March 24, 2019 Text: Ezekiel 33:7-20
Dear Friends in Christ,
Do you realize what you just sang? I hope and pray when we sing we also concentrate on the words. You just sang in stanza 3 “Assist my soul, too apt to stray, A stricter watch to keep.” You just asked God to help keep watch over your spiritual condition. If you were God, how would you answer that prayer? Send a memo? Weekly e-mails? Have a drone deliver a warning? Why the warnings? Because you just confessed you would rather have it your way than God’s way.
Because you are also a baptized child of God, your new nature desires to live a God-pleasing life. You want to be told when you’ve wandered from the truth. So, you’ve asked God to help you. I am standing here to tell you that God has answered your prayer. I, as your Pastor, have been . . .
“CALLED TO BE A WATCHMAN”
God called Ezekiel to be a watchman. Not a watchman perched on the city walls looking for an invader. Ezekiel was called to be a watchman over the spiritual condition of God’s people. “So you, son of man, I have made a watchman for the house of Israel. Whenever you hear a word from my mouth, you shall give them warning from me. If I say to the wicked, O wicked One, you shall surely die, and you do not speak to warn the wicked to turn from his way, that wicked person shall die in his iniquity, but his blood I will require at your hand.” (v. 7-8)
I, like every Pastor you have ever had, also have a call to speak God’s warning. I have been called to pull you back when you turn sports or patriotism or money into idols. If I see you steal or live unfaithfully. If your words or posts go beyond the 8th commandment or when you despair and see no way out of the mess you have made. I remind you that God gets no pleasure seeing you in this condition.
I have also been called to remind you that you can’t do enough good or procure enough credit on the good deeds side of your ledger to get out of your mess. You can’t make up for the wrong you did to a neighbor or a friend or a family member. If you listen to my words of admonition and repent and receive Christ’s forgiveness and then live His words then my job as a watchman can be an answer to prayer.
But that is not always easy in this moral cesspool we live in. When we are shown our faults, even by the Pastor and God’s words, our sinful nature thinks, “Does Pastor think he’s better than me!” Then some leave the church because they make it personal. God addressed Ezekiel as “son of man.” I’m mortal too. A few years back I said from this pulpit that I had done and am capable of doing some horrible things. Someone who was there that day said that bothered them. They just couldn’t believe that about me. Believe it. I don’t stand up here Sunday after Sunday as the Holier-Than-Thou guy. I don’t preach law to put you in your place. The warnings I preach are not my own, they are God’s. I’m the messenger. Furthermore, if I don’t call you out when you need it, then the Lord is holding me accountable for your fate.
I am also called to point you to a way out of your predicament. “I have no pleasure in the death of the wicked, but that the wicked turn from his way and live,” says the Lord in our text (v. 11). I am called not just to have you turn from bad behavior but to turn to someone. Another “son of man” and that is Jesus.
Jesus came in mortal flesh and He too was tempted by the same things that capture us. They did not capture Him. He overcame them and through His obedience to the Father He kept the Law perfectly for us. That righteousness has been credited to you. As we make our way to Calvary we know what we will find at the top of the hill – A Savior dying for us. As a baptized child of God you have the power through the Holy Spirit to walk away from your bad behavior and bad choices and bad attitude and I am here to help. I know you fail. I fail. But each week we gather here to be picked up again through God’s Word and God’s Sacrament. This is why we don’t walk away from the church. The watchman cannot do his job if the subjects are sitting at home, or having brunch, or at a ball field.
The American Heart Association in their materials and commercials would like us all to know the warning signs of a heart attack. Why do they do this? So if we see these signs we can do something about them. In a similar way, then, I serve as a watchman, called to be alert to the signs of spiritual danger in this congregation. To sound the warning from this pulpit or in my office or at your home. Then to let you know that something can be done about it through Jesus, the Great Physician of our soul.
I pray that with God’s power, I will continue to be that blessing to you. Called to be a watchman.
Amen.