WWUTT 2679 Eat the Words I Give You (Ezekiel 2:1-3:3)

God's Word can be difficult for us to hear sometimes, but it is always good. Even if we have to be convicted of our sin, God is leading us in paths of righteousness for His namesake, when we understand the text.

You're listening to When We Understand the Text, an online Bible ministry so that we may know all the riches freely given to us by God. For questions and comments, send us an email to whenweunderstandthetext at gmail .com.

Here's your teacher, Pastor Gabe.

Thank you, Becky. In our study of the book of Ezekiel, we come now to Chapter 1. When we started off this book, Ezekiel sees a vision of God enthroned in heaven, and four living creatures that are around the throne, kind of working like they are guiding a chariot.

Ezekiel even has a vision of wheels with eyes throughout the wheels. So it's as if there's a chariot and the throne of God above that, and then God above the throne. And Ezekiel is overwhelmed by this vision, and he falls on his face.

That's what we had at the very end of Chapter 1. Such was the appearance of the likeness of the glory of the Lord. And when I saw it, I fell on my face, and I heard the voice of one speaking. So throughout Chapter 1, we had a description of the vision that Ezekiel saw.

Ezekiel’s Commission to Speak God’s Word

And now we come to Chapter 2, where Ezekiel will hear the voice of God commanding him. Let me begin reading here. It's not a very long chapter. We're only looking at 10 verses here. This is Ezekiel 2, 1 -10.

Hear the word of the Lord. And he said to me, Son of man, stand on your feet, and I will speak with you. And as he spoke to me, the Spirit entered into me and set me on my feet, and I heard him speaking to me.

And he said to me, Son of man, I send you to the people of Israel, to nations of rebels who have rebelled against me. They and their fathers have transgressed against me to this very day. The descendants also are impudent and stubborn.

I send you to them, and you shall say to them, Thus says the Lord God. And whether they hear or refuse to hear, for they are a rebellious house, they will know that a prophet has been among them. And you, Son of man, be not afraid of them, nor be afraid of their words, though briars and thorns are with you, and you sit on scorpions.

Be not afraid of their words, nor be dismayed at their looks, for they are a rebellious house. And you shall speak my words to them, whether they hear or refuse to hear, for they are a rebellious house.

But you, Son of man, hear what I say to you. Be not rebellious like that rebellious house. Open your mouth and eat what I give you. And when I looked, behold, a hand was stretched out to me, and behold, a scroll of a book was in it.

And he spread it before me, and it had writing on the front and on the back, and there were written on it words of lamentation and mourning and woe. Now the command that God gives to Ezekiel here is to eat the scroll.

So let me go on to the start of chapter three, where we see Ezekiel do that very thing. This is chapter three, verse one. And he said to me, Son of man, eat whatever you find here. Eat this scroll and go speak to the house of Israel.

So I opened my mouth, and he gave me this scroll to eat. And he said to me, Son of man, feed your belly with this scroll that I give you and fill your stomach with it. Then I ate it, and it was in my mouth as sweet as honey.

And I at least want to draw out that much of the text in our reading today. I may go a little bit beyond that since chapter two is so short, we will see. But as we study this chapter here today, we want to understand feeding on the word of God and being filled with it, knowing that whatever we read in it, it is good.

Even though Ezekiel says here that there was written on the scroll words of lamentation and mourning and woe, yet when he eats it, it's as sweet as honey to him. Though the word may be bad news, the way that we read it, I'll give you some examples of that here in a moment, yet if it is the word of God, it will always be good to us.

Those words will always taste good going down. Let us keep that in mind as we hear what we are reading today. So coming back up to the start of chapter two, God said to me, Son of man, stand on your feet and I will speak with you.

Ezekiel as the Weak and Dependent Son of Man

Now, if you remember back to my introduction to the book of Ezekiel, which was a couple of weeks ago now, I had said that phrase, son of man appears more in the book of Ezekiel than anywhere else in the Bible combined.

Even though this was a title that Jesus commonly used of himself, Jesus, however, was citing the title, son of man, as it's given in the book of Daniel. It has a different application in the book of Ezekiel.

This is the title that God gives to Ezekiel. He is calling him son of man. And the reason he calls him that is not because he is the promised Messiah. As we read about in the book of Daniel, this is actually to highlight that Ezekiel in and of himself is not a great man.

What is great about the book of Ezekiel is the word of God. It's not Ezekiel calling him a son of man or literally son of Adam. That's how that translates out. He is son of Adam, or as we would say it in English, Adam, son of man is how it gets translated in most Bibles.

This is showing that he is a sinful man, that he is insufficient, that he is weak, that he is in and of himself unable to do the task that God is calling him to do. That's important, especially with what we read in the next verse.

So the Lord says to him, stand on your feet and I will speak with you. Right now, Ezekiel has fallen on his face in light of this vision, this heavenly vision that he has been given of angels flashing to and fro in these big wheels with eyes and God and throne sitting above it all.

And so as God spoke to him, it says in verse two, the spirit entered into me and set me on my feet and I heard him speaking to me. So what did God instruct Ezekiel to do? He said, stand on your feet. And what did the spirit do?

Enter into him and set him on his feet. Here is the wonderful, blessed compassion of God in what he commands of us. What he tells us to do, he also supplies. The Lord commands us to be righteous. What does he give to us?

He gives us his righteousness in Jesus Christ by faith in him. We are clothed in his righteousness. What God commands, he also gives. And we see that even here with Ezekiel. He is going to command Ezekiel to go out with a word.

And what God is commanding Ezekiel to do, he's also going to give to him. He's going to give him the strength to be able to do it. The spirit of God himself entering into him and setting him on his feet.

And he has ears now that he may hear the word of God and understand it and be in fear of this word and so deliver it to those people who will not be in fear of him. And so as God says, do not be afraid of them.

It is at the word of God that Ezekiel trembles. It is not in the presence of these men that Ezekiel should fear because God is on his side because God is literally even dwelling in him as we see at the start of chapter two.

Preaching to a Rebellious People

So he says to Ezekiel, verse three, son of man, I send you to the people of Israel, to nations of rebels who have rebelled against me. They and their fathers have transgressed against me to this very day.

Now, where is Ezekiel when he sees this vision and he hears this word from God, he is in Babylon. The Israelites have already been sent into Babylonian captivity. And so God is using Ezekiel to give his word to those people who have rebelled that they may repent and come back to the Lord.

But God says to Ezekiel here that what he says to them, they won't hear and their hearts will be hard, but he is supposed to preach it anyway. So we go on into verse four. The descendants also are impudent and stubborn.

I send you to them and you shall say to them, thus says the Lord God. This is not Ezekiel's word that is coming to them. This is the word of God. And whether they hear or refuse to hear, for they are a rebellious house, they will know that a prophet has been among them.

Whether they hear it, whether they listen to it, whether they decide to follow it or not, they are yet going to know that a prophet of God has been among them, that the word that has been delivered to them came from God.

In 2 Timothy chapter four, the apostle Paul says to Timothy, I charge you in the presence of God and of Christ Jesus, who is to judge the living and the dead and by his appearing and his kingdom, preach the word.

You know that instruction, right? Do you remember that passage? What's the very next line? Paul says, preach the word and do it when? Be ready in season and out of season, reprove, rebuke, and exhort with complete patience and teaching.

So even when people are listening to you and even when they don't listen to you, yet Timothy is being instructed to preach the word, though people will follow it and though they may not follow it, yet he is to reprove, rebuke, and exhort, but doing so with complete patience and teaching, leaving nothing out, but even being patient with those who may not be listening right away.

Same kind of instruction is being given here to Ezekiel. Whether they hear or refuse to hear, Ezekiel is supposed to speak this word to them. And verse six says, and you, son of man, be not afraid of them, nor be afraid of their words though briars and thorns are with you and you sit on scorpions.

Be not afraid of their words, nor be dismayed at their looks for they are a rebellious house. They're going to look at you sideways. They're going to give you glares. They're going to scowl at you. They're going to look all sour about what it is that you have to say.

Do not be afraid of them. Don't even be afraid of the words that they say to you. A pastor friend of mine a number of years ago, his name is Pastor Eric. He had gone through quite a change in his doctrine and in his ecclesiology in the way that he was preaching in his church.

Ecclesiology and the Cost of Gospel-Centered Preaching

Ecclesiology, by the way, is the study of churches. It's even the study of the way that worship services might be conducted in a church. An order of worship, a matter of polity, or any of these other things, all of this wrapped up in a study of the way that a church should operate and function according to the word of God.

We call that ecclesiology. And so there were some things about the way that he preached and even the way that church was being conducted that were starting to change for him because he was coming into more reformed theology and expositional preaching.

And that's what he started practicing in his church. He was preaching expository. He was going through entire books of the Bible, verse by verse, and not just doing that as a matter of a running commentary, but he was even giving the sense of the word to the people, helping them to understand it, giving application.

Here's now how we live in light of what we have read in the word of God. And his preaching became so very gospel-filled. He attempted with every sermon to point people back to Christ again and again and again, calling out sin, pointing people to Jesus who forgives sin and leads us in righteousness.

Well, in the very beginning, this was being received well, but as things began to progress, there were some people in the church that started pushing back on it. They didn't like this so much. They received it well at first, and even to them, it felt like a breath of fresh air.

It was like cool, clean water, when the water we had been drinking before may not have been as clean. But then after a period of time, they didn't like it anymore. They didn't like hearing about their sin and having it called out and pointing back to Christ, the gospel, again and again and again.

There were people that even hated hearing it. Pastor Eric told me about one service where, as he was coming to the gospel again, there was a woman in the congregation who lifted up her hands so that he could see her do this.

She lifted up her hands and covered her ears, made this motion to him as though, I don't want to listen to you talk about this anymore. And after service, she went up to him and said, I am sick and tired of hearing about the gospel.

I'm tired of it, again and again and again. Stop preaching the gospel. She loathed that he was preaching the gospel of Christ, which should have been the very thing that brought her to church in the first place.

If she was truly a Christian, that's why she was a Christian, because she heard the gospel. But suddenly she hated hearing it. And then even periodically after that, she would make those gestures during church like she didn't want to listen to this anymore.

And yet Pastor Eric continued to preach it. He continued to preach it until they fired him. He actually ended up having to leave that church and found a calling at another church who had called him to be their pastor because they wanted to hear the gospel.

They wanted to hear the word of God preached. And here the Lord is telling Ezekiel, there's going to be people who will hate you. They do not want to listen to this. Don't be afraid of their words, though briars and thorns are with you and you sit on scorpions.

Don't be afraid of their words, nor be dismayed at their looks, for they are a rebellious house. I've been in that situation before, too. I even had a person come up to me after church one time, and she said to me, if you keep preaching like this, people are going to leave.

And I said, that's between them and God. But I have to go on preaching the word of God. I have no other choice. And so the Lord says to Ezekiel in verse seven, and you shall speak my words to them, whether they hear or refuse to hear, for they are a rebellious house.

And we must go on preaching the word of God, never being ashamed of it. Remember Paul's words in Romans chapter one, verse 16. I am not ashamed of the gospel for it is the power of God for salvation. To the Jew first and also to the Greek, and then saying in verse 17, the just will live by faith.

The just will live according to this word. And so the Lord goes on to say to Ezekiel, last few verses here of this chapter, but you, son of man, hear what I say to you. Be not rebellious like that rebellious house.

Feeding on Christ Through His Word

Open your mouth and eat what I give you. You know, John chapter six is one of the most controversial chapters in the Bible. This is the chapter that the Roman Catholics use to justify their doctrine of transubstantiation that if you want to enter the kingdom of God, you must literally eat the flesh of Christ and drink the blood of Christ.

Because Jesus said in John six, unless you eat my flesh and drink my blood, you have no life in you. So they claim to have the true communion, the bread that actually turns into the flesh of Christ, the cup that actually turns into his blood, but they completely misunderstand what Jesus was talking about in John six.

In verse 35, Jesus said to them, I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me shall not hunger and whoever believes in me shall never thirst. So eating and drinking of Christ means coming to him and believing in him, believing his words.

We eat and consume his words. That's what Jesus was talking about. Not that you have to believe that that the bread can literally become my flesh and the cup literally becomes my blood and you must cannibalize me.

That is not what Jesus was preaching there in John six, but that we would hear his words and believe in him. Previously, the Jews had asked Jesus, what must we do to be doing the works of God? And Jesus said, this is the work of God that you believe in him whom he has sent.

Believing the word of Christ, feeding on the word of Christ, being filled with Christ, listening to his word, open your mouth and eat what I give you. God said to Ezekiel, he says that to each and every one of us, we open our mouths, we feed on God's word.

The Scroll and the Completeness of God’s Revelation

And Ezekiel goes on to say verses nine and 10. When I looked, behold, a hand was stretched out to me and behold, a scroll of a book was in it. Same sort of scroll that John sees in revelation chapter five with the one who is on the throne, extending the scroll with seven seals on it to the lamb.

And verse 10 says, he spread it before me and it had writing on the front and on the back. Same as the description of the scroll in revelation four and five, and they were written on it words of lamentation and mourning and woe written on the front and on the back means it is completely covered in God's hand and no one can add any words to it.

There's no doctrine of man that can be added to this. It is all God's word. There's no room for any embellishment or additions to this word. And so we go on to finish with the beginning of chapter three, as God said, son of man, eat whatever you find here, eat this scroll and go speak to the house of Israel.

So I opened my mouth and he gave me this scroll to eat. And he said to me, son of man, feed your belly with this scroll that I give you and fill your stomach with it. And then I ate it and it was in my mouth as sweet as honey.

God’s Word Is Good Even When It Is Difficult

And as I said to you in the beginning, though, we may be reading words of God that can be difficult for us to hear. Sometimes it's God's word. It's always good for us. We just got done studying the book of Lamentations.

That was a difficult book to go through. Not a lot of high points of the book of Lamentations, as the name would suggest. It is a book of lament. And yet it was all good for us, wasn't it? There were sweet morsels there, even when we were reading bad news.

The book of Ecclesiastes, also kind of a downer book, as it begins with Solomon saying, everything is vanity. There is nothing new under the sun. What has been before is what will be. And yet those words were good for us too, weren't they?

Even when we read the difficult passages, it is God's word and it is always good. It is what brings us near to God, reveals to us the mind of God, that we may do those things that are pleasing to him.

So open your mouth and be filled with the word of God today. Share it with somebody else. Use these words to be an encouragement to a brother. Use these words to admonish a brother or sister in the Lord, if you must.

And especially use these words to reach out to the lost, that they may hear the good news of the gospel of Christ and turn from their sin and believe. Heavenly Father, we thank you for what we have read here in Ezekiel 2 and going into the early part of chapter 3.

And I pray that this would be the delight to our souls, to hear the word of God, to believe in it and to do what it says. May it be sweet to us when we hear it. May we never get tired of hearing it. We want to hear the word of God more and more.

It is never a burden to us, never a burden that we wouldn't want to bear anyway. But it is always something that we know is leading us into greater and greater glory to be with you. John 17, 17 says that we are sanctified in your word.

And so make us holy, convict us of our sin, that we would turn from it and lead us in paths of righteousness for his namesake. It's in Jesus' name that we pray. Amen.

God's word when we understand the text.