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GOD’S URGENT CALL
Tasted Words, Tested People, Toughened Prophet: Ezekiel
Introduction. Today I want to look at a priest who never expected to become a prophet. Ezekiel was thirty years old, far from the temple he was trained to serve, living among the first wave of exiles by an irrigation canal in Babylon. Then the heavens opened. The glory of the Lord came near. A voice said, “Son of man, stand up on your feet and I will speak to you.” The Spirit set him on his feet. A scroll was unrolled before him, written on both sides with words of lament and mourning and woe. And now, in the text before us, the call is no longer a vision to be watched. It is a word to be eaten, a people to be faced, and a prophet to be made.
This is the closing word in our series, “God’s Urgent Call.” The urgency has not eased. If anything, as we end this series, we’ve learned that the call of God is not first a program, a personality, or a platform. It is a word that must enter a person, a people who will test that person, and a God who will toughen that person until he can speak whether they listen or fail to listen.
Tasted words, Ezekiel 3:1 – 4.
And he said to me, “Son of man, eat what is before you, eat this scroll; then go and speak to the house of Israel.” [2] So I opened my mouth, and he gave me the scroll to eat. [3] Then he said to me, “Son of man, eat this scroll I am giving you and fill your stomach with it.” So I ate it, and it tasted as sweet as honey in my mouth. [4] He then said to me: “Son of man, go now to the house of Israel and speak my words to them. (Ezekiel 3:1 – 4 | TNIV)
Don’t miss the order here; it’s essential. Before Ezekiel is sent to speak, he is required to swallow. Before he is a mouth for God, he is a stomach for God. The word isn’t a pamphlet he can just hand out while remaining untouched. It is food. It must be taken in, broken down, absorbed, until it becomes part of the man himself.
That is how the Bible talks about the Word of God when it is received as God intends. The prophet Jeremiah put it like this:
When your words came, I ate them; they were my joy and my heart’s delight, for I bear your name, Lord God Almighty. (Jeremiah 15:16 | TNIV)
The psalmist said the ordinances of the Lord are “sweeter than honey, than honey from the honeycomb.” Jesus told the crowds that man does not live on bread alone, but on every word that comes from the mouth of God. In Revelation, John is given a little scroll and told to eat it; it is sweet in his mouth and bitter in his stomach. Ezekiel’s experience stands in that same line. The Word of God is not first information. It is nourishment.
Notice what he is eating. Chapter 2 already told us the contents of the scroll: lament, mourning, and woe. This is not a scroll of good news! It’s an extremely hard word about a hard people and a coming judgment. And yet, when it enters the prophet’s mouth, it tastes like honey. How can a word of woe taste sweet?
Because it is God’s word. The sweetness is not in the subject matter. The sweetness is in the Speaker. Even a hard word from a holy God is better than a soft word from a lying world. Even a message of judgment is sweet when it is true, because truth from God is life. Ezekiel does not love the coming destruction of Jerusalem. He loves the God who still speaks. He loves that the Lord has not gone silent in exile. He loves that the glory that departed the temple has found a priest by a canal and given him something to say. The taste is honey because the source is God.
There is a warning here for every preacher, teacher, parent, and witness in this room. It is possible to handle the Word all week and never eat it. It is possible to prepare a lesson, post a verse, quote a text, and remain unfed. F. B. Meyer once said there is no greater mistake than to suppose that because we are constantly handling God’s Word for the purpose of teaching others, we are therefore feeding on it for ourselves. You can acquire an intellectual knowledge of the truth while the heart is entirely unaffected. Ezekiel is not allowed that luxury. He must fill his stomach.
The church in our day is not starving for more opinions about the Bible. We are starving for people who have tasted it. We need men and women who have sat long enough with Scripture that it has gotten into their bloodstream. We need parents who speak to their children out of a full heart, not out of a hurried search on a phone. We need a congregation that does not merely admire the Word from a distance but takes it in until it changes the flavor of the whole life.
“Fill your stomach with it,” God said. Not a nibble. Not a sample. Fill. The urgent call begins here, before any pulpit, any classroom, any conversation at work. Has the Word of God become food to you? Have you opened your mouth? Have you let Him place the scroll there? Have you found that even the hard parts taste like honey because they come from Him?
Only then does the Lord say, “Go now to the people of Israel and speak my words to them.” Not your words, but My words. The prophet does not invent a message after breakfast. He speaks what he has eaten. That is still the only safe way to open your mouth for God. Speak what you have first swallowed.
Tested people, Ezekiel 3:5 – 7.
You are not being sent to a people of obscure speech and strange language, but to the house of Israel— [6] not to many peoples of obscure speech and strange language, whose words you cannot understand. Surely if I had sent you to them, they would have listened to you. [7] But the house of Israel is not willing to listen to you because they are not willing to listen to me, for the whole house of Israel is hardened and obstinate. (Ezekiel 3:5 – 7 | TNIV)
This second movement of the text is a shock. You might expect God to send His newly fed prophet to a distant nation, to people who have never heard the name of the Lord. That would be hard, but it would be understandable. Instead God says, in effect, I am not sending you to foreigners. I am sending you home.
The hardest field is not the one that speaks another tongue. The hardest field is the one that already knows your language, already owns your Bible, already claims your God, and still will not hear.
God even says the unthinkable: if I had sent you to the nations, they would have listened. Jonah discovered something like that in Nineveh. Jesus said something like that about Tyre and Sidon and Sodom. Familiarity with holy things does not guarantee a soft heart. Sometimes it hardens the heart. The people of Israel can understand every syllable Ezekiel will say. That is not the problem. The problem is willingness. They are not willing to listen to the prophet because they are not willing to listen to the God who sent him.
That sentence should make a church sit up straight. The greatest obstacle to the Word of God is not always ignorance. It is often refusal. It is the settled decision that we already know, we already belong, we already have enough of God for our tastes. Hardened and obstinate. The Hebrew picture is a hard forehead and a stiff heart. These are not people who missed the memo. These are people who received the memo and crumpled it.
So the urgent call is not only a call to go somewhere far away. It is a call to speak to our own people. To the family that sat in church and then went home unchanged. To the community that still uses Christian words and lives by other loves. To the congregation that can sing the songs and still resist the Lord of the songs. Ezekiel is not commissioned to a strange language. He is commissioned to a strange unwillingness.
We should be honest about how this feels. It is one thing to imagine preaching the gospel in a place where no one has heard the name of Jesus. It is another thing to speak the truth to people who share your last name, your pew, your town, your history. They know your weaknesses. They remember your past. They can shrug you off with a look. “That’s just Ezekiel. We knew him when he was a priest. We know what he used to be.” Home is the testing ground.
And God tells him why they will not listen: they will not listen to you because they will not listen to Me. That is both a burden and a mercy. It is a burden because the rejection will feel personal. It is a mercy because the rejection is not finally about the messenger. When people harden themselves against a faithful word, they are not first refusing a preacher. They are refusing the Lord. Ezekiel must know that before he opens his mouth, or the first week of ministry will crush him.
Do you see how this closes our series? God’s urgent call is urgent precisely because the people who should be most ready are often most resistant. We do not have the luxury of waiting for a more receptive audience. We are sent to the people in front of us—exiles, neighbors, children, coworkers, a nation that still has Bibles on the shelf and little hunger in the soul. The call is not “Find people who will applaud.” The call is “Speak My words to them.”
Toughened prophet, Ezekiel 3:8 – 11.
Now the Lord does something we might not have asked Him to do. He doesn’t soften the audience. He hardens the prophet.
But I will make you as unyielding and hardened as they are. [9] I will make your forehead like the hardest stone, harder than flint. Do not be afraid of them or terrified by them, though they are a rebellious house. ” [10] And he said to me, “Son of man, listen carefully and take to heart all the words I speak to you. [11] Go now to your people in exile and speak to them. Say to them, ‘This is what the Sovereign Lord says,’ whether they listen or fail to listen. ” (Ezekiel 3:8 – 11 | TNIV)
God matches the messenger to the mission. If the people have hard foreheads, Ezekiel will have a harder one. If they are flint, he will be the stone that cuts flint. This is not a license to become harsh, cold, or cruel. It is a promise that God will give His servant a holy stubbornness—an unwillingness to quit, an inability to be talked out of the truth, a face that does not flinch when the room turns against him.
Isaiah used the same image of the Servant of the Lord: “I have set my face like flint.” Jesus set His face toward Jerusalem. The apostles, after they were beaten, rejoiced that they were counted worthy to suffer for the Name, and they kept preaching. The church does not need prophets with thin skin and thick self-pity. The church needs men and women whose tenderness toward God has made them tough toward opposition.
Look at how the toughness is formed. It is not Ezekiel pumping himself up. It is not a personality type. “I will make you.” God does the hardening. The same Lord who told him to eat the scroll now tells him He will make his forehead like adamant. Courage in ministry is not a natural resource you either have or lack. It is a gift God gives to people who have first swallowed His Word and then accepted His assignment.
Then comes the last instructions of the commissioning.
Son of man, listen carefully and take to heart all the words I speak to you. Go now to your people in exile and speak to them. Say to them, ‘This is what the Sovereign Lord says,’ whether they listen or fail to listen.
Three more commands, and they complete the urgent call.
Listen carefully. The prophet never outgrows being a hearer. The moment Ezekiel stops taking the Word to heart, he has nothing worth saying. Every Sunday we gather is a test of this. Did we come to taste again, or only to watch someone else eat?
Go now. Not when the people improve. Not when the exile ends. Not when the cultural weather is fair. Now. To your people in exile. The field is the people who are already around you.
Say, “This is what the Sovereign Lord says.” The authority is not in Ezekiel’s tone, training, or tears. The authority is in the formula. He is a messenger. He does not have to make the word work. He has to deliver it.
And then the sentence that could save a thousand discouraged servants: “whether they listen or fail to listen.”
Faithfulness is not measured by the show of hands. The urgent call is not “Get results.” The urgent call is “Get the word out.” God will deal with the hearing. The prophet must deal with the speaking. If they listen, glory to God. If they fail to listen, the prophet has still been a prophet. They will know that a man with the Word of God has been among them.
Conclusion. That is how this series must end for us. Some of you have tasted the Word and found it sweet. Do not stop at tasting. Fill your stomach. Some of you have looked at the people around you and felt the hardness. Do not be surprised, and do not be silent. Some of you have been afraid of faces, of rooms, of family tables, of a culture that rolls its eyes at holy things. Hear the Lord: I will make you as unyielding as they are. I will make your forehead like the hardest stone. Do not be afraid of them.
We are not Ezekiel. We live on the other side of the cross and the empty tomb. The Word we eat is not only lament and woe. It is the good news that the Son of Man came, set His face like flint, bore the judgment the scroll announced, and rose so that hard-hearted people might be given new hearts. Ezekiel pointed toward a day when God would take the heart of stone and give a heart of flesh. That day has come in Jesus Christ. So we speak with even more reason than Ezekiel had. We speak a finished work. We speak a living Lord. We speak a Spirit who can do what no prophet can do—unharden the hearer.
But the pattern of the call has not changed. Taste the Word. Face the people. Receive the toughness God supplies. Then go to your people and say, “This is what the Sovereign Lord says,” whether they listen or fail to listen.
God’s urgent call is still urgent. The scroll is still sweet. The people are still tested. The Lord still makes flint foreheads for faithful mouths. Open your mouth. Fill your stomach. Get up. Go. Speak.
