II Chronicles 36:11-12; Ezekiel 1:1-3:21; II Kings 24:20-25:3; Jeremiah 52:3-6
Today we meet Ezekiel with his call to be a prophet of the LORD among the exiles in Babylon. Ezekiel sees a vision of the glory of the LORD, involving living creatures with four faces and wheels within wheels. (If you are looking here for an explanation of that vision, I’m sorry to disappoint…) Having gotten Ezekiel’s attention, the LORD commissions Ezekiel as a prophet to the people of Israel, including Judah, whom the LORD describes as rebellious, impudent, and stubborn:
And He said to me, “Son of man, I send you to the people of Israel, to nations of rebels, who have rebelled against me. They and their fathers have transgressed against me to this very day. The descendants also are impudent and stubborn: I send you to them, and you shall say to them, “Thus says the Lord GOD.” And whether they hear or refuse to hear (for they are a rebellious house) they will know that a prophet has been among them.
Ezekiel 2:3-5
We would do well here to remember Isaiah’s call:
And I heard the voice of the Lord saying, “Whom shall I send, and who will go for Us?” Then I said, “Here I am! Send me.” And He said, “Go, and say to this people:
Isaiah 6:8-10
“‘Keep on hearing, but do not understand;
keep on seeing, but do not perceive.’
Make the heart of this people dull,
and their ears heavy,
and blind their eyes;
lest they see with their eyes,
and hear with their ears,
and understand with their hearts,
and turn and be healed.”
And let’s not forget how Jeremiah is consistently rejected…
Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Ezekiel (not to mention innumerable others) are all called to prophesy to people who are not listening, and won’t. The LORD is clearly well aware of Israel’s hard heart, yet the LORD calls these prophets anyway and charges them to preach. He explains to Ezekiel that He is setting him as a watchman with the responsibility to warn the people, whether or not they choose to listen. (Ez. 3:16-21)
Do we as Christians today each stand in Ezekiel’s place, with the same responsibility as a watchman? No, I don’t think so, at least not in quite the same way; we are not Old Testament prophets. Ezekiel and others did their job, and the world has been duly warned. But that is not to say that we should sit idly by as the world goes to hell. Not at all. We must do what we can to warn against sin. We must take our stand on major moral and social issues of our day: human trafficking, drugs and addiction, abortion, pornography and sexual immorality, greed — any sin, actually. And we should stand firm, even when the world refuses to listen. Most of all, we should do our part in sharing the Good News of Jesus Christ. After all, it is not a message to be hoarded! But that does not mean that we are in Ezekiel’s shoes.
One more thing…
You might notice that the LORD repeatedly addresses Ezekiel as “son of man”, which basically just means “man” or “human being” or “mortal person”. In other words, Ezekiel is one of us. As a title, “son of man”, is used over ninety times to refer to Ezekiel, but it is used nowhere else in the Old Testament except in Daniel 7:13 (where it points to the Messiah) and Daniel 8:17 (where it refers to Daniel). When we get to the New Testament, we will see in the Gospels that in referring to Himself, Jesus uses “the Son of Man” more than any other title. In so doing, Jesus emphasizes His humanity, that He is one of us, but we should also note that He is the Son of Man, that is, the Archetypical Man.
And another thing…
There’s nothing like a good old African American Spiritual to remind us of Scripture, so have a listen to any of these varied renditions of “Ezekiel Saw de Wheel”: