Ezekiel 33:7–11 Pentecost
Pastor Ron Koehler
Grace—Tucson, AZ
September 6, 2026
I saw video this week of a woman in Nepal talking about the flood and how she told those around her to run. There was just one way to possibly escape death. Some situations are like that, where almost everybody agrees on the correct direction to run. Someone yelling, “Fire!” Gunshots fired. Cars crashing ahead of you at an intersection. Everyone knows what to do. Run out! Run away! Turn around! You don’t go toward those things; you get away as fast as you can! Except some people don’t do that. Firefighters run into burning buildings. Police officers move toward dangerous situations. Paramedics kneel down in the middle of the chaos. This is why we value and respect first responders. While everybody else is trying to get away from the danger, they move toward the people who are in danger. They do the unexpected thing—the thing most won’t do—when people are in trouble. God wants you and me to respond when people are in danger also. That’s true in a number of ways, but today we are thinking about the spiritual danger people get themselves into. It’s far worse than the threat of death that comes with a burning building…gunshots…or a collision. We’re talking the threat of eternal death. Perhaps it comes as An Unexpected Truth that you and I are expected to respond in the midst of the spiritual threat—whether a person realizes the danger they are in or not. We have a responsibility to WATCH OUT FOR EACH OTHER. “Where is Abel, your brother?” That’s what God asked one of the very first people who lived on this planet. Some of you know about Cain. He murdered his brother because he was jealous of him. When God approached Cain and asked where Abel was, Cain couldn’t have been more sarcastic and deceitful: “I don’t know. Am I my brother’s keeper?” Can you imagine talking to God that way?! “How would I know? Should I be keeping track of him? Why should I be responsible for him? Thousands of years after Cain shot back at God with his flippant question about being his brother’s keeper, the LORD explained to his prophet Ezekiel that God’s people have a certain responsibility: when we see someone wandering toward spiritual destruction, we don’t shrug our shoulders and say, “Not my problem.” “Am I my brother’s (or sister’s) keeper?” It’s really the opposite. We should think of ourselves as spiritual first responders who: See the danger, Sound the warning, and Save lives. See the Danger Ezekiel heard this from God: I have appointed you, son of man, to be a watchman for the house of Israel. The watchman was the guy who stood high up on the top of the fortified city wall, looking off into the distance, watching for danger—like an approaching enemy army. But he was never to just look out across the land; his job was also to warn. Most people lived or worked outside the city walls. They tended flocks and vineyards and orchards. They worked in the fields nearby. They operated small businesses. When the watchman saw danger approaching, he would sound the trumpet and the people would run to safety within the city walls.
The watchman did not have the option of saying, “You know, I hate confrontation...” He couldn’t be the kind of guy who saw everything with blinding positivity: “Maybe they’re friendly.” He couldn’t be delicate: “I don’t want to upset anybody.” His job was to pay attention and recognize danger before everyone else discovered it the hard way. Ezekiel was a watchman, but not one in a tower. He was a prophet called by God to warn the people of an even greater danger than an invading army—sin. But it’s not just Ezekiel—we have a similar calling. Have you noticed that how bad a sin is is measured by immediate consequences. Did anybody get hurt? Did anybody find out? Did it cost me my job? Did it ruin the relationship? Did I get arrested? If those things don’t apply, then maybe it wasn’t so bad. But the holy God measures sin differently. Sin actually separates people from him. We cannot just go on sinning without looking to God for forgiveness and without the desire to stop those sins. If we do, the separation that is not apparent right now will be painfully obvious to the body and soul after death. God calls us to help people See the Danger. That’s harder than it sounds. Because sometimes we would rather not see. Suppose someone you love is caught in a sin. Maybe it’s something immoral, or it’s bitterness or dishonesty or alcohol or substance abuse or gossip or greed or not coming worship and the Lord’s Supper—or some other behavior that clearly contradicts God’s Word. We can become amazingly creative as we try to avoid serving as God’s watchman. Tell me if you have to plead guilty to saying or thinking any of these: “Who am I to judge?” “It’s none of my business.” “I’m sure there’s another side to the story.” “I don’t want to damage our friendship.” Sometimes we use those as excuses to not do what God tells us to do. He does not ask us to be spiritual busybodies poking around in everyone else’s lives. And we should point out that God does not call us to be investigators, he expects us to be watchman who will notice when there is danger and help people to see it. This is supposed to be a loving thing that we do for each other. We get this, right? Take the classic examples: a parent doesn’t sit there and say nothing when their small child is about to touch a hot stove or step into a busy street. They need to be warned of the danger. And any parent would expect that if one of their older children saw their little brother or sister about to do that, they would warn them. Your heavenly Father expects that if one of your brothers or sisters in Christ is doing something that threatens their relationship with him, you are going to warn them…because you care. This is not hard to understand, is it? Yet, we make it hard, and find that we sin when we won’t be the caring watchman. Have you done this: seen someone walking toward spiritual danger and didn’t say anything because silence was easier? Have you been more concerned that someone might think badly of you than that they might turn away from Christ?
Oh, pastors need to hear this too. They do not get to avoid difficult subjects because it makes them uncomfortable or because they want to keep people happy. And if you are expecting your pastor to encourage you, visit you in the hospital, be engaging, marry you, bury grandpa, and keep sermons to definitely no longer than 20 minutes BUT not say something when you’re living in a way God does not approve of or when you stop going to church, then you don’t understand all that God calls pastors to do! These watchmen are called by God and by you to preach and teach everything God says. Sometimes that means saying something a person does not want to hear. These are not their ideas. It’s just like God said to Ezekiel: Whenever you hear a word from my mouth, you are to warn them from me. Sound the Warning God told Ezekiel: If you do not speak to warn the wicked man against his way, that wicked man will die because of his guilt, but I will also hold you responsible for his blood. Isn’t that frightening? The watchman is responsible if he will not warn people and they die. God also says this: But if you do warn the wicked man to turn from his way, and he does not turn from his way, he will die because of his guilt, but you will have saved your life. God doesn’t tell Ezekiel that he can make a person repent, but Ezekiel could warn. The watchman isn’t responsible for the one who doesn’t listen and doesn’t seek the safety of the city walls and instead dies outside the gate. What an important thing to notice! We are to be faithful in watching and warning. We are not responsible for a person’s response to us. Earlier, you heard Jesus make the same point: If your brother sins against you, go and show him his sin just between the two of you (Matthew 18:15). You heard that Paul had to say something to Peter when Peter had done something wrong and harmed others in the process. Can you imagine how uncomfortable that must have been?! But it was done in love. And judging from Peter’s later letter where he called Paul his “dear brother” and spoke of his wisdom, things turned out well. Last December our congregation had to do something that nobody enjoyed. After repeated efforts to call one of our members to repentance over an ongoing sin, we finally had to acknowledge publicly that she was refusing to repent. We removed her from our fellowship. That was not a declaration that we hated her. It was exactly the opposite. It was the church sounding the warning in the very way Jesus tells the church to do in Matthew 18, which, again, you heard earlier. We were saying, as clearly and lovingly as we could: This is serious. We love you too much to tell you it isn’t. Spiritual rescue work is not just for the church body or the pastor. Sometimes you may need to say to someone: “Can we talk about what is happening?” “I’m worried about you.” “What you are doing does not agree with what God says.” “I love you, and that is why I cannot pretend this is harmless.”
That’s not easy. And we must speak with humility because we who are doing the warning are also sinners. Before I am a watchman, I am someone Jesus had to rescue. Before you call another Christian to repentance, remember how many times God has called you to repentance. That’ll affect your heart and your tone. Save Their Life Israel finally understood how serious its sin was. “Certainly our rebellion and our sins weigh us down, and because of them we are rotting away. How then can we live?” Can you relate? You’ve felt the burden of sin, the guilt over something you did. Maybe someone even called you on it. Then you relied on the grace of God to forgive, which is what he wants to do! As I live, declares the LORD God, I take no pleasure in the death of the wicked, but rather that the wicked turn from their way and live. You can hear God’s heart, can’t you. He does not enjoy condemning sinners. His perfect justice requires him to do it if the sinner will not repent though. Do you hear the pleading in his voice? Turn back, turn back from your evil ways, for why should you die, O house of Israel?” God wants the sinner back. That is the purpose of the warning. It’s not humiliation or revenge or winning an argument. The purpose is life—eternal life! How much does God want this for every person? So badly that he wasn’t going to just let the danger that sin brings engulf everyone. He sent his only Son into the danger of a sinful world to respond to the crisis. Jesus came running to save those were going to die, and he kept going, eventually stumbling to the cross. And they nailed him to it…then raised it up…and the sinless Son of God took responsibility for sins he never committed. All of yours. All of mine. Everyone’s. Even the times we should have warned someone of their sin and didn’t. All the times we said something but without love. The blood of Jesus cleanses us from all sin and gives us life. That’s why we call people to repentance. Because of God’s grace, we sometimes get to see exactly why the difficult work was worth doing. That member I mentioned earlier recently came back. There was repentance. There was forgiveness. There was restoration. And there was rejoicing. Think about that. What happened in December was painful. What happened recently helps us understand why it was done. We regained our sister in Christ. We need to WATCH OUT FOR EACH OTHER—pastors, parents, spouses, friends, elders, teachers, fellow Christians. We all have a responsibility for each other—and we should love God and each other so much that we’re willing to do what God asks for the people he has placed into our lives. Amen. Now the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. Amen.