Stand Up and Speak for God!
The 34-year-old pharmacist had become a successful military general, racking up important victories in the Revolutionary war. It was not without difficulties, however. He had two horses shot out from under him in one battle. He suffered two significant leg injuries. To make things worse, others took credit for his for his success, so he was not getting the recognition he deserved. At home, his wife Margaret was spending money like crazy, putting them deep in debt.
Bitter and broke, he brokered a deal with the British to become a spy for them with the intent to capture George Washington. Eventually, some of his traitorous documents were discovered, and Thomas Jefferson put out a bounty of 5,000 gold coins for his capture. He escaped and fled to London where he lived until his death in 1801.
This is how the traitor Benedict Arnold became the poster boy for disloyalty in America. You can imagine the hatred and disgust the leaders and the people had for him.
Now think of the disgust God has when people are disloyal to him in spite of his many blessings most importantly, the gift of his love and forgiveness in his Son! This disloyalty goes on today among people who had loved him. It has always gone on. God’s people in the northern kingdom of Israel felt the wrath of God when they abandoned him. The Lord had the nation of Assyria blow through the land in 722 BC, taking the Israelites captive and moving them to other countries never to return. The southern kingdom of God’s people—the land of Judah, where Jerusalem was—didn’t learn a thing from that. They continued to pursue false gods, leaving the LORD behind.
So, the Lord sent the big, bully nation of Babylon to defeat them and take them captive. Having previously been warned that this would happen if they didn’t get their spiritual act together, and now living in captivity, you would think that God’s chosen people would have learned, but they continued to reject God. Ezekiel was the prophet God sent to them in the middle of all this still trying to get them to repent and come back to him.
What we see today is how the LORD called Ezekiel to speak for him. And we can’t help but see how the LORD hasn’t changed when it comes to having his people speak for him today. Like with his prophet,
1. He Prepares You to Speak (1-2)
2. He Calls You to Speak (3-7)
3. He Will Work Through What You Say (5,7)
He Prepares You to Speak (1-2, 3-7)
It was 5 years into the captivity that God gave Ezekiel a dramatic vision of his glory. It caused him to fall face down into the dirt in humility and awe and reverent fear If you read Ezekiel chapter 1 later today, you’ll see why that was his reaction! “Son of man, stand up on your feet, and I will speak with you.” That’s what he heard as he lay stunned and still on the ground. God wanted to prepare him to be his spokesman.
Ezekiel a sinful human being (a Son of man) had no ability to stand before the LORD on his own. But the Holy Spirit entered into him, raised him to his feet, and then the LORD spoke.
Even though none of us can claim divine revelation and an audible call to stand up and listen to God, he does prepare us to speak for him. And he does it the same way as he did with his prophet.
God takes sinful people like us who are not deserving of his love, much less being spokespeople for him, and tells us to stand up before him. The same Holy Spirit that filled up and lifted up Ezekiel is the One who entered you when you were baptized into Christ or when you heard the saving words of the gospel and believed. The saving work of Jesus was applied to you. This lifted you up no more face in the dirt, no more unworthiness separating you from God. That was replaced with a loving relationship with God. In fact, you are so close to God that he trusts you to speak for him!
Ezekiel needed to be coached up before he was sent God made sure that he would go in with eyes wide open. I dragged a highlighter across the words God used to describe his people who had rejected him: disloyal
disloyal
brazen-faced
hardhearted
rebellious
briers and thorns
scorpions
rebellious
rebellious Could God have been any clearer about how far gone his people were?
How eager would you be to work in a massive patch of prickly pear and cholla and ocotillo where an enormous cyclone of scorpions was located (yes, that is an actual term!)? It certainly doesn’t sound like fun even if you wore all the right clothes and gloves To work in that desert environment would be difficult and scary and something you might not really want to tackle.
You can imagine, then, how Ezekiel might have felt when faced with the call to share God’s Word with prickly, thorny, menacing-looking people. The LORD knew the temptation would be there for his spokesman to shy away from this work. So, after these words, the Lord warned Ezekiel not to be rebellious like his people were but to listen and do the work he called him to do.
The people then might sound a lot worse than people today, but that’s not really true. God’s people turned away from him and worshiped false Gods, but isn’t that still happening? You know people who have kind of trailed away from church and their relationship with God. That is rebellion. That is spiritual Benedict-Arnold-like disloyalty to God. It is really chasing after other gods time for themselves (not for God), living for money, placing family above God, calling the shots in their life instead of God doing that. That’s going to end badly for them too if they don’t return to God.
People don’t like to hear that what they are doing is wrong. This has always been. Throw God into the mix and talk of sin and a need to change, and it’s even worse. We know better, but we can get testy and even reject what a fellow Christian tells us. Knowing what God says and knowing the people and attitudes we will face when we share God’s Word that’s prep work for going out and speaking for God.
When you come to know the majesty and glory of God, you don’t just stay lying on the floor in awe of him. He stands you up and Prepares You to Speak for him
He Calls You to Speak (3,4,7)
I am sending you…I am sending you…you are to tell them…you are to speak my words… Clearly, the Lord was assuring Ezekiel that he could go, fully confident that God wanted him to do this. He knew God. He knew God was sending him. He knew what to say because God would tell him.
That sounds pretty straightforward, doesn’t it? It sounds simple even. We seem to complicate it sometimes. The truth is, you know God. You know God is sending you. You know what to say because tells you in his Word.
So why are we often so hesitant to say what needs to be said?
Maybe our aversion to walking and working among the cactus and venomous wildlife is similar to our aversion to talking to people around us about God.
Maybe we need to admit that we haven’t been listening even though we have heard in church and in devotions and Bible study that we are God’s messengers who are to share his Word and the Savior with people.
If God calls us to it but we refuse, is that not like the Israelites who were told by God to stop chasing after false gods and return to him? Our failure to listen is the same.
Ezekiel needed to be propped up: Don’t be afraid of what they will do or say or how they look at you. He needed to hear, Whether they listen or not, you say what I tell you to say We need these encouragements too. The important thing is that God’s Word be proclaimed. Souls were at stake—and they are today too.
Any who rejected the prophet’s call to repent would one day be forced to admit that God had come to them when he sent his spokesman. That day may have been when the Babylonians levelled Jerusalem and the temple, but it certainly was the day they died and stood before the Lord. No one could charge God with injustice when all along he was pleading with them to return to him but they did not.
The same will be true for any who reject God and the things we tell them about him. God’s goal—our goal—is to have anyone we talk to look to him as their Savior and worship him. It is a sad truth that many will reject, but some may not. Either way, we faithfully represent and glorify God when we answer his call to speak for him.
He Will Work Through What You Say (5,7)
When God’s people share his words with others, there will always be a response of some kind. The Word will condemn those who do not listen. It will lift up those who repent It will work faith in others. In any case, it will do its work. As long as we are sharing what God says, he will work through what we say—and we will have given him glory by doing what he calls us to do.
It is good for us to remember that God and his Word do the work of softening the hard heart, not us It is impossible for us to convince a person to repent. And we can’t argue someone into believing in God. Our job is simply to say what God says. God does the actual work on hearts. That takes the pressure off, doesn’t it?
Is it strange to think that we don’t have to worry about how it goes when we speak for God? I mean, we want it to go well.
We want them to say, “You’re right. What I’m doing isn’t right. Thank you for saying something.”
We want them to say, “You might be right. Maybe I do need God in my life.”
We want them to say, “Tell me more about Jesus, I actually don’t know much.”
This is what we want. God wants this. People like Ezekiel wanted this. But like God’s prophet and like Jesus himself we may experience rejection. Should we just stop saying anything then? No, because God has Prepared You to Speak, Called You to Speak, and Promises to Work Through What You Say.
Your takeaway this morning might be an encouragement to continue sharing God and his Word to those around you. Or maybe you’re in the group of us who are emboldened to finally speak up as you have opportunity with those you know who are living a life without God right now.
May God be with you as you recognize the call to Stand Up and Speak for God and as you go out and do it. Amen.
Now the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. Amen.