followers to “Not store up for yourselves treasure on earth; where moth and rust destroys and thieves break in and steal”. In other words, don’t make things or stuff the primary focus of your life.  Instead, He goes on to say “But store up for yourselves treasure in heaven where moth and rust DO NOT destroy and thieves DO NOT break in and steal”! (Matthew 6:19-20) We would be naïve to not see the urgency Ezekiel is given by God in terms of his calling. And, we would be naïve to miss the urgency God has for us to spread the message today.

In one final view of things, I wonder what would happen if all the decisions in our lives were primarily focused on us having a ministry. What if we looked for a job based on the opportunity for sharing the message of God? What if we searched for a neighborhood to live in based on the opportunity for sharing the message of God? What if we chose who our life-mate would be, or how we would use our computer or where we would do business based on the opportunity to share the message of God. If it is not our top priority, I wonder what we will say to the same God who called Ezekiel when He opens the books in the Day of Judgment?

LET HE WHO HAS EARS TO HEAR, HEAR THE WORD OF THE LORD!