Sermon Tone Analysis
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Intro
Pray
Let me ask a question.
Does selling insurance matter to God?
How about being a barista at Starbucks?
What about driving Uber or waiting tables at a restaurant?
Do these vocations matter to God and have an impact on the kingdom of heaven?
Unfortunately, when we think about our lives we tend to think that some are sacred and others or secular.
When we think of callings, we tend to think that God only calls people to vocational ministry.
Vocational ministry is typically understood as a career where someone is paid for working in a Christian organization like:
Pastors
Missionaries
Evangelist
Sometimes a person’s calling is different than their occupation or job.
The apostle Paul for example was a missionary but he also had an occupation as a tent maker to support himself financially.
The great reformer, Martin Luther argued that regardless of the vocation that God calls someone to, it is sacred because it is God who does the calling.
When we consider the “priesthood of all believers” it doesn’t mean that everyone has to be a church worker but many types of vocations can be a sacred calling.
If God reigns over all things, then all things are sacred.
It seems like Monday though Saturday night we do whatever and then we get together to do our God thing on Sunday morning.
What we need to realize is that God has called each of his people to contribute to and participate in God’s redemptive mission.
In Ezekiel chapter 2 we see God calling Ezekiel as a prophet.
Today in chapters 4 and 5 we get to see what that looks like for him.
I need to reiterate that Ezekiel was a strange dude.
The prophet stayed home and didn’t speak unless we was delivering a message from the Lord.
At this time people had become so calloused toward God they really didn’t want to hear God’s word but Ezekiel was so strange he became a spectacle.
People were curious and waited to see what he was going to do next.
Chapter 4 of Ezekiel is full of symbolic acts that God instructions Ezekiel to perform.
You know how kids build forts and create war scenes with their action figures?
“Action figures” not dolls.
My son Jonah has always had a fascination with cars.
When we was little, he would build these elaborate little cities to drive his hot wheels cars through.
He’d also construct these little battle scenes where the inhabitants would have to defend the city from being taken over.
Here we have Ezekiel who sketches the city of Jerusalem on a clay tablet.
He creates a siege scene.
A siege where the enemy surrounds the city and its inhabitants were confined to the city and went without necessities like food.
It doesn’t stop there:
eze 4:
Later tonight when you start getting mentally prepared for work or school tomorrow, thank God that you’re not Ezekiel.
Later tonight when you start getting mentally prepared for work or school tomorrow, thank God that you’re not Ezekiel.
Imagine that you go into the workplace tomorrow and your boss says, yeah, I’m gonna need you to lay on your side for about 390 days and then on your right side for about 40 days mmmkay?
Ezekiel was commanded to lie on the ground facing this model that he’s put together with his arms bound.
We might equate this symbolic act to something like performance art but this is to show the Jewish exiles why the Lord was allowing their city to be ravaged and ruined.
Again, the Israelites just continued to sin and turn away from God and everything had caught up to them.
Each day represented a year in the sinful history of the Jewish nation and the people that watched this display got a good sense of this.
The 390 years represents past sin of the nation beginning with Solomon’s son, Rehoboam through King Zedekiah as it’s recorded in 1 & 2nd Kings.
40 years signifying the 40 year journey from Egypt to the Promised Land.
The message that should have been clear to the nation of Israel is that God had been longsuffering, patient and merciful toward the sinful people of Judah.
He constantly warned them and chastised them but they just wouldn’t stay true.
As we recently read through Kings we saw some of these kings try to bring the people back to God but as soon as those kings died the people went right back to their idolatry.
Here we are thousand of years later looking back on the nation of Israel and we think how dense are you?
You got to see first hand how God delivered you from slavery in Egypt, he brought you into the promised land but you just can’t help yourself.
Be careful...
Even with these examples that we read in God’s word, aren’t we still in this cycle?
The rest of the chapter describes the miserable food and water Ezekiel ate to symbolize the diet of the exiles.
Soon there would be a shortage of food and water in Jerusalem.
Moses announced this type of national judgement for disobedience in the Leviticus.
eze 5
As a man with a bald head and beard, this sounds like the most gangster way to shave your beard and head.
Bruh… with a sharp sword?
The final symbolic act in this section, Ezekiel cuts his hair to represent the fate of the Israelites who are judged by God.
Shaving the head often signified mourning rites:
It also signified humiliation:
Finally, the use of scales for weighing the hair showed the divine righteousness in judgement as we see in scriptures like .
Of course fire typifies destruction:
The results of this siege would be traumatic but God...
God offers a glimmer of hope.
In verse 3 God instructs Ezekiel to take a few strands of hair and tuck them away.
Even though some will be burned, some will be saved from this destruction.
There will be a remnant that will remain!
The survival of this remnant becomes a dominant theme in the Old Testament.
If we are brutally honest, none of us would want to do what Ezekiel was asked to do.
Even if we chose to do it would complain incessantly about it.
Where has God placed you to deliver the message of the gospel?
If comfort, ease and safety are a priority, then we won’t take God’s word to difficult places or endure difficult circumstances to proclaim.
But is it really that difficult though?
I encourage you all to go home today and read through Ezekiel chapters 4-5.
Don’t miss the message that’s being preached through Ezekiel’s life.
What are our lives communicating by the message that we’ve been given?
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