The PreacherĀ“s Many Faces

 

Ezekiel Series
The Preacher's Many Faces
Ezekiel 3:4-11
 
I'm going slowly in these opening verses and chapters of Ezekiel because I want to set the scene for the preaching ministry which God assign to this young man named Ezekiel.
 
Preaching is not an easy assignment. Some of you young guys think maybe you would like for the Lord to call you to preach. You better be sure that God calls you to preach. Preaching is a call of God which tends to discouragement at times. Read the stories of the preachers in the Bible and you will find that there were times when they had great discouragement.
 
Jeremiah and his prophecy in the ninth chapter said,
"Oh, that my head were waters and mine eyes a fountain of tears that I might weep day and night for the slain of the daughter of my people." In the second verse, paraphrasing he said, I would just like to get me a little motel on the side of the road and just get away from these people and get away from it all. He was evidently discouraged.
 
Paul, in the New Testament, evidently had periods of time when the ministry was discouraging to him. You recall when he went to the city of Corinth and in
First Corinthians 2, he talks about his ministry and said, "I was with you in weakness and in fear, and in much trembling." He seemed to have gone through a time of despondency.
 
 
That's why the Lord spoke to him in a vision that night and gave him an encouraging word.
 
Preachers have to deal with the ideal as they find in the Scriptures and the real as they find it in the world and in their work. They see the pattern, the way things ought to be, the way a church ought to be, the way God's people ought to live, in the Scriptures.
 
Then they see the practice, the reality, of how it is actually carried out in the lives of people many times. So, it is a difficult assignment.
 
Ezekiel has been given by God a very difficult assignment. He's a thirty-year-old man. He started out as a priest and was trained as a priest. As he was getting ready to launch his career, God changes careers on him and caused him to be a prophet which is a much more difficult task. He is assigned the responsibility of being a preacher to an exile people, to a people who are in captivity.
 
Even though they are in captivity, even though they are experiencing the judgment of God, they will not hearken and they will not listen. God has basically said to Ezekiel, "Ezekiel, I'm calling you to preach to a people who are not going to listen to what you have to say.
 
Sometimes we think that when calamity comes and when difficulties come, that will cause people to turn to God. Many people were hoping and praying after 9.11 that there would be a mighty turning to God in this country. Surveys have been taken and they have found that 9.11 did not bring people to God.
 
There was a bump in attendance about one Sunday in most churches. Then everything went back like it was.
 
Here is Ezekiel. He is given a tough assignment. He's going to be a man of many faces. Notice that the Lord said to him in verse 8, "Behold I have made thy face strong." He is going to be a man of many faces. He is going to have many roles, many assignments.
 
Actually, in this third chapter, beginning with verse four and going to the end, you have the many faces of the preacher; the roles that the preacher has to fill in the carrying out of his ministry.
 
I want us to just look at these this evening as we prepare to deal with the messages that Ezekiel preaches in this unusual prophecy.
 
The first face Ezekiel is to put on in these opening verses is-
 
I. The Face of a Messenger.
 
We see Ezekiel speaking in these verses. He is in the role of a messenger. God is calling him to be a messenger, to carry His Word. In verse four he tells who the messenger is; that's Ezekiel. He tells who the audience is; the house of Israel. He tells what the message is; he says speak unto them my word.
 
God's preacher is not to speak his message; he is to speak God's message. It is not my job to get up here and give you my opinion. I'm not here to give you book reviews or opinion. My assignment is to declare, "thus saith the Lord." It's not my word; it's God's Word. 
That's why in First Thessalonians, chapter 2, verse 13, Paul said, "For this cause also thank we God without ceasing, because, when you received the word of God which ye heard of us, ye received it not as the word of men, but as it is in truth, the word of God, which effectually worketh also in you that believe."
 
That is his assignment. That is his role. He is to be a preacher. He is to be a messenger and he is to preach God's word and he is to preach God's word to the house of Israel; those who are in captivity in the land of Babylon.
 
It's rather interesting how he describes this audience
Ezekiel is to preach to. In verse 5 he says to them,
Ezekiel, I'm not sending you to a people who speak a language you don't understand. He says I'm not sending you to a people of strange speech. That is, obscure speech and a hard, difficult language. He is saying, I'm not sending you, Ezekiel, to people who have a hard to speak language and words which are difficult to pronounce. I am sending you to the house of Israel.
 
Those who are called to go to the mission field to preach the gospel have the easier assignment. We have missionaries in our fellowship here who go to other countries. Some of you, from time to time, go on trips to other countries and preach the gospel.
 
There is an overwhelming response. There are many in those places who have never heard the gospel before. It is much easier to preach the gospel on the mission field. You may have to learn languages. You may have to go to language school and get prepared to do that.
But there is openness in the hearts of the people. It is a tougher assignment to preach the gospel in gospel-hardened America. I will assure you of that.
 
Sometimes missionaries, who go over there and come back here, become a little bit impatient with what goes on here. They preach over there and thousands of people come forward. We preach over here and a handful of people come forward. Of course, we never really know who is saved.
 
What about all the people who walk forward in the services in here? Are they all saved? I don't know whether they are saved or not. We do every thing we know to do to ensure that they have a genuine understanding and come to a real experience with the Lord, but I don't know their hearts.
 
One of the indications that conversions are real is that when you go back there in a year, you will find a church somewhere. Read the New Testament and you will discover that the New Testament pattern is “go, make disciples, baptize them, teach them, and you will find that when the gospel was preached and people were saved in the New Testament, a church was formed. So, on the mission field that's the way it goes.
 
God is saying to Ezekiel: you are going to have a tough job. You are not going to preach to a foreign country, to people with a foreign language. You are going to preach to the house of Israel and I want you to know they are not going to pay any attention to you. That's a real encouragement, isn't it?
 
 
 
Over in the thirty-third chapter of the book of Ezekiel, the Lord said this to him. Verse 31 and following says, "And they come unto thee as the people cometh, and they sit before thee as my people, and they hear thy words, but they will not do them; for with their mouth they show much love, but their heart goeth after their covetousness. And, lo, thou art unto them as a very lovely song of one that hath a pleasant voice, and can play well on an instrument: for they hear thy words, but they do them not."
 
In other words he is saying, they will come to hear you preach, but they are not going to pay any attention to you. They are going to walk out saying,
"Oh, isn't that pleasant? Isn't that an entertaining thing? We receive what he says as information; we are dismissed and we go our way doing just as we please."
 
So, Ezekiel, first of all puts on the face of a messenger and we see Ezekiel speaking but they are not going to listen.
 
Notice what he says inverse 7. "But the house of
Israel will not hearken unto thee; for they will not hearken unto me." He is saying, it's not YOU, Ezekiel, they are rejecting. It's me. He deflects the brunt of the thing from Ezekiel to Himself.
 
Sunday mornings I preach, and then I give an invitation. We never know who will come. But whoever comes is not a reflection on me. I give the invitation for God. I am an ambassador for Christ. I give the invitation on behalf of God. Whether people come or they do not come, is not a matter of me, it's a matter of God. I'm just a messenger boy.
That's all I am doing. I'm just delivering the mail. It's God who sends the message. So he is to be a messenger. That's where he is sent.
 
Now notice how he is to be strengthened.
 
verse 8-9
 
 he says, "Behold, I have made thy face strong against their faces, and thy forehead strong against their foreheads." 
 
He is says: Ezekiel, you are going to have to be strong for this task. There is a tough side to the preacher. The preacher has to preach and he has to be willing to preach when it is unpopular.
 
I love to preach on the happy things. I love to preach on the return of the Lord. I love to preach on heaven. I love to preach on all those glorious themes, but if I am true to the Word, there are times I have to preach on the tough stuff and preach God's Word.
 
So, the preacher has to develop the tough side. There are times when the message is not received. There are times when the people are not happy at what the preacher has had to say.
 
So God says to Ezekiel, I'm going to strengthen you. Your face is going to be like a rock; hard as granite. He would stand up there and preach and they would frown at him and he would just preach a little stronger.
 
 
 
First of all he has on the face of a messenger. He's speaking. In verse 10 he says now, Ezekiel, I want you to take the message into your heart and life and ears yourself.
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When I preach, I first of all, have to preach it to me. When I point the finger toward you like that, I have three pointing back to me. I must take the message. That's what happens to me in the course of the week as I prepare and study the Word to have a message for you. God has to speak to me. It has to be personal to me. I have to get the Word in my heart, receive it with my ears.
 
He is a messenger. We see Ezekiel speaking. Now, notice what happens in verse 12. Now, he has on another face. Now, we see Ezekiel as
 
II. The Face of a Pastor.
 
Verse 12-13
 
He's going back to his experiences in chapter 1; that great vision. God is encouraging His preacher with a reminder of the vision of the glory of God.
 
You have to keep your eyes on Jesus. Keep your eyes on the glory of the Lord.
 
So the Holy Spirit picks him up. 
 
Notice verse 14
 
He said I went bitterly and angrily. The word, heat there, means hot displeasure. He's angry.
 
 
"But the hand of the Lord was strong upon me." He is basically saying that he was angry and didn't want to go.
 
He is saying, Lord, you are picking on me. You are sending me to preach to some folks that don't even want to hear what I have to say.
 
verse 15
 
 
Now, you see him in the role of a pastor. We see Ezekiel caring for the people. He said, I sat where they sat. He's identifying himself with the people.
They were going through a tough time. There were in captivity.
 
If you want to really get their feeling sometimes, read Psalm 137. There you will get just a little inkling of how these people were in a land of captivity; how they were handling that.
 
Let me just read you a verse or two of Psalm 137.
 
"By the rivers of Babylon, there sat down, yea we wept when we remembered Zion. We hanged our harps upon the willows in the midst thereof. For there they that carried us away captive required of us a song; and they that wasted us required of us mirth, saying, Sing us one of the songs of Zion." They said, "How shall we sing the Lord's song in a strange land?"
 
Ezekiel sat where they sat; he identified with them.
 
 
 
The preacher has a tough side, but the preacher also has a tender side. He has to care. The pastor, if he is to be what God wants him to be, when the people rejoice, he rejoices. When the people weep, he weeps. He cares. It's kind of like the Lord is. That's what God does. He says we are to cast all our cares upon him for he cares for us.
 
So for seven days Ezekiel is sitting there to identify with them, to care for them. We see him in the role of pastor caring.
 
Look at verse 16 and following. The third picture comes up and he puts on the face of an evangelist.
 
III. The Face of an Evangelist.
 
We see Ezekiel warning.  Interesting verses. Let me read them for you in verses 16 – 19
 
There's the warning of the wicked.
 
Now the warning of the righteous. 
 
verse 20 – 21
 
He's not talking here about eternal salvation. This is an Old Testament picture and he is not talking about spiritual death. You have two groups and Ezekiel's assignment is to be an evangelist. We see him warning. The role he fills here is the role of a watchman.
 
You have to understand the Old Testament scene of what is going on here. The watchman was kind of like what we would call today an early warning detection system. Kind of like a smoke detector.
A smoke detector detects the smoke which gives you an early warning that is a fire. On my computer I have a Norton Anti-virus. Don't ask me what they do. But I think it's some kind of early warning system that there is something bad coming. So we are familiar with early warning detection devices.
 
Well, a watchman, in those days, was an early warning detection device. It was his job to be on the walls or in the towers of a city and to keep a watch to see if an enemy was approaching. If an enemy came, he was to blow the trumpet or to sound the alarm so that the people might be warned in order to prepare themselves and maybe avoid disaster.
 
He takes that figure of speech of the watchman on the wall, the warning, and he applies it to Ezekiel's responsibility and really to your responsibility and mine to warn people.
 
I have a role as an evangelist. I have a responsibility to preach to the lost. Really community leaders are to be watchmen on the wall. They are to be watching out for danger that is coming into the city.
 
Parents are to be watchmen on the wall, watching out for danger to their children. You moms and dads are to be watchmen on the wall. A pastor is to be a watchman on the wall. It's my job to watch.
 
Dear one, that's our evangelistic responsibility to the lost. You and I have a responsibility to warn the lost. I have a responsibility when I preach. I have to warn that Jesus is coming. Lost people need to get ready. I have to warn that hell is real.
 
 
What if I don't do it? What if I have a message of warning and I'm picking flowers along the way and let lost people die, the Bible says their blood is on my hand and their blood is on your hand, dear one, if you have responsibility and opportunity to tell people about Jesus Christ and you don't do it. If they die and go to hell, their blood is on your hands. That's what this passage teaches.
 
To the righteous, we have responsibility. That's why there are passages in the Bible that talk about rebuke. My job is to rebuke God's people when there is sin in their lives, and to warn God's people, and to preach the truth to God's people and show them the dangers of sin. If I don't do it, then blood is on my hand. I don't want to stand before God and have the blood of people on my hand.
 
He is an evangelist and we see him warning. So much more I'd like to say there.
 
Now, look at the fourth face Ezekiel puts on. This gets interesting. He puts on -
 
IV. The Face of a Dramatist.
 
We are going to see Ezekiel acting. 
 
Verse 22
 
Same glory he saw in chapter 1. He fell down just like he did in chapter 1. Then the spirit entered him. It wasn't the spirit that knocked him down. It's the spirit that picked him up. The spirit doesn't knock you down; the spirit picks you up.
 
 
Verse 24 - 25
 
He's going to be tied up. He's confined to his house. He's tied up in ropes. Isn't this amazing?
 
Verse 26
 
In other words, he says you won't be able to talk.
 
Here's Ezekiel in a tattered hut among the captives in Telabib. He's tied up in his house and he can't talk.
 
verse 27
 
He is saying, Ezekiel, you can't talk unless I tell you to, unless I have a message; unless it's time to preach. So here he is.
 
What if God said to me, "Tolbert, you are to stay at your house, let Lisa tie you up in ropes. (She might like to do that sometimes) But you can't say anything unless I tell you to. So, folks come over there to the pastor's house. I'm all tied up. "Good to see you, preacher. Are you feeling all right?" Then God says, preach. That's the only time I could speak.
 
That went on for seven years. What's going on? Ezekiel is a dramatist. He's acting. You read the Old
Testament about the Old Testament preachers and you will find they were tremendous actors. What do I mean by actors? Are they putting on a show? No, no. Ezekiel is fixing to become a one-man street show, but he's not just putting on a show; he's an actor in the best sense of the term. These are objects lessons. 
 
God's preacher uses the techniques of drama and acting. Read the Old Testament prophets. They had a tool kit full of rhetorical devices. They painted with non-verbal words. They acted it out. Here is Ezekiel. He's an actor. He is going to act out God's message.
 
The elders come down to his little hut and there's nobody there but him and his worried wife. All of a sudden, a place is cleared out and the drama begins.
There are twelve acted out sermons that Ezekiel gives. One of them is in chapter 4.
 
Verses 1 - 8
 
What is God doing? He's using a scene and acting out. He's doing an action sermon that Jerusalem is getting ready to fall.
 
You read on down and there's another sermon in verses 9 and following. He's to eat some filthy bread that has been cooked by human dung.
 
You come to the fifth chapter and he acts out another sermon. He takes a barber's razor and shaves his beard and divides the beard into three parts. He's just acting out the message. Why is this?
 
Look at the last verse, verse 27 of chapter 3, where God said he that hears let him hear. Does that remind you of something Jesus said one time?
 
Turn to Matthew 13. It's one of the reasons why Jesus used parables; pictures, acted out stories. I want to show you something that Jesus said in verse 13.
 
 
Verse 15
 
 
Notice their ears and eyes. First God speaks the word to the ear. But when people don't hear with the ear, God will try their eyes. He will send it to you in sign language. He will send it to you in pictures.
 
Don't misunderstand what I'm going to say. I'm not saying that God caused all of the tragedy. But I'm saying that God allows the events of history to teach lessons.
 
In a nation which is gospel hardened, where there is a church virtually on every corner, down every road and to a nation that has refused to hear the message with its ears, it's as if God said, there are messages for the eyes. When tragedies come sometimes God may use those tragedies to try to get the message to the eye-gate if they won't take it into their ear-gate.
 
"He that hath an ear, let him hear what the spirit
says to the churches."
 
Let's bow our heads in prayer.