Ezekiel Is Israel's Watchman

 Ezekiel 33:1-9

 

January 19, 2024

 

Ezekiel Is Israel's Watchman

The word of the Lord came to me: “Son of man, speak to your people and say to them, If I bring the sword upon a land, and the people of the land take a man from among them and make him their watchman, and if he sees the sword coming upon the land and blows the trumpet and warns the people, then if anyone who hears the sound of the trumpet does not take warning, and the sword comes and takes him away, his blood shall be upon his own head.  He heard the sound of the trumpet and did not take warning; his blood shall be upon himself. But if he had taken warning, he would have saved his life.  But if the watchman sees the sword coming and does not blow the trumpet, so that the people are not warned, and the sword comes and takes any one of them, that person is taken away in his iniquity, but his blood I will require at the watchman's hand.

“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.  But if you warn the wicked to turn from his way, and he does not turn from his way, that person shall die in his iniquity, but you will have delivered your soul.

 

Grace versus Law, Ezekiel was called to be the watchman over the house of Israel.  You can read God’s requirement for a watchman. A watchman had great responsibility; souls hung in the balance over his doing the will of the Father.  

 

As a follower of Christ, are we called to be watchmen? What is God’s calling on those of us who have Christ's Spirit living in us?  Have we not been instructed to “Go and Tell, all that God has done for us?  Shall we explore the Scriptures, and see what God has called us who are in Christ, and He in us, are to do?  “And he did not permit him but said to him, “Go home to your friends and tell them how much the Lord has done for you, and how he has had mercy on you.” (Mark 5:19)  How about Mark 15:16, And he said to them, “Go into all the world and proclaim the gospel to the whole creation.  

Often, I seek better understanding from those with insight into the Scriptures, and “Got Questions” is a good source, this is from them.

Ezekiel has shown all Christians that we are to be obedient to God’s call on our lives. God told Ezekiel to groan with a broken heart and bitter grief for the coming judgment, and, through his dramatic book, Ezekiel tells us the same thing. Judgment is coming! It will surely take place, declares the Sovereign Lord. We, like Ezekiel, can warn others, and we can also share with them the good news of salvation in Jesus Christ.

 

From the Back Porch,

 

Bob Rice

-- 

__________________________

Wake up Christian Men

 Wake up, men of the Church, and it does not matter what church you are affiliated with; we have a man problem.  And guess what, The Government does not have the answer, money is not the answer, or programs, we need to show by actions that only Jesus Christ can restore a young boy who needs a dad and has no male direction in his life.  Will you step up and be that man for some young boy?

 

If your Church is fearful of being sued for any reason and has looked the other way on the single moms of your church, who have sons with no dad to be a spiritual influence, then look at big brothers and sisters as your path to help rescue these young men, and be Christ to them.  Now that should be after you have worked with the leadership of your Church to see if they are willing to invest in these moms and their sons.  If so, Big Brothers and Sisters, I’ve discovered, are willing to assist in the background checks and guidelines of the men who sign up.  This article from Grassfire will give you more information on what is needed.

 

In the aftermath of two more tragic shootings this past weekend, politicians and pundits are scrambling to point the finger of blame and push for more laws to solve the problem.

Interestingly, Oprah is closer than the politicians and pundits to the real solution for our nation...

+ + Oprah: We are missing "a core moral center."

Just the other day, Oprah offered her thoughts on what our nation needs to solve our current crisis:

“I think what people are missing is a core moral center... Churches used to do that… It was a central place you could come to, and there was a core center of values about a way of living and being in the world.... Until we can return to that, however, that is, in whatever form, we will continue to be lost.”

Oprah says churches "used to" provide the moral center. But what happened? Did churches lose their message? Or did the statists and socialists take over the debate and work to effectively purge faith from our communities? Years ago, the late author Richard John Neuhaus wrote a seminal work called The Naked Public Square that explained what happens to a society that strips God from its consciousness. Today, we are living out what Neuhaus spoke of.

So how do we regain our "moral center"? It's certainly not found in politicians or pundits who point the finger of blame and accuse the President (and by association, every conservative in our nation) of racism and hate, or capitalize on these tragedies to promote gun control. And it's not in feel-good sessions and "moments of silence" in which public leaders dare not pray. 

+ + We have a "man problem."

Practically speaking, the cause of these shootings -- and the reason seven were murdered last weekend in Chicago, and more than 300 will be killed in Baltimore this year -- is broken families. Boys simply don't do well when they are raised without both mom and dad in the home. Check the statistics -- almost all of these mass shootings and most of the violent crimes are committed by men. And most of those men grew up in broken homes.

Our homes are broken because we lost the "moral center" of the two-parent family shortly after we lost the "moral center" of faith. Now, most of our well-intentioned government welfare programs try to fix the cultural rot in our society in ways that further break our families apart and cause more children to be raised without both mom and dad. And since we've wrongly decided that Jefferson's "separation of church and state" means God and faith must be purged from our publicly funded efforts, government programs can't even legally point to the source of the "moral center" we so desperately need. We can't regain our "moral center" without acknowledging that there is a basis for a "moral center" -- a God who creates the "north pole" for our society to which we can align our life compasses. As a result, we are stuck in an ever-degrading cultural loop.

So, if we can be honest for a moment, when we look at these mass shootings or the killings in Chicago and elsewhere, what we have is a  MAN PROBLEM, caused by a FAMILY PROBLEM caused by a FAITH PROBLEM.

+ + Restoring our "moral center."

Here at Grassfire, while we remain fully committed to challenging the efforts by politicians to undermine our liberties and further expand the reach of government, we also want to call our nation back to the FAITH ANSWER and the FAMILY ANSWER so we can begin to restore the "moral center" even Oprah knows we've lost.

From our Back Porch, 

Bob Rice