We're going to turn next to the book of Ezekiel. Ezekiel chapter three on page six hundred and ninety three of the Black Pew Bibles. Ezekiel three this morning, we're going to be reading and considering verses 16 to the end of the chapter. Before we read, let's pray and ask God to bless us. Our Father, we do desire and need Your blessing. These words that are on a page, we can read them. We can look up definitions and write out lines and sermons. But, Lord, if You do not accompany us with Your Holy Spirit, our time will be fruitless. So we pray that You would use Your Word as the sword of the Spirit that it would divide us, that it would cut us apart so that You might rearrange us. We pray for this in Jesus' name, Amen. Ezekiel 3, beginning in verse 16, And at the end of seven days the word of the Lord came to me, Son of man, I have made you a watchman for the house of Israel. Whenever you hear a word from my mouth, you shall give them warning from me. If I say to the wicked, you shall surely die and you give him no warning or speak to warn the wicked from his wicked way in order to save his life, that wicked person shall die for his iniquity, but his blood I will require at your hand. But if you warn the wicked and he does not turn from his wickedness or from his wicked way, he shall die for his iniquity, but you will have delivered your soul Again, if a righteous person turns from his righteousness and commits injustice, and I lay a stumbling block before him, he shall die. Because you have not warned him, he shall die for his sin. And his righteous deeds that he has done shall not be remembered, but his blood I will acquire at your hand. But if you warn the righteous person not to sin, and he does not sin, he shall surely live. Because he took warning, and you will have delivered your soul. And the hand of the Lord was upon me there, and he said to me, Arise, go out into the valley, and there I will speak with you. So I arose and went out into the valley, and behold, the glory of the Lord stood there like the glory that I had seen by the Kabar Canal, and I fell on my face. But the Spirit entered into me and set me on my feet, and He spoke with me and said to me, Go, shut yourself within your house. And you, O son of man, behold, cords will be placed upon you, and you shall be bound with them, so that you cannot go out among the people. And I will make your tongue cling to the roof of your mouth, so that you shall be mute and unable to reprove them, for they are a rebellious house. But when I speak with you, I will open your mouth, and you shall say to them, Thus says the Lord God. He who will hear, let him hear. And he who will refuse to hear, Let him refuse, for they are a rebellious house." This is God's Word. One of the things we mentioned last week is where I'd like to start us this morning. One of our problems in reading Scripture is reading ourselves into the story in a wrong way. It's very important when you open the Bible to read yourself into the passage, to see where you are and where you fit into the stories that you're reading. But here again, in the second part of Ezekiel's commission, it's very easy to read ourself into the wrong part of the story. And in fact, if you have heard a sermon, if you've read things about this portion of Ezekiel 3, this famous passage about the watchman, you have often heard it presented as a passage about evangelism. that as Ezekiel was called to bear responsibility for the souls of the people around him, so you bear responsibility for the souls of unbelievers around you. And in fact, one of the most popular Christian books of our generation writes exactly this. This is from Rick Warren, who wrote The Purpose Driven Life, which, by the way, is not a horrible book. There's lots of good stuff in that book. I give this to you not to slam the book, but to show you that this is representative of how many people read Ezekiel 3. Here's what he writes. You may have been unaware that God holds you responsible for the unbelievers who live around you. The Bible says you must warn them so they may live. If you don't speak out to warn the wicked to stop their evil ways, they will die in their sin. But I will hold you responsible for their death. And you can hear him quoting from Ezekiel three and saying to his readers, you to hold responsibility for the souls of unbelievers around you. I just want to begin by asking the question, is that what this passage is really about? Can you really sink that thought into your head? What if you left here this morning convinced that you were responsible before God for the soul of every unbeliever you know? Can you handle that? I'm just not sure I can, to be honest with you. Is this passage meant to be the guilt trip to end all guilt trips? Or is there something else going on here? And there is application at the end of the sermon, I promise, about evangelism. But there's something else going on here, something that's far more glorious and far more comforting. And let me give you a hint before we dive into the passage. And the hint is this. When we come to a passage, when we want to read it the right way, we need to always be asking the question, where is Jesus? Where is Jesus? So stick that in your head, and we'll dive into the passage and see what we have there. We'll come back to answer that question, Lord willing, in a few minutes. Let's remember, first of all, where we are and where we've been. We've just really begun digging into the book of Ezekiel. And the first three chapters are really one passage. It's really one story about how God calls Ezekiel to be a prophet. Chapter 1 of Ezekiel is this marvelous and powerful and thrilling and terrifying vision that he has of the glory of God. He sees these four living creatures. They each have four faces. They have wings that touch each other. They ride on intersecting wheels that have eyes. And then he looks up and he sees Jesus on the throne. And in the end of chapter one, Ezekiel properly falls down like he's dead. And we saw last week that after that happens, the Holy Spirit comes and picks Ezekiel up and sets him on his feet so that God can begin to talk to him. And chapter two is the first part of Ezekiel's commission. We looked last week about how God came to Ezekiel and said, here's what you are going to be. I'm going to set you apart to be my prophet. And then another word we could use there is the idea of being a spokesman or an ambassador. God says to Ezekiel, you are my ambassador to Israel. I'm going to give you words. And in fact, he made Ezekiel eat a scroll in this vision. And he says, those words are going to be in you. And when I speak to you, you will speak to the people. And then Ezekiel, so weighed down with the weight of his calling, he goes back to these exiles by the Kabar Canal. And he sits there for seven days and doesn't say a thing. Doesn't say a thing because he's so overwhelmed, as you would be, with the situation God has given to him. And at the end of seven days, we find ourselves now in chapter three, verse 16. At the end of seven days, the word of the Lord came to him. And rather than make it better, rather than pat Ezekiel on the head and say, it's going to be okay. God says, there's something else I need to tell you. There's another part of your commission I haven't given to you yet. And that's what we read here. This second part of the commission comes to us in two scenes. And the first scene is that God tells Ezekiel, not only are you going to be my spokesman, but you're going to be my ordained watchman. We're going to come back to the idea in a minute to really dive into that. But watchman is basically someone who warns the rest of the people. So now God says, not only are you my spokesman ambassador, not only do you have to say the words I give you to say, but I'm going to hold you responsible for the spiritual lives of the people around you, that if they die in their sin without hearing the warning, you will be guilty of their blood. This did not cheer Ezekiel up. I can't imagine that this made him more excited, but regardless of that, as we noted last week, God isn't discussing this with Ezekiel. God is not Ezekiel's guidance counselor. He hasn't sat down to talk with Ezekiel about what he'd like to do with his life. He simply says, here's what you're going to do for me. And I'm going to make you my spokesman. And now he says, I'm going to make you my watchman. And then the second part of the passage we read today, God brings Ezekiel back out and he shows him once more the same vision of chapter one. Did you catch that? It goes by really quickly this time in verse 23. He says, I arose and went out into the valley. And the glory of the Lord stood there like the glory I had seen by the K-Bar Canal. And once again, having seen the glory of God, having seen Jesus on the throne, Ezekiel falls down like he's dead. And once again, the Holy Spirit picks him up. And now God says something. He adds to it. He keeps adding to this call on Ezekiel's life. And he says, go home. Shut yourself in your house. I'm going to send somebody else and they're going to bind you with cords inside your house. This is a very interesting part of the call. A lot of what we'll see in the coming weeks is that Ezekiel's ministry is very visible. God doesn't just preach through Ezekiel's mouth. He preaches through Ezekiel's body. What he does to Ezekiel is itself part of the message. And so God says, go home and shut yourself in your house. And you are not going to be allowed to leave until I tell you to. And this is all part of the idea of God making Ezekiel his watchman and spokesman. He actually says, you won't even be able to speak until I loosen the tongue from the roof of your mouth. And when I do, you better tell the people what I tell them. You better give to the people the message I give to you. So God confines Ezekiel to his home, enabling him to speak only when God decides he should be allowed to speak. So let's think a little bit more than about what this watchman is. The watchman, the idea of a watchman is a common theme in the Old Testament prophets. But everywhere else, it's a negative theme. Everywhere else we read about a watchman. God has made somebody else a watchman and they haven't done a good job. Let me read to you a couple of these. Isaiah 56, verse 10. God says, Israel's watchmen are blind. They are without knowledge. They are all silent dogs. They cannot bark, dreaming, lying down, loving to slumber. God is not happy with the other man that he made watchman for Israel. He said, those watchmen I put up there to warn the people and they're silent. Now, a year and a half ago, we got a dog. We have a boxer. Some of you have met our boxer. He's supposed to be 60 pounds of pure fighting muscle. He's supposed to scare people away from my house. I don't really like guns, so I bought a dog instead to protect my family, to be the watchman for my house. But my dog is rather silent. He doesn't bark in the house at all. He dreams, he lies down, and he loves to slumber. And if you do, in fact, come to break into our house, he will love to be your new friend. He's a bad watchman. And so it was for those who were called to guard Israel. God says, you are bad watchmen. And again, Jeremiah 6, verse 17. God says, I set a watchman over you saying, pay attention to the sound of the trumpets. But they said, we will not pay attention. So here's a different type of rebellion. And for Isaiah's watchman, they were foolish. They couldn't speak. They didn't understand. Those in Jeremiah said, we won't do it. We will not give your people the warning. How about this one? Hosea chapter nine, verse eight. The prophet is the watchman of Ephraim, and that means Israel, is the watchman of Ephraim with my God. Yet a fowler's snare is on all his ways and hatred in the house of his God. He's trapping the people rather than warning them. Essentially, the idea of a watchman is a tornado siren warning people of the coming wrath of God. We also have a tornado siren that's right next to the church. That's right over here in the corner of our property. And I can tell you that it works. I can tell you that on Saturday mornings at a certain time, it reminds me that there are no tornadoes coming. It reminds me that if it did, if they were coming, that I would be warned. That's essentially what these watchmen were called to be. God tells them, my wrath is coming. And you need to warn the people, you need to warn them of what is to come. The requirements of this, we can see what the requirements are of being a watchman. Verse 18, God says, if I say to the wicked, you shall surely die and you give him no warning, his blood I will require from your hands. And then in verse 27, he says, when I speak with you, I will open your mouth and you shall say to them, thus says the Lord God. The job requirement for watchmen was to say what God says. was to give the people what God had given them. If you're a watchman, you hear a message, you give it. You see something bad coming, you warn the people. It's a relatively simple, but extraordinarily important job. And look at what the results of it are. Again, verse 18, God says, the first result will be that many of the wicked will turn and they'll be saved. And this is what happened with Jonah. Jonah was a watchman, not for Israel, but for Nineveh. And he didn't want to go just like those in Jeremiah. He says, I'm not going to go. But as soon as he goes, as soon as he warns Nineveh, they turn and many of them repent and are saved. So many will be saved, many others will die for their own wickedness. We warn God, God wants Ezekiel to warn all all the people of Israel, and some of them will still die in their sins. He also says in verse 19, a second result of your job will be that you, Ezekiel, will gain your salvation. Look at verse 19, because this could be tricky for us. He says, you will have delivered your soul. Do we have a problem with that in reformed circles? What if I said to you today, if you do this, you will have delivered your soul. The elders of the church would bring me up on heresy charges because I can't deliver my soul. And we see in so many other places in Scripture that you have no ability to save yourself. So what's going on here? Do we have to be prophets to be saved? Is Ezekiel earning salvation? No, he's not. But God is saying to Ezekiel, this is my calling on your life. And if you don't do this, you will prove to me that you have no faith. You'll prove by your actions that you are not justified. And so it is that James says in James chapter two, that we are justified by our actions. That is, we're not made right with God by what we do, but we are proven right with God by what we do. And it's in that sense that Ezekiel would deliver his soul. He would show himself to be a faithful servant of God. And then finally, the third result from being a watchman is in verse 27, where God says some will hear and some won't hear. That is, the job of a watchman was not to save people. It was not Ezekiel's job to make sure everybody was converted or everybody was repentant. It's not my job to make sure everybody hears. It's my job to proclaim. And so it was with Ezekiel. He had to tell people what God said. And if they didn't hear, they didn't hear. And their blood was on their hands at that point. So some will hear and some won't hear. And then the point of this all is really this simple. that God is coming and he's mad. God is coming and he's and he's mad, and maybe you've seen I've seen before really blasphemous T-shirts that say Jesus is coming and he's really upset, but it uses different words than upset. Maybe you've seen that. Does it sound blasphemous to you this morning, though, to say God is coming and he's really mad? Almost sounds a little blasphemous, but that's exactly the message God gave Ezekiel to preach. In World War II, especially in England, there was a group of people called the air raid wardens. And they were called to warn people of coming air raids. Of course, if you lived in London, you wanted to be able to black out your house as quickly as possible if the Nazi planes were coming. And so the air raid wardens were called to police a certain neighborhood. And they were to go, no problem. The air raid wardens were called to go into their neighborhoods and to shout that you've got to close up your house. You've got to put down your blackout curtains. They were called to police. They were called to warn. And if they didn't, if there was one bright house in the neighborhood, it becomes a good target for bombings. And it's a good picture of what this watchman is called to do, that the wrath of God is coming and you need to repent. That is what majorly constitutes Ezekiel's ministry. Well, how do we make sense of this? How do we deal with this this passage? The first thing we need to do is understand that the Watchman is given out of the love of God. The Watchman is given because of the love of God. It's easy in this passage to focus on details that aren't ultimately important. We read this and we think about what must it be like to be Ezekiel, to be bound up in your house by God for an indefinite period of time. What must it be like to have God say these things to you? But there's something else going on here, and that is that God is installing a warning system for the sake of his people, that God loves his rebellious people so much that he's going to give them another warning. This passage is about the love of God for rebellious people. It's not about the wrath of God. It's about the love of God. The wrath of God is a reality. The wrath of God is necessary. But what God delights in is mercy. Consider the alternative to this. And we understand that this watchman is given out of grace because sometimes God doesn't send a watchman. He says in verse 26 to Ezekiel, sometimes I won't let you warn them. Sometimes I'm going to be so upset that I won't let you warn them so that my wrath might fall fully on them. Amos, chapter eight, verse 11, God gives a similar prophecy. where he says, Behold, the days are coming when I will send a famine on the land, not a famine of bread nor thirst for water, but of hearing the words of the Lord. Amos says, I will. God is going to stop the flow of the word of God to this nation. He's going to stop it so that you will not receive the words of grace so that when God does give words of grace, as he is through Ezekiel, it is all of love. You see, we're going to read a lot in Ezekiel about the wrath of God, about the justice of God. The reality is that God is holy and he must punish every sin. He can't let things go. God is holy and full of justice and full of wrath. But we'll also see in Ezekiel that what God delights in is mercy. And that is what's going on in this passage. That's what's going on in Ezekiel's ministry, that God loves mercy. And so he's sending another warning to his people. Therefore, if we are beginning then to see the grace of God in this passage, we can go a step further and realize that Jesus Christ is our watchman sent out of the love of God. That Jesus Christ is our watchman sent out of God's love. I want to remind you, if you've been here with us the past few weeks, that Ezekiel is a type of Jesus Christ. He's an Old Testament picture of some of the things that Jesus would be and do when he came and was born to Mary. We know that Ezekiel is a prophet and a priest, and Jesus Christ is to a prophet and a priest and a king. We know that Ezekiel is called many times in the book, Son of Man. And this is Jesus' favorite title for himself. And so Ezekiel in his ministry is not showing us ourselves primarily, but he's showing us Jesus Christ. And Jesus Christ, just as Ezekiel, was sent as a watchman for his people, in fact, for all the world. Jesus Christ is a watchman. He says in John 17, in praying to the Father, Jesus says, I have given them the words that you gave me. And like Ezekiel, Jesus at points in his ministry had to close his mouth Jesus, at points in his ministry, couldn't tell people everything they might need to know. It says in Isaiah chapter 57, verse 7, he was oppressed. He was afflicted. Yet he opened not his mouth. There were times when Jesus, like Ezekiel, was confined so that the will of God might be accomplished and point out wrath, not on the people, but on Jesus himself. And Jesus, just like Ezekiel, had many words of warning for people. And we might not think about Jesus this way. We might think about Jesus as always kind, always healing, was loving, was bringing people in. But there were many times when Jesus drove people away with what he preached. He said in John 8, 24, I told you that you would die in your sins for unless you believe that I am he, you will die in your sins. In Luke chapter 13, he says, unless you repent, you will all likewise perish. Those are the words of a watchman. Those are the words of one sent by God to warn people of the coming wrath of God. And so for His love to the Father and His love for you, Jesus Christ assumed the responsibility of being your watchman. Jesus is the one who stands on the wall of the city between the people of this earth and the wrath of God and calls to the people The woe is coming. The wrath is coming. Jesus calls to the people of this earth. He is the watchman. We are not the watchman of this passage. Jesus Christ is set by the Father to be the watchman. What does this mean for you? First of all, it means you must hear him. You must hear him. Because today and every Sunday that you're here, I hope, God warns you. He says, repent, or you will die in your sins. That we warn people because Jesus warns through us. Be warned and respond. Hear Jesus when He warns you of the wrath of God. Fear the Lord and turn to Him in repentance. Not only that, but we ought to be thankful. Can you imagine how much weight was on Ezekiel to know that he bore responsibility for the exiles? Can you imagine that weight? Can you even begin then to imagine the weight that was on Jesus Christ when he came to bear responsibility for all the sins of the elect and to bear responsibility for proclaiming the gospel to the world? What we see in Ezekiel's commission is not what we have to do, but what Jesus has done and is doing. And we ought to respond by saying thank you, by being grateful to Jesus, who is willing to take this incredible commission from the father. I want to note one more thing before we move on, and that is that the warnings that Ezekiel gave and the warnings that Jesus gives are for the unbelievers and believers alike. You don't get past the need for warning when you profess faith in Jesus Christ. Just because you said something, just because you stood up in front of the church and professed faith, just because you've been baptized, we don't know your heart. And so we continue to warn. If you do not live in faithfulness, you will die in your sins. Regardless of what you said, regardless of what you signed, be warned. that God's wrath is coming and we must all face it. So we need to live in faith in Jesus Christ. Well, since Jesus is our watchman, we can go one final step further and realize that Jesus, as the watchman, fulfills his ministry now through the church because we are warned, because we are saved. We are enabled now to be the mouthpiece of Jesus Christ to this world. We are not the watchman. But we are the trumpet of the watchman. The church together in this world is the instrument that Jesus is using to warn the world, to sound the warning that the wrath of God is coming and that salvation is here through Jesus. And I want to make clear one more time, this is not a passage about personal evangelism. Now, you ought to do personal evangelism. There are plenty of passages about that. This is not to get you out of something you might not like to do. This is a passage about Jesus. It's a warning for the prophet of God. This warning is not given any place else in Scripture. God never, in the New Testament, never says to everybody in the church, you bear this type of responsibility. He says it to Jesus and Jesus fulfills his responsibility through the church. Now, I want to say a word before we get into what that means about responsibility, because some people in God's economy are responsible for others. The elders of the church, it says in Hebrews 13, have to answer for the souls of the people in the church. That is that someday me and Ben and David and whomever else God raises up to lead this church, we will stand before God and we will have to answer. Did you proclaim faithfully the gospel of grace to the people I brought you? That's a frightening thing, but that's what our call is. So we as elders, as prophets in the New Testament sense, have that type of responsibility. Paul himself says, woe to me if I do not preach the gospel. In another sense, we do bear responsibility as parents and especially as fathers. You fathers bear the responsibility that your children hear and see the gospel. That falls not on mom and dad the same way it falls primarily on dad, that you fathers are called to make sure that your children hear and see the gospel. And then in another sense, we are called to be good stewards of all of our relationships. I do want to have the mindset of a watchman. I do want to warn my unbelieving friends of the wrath of God. But ultimately, I'm not the watchman. That Jesus is the watchman. And as the watchman, Jesus intends to use you in his mission and to use us in his mission. Hebrews 12, 25 says that Jesus warns even now from heaven. Jesus is warning the world. And how does he do that? Except through the church. The church is, it says, Paul writes to Timothy, the church is the pillar of truth. The church is to be prophesying, warning to the world. And so we are called to warn each other and to warn our city that the wrath of God is coming and that living in God's love is possible by trusting in Christ. So we are not the watchman, but Jesus, as the watchman, is using his church to warn the world around us. And so we can't have the mindset of this passage without taking to ourselves the responsibility that belongs to Jesus alone. But I want to end now by coming back to the main point. Jesus Christ has been made your watchman. And He has through His Word, through the preaching of the Word, through the teaching of the Word, Jesus has warned you. I know most of you, I know you've been in church for a while at least. Jesus has warned you. And I encourage you to listen. Be warned. Be saved from the wrath to come. He who will hear, let him hear. He who refused to hear, let him refuse. Let's stand and pray together. Our God, how we thank you that you have commissioned for us a watchman. We know that we do not deserve warnings. We do not deserve protection. We deserve only your wrath. And so we delight even more that Jesus has taken it to Himself to be our watchman. That He has warned us and that He has won us to Himself. We pray that You would make us a faithful mouthpiece of Jesus Christ. That we as a church would faithfully proclaim Your Gospel of Grace. That we would not shy away from warning people of the wrath to come. We pray that You would cause Your church around the world today to be effective as the trumpet of the watchman. Lord, we confess our weakness for this task, but we delight in Jesus' strength. We praise you for it in Jesus' name. Amen. Let's turn in response to Psalm 40, Selection B.