Thought from today’s Bible reading from Ezekiel 32-34.
“Now as for you, son of man, I have appointed you a watchman for the house of Israel; so you will hear a message from My mouth and give them warning from Me. When I say to the wicked, ‘O wicked man, you will surely die,’ and you do not speak to warn the wicked from his way, that wicked man shall die in his iniquity, but his blood I will require from your hand. But if you on your part warn a wicked man to turn from his way and he does not turn from his way, he will die in his iniquity, but you have delivered your life” (Ezekiel 33:7-9).
A watchman’s job was simple: warn the people when danger threatened in order to give them time to prepare for the threat. Ezekiel’s job as “a watchman for the house of Israel” was similar. He was to warn them of divine punishment that was coming because of their sins. The hope was that the warning would lead them to prepare for the “threat” by putting away their sins and turning back to the Lord.
There are at least two lessons we can take from this:
- Those who remain in sin will be punished, whether they are warned or not. Those in sin cannot blame others when they face the punishment for their sin. We are each responsible to be sure we are right before God, even if no one warns us of the dangers of sin.
- The watchman’s responsibility is simply to warn. He cannot force people to listen to or follow his message. It can be discouraging when people do not listen. But the watchman, in this case Ezekiel, was not to allow the attitude of the people to deter him from his responsibility. If they failed to listen, they would answer for that before God. Ezekiel would answer for what he did in carrying out his role as a watchman.
Though we do not have divinely-appointed watchmen today, we can still do the work of warning people of God’s punishment for sin and how to make things right before Him. If others reject the gospel, they will answer for that themselves. We must do what we can to teach and warn others.
Tomorrow’s reading: Ezekiel 35-37
[I’m using the Chronological reading plan on the Bible Gateway website if you’d like to follow along, too.]
Daily Notes & Observations contains all 365 articles from this series and is available in paperback from Gospel Armory.
