Turn with me to Ezekiel chapter 33. When the Lord comes to Ezekiel and gives him the message that he’s going to give him in this chapter, this isn’t given to him at the beginning of his ministry. This is given to him after he’s been called by God to share with the people.
How many times have we heard the Lord say to Ezekiel, Son of man, hear this and say it unto your people. And they don’t listen. And the Lord is going to reveal to Ezekiel accountability and responsibility.
And what our accountability and responsibility is, when God places us in situations, in situations which seem to be impossible. And we go, Lord, why am I even here? Why do these things happen? Think of elections last night. You look at people that were saying all the right things and didn’t get elected.
And those that you know were standing for wickedness did get elected. Well, what’s our accountability and responsibility? I think part of it is revealed to us in the lesson this evening. And so we’re going to take a look at chapter 33.
And it’s where God tells Ezekiel he’s called to be a watchman. And you and I are called to be watchmen. Let’s take a look at Chapter 33.
Ezekiel 33:1-33
Again the word of the Lord came unto me, saying, 2 Son of man, speak to the children of thy people, and say unto them, When I bring the sword upon a land, if the people of the land take a man of their coasts, and set him for their watchman: 3 if when he seeth the sword come upon the land, he blow the trumpet, and warn the people; 4 then whosoever heareth the sound of the trumpet, and taketh not warning; if the sword come, and take him away, his blood shall be upon his own head. 5 He heard the sound of the trumpet, and took not warning; his blood shall be upon him. But he that taketh warning shall deliver his soul. 6 But if the watchman see the sword come, and blow not the trumpet, and the people be not warned; if the sword come, and take any person from among them, he is taken away in his iniquity; but his blood will I require at the watchman’s hand.
7 So thou, O son of man, I have set thee a watchman unto the house of Israel; therefore thou shalt hear the word at my mouth, and warn them from me. 8 When I say unto the wicked, O wicked man, thou shalt surely die; if thou dost not speak to warn the wicked from his way, that wicked man shall die in his iniquity; but his blood will I require at thine hand. 9 Nevertheless, if thou warn the wicked of his way to turn from it; if he do not turn from his way, he shall die in his iniquity; but thou hast delivered thy soul.
10 Therefore, O thou son of man, speak unto the house of Israel; Thus ye speak, saying, If our transgressions and our sins be upon us, and we pine away in them, how should we then live? 11 Say unto them, As I live, saith the Lord God, I have no pleasure in the death of the wicked; but that the wicked turn from his way and live: turn ye, turn ye from your evil ways; for why will ye die, O house of Israel?
12 Therefore, thou son of man, say unto the children of thy people, The righteousness of the righteous shall not deliver him in the day of his transgression: as for the wickedness of the wicked, he shall not fall thereby in the day that he turneth from his wickedness; neither shall the righteous be able to live for his righteousness in the day that he sinneth. 13 When I shall say to the righteous, that he shall surely live; if he trust to his own righteousness, and commit iniquity, all his righteousnesses shall not be remembered; but for his iniquity that he hath committed, he shall die for it. 14 Again, when I say unto the wicked, Thou shalt surely die; if he turn from his sin, and do that which is lawful and right; 15 if the wicked restore the pledge, give again that he had robbed, walk in the statutes of life, without committing iniquity; he shall surely live, he shall not die. 16 None of his sins that he hath committed shall be mentioned unto him: he hath done that which is lawful and right; he shall surely live.
17 Yet the children of thy people say, The way of the Lord is not equal: but as for them, their way is not equal. 18 When the righteous turneth from his righteousness, and committeth iniquity, he shall even die thereby. 19 But if the wicked turn from his wickedness, and do that which is lawful and right, he shall live thereby.
20 Yet ye say, The way of the Lord is not equal. O ye house of Israel, I will judge you every one after his ways.
21 And it came to pass in the twelfth year of our captivity, in the tenth month, in the fifth day of the month, that one that had escaped out of Jerusalem came unto me, saying, The city is smitten. 22 Now the hand of the Lord was upon me in the evening, afore he that was escaped came; and had opened my mouth, until he came to me in the morning; and my mouth was opened, and I was no more dumb.
23 Then the word of the Lord came unto me, saying, 24 Son of man, they that inhabit those wastes of the land of Israel speak, saying, Abraham was one, and he inherited the land: but we are many; the land is given us for inheritance. 25 Wherefore say unto them, Thus saith the Lord God; Ye eat with the blood, and lift up your eyes toward your idols, and shed blood: and shall ye possess the land? 26 Ye stand upon your sword, ye work abomination, and ye defile every one his neighbour’s wife: and shall ye possess the land? 27 Say thou thus unto them, Thus saith the Lord God; As I live, surely they that are in the wastes shall fall by the sword, and him that is in the open field will I give to the beasts to be devoured, and they that be in the forts and in the caves shall die of the pestilence. 28 For I will lay the land most desolate, and the pomp of her strength shall cease; and the mountains of Israel shall be desolate, that none shall pass through. 29 Then shall they know that I am the Lord, when I have laid the land most desolate because of all their abominations which they have committed.
30 Also, thou son of man, the children of thy people still are talking against thee by the walls and in the doors of the houses, and speak one to another, every one to his brother, saying, Come, I pray you, and hear what is the word that cometh forth from the Lord. 31 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 shew much love, but their heart goeth after their covetousness. 32 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. 33 And when this cometh to pass, (lo, it will come,) then shall they know that a prophet hath been among them.
Let’s just bow in prayer. Lord, I pray that you speak to us through your word.
Help us to apply these truths to our lives. We pray in Jesus’ name. Amen.
Ezekiel, much like Jeremiah, probably wondered, Lord, why do I keep bringing the same message to the house of Israel? Nobody listens. They don’t do anything. They don’t change.
Their hearts aren’t transformed. Why do you keep giving me this same message? And yet, the Lord told Jeremiah, at the beginning of his ministry, that he was going to place his words upon his lips and that Jeremiah was to take and eat them and they were to literally become a part of him. And he said, I’m going to place you amongst the nation of Israel, amongst my people, and you will speak these words, but nobody will listen to you.
Ezekiel had much of the same ministry. He spoke the words. He told the people.
He warned them. He called them to repentance. And yet, we see here in this chapter, the ultimate outcome is that many of them would go and listen, as we saw in the last verses that we just read.
They’d listen and they’d hear this sweet music to their ears, but they wouldn’t apply it to their lives and they wouldn’t change and their hearts remained hardened against God. So what does that mean about us? And what are we supposed to do? Well, Ezekiel is told by the Lord here, I’m going to give you the example of a watchman that’s placed upon the wall. Now we don’t have watchmen on the walls in our city because we don’t have a walled city.
And we don’t fight the same type of warfare that they fought back then. Back then when they fought, they would have armies that would come and they would attack. Some would come with horses and chariots.
Some would come with swords and spears. Some would come with arrows and bows. And they would come upon the city.
And one of the ways the city tried to prevent them from coming and attacking was to place a wall around the city. And what they would do, as the text reveals to us tonight, is they would place a man upon the wall and his whole job was to watch. He was to watch into the distance and see, is the enemy approaching? Is the enemy coming to destroy us? And what he was to do was to cry out if he saw the enemy coming.
And the purpose of this was to give the people time to prepare. That they would be able to arm themselves, that they would be able to prepare to fight against the enemy, that they would be able to stand and that they would be able to overcome and defeat the enemy before the enemy came upon them unawares and destroyed them. Now, the Lord gave a couple examples in here.
He said, one is, the watchman cries out. He says, the enemy is coming. And the people ignore him.
They say, we don’t believe him. We don’t believe that there’s any danger out there. We don’t believe that there’s anybody coming.
We don’t believe that we’re in any danger. And the Lord says, if you as a watchman would cry out and warn the people and they would ignore you, when they come and they are overcome and their blood is shed because they did not listen and they did not heed to the watchman’s cry, He said, their blood is upon themselves. They have to be accountable for their own neglect of listening to the truth and responding to it and believing that the enemy was coming.
And so, you as a watchman, there is no accountability to you. Their blood is not on you. You did everything you were supposed to do.
You warned them. You told them. You told them to prepare.
But they didn’t listen. However, if you as a watchman sit on the wall and let’s say you go, well, I really don’t think I need to cry out. I’ve been standing up here and yeah, I see some things in the distance, but they’re really far away.
I’m not going to warn anybody. I’m not going to say anything. And then the enemy comes and he overwhelms the people and the people aren’t prepared because you didn’t warn them and they are all killed.
The Lord says, their blood is on your head because you did not do your job. You didn’t proclaim the danger that was coming and you didn’t tell them to prepare and you didn’t warn them about the coming danger. Well, as you look at our culture today, you say, well, where are the walls? How are we watchmen? And what do we do? Well, God has really called us to be watchmen and as you look at what’s happening in our world today and look at what’s happening even in our own country, you can see the danger that’s coming.
And the problem is, the people are like the people in the midst of the sea of the city. They don’t see it. Now, there’s various reasons that they don’t see it in our culture.
Part of it is, the Lord says their eyes are blinded because they don’t believe in Him, they don’t believe in truth, they don’t believe in His Word. That’s part of the reason their eyes are blinded. Others may be believers in Christ, but they really don’t think God wouldn’t allow those type of things to come upon us in our culture because we are claimed to be Christians, we’re His.
And neither one of those groups of people are really looking out and seeing the danger that is coming. Now, what are we to do as watchmen? We’re to warn them. Now, if you look at our own culture, there are things that we should be warning about.
One is how the enemy, Satan, is trying to come in. He’s coming into the churches unaware, trying to sneak in, even as the apostles wrote in their letters, Paul and Peter and John and James, wrote about the fact that in the last days, there would come those sneaking in, coming in with the full intent of deceiving and destroying the body of Christ. And the Bible gives us examples in Colossians.
We were just doing a study this last week and we were looking at Colossians and it’s beginning to talk about some of the things that are there that we see that Satan uses to try and destroy and deceive Christians and come in amongst them and come against their faith and make them ineffectual in their Christian life. And he does it by bringing humanistic philosophies into the church and people begin to trust in that which is not the Word of God and the truth of God and to abandon it and believe in lies. And as you begin to see this as God’s watchman, what are you supposed to do? You’re supposed to warn your fellow believers of the deception that’s being placed before them lest they have itching ears and don’t listen to the truth and believe the lies.
And the Scriptures tell us we are to warn them. We’re to be a watchman. So not only that, if we look at our culture as a whole, you see all kinds of things that Satan is doing to undermine and destroy the truth that’s within our culture.
And we see that some of these lies go back literally a couple hundred years, the beginning of the foundation of our nation, some of these lies were already there in their infant form. And people were warned and people responded various times in our nation’s history. They responded to watchmen.
George Whitfield during the Great Awakening and other preachers that preached at that time spoke of the need to look to God’s Word and trust in God’s Word and not in our own abilities but to look to the Lord and to give our hearts to Christ. That’s a message that needs to be preached today and people don’t see it. Instead they look and they see they’re deceived and the world tells them just trust in yourself.
Look to your own heart. Believe that you can do anything you want to achieve, you can accomplish. That’s some of the lies that are out there.
There’s other lies that would come. For example, right now in our culture one of the big lies is that Islam is a religion of peace and that they just want to live peacefully and they want to worship their God as Christians would worship their God. Well, I want to tell you first of all, we need to warn, Islam is not worshipping a true God.
Islam is a religion that really is founded in Satan. I really agree with one man that said Islam is a religion of Satan and it is because it’s exactly the opposite of biblical Christianity. It has no forgiveness, it has no love, it has no mercy and it calls out for people to convert by the sword and death.
It’s a horrible religion and it’s not a religion of peace and their full intent is not to assimilate into a culture but to conquer a culture. Well, we need to warn what some of these false religions are and how they desire to come against the word of God and destroy people and you can’t accommodate their belief system because what their full intent is to overcome our belief system and destroy it and destroy all who believe in God. And it’s not only them, you can look at other false religions, it’s the same thing.
But today, are we being watchmen and warning of what their full intent is. Or you can go on to a number of different things, how that our children are being undermined in the schools by being taught falsely that there is no God, there is no creation and to believe in all kinds of false teachings to replace the Bible. And any and everything is acceptable except the word of God.
And we need to warn and watch people, warn people about that and be a watchman on it. So God calls us to do that but if we are not willing to do it and these people die because they don’t know. Nobody told them.
God says there is accountability for us because we didn’t take responsibility with what God called us to do. So this chapter is really a lot about accountability and responsibility. What are we accountable to do as watchmen? What are we responsible to do? And how does God hold us accountable or not accountable? Now, God says that we are not responsible for them responding to our message.
If they choose not to respond, that is their choice and if they are overcome by the enemy and destroyed, their blood is on their own head. That was their decision and they failed to listen to the watchmen. However, if we never tell what the truth is, they don’t have the ability to respond to the truth and then we stand accountable because we weren’t responsible.
And so there is a responsibility to the hearer, there is a responsibility to the proclaimer and there is accountability to both of them. And He says that here. Now, I want you to look at it specifically in light of what was happening with the nation of Israel.
The Lord told Ezekiel to proclaim this message to Israel and to tell him. And if you look at towards the end of the chapter, He says, If the wicked restore the pledge, give again in verse 15, that he had robbed, walk in the statutes of life without committing iniquity, he shall surely live and he shall not die. So one of the things of accountability of the listener is, he can repent.
And he may hear the watchman’s proclamation and turn and repent. And Ezekiel is telling, the Lord is telling Ezekiel, that’s part of your responsibility in proclaiming the truth is that gives these people an opportunity to repent and turn back to me. And if they turn from their wickedness, their forgiveness will come.
However, before that he said, there are those who think, I am so righteous, I don’t need to listen to the message. And it’s my righteousness that will save me. But they said, they think that their righteousness will save them, but then they walk in iniquity or sin.
And really their sin is they’re rejecting God and not believing in Him. And so he says, they shall surely die. Now, it’s interesting, and I should have marked it.
He gives specifically six things that he talks about. If you turn to verse 24 of chapter 33, they were saying, the people that were listening to Ezekiel were saying, look at us, we’ve got all of these people here and we’re all descendants of Abraham, right? We’re all descendants of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. Abraham was one man and he was promised the land.
And look at all of us, we should be promised the land too. Well, let’s see how God responds to that and what the problem really is. He says, Son of man, they that inhabit the waste of the land of Israel speak, saying, okay, so this is the people that are left in Israel that have not been taken away into captivity yet.
They’re inhabiting the waste of the land. They’re the ones that are still there. And they say, Abraham was one and he inherited the land.
But we are many and the land is given us for an inheritance. Well, there was some truth to that in the sense that God had promised Abraham, Isaac and Jacob that their descendants would inherit the land. However, it was a conditional inheritance.
They would not experience the fruit and abundance of the land and the land would be desolate unless they walked in obedience to the Lord. Well, what does God say? Wherefore say unto them, Thus saith the Lord. And He gives specifically six sins that they are involved with that cause them to not inherit the land and that they’re going to be driven from the land and the land’s going to be desolate.
What are the six? He says, first of all, Ye eat with the blood. Now, if you look at what they were, the nation of Israel was told not to eat blood. They were told how to prepare food, how to prepare meat.
They were to not eat the blood. Why is that? Because life is in the blood and the pagans, as part of their occultic worship service, they would eat and drink blood. I remember we used to have some people in our hometown and they’d butcher a pig and as they butchered the pig, they’d drain the blood from the pig, but they’d take a cup and they’d take the blood and they’d drink the blood of the pig.
And I’m going, that’s disgusting. Well, it’s disgusting because God told us not to drink and eat blood. But the nation of Israel was doing that, which was a pagan practice.
They were doing that, which violated God’s word. They went against it and they disregarded life, is really what they were doing, because life is in the blood. They disregarded what God said about life and they would eat the blood.
And then not only that, He says, and lift up your eyes toward your idols. They didn’t lift up their eyes to the Lord, they lifted up their eyes to their idols. And they were in the land and they said, well, we’ve inherited the land because God said, and look at how many of us are still here, even though judgment has come.
We’re still here, so we’ve got the inheritance, but we’re going to worship the idols and not God. We’re going to look to the idols as our deliverer, not the Lord. And they did.
And God says, that’s another reason for this. The second reason that you’re being judged. The third is, and shed blood.
And they shed innocent blood. Now, if you look at what they did, they were involved in pagan practices. They would offer human sacrifice.
They would offer their own children to their pagan gods. They would shed innocent blood. I just want you to equate and think about this in relation even to our culture, as we get to the other three sins.
And it says, and ye shall possess the land. And he’s saying, you think you deserve to possess the land? And you’re involved in these three practices? You drink blood, you worship idols, and you kill the innocent. And you think you deserve to inherit the land? Now, he doesn’t stop there.
He says, ye stand upon your sword. What does that mean? Ye stand upon your sword. Well, if you stop and think about it, what was the sword for? The sword was a defensive weapon.
The sword was an offensive weapon. Their enemies would come upon them, and they’d say, the Lord has to deliver us. And they’d stand upon their sword.
We’re going to look at this in light of how it applies to us in just a moment. They wouldn’t be involved in their own defense, and they wouldn’t be involved in defending their own people. They’d stand upon their sword.
The fourth thing he says, and you work abomination, they did that, which was an abomination to the Lord. They defiled his sacrificial system. They defiled his worship.
They defiled everything that was pointing to the coming Messiah. They were much like Esau, and they disregarded that which was holy, righteous, and pure. The sixth thing.
It says everyone, you defile everyone, his neighbor’s wife, every one of them, and so sexual sin and sexual lust became part of their culture. And then he says, and you shall possess the land? Now I wanted you to look at this in light of people who profess to be Christians and examine how that applies to us today and even how it applies to our nation. And oftentimes people want to hide behind the fact that they keep saying, well we have a Christian foundation, we have a foundation that was laid like no other nation.
Well that is all true, except our nation has never been 100% Christian, but the foundation was laid on biblical principles and the foundation was laid upon the Bible. But let’s just take a look at these six sins in light of our culture and Christians. First of all, wherefore he says, ye eat with the blood.
Do we really take seriously some of the things that God says about the way that we conduct ourselves? Today in the church, social drinking has become a big thing. A lot of Christians think it’s no big deal. And if you look at the way that a lot of Christians conduct themselves in the world, it’s no different than the world.
God says there has to be a difference. Because you’re to understand the principles of how I created you in My image, the principles of how I despect you to walk in obedience to My Word and truth and righteousness. And there has to be a difference.
What spirit controls you? Is it the spirit of this world which would perceive the lust that Satan would say to go out and do? One of these in their culture was occultic worship, drinking of blood. And they didn’t see any big deal with that. A lot of Christians today do things that they don’t see any big deal with, but if you begin to look at God’s Word, it says, wait a second here, you’re to be different.
The second thing He says is you lift up your eyes towards your idols. We’ve talked about this in other messages and other times. What has become an idol in our life? What do we worship instead of God? What do we place ahead of God? What do we expect and put our trust in? Is it our money? Is it our job? Is it things of this world? You know what, we teach our young people to idolize athletics and sports teams, Hollywood stars and singers.
Do you know what the word fan stands for? If you’re a fan, and fans are used in sports, fans are used in music, people who follow music, it means that you’re fanatic about it. That’s what fan is shortened for. I’m a fanatic when it comes to sports.
I’m a fanatic when it comes to music. Well, a fanatic, if you look at what the definition of that means, it’s all-consuming. It just consumes me all.
I remember my wife used to say, Wow, it seems like you know every statistic there is to know about football players and baseball players, and you seem to have them all memorized. Sometimes we do that. But are we being consumed by the right things? Are we being consumed by God’s word? Are we being consumed by the things of this world? Do we just want to go and see singers so bad that we would spend money we don’t have, make trips that we can’t afford just to go and hear a concert? And then you go and hear the music and it’s not uplifting and edifying.
If you really listen to the words, it’s destructive to our moral character and degrading to our walk with Christ. So he’s saying, don’t have idols, whatever the idol is. And then he goes on and he says, and you shed blood.
Our culture is guilty of shedding blood. We’re guilty of killing our children. And now we’re beginning to look at killing the elderly.
Why? Because it’s inconvenient. Because, you know, I’ve got better things to do than have a baby right now. I have plans.
I had planned a career. I was going to go to school. I was going to do this.
I was going to do that. Or maybe it’s our parents and I wish they’d really get out of the way so we can just help it along. You see, when you shed innocent blood, you’re really defiling that which God calls sacred.
And that’s life. Because they’ve all been created in His image. That’s what Israel was doing.
And we’re doing the same thing. And he says, and you shall possess the land. Well, we shall call ourselves Christians.
Then he goes on and he says, you stand upon your sword. How do Christians stand upon their sword? How do people in America stand upon their sword? The one thing that we have in the armor of God that’s an offensive weapon is the Word of God. And Paul gives you the armor which is laid out in the book of Ephesians.
He said, take the sword, the word of truth. Take the sword, the word of truth. How many Christians stand on their sword? How many people in America stand on the only thing they’ve got to defend themselves against the evil one and against all of the wickedness of this world? The only thing that they can have that can discern, as it says in the book of Hebrews, it’s a powerful sword, cutting asunder bone and marrow.
And when you cut asunder bone and marrow, where do you find the marrow? The marrow is inside the bone. And you have to have a very sharp instrument to cut the marrow from the bone. You just don’t go in there with a dull instrument.
You just don’t go in there and start hacking. It has to be a sharp instrument. Well, it says that the word of God is that type of instrument.
And it can cut and discern that which is one thing from another. It can discern bone from marrow. It can discern that which is truth from error.
So you’re going to go out and you’re going to look at all the things that we talked about at the beginning of the message. Like, let’s talk about the Islamic religion. Is that true or isn’t it true? Is that just another form of worshipping the God of the Bible? Is it just something that should be really incorporated and we can combine the two and call it Chrislam, what some people do? No, you should take the word of God and it should be able to cut asunder everything that’s in the Islamic religion and tell you, is this true or not true? Is it true that I have the right to lie so that I can deceive my enemy and then I can come and kill him because I’ve deceived him? And it’s alright to lie in that case.
Is it a religion that shows no mercy? Is that okay? Is it okay never to forgive my enemies? The word of God says those are things that are to mark the Christian’s life. Jesus tells us to pray for our enemies and to pray for those that would despitefully use us. The Quran says kill them.
Kill them. Do away with them. Give them two opportunities.
Either they can pay you a tax and then it comes a point where they either have to continue to pay the tax and then they have to submit and they have to become a believer in your religious system and the third thing is if they won’t do those two, then what you do is kill them. Then you take the sword and you say either you convert or the sword. Today there are Christians, more than one small church in Africa, that has been the option given to them by the Muslims and they refuse to convert and their heads are lopped off.
That’s Islam. Well, do we stand on our sword? Do we stand on the word of God so that we don’t even know that that’s not biblical? That’s not Christianity? And instead we embrace them? Or we embrace the world that would teach everything, that would teach God isn’t creator, that would teach that man and women are not created as different? But we say, oh, you can be a woman if you want to be and you’re a man, you can be a man if you want to be and you’re a woman and there’s all these different sexes and genders. No, there’s not.
There’s two. And God created a man and woman and He created them with purpose and He created them to be complimentary to one another and to be there to come together as one. But we teach that no.
All kinds of divergent philosophies that stand against the principle of God and the word of God is right there. It says it right there. It cuts it asunder.
Or do we stand on our sword? The fifth thing. He says, ye work abomination. Ye work abomination.
Do we believe in that which is an abomination to the Lord and do we accept it? Many Christians today accept homosexuality as normal. Accept transgenderism as normal. It’s an abomination to the Lord.
It flies against everything that He created and gave to man and said is good. Do we embrace that which is an abomination? People need to ask themselves these things. And finally, the sixth thing that Ezekiel tells these people is and ye defile everyone his neighbor’s wife.
Sexual perversion. Defiling the most sacred of institutions that God gave to man, the institution of marriage. And mocking it.
Making it something that doesn’t matter. As you look at this, these people were doing these things and then they go, we possess the land. God says, are you going to possess the land? Are you going to walk in the fruit of my calling as a believer in Christ? And you have, this is the direction of your life? Are you really His? Are you really one that is there to walk with Him? These are questions we should ask ourselves.
And these are things that we should lay before people as watchmen on the wall. In closing, in verse 31, the Lord tells Ezekiel 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 in their heart they goeth after their covetousness. What does God, what did Jesus say? What’s more significant, the outside or the inside? He says you can do a lot of things with the outside to cover up what the real problem is and that’s the inside.
He said, where does, where when a man lusts after a woman, it’s as if he’s already committed adultery. Where does the lust begin? In the heart. On the inside.
And it works its way out to the outside eventually. But he’s saying these people, they give all these beautiful words with their lips but in their heart they’re filled with covetousness and really hatred of the things of God. And thou, and lo, thou art unto them as a very lovely song one that hath a pleasant voice.
He’s a watchman on the wall. He’s proclaiming the truth. And the Lord’s saying, oh they listen and they say, oh that sounds good.
We like hearing that. And can play well on their instruments for they hear thy words but they do them not. They can appear to do that which is right but they really don’t do it.
That is why our culture is the way it is today. That is why the church is the way it is today. That is why we’re in the trouble we are in today.
There have been watchmen on the wall that have proclaimed the truth but people have said, sounds great but I’m not going to do it. Sounds wonderful for you but I’m going to go home and do my thing. And the Lord closes this particular portion of the book and says, And when this cometh to pass, lo it will come, then shall they know that a prophet hath been among them.
When these things come to pass and you have spoken the truth and you have revealed to them He gives six sins here, where they’re going down this road, they’re going to know that your words are true and they’re going to know that their sin is the resulting in their judgment but they’ll never know it if you don’t say anything. So the key to this whole chapter is be a watchman, understand your responsibility as a watchman and understand your commitment to truth and realize that you are not accountable for responding to your message and having the people respond. Your accountability is to the Lord for sharing the message and living the life and proclaiming the truth and laying it before them.
They are accountable for hearing and responding and actually acting on the message. Let’s just close in prayer. Lord I pray you just help us to understand this, help us to apply this to our lives, help us to be watchmen on the wall.
This we ask in Jesus name. Amen.