Watchman

Ezekiel 3
16 At the end of seven days the word of the LORD came to me: 17 "Son of man, I have made you a watchman for the house of Israel; so hear the word I speak and give them warning from me. 18 When I say to a wicked man, 'You will surely die,' and you do not warn him or speak out to dissuade him from his evil ways in order to save his life, that wicked man will die for his sin, and I will hold you accountable for his blood. 19 But if you do warn the wicked man and he does not turn from his wickedness or from his evil ways, he will die for his sin; but you will have saved yourself...

Just recently I have had the privilege to take a course on the book of Ezekiel, and this week we touched on chapter 3 (the Watchman chapter) and I also did some homework for it to. I thought it was really incredible because Ezekiel is in the midst of a people who have completely rebelled against God. Israel had been saved out of Egypt, established in the Promised Land, and shown blessing for generations, but still they had a problem with following the LORD and were caught up in idolatrous practices. They would follow the rituals of the other pagan nations; they would involve themselves in pagan worship and only allow the LORD to be one of their gods. Yet the LORD calls Ezekiel to be a watchman to the people of Israel. In the days of fortified cities a watchman would sit on top of the wall and "watch" for enemies who were coming to kill the city. The watchman alone was responsible for the entire city's future and well being. If the watchman failed at his job, potentially the city could be destroyed. This imagery of a "watchman" is really cool to me because God calls Ezekiel to this same metaphorical task. He is to be a "watchman" to Israel in the sense that he is to deliver a lifesaving message to them. The reward for obedience here is not conditional based on whether the recipient of the message obeys, but rather, God promises that the messenger will live even if the hearer continues in his ways.

I find this intriguing because God calls followers of Jesus to the same task; to be a watchman for his people. We have an incredible message for the world and that message is that God loved the sinful world enough that he came and laid down his life as an atoning sacrifice for it.

God's done his part...now it's time for to do ours.

We are watchman. The entire city's salvation is based on whether we climb down the wall and warn the people of the coming destruction. We have a message of incredible love. Our job requires us to do it, or else we too will "die". Fortunately, even if our hearers don't obey, we still will have done the job we were instructed to do.

I am personally really struggling with this right now. Things like pride get in the way where I feel more scared to share the gospel because of my fear of rejection. This fear is very selfish in the fact that I'm more worried about my own feelings than I am about other people's lives. This is something I've been actively praying about and hopefully will start to turn it's course in the next couple of weeks. My goals have been to start speaking with people I'm closest to...my closest unsaved friends, co-workers, family, etc...I have an incredible message of love to share with them, and all I'm asked to do is share it, and then I get a "job well done"

That's all of our jobs. We are watchman...and there's an enemy in the distance...who's going to tell the people around us?

"Here am I, send me..."