Ezekiel 3:16-21 - I have made you a watchman

3:16-21

Ezekiel has been told that he must speak the word, and whether people were willing to listen or not was not to deter him. Here we get a fuller explanation of why he was to do this. Ezekiel was a watchman. A watchman was placed on the city walls to keep an eye out for enemies. Judah’s big mistake was, in Isaiah’s day, thinking that Assyria was their biggest problem, and in Jeremiah and Ezekiel’s day thinking that Babylon was their biggest problem. Their real problem was God! For they had sinned against God. Their sins were the biggest problem. Sin is the enemy that they really needed to watch out for. So Ezekiel was a watchman warning them about their real enemy. Ezekiel was to give the nation warnings. Whether the people chose to heed these warnings or not was not to be a primary concern of Ezekiel. People were responsible for their own actions. However, God had given Ezekiel a responsibility to warn the people about their sin, if he did not warn them then he too would be guilty. 

In the church today, including the evangelical church, there is a great reluctance to warn people about sin. This applies in particular to sexual sins like sex before marriage or homosexual acts. The reasoning goes that we don’t want to offend people and so put them off hearing the gospel. That sort of reasoning does not stand up very well in the light of this passage. The root of the error in this reasoning are the presuppositions. It takes a very humanistic view, and assumes that if people only get to hear the gospel then they will want to believe in Jesus. The Bible presents a very different picture. It presents us as hopelessly lost in our sin, hearts hardened in rebellion against God. It then presents God as uniquely able to save us by changing our hearts, giving us new hearts. Indeed this is how Ezekiel works. The first thirty chapters or so are pretty dire! Then we get some glorious chapters of salvation. We should also note that an essential part of the gospel message is about our sinfulness! And Jesus was in no way reluctant to talk about sin.