Ezekiel Series
Preaching Among Thorns and Scorpions
Ezekiel 2
Ezekiel, as you will recall in the first chapter, is a young priest. He is just getting ready to begin his priesthood. He has finished his finals. He has taken his oral exams. He is getting ready now to embark on his career. He is on the cusp of the priesthood.
He is living in a time of major catastrophe. The children of
Ezekiel was living among them as a young priest. Now, God steps into Ezekiel's life and changes careers on him. He now calls him to be a prophet. We know this is true because in the 2nd chapter we have read verse 5 where the Lord has called Ezekiel. He says to him, "Yet shall know that there hath been a prophet among them."
God is calling him to a tougher task. The role of the priest was primarily to represent the people before God. He was to be there for the people in their times of sorrow and their times of special need. When they needed to go to God in prayer this priest would go before God for them. It had its difficulties, of course. It had its challenges, but it was a relatively easy career.
Now God has changed careers on him. God has called him to be a prophet. As we shall see it is going to be a much more difficult assignment.
A prophet had to be a realist. Whereas the priest represented the people before God; a prophet represented God before the people. It was his responsibility to say, "Thus saith the Lord"; to speak God's message to the people.
So he had to be a realist. He had to tell it like it is. He could sugarcoat it or water it down. He had to tell the people the truth; what God had to say.
But he also had to be an apologist. He had to stand before the people and declare the righteousness of God's judgments. He had to show that what God was doing was righteous and just. So he was a realist and also an apologist.
But as a prophet he also had to be an optimist. He had to give the people some hope. He couldn't just be on the dark side all the time. His role was not to discourage the people by the circumstances in which they lived and the dire nature of the world in which they were in, but his job was to encourage the people and give them a message of hope.
That's my responsibility. Though I must be faithful to what God says. I must preach the Word just exactly like it is. Though there are times when the message is stern and there are times when the message is severe and scathing, it is always my responsibility before it is over, to turn the page and to give you a message of hope so that when you walk out of this building you don't feel beaten down like a dog and like there is no hope.
Rather you walk out saying, "Regardless of the circumstances, regardless of what we are going through, there's hope. There's an answer out there in the future."
That is the assignment God has given to this man Ezekiel.
Turn back to the first chapter and the third verse. There are a couple of phrases here which I think are important because these two phrases will show us the strength that God is going to provide for Ezekiel to undertake His prophetic task.
He says in verse 3, "The word of the Lord came to Ezekiel." At the end of that verse it says, "and the hand of the Lord was there upon him." The word of the Lord came and the hand of the Lord was upon him.
Ezekiel's name means God strengthens. He received the word of the Lord to enlighten him. He experienced the hand of the Lord upon him to enable him.
The same thing is true for God's preacher today and for God's people today. We have the Word of God and the Word enlightens us. "Thy word is a lamp unto my feet and a light unto my path."
God has also given us the Holy Spirit, the hand of God to enable us to give us strength for the journey; to give us power to go on; to give us power to be a witness for the Lord.
This young man, Ezekiel, is not going to go in his own strength. He is going to go enlightened by the Word of God. He is going to go empowered by the hand of the Lord.
Now, he is going to be given his assignment. Now, he is going to be called upon to speak the word to the people.
Notice what God did before He called this man Ezekiel to speak. He gave him this magnificent vision of the glory of the Lord. It IS magnificent. We took a look at it last week and we saw the wheel in the wheel and we saw the cherubim and we saw the throne and the lightning flashing and all of that.
All of that pictures the glory of God. The Lord knows that Ezekiel is going to have a difficult assignment.
Before this assignment is given to him, he wants him to get a glimpse of the glory. So magnificent, so stupendous, and so glorious is this vision that we are told in the last verse of the chapter that when Ezekiel saw it he said, "I fell upon my face and I heard a voice."
Let me just parenthetically that this doesn't have a thing in the world to do with the modern phenomenon of slain in the spirit. Maybe you have seen this or been around this or have heard people talk about this.
There are some people who want to point to experiences like the one Ezekiel had here as an illustration of being slain in the Spirit. But the contrasts are far greater than the parallels.
For instance, this is something that evidently took place privately. It was not something that was done publicly. It is something that happened between the Lord and Ezekiel. There was no human mediator. Nobody touched Ezekiel. Nobody caught Ezekiel when he fell.
So there are really very few similarities, but quite a few contrasts, between what happened to Ezekiel and what some people use today to refer to being slain in the Spirit.
If you will read it very carefully you will find that it is Ezekiel himself who prostrates him before the Lord. Then we are told in verse 1 and 2 of the second chapter, that the Holy Spirit entered into Ezekiel and rather than knocking him off of his feet, the Holy
Spirit picks him up and puts him on his feet. There's quite a difference there, isn't there?
What is this all about? Ezekiel is in the presence of the awesome majesty and glory of God. It is an awesome thing to be in the presence of the Lord. It is an awesome thing to have a vision of the glory of the Lord.
Isaiah, before his call to the ministry, said, "I saw the Lord high and lifted up." John, in the book of The Revelation, before God unfolded to him all of the things in chapters 2 and following, God let John see a vision of the glorified resurrected, risen Lord Jesus Christ.
John said, "When I saw it, I fell at his feet as dead." Then the Lord went over there and touched him.
Here is Ezekiel now and God has called him to the prophetic ministry. He has called him to be a prophet.
There are several aspects of this prophetic ministry of Ezekiel.
For instance, in the first five verses I want to call your attention to-
I. Ezekiel's Prophetic Call.
Here is His call to the ministry. God called me to the ministry. I believe in a God-called ministry. God has to call you to do it. No human being does it; it is a call of God. This is Ezekiel's prophetic call. The Lord said to him in verse 2, after he had set him on his feet, "I heard him speak." And in verse 3 the Lord said to Ezekiel, "Son of man, I send thee." That's the call.
Son of man. Just glance down through that second chapter and see how many times he refers to Ezekiel as son of man.
In fact, he is referred to as son of man 93 times in the book of Ezekiel. You will find it over and over again. Those of you who know your New Testament, know that the Lord Jesus is referred to as the Son of
When Ezekiel is referred to as the son of man, the emphasis there is upon humanity with frailty. It is a term that reminds Ezekiel of how frail he is. Son of man; humanity with frailty.
But when Jesus applies the term to Himself the emphasis there is upon humanity with deity. Not frailty, but with deity. The emphasis is that Christ, who is God, manifested Himself in human form. Son of Man; not humanity with frailty, but humanity with deity.
The Lord is calling Ezekiel and He points out his frailty. "Son of man, I send thee to the children of
Jeremiah was a contemporary of Ezekiel. Jeremiah was still back in
The word, rebellious, there is a Hebrew word that was used to refer to Gentiles. It was a word specifically that applied to the rebellion in the hearts of Gentile people. Basically he is saying, “Ezekiel, I'm sending you to a people of God who are acting like a bunch of pagans.”
So he told him, you are going to have a tough job. You have a tough crowd to preach to. In fact, he gets a little more intense about it in verse 4. He says, "They are an impudent." Literally they are a hard of face, hard headed. And they are stiff hearted.
He is saying that they are hard on the outside because they are hard on the inside. What you are on the outside is a reflection of what you are on the inside. Your outward behavior is a testimony to what is going on in your heart.
The reason people behave the way they do is because of what's going on down in their hearts. So he says you have a hard headed, stiff hearted people to preach to. He is basically saying, "Ezekiel, I'm calling you to preach, but I have news for you, you are going to preach to a tough crowd." How about that for an encouragement?
Ezekiel has a difficult assignment. He is called to preach to a difficult people. But he says you are to say unto them, thus saith the Lord. He is saying, “Ezekiel, be faithful to the Word. Preach the Word.”
God's preachers, God's prophets are called to preach the Word. Not Reader's Digest. Not the latest TV program. Or the latest song going around. Preach the Word. "Thus saith the Lord."
verse 5
Whichever way it goes, whether they listen or whether they won't, when it's all over they will know God's man has passed through.
There is Ezekiel's prophetic call. Called to a difficult assignment. Called to people who are going to have hard faces.
Ezekiel's prophetic call. Now look at the second
thing.
II. Ezekiel's Prophetic Courage.
He says to Ezekiel in verse 6: don't be afraid. In fact, if I counted it correctly, three times in that one verse he said, don't be afraid. That means there were going to be circumstances which would cause Ezekiel to be afraid.
So, the Lord comes to his preacher, his prophet Ezekiel, at the beginning of his career as a prophet and says, Ezekiel, don't be afraid. Don't be afraid of their words. Don't be afraid of their looks. You are going to be preaching "among briers and thorns and dwell among scorpions."
You know what a thorn and brier will do, don't you? It will cut you. You know what a scorpion will do, don't you? It'll sting you. I'm told it is a very painful sting. I've not been stung by one thankfully. He is saying, "Ezekiel, the crowd you are going to preach to is like thorns. They are going to cut you. They are going to be like scorpions, they are going to sting you.
God says, Ezekiel, you have courage. Don't be afraid. When I read that I thought about Paul's experience in the city of
We are told in that chapter of Acts that that night Paul had a vision from the Lord. The Lord said to Paul, don't be afraid, Paul, go on speaking.
Nobody will harm you. I have much people in this city.
God had to speak a word of courage to him and a word to assuage his fears. That's what God is doing to Ezekiel. He is saying you just keep on speaking my Words.
verse 8
Don't be like them. Don't go down on that level. You be my man. You be my preacher. You be my prophet. You keep the higher ground. Don't become like the people.
The temptation today in many circles is for the preacher to become just like the people. The pastor responsibility is to call people up to a higher standard. God expects a whole lot of me. God expects me to call you to a higher standard. A church will never, ever go any higher spiritually than its leaders are. The leaders set the pace. That's true of the pastor. That's true of staff. That's true of deacons. That's true of Sunday School class leadership. Our job is to call people to a higher standard.
The people are so rebellious. The people are so full of the things of this world and the people are so indifferent to the things of God. I know that, but our responsibility is not to just give in and cave in to that, but to call them to a higher level of commitment and sacrifice. That's our job.
The commitment level is so low among God's people today. Let's call them to a higher level of commitment. Let's call our young people to total surrender to the lordship of Jesus Christ. Let's call our leadership to all-out, sold-out, on-fire, full steam ahead for the Lord Jesus Christ. Be courageous.
III. Ezekiel's Prophetic Content.
This is so interesting. It's a familiar picture. In the last part of verse 8 he says “eat what I'm going to
give you.”
What is he going to do? Is he going to give Ezekiel a meal? Is he going to serve him breakfast?
We read about it in verse 9.
In those days they wrote on either papyrus or leather. They would take the sheets of either one of the substances there and either sew them together or glue them together. Then they would write on them and then they would roll up the scroll.
God says to Ezekiel, Ezekiel, here's a scroll of a book. It's all rolled up.
verse 10
In other words, he unrolls it.
This could well be a reference to chapter 4-right on
through chapter 32. When you read those chapters (we are not going to deal with every chapter, we would be here the rest of the time till the Lord comes) you will find lamentation and mourning and woe.
In the first section he talks about the fall of
Look at verse 1 of chapter 3.
This is a familiar picture to us. In the 10th chapter of the book of The Revelation, God did the same thing with John and gave him a roll and told him to eat the roll and it was bitter in his stomach and sweet to his taste. Eating a scroll, eating a book is a familiar figure of speech. We use the same terminology today.
A school teacher gives 2 chapters to read for tonight, before tomorrow, and says I want you to read those chapters and digest them.
Or you get hold of a good novel or a good book on some subject and you say, "Man, that was the most interesting book. I just devoured it." It is a figure of speech that means to digest, to take something in, to assimilate it, to make it a part of you.
Listen to what Jeremiah said in Jeremiah 15, verse 16.
"Thy words were found and I did eat them. And thy word was unto me the joy and rejoicing of my heart."
Listen to Psalms 19, verse 9ff. he says, "The fear of the Lord is clean, enduring forever. The judgment of the Lord is true and righteous altogether. More to be desired are they than God, yea, than much gold, sweeter also than honey and the honeycomb.”
Why was a book that was filled with lamentation and mourning and woe, sweet to his taste? It was not that the message was sweet. It was not that he was to take joy in the message of judgment that he had to deliver to the people.
But there was a sweetness in the fact that he is faithful and obedient to deliver the message that God assigns him.
Sometimes preachers speak about things sweet and dear. Other times, they preach on things that are bitter and drear. But the sweetness comes in knowing that you have obeyed the Lord and have been faithful to the Lord.
I will tell you this: there is a sweetness in delivering the Word of God. There is nothing more satisfying than preaching the Word of God with the assurance of knowing you are being faithful to God, UNLESS it is obeying the Word of God. You will always get to the sweet spot when you obey the Word of God.
Let's bow our heads in prayer.
