Our former district superintendent, Bill Smith, recalls preaching part-time in a small local church while he was still studying for the ministry. Six months passed and none of his professors had come to hear him. Finally, his faculty advisor agreed to attend one Sunday.
After the service, the advisor shook Bill’s hand and said, “That was a very warm sermon.”
But Bill’s delight was short-lived as he continued. “You know what the definition of warm is, don't you?” he asked.
Before Bill could respond, he answered, “Not so hot” (Bill Smith, "Lite Fare," Christian Reader; www.PreachingToday.com).
Ouch! But it does raise a very important question not only for preachers and teachers, but also for parents and grandparents, or for anyone with an important message they just want people they love to hear especially in hard times.
How do you turn up the heat in your message? How do you communicate in such a way that people really hear what you have to say? Well, if you have your Bibles, I invite you to turn with me to Ezekiel 3, Ezekiel 3, where God calls Ezekiel to communicate hard words to hard people in hard times.
Ezekiel 3:1-3 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 (ESV).
God has given Ezekiel a hard message of judgment to Jewish people in hard times. They are in exile in Babylon while the Babylonian army is besieging their capital city and about to destroy it. Yet Ezekiel finds God’s word sweet in His mouth. It’s not what he expected. Perhaps, he expected a bitter taste that sours the stomach, but God’s Word was sweet nourishment to his soul.
My dear friends, if you want God to powerfully use you to communicate His message to hard people in hard times, you must…
EAT HIS WORDS YOURSELF.
You must ingest God’s message into your own life. You must receive it and make it a part of who you are.
In an interview with The Telegraph, actor Anthony Hopkins said that when he gets a movie script, he reads through it between one hundred and two hundred times before production. He makes notes in the margins. He scribbles and doodles and imagines how it would look on stage or screen. By the time Hopkins is finished, that script is internalized. He knows his character. He knows his (and everyone else's) lines. He's able to improvise, and he's a personification of the script (Sean Macauly, “Anthony Hopkins Interview,” The Telegraph, 1-31-11; www.PreachingToday.com).
That’s what it means to eat God’s Word. It starts with reading parts of it several times—maybe 100 or 200 times. Then take notes, and imagine what it would look like in your own life. Do this until God’s Word is internalized, and you become a personification of the “script” itself. Then, and only then, are you ready to communicate God’s Word to others. First, eat God’s Word. Then…
SPEAK GOD’S WORD.
Faithfully proclaim exactly what God has said, whether people listen or not.
Ezekiel 3:4-7 And he said to me, “Son of man, go to the house of Israel and speak with my words to them. For you are not sent to a people of foreign speech and a hard language, but to the house of Israel— not to many peoples of foreign speech and a hard language, whose words you cannot understand. Surely, if I sent you to such, they would listen to you. But the house of Israel will not be willing to listen to you, for they are not willing to listen to me: because all the house of Israel have a hard forehead and a stubborn heart (ESV).
God asks Ezekiel to bring His Word to a hard people, who will refuse to listen. However, God will make Ezekiel just as hard, if not harder than they.
Ezekiel 3:8-9 Behold, I have made your face as hard as their faces, and your forehead as hard as their foreheads. Like emery harder than flint have I made your forehead. Fear them not, nor be dismayed at their looks, for they are a rebellious house” (ESV).
God will make Ezekiel to be just as hardheaded and persistent in proclaiming God’s Word as the people are hardheaded and persistent in resisting God’s Word. The word for “hard” in the Hebrew is the same word that forms part of Ezekiel’s name, which means “God will strengthen” or “God will harden.” So, when Ezekiel heard his name, it reminded him of God’s promised strength (Charles Dyer, BKC). And God promises you that same strength as you faithfully speak His Word in difficult situations. But first you have to soften your heart to receive His Word for yourself.
Ezekiel 3:10-11 Moreover, he said to me, “Son of man, all my words that I shall speak to you receive in your heart, and hear with your ears. And go to the exiles, to your people, and speak to them and say to them, ‘Thus says the Lord GOD,’ whether they hear or refuse to hear” (ESV).
God does not measure your success by how people respond. God measures your success by how faithfully you have relayed His Word to people. Have you communicated the message He gave you to communicate without change or compromise.
Dr. Rosaria Butterfield, a former tenured professor at the University of Syracuse, was a committed and comfortable lesbian until she had what she described as a “train-wreck conversion” to Christ. At one point in her life, she wrote, “As an unbelieving professor of English, an advocate of postmodernism … and an opponent of all totalizing meta-narratives (like Christianity), I found peace and purpose in my life as a lesbian and the queer community I helped to create.” Today she is married to Pastor Kent Butterfield, and mother of four adopted children and numerous foster children.
After her conversion, she describes an encounter with a female counselor who wanted Dr. Butterfield to bend her message about homosexual practice. The woman asked Butterfield to state publicly that homosexual practice is not inherently wrong. Butterfield writes:
When I entered her office, she directed me to a comfortable chair and made one simple request: “Rosaria, I want you to change your message.” I found this a bold and disarming request, and so I told her that I come in the gospel of peace. She said, “Change your message.” Finally, I asked her what I ought to change in my message. She said, “Tell people that it is only IN YOUR OPINION that homosexual practice is a sin.”
Rosaria responded by saying, “ I am not smart enough to have this opinion, but that this is the position the inspired and inerrant Word of God upholds. It comes to me from the historic Christian church… through the pages of Scripture, and so on down to me.” Rosaria told her, “Changing my message would involve denying the plain meaning of Scripture, the testimony of the church, the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus, and the gospel.”
Now, to the postmodern mind… the counselor’s request seems reasonable enough: just own this position as a personal point of view. But claiming something that is a universal truth to be a mere matter of personal preference is a lie by omission. “This is the Bible's message, and apart from Christ,” Rosaria says, “I am more condemned by it than the woman who made this request (Rosaria Butterfield, Openness Unhindered: Further Thoughts of an Unlikely Convert on Sexual Identity and Union with Christ, Crown and Covenant Publications, 2015; www.PreachingToday.com).
Our culture pushes us to soften the hard language of Scripture, to fudge a little when it comes to proclaiming God’s clear message. Please, don’t do it, because to do so would deny the power of the Gospel itself. Instead, just tell people, “Thus says the Lord GOD,” whether they hear or refuse to hear.
If you want God to powerfully use you to communicate His message to hard people in hard times, 1st, eat God’s Word. 2nd, speak God’s Word without change or compromise. And 3rd…
FOLLOW GOD’S SPIRIT.
And go only where He leads you. Let God’s Spirit guide you to the places and people He wants. That’s what Ezekiel did.
Ezekiel 3:12-15 Then the Spirit lifted me up, and I heard behind me the voice of a great earthquake: “Blessed be the glory of the LORD from its place!” It was the sound of the wings of the living creatures as they touched one another, and the sound of the wheels beside them, and the sound of a great earthquake. The Spirit lifted me up and took me away, and I went in bitterness in the heat of my spirit, the hand of the LORD being strong upon me. And I came to the exiles at Tel-abib, who were dwelling by the Chebar canal, and I sat where they were dwelling. And I sat there overwhelmed among them seven days (ESV).
With the mighty sound of angels’ wings, God’s Spirit took Ezekiel to Tel-abib, which literally means “mound of the flood.” It was an ancient ruin where God’s ruined people had gathered in exile.
Why not the city of Babylon itself where God had led the great prophet Daniel and where Ezekiel could have had greater influence? Instead, God leads Ezekiel to a distant place and a displaced people, who had no influence nor hope of any future influence in their world.
They were nobodies in a nowhere place, and that upset Ezekiel. To be sure, he started with praise (verse 12), but he arrived in “bitterness” and “heat” (or rage), being “overwhelmed” at the task God gave Him to do.
These are extremely strong words in the Hebrew, indicating a raging displeasure. Ezekiel had come back from his day trip to the river in a fury. It was his thirtieth birthday (Ezekiel 1:1), the year he was to start his priestly ministry in the Temple in Jerusalem (Num. 4:2-3). Instead, God sends him with a hard message to a hard people in a hard, out of the way, place. Why had God picked on him?
One commentator asked, “Was it not enough to have lost his career and his future, to have been wrenched away from the temple of his dearest dreams, to be suffering this appalling living death in exile along with all the other exiles? Must he now also endure the lonely unpopularity and social exclusion that will inevitably be his lot as the prophet of yet more doom to come? (NIV Bible Speaks Today, IVP, 2020).
Some of you are there right now. You started your career with high hopes and big dreams. You were praising the Lord, but now you find yourself in a hard place.
You see, the Holy Spirit doesn’t always lead His servants to what the world calls “success.” Sometimes, the Holy Spirit leads His servants to suffer in hard places where they see little or no response.
Be angry like Ezekiel if you must, but in your anger, do not sin (Ephesians 4:26). Do not turn away from God’s leading in your life. Take some time off like Ezekiel if you must, but come to accept God’s call to the place and to the people He wants you to serve. That’s what Ezekiel did, and that’s what you must do if you want to communicate God’s word to hard people in hard times.
Just a couple of years ago (November 2023), the jet stream (that is the air current about five miles above the earth’s surface) was stronger than usual. CNN meteorologist Sara Tonks attributed the difference to a burst of cold air, which had increased the difference in temperature between the colder United States and the warmer Atlantic Ocean.
Now, the jet stream has always been a boon to travelers heading west-to-east, but two years ago, it allowed planes to travel at speeds approaching the speed of sound, estimated at about 761 miles per hour.
As a result, several airplanes logged impressive flight times. For example, an American Airlines flight from JFK in New York to Heathrow in London touched down almost an hour early.
In 2019, a Virgin Atlantic plane from Los Angeles to London achieved a speed of 801 mph while flying over the state of Pennsylvania. Afterward, Virgin founder Richard Branson described it as flying “faster than any other commercial non-supersonic plane in history” (Julia Buckley, “Transatlantic airplanes are flying at the ‘speed of sound’ right now. Here’s why,” CNN, 11-1-23; www.PreachingToday.com).
When you have the wind at your back, you can do amazing things. You can overcome amazing obstacles. You can persevere through the hardest times. That “wind” for the believer is God’s Holy Spirit. Trust Him to push you to and through the hard places in your life.
If you want God to powerfully use you to communicate His message to hard people in hard times, 1st, eat God’s Word. 2nd, speak God’s Word without change or compromise. 3rd, follow God’s Spirit. And 4th…
WARN GOD’S PEOPLE.
Even if it’s hard, alert people to the danger of disobeying God. Admonish people to turn from their sin before it is too late. That’s what God called Ezekiel to do.
Ezekiel 3:16-17 And at the end of seven days, the word of the LORD came to me: “Son of man, I have made you a watchman for the house of Israel. Whenever you hear a word from my mouth, you shall give them warning from me (ESV).
Watchmen stood on city walls, hilltops, or watchtowers, where they kept an eye out for an approaching enemy. If they saw an enemy approach the city, they warned the city’s people of an impending attack. That gave city dwellers outside the walls an opportunity to seek protection, and the warning also gave people time to secure the gates and man the defenses (Charles Dyer, BKC). To begin with, God called Ezekiel to warn the wicked of impending judgment.
Ezekiel 3:18-19 If I say to the wicked, ‘You shall surely die,’ and you give him no warning, nor speak to warn the wicked from his wicked way, in order to save his life, that wicked person shall die for his iniquity, but his blood I will require at your hand. But if you warn the wicked, and he does not turn from his wickedness, or from his wicked way, he shall die for his iniquity, but you will have delivered your soul (ESV).
If Ezekiel did not warn the people, God would hold him responsible for their murder as if he had killed them himself. However, if Ezekiel fulfilled his responsibility, then he would have delivered his soul—that is, saved his life. He would escape the capital punishment God’s law required for every murderer (Genesis 9:5-6). God would not hold Ezekiel responsible for how people responded, no! God would only hold Ezekiel responsible for warning people about the consequences of their own sin.
God called Ezekiel to warn the wicked of impending judgment. But He also called Ezekiel to warn the righteous not to sin.
Ezekiel 3:20-21 Again, if a righteous person turns from his righteousness and commits injustice, and I lay a stumbling block before him, he shall die. Because you have not warned him, he shall die for his sin, and his righteous deeds that he has done shall not be remembered, but his blood I will require at your hand. But if you warn the righteous person not to sin, and he does not sin, he shall surely live, because he took warning, and you will have delivered your soul” (ESV).
Even if good people sin, their past goodness will not save them.
So then, who can be saved, because all of us sin, the wicked as well as the righteous? Well, let me tell you. Only those who turn from their sin to Christ can be saved. That’s because He died for your sins and rose again. He took the punishment you deserved, which God accepted on your behalf by raising Jesus from the dead. Now, all you have to do is acknowledge your own sin, believe that Christ died for your sins, and confess Him as your Lord, turning your life over to Him.
Please, if you haven’t done it already, trust Christ with your life and experience the salvation only He can provide, because your own goodness will never save you.
That’s the message God wants His servants to deliver—Repent or perish! Turn or burn! It’s not popular in our culture, but it’s absolutely necessary if anybody is going to escape God’s judgment to come.
In Phuket, Thailand, Tilly Smith, a determined 10-year-old girl, saved her parents and dozens of people from a deadly tsunami. She had recently studied tsunamis at school, so when she suspected one was on its way, she courageously spoke what she knew to be true.
As Tilly's family enjoyed a day at Maikhao Beach, the sea began to bubble and rush away from the shore. While the adults were merely curious, Tilly was petrified with fear.
“Mummy, we must get off the beach now!” she said. “I think there's going to be a tsunami.”
The adults didn't even understand her warning until Tilly referred to it as a tidal wave. Once they understood, they all believed Tilly and evacuated the area. Minutes later the water surged right over the beach and demolished everything in its path. The resort was destroyed, but that section of beach was one of the few places along the shores of Phuket where no one was killed or even seriously hurt.
Tilly was praised for raising the alarm (Duncan Larcombe, "Quake Angel," New York Post, 1-1-05; www.PreachingToday. com).
Judgment is coming on those without Christ. Do you have the courage to raise the alarm? Do you have the courage to warn others so they have the opportunity to escape.
If you want God to powerfully use you to communicate His message to hard people in hard times, 1st, eat God’s Word. 2nd, speak God’s Word without change or compromise. 3rd, follow God’s Spirit. And 4th, warn God’s people. Boldly share the message God has clearly communicated in His Word.
In his book Building a Church of Small Groups, Bill Donahue tells a story from his time as a part-time youth pastor while attending seminary. He was visiting a farm where two of his students lived, and their father Tom decided to teach Bill a lesson:
He asked if Bill could help call in the sheep. Bill enthusiastically agreed. Sheep-calling was like preaching. So they stood at the pasture fence, watching 25 sheep graze.
“Go ahead,” Tom dared Bill. “Call them in.”
“What do you say?” Bill asked.
Tom replied, “I just say, ‘Hey, sheep! C'mon in!’”
No sweat, Bill thought. A city kid with a bad back and hay fever could do this. He began in a normal speaking voice, but Tom interrupted. “You are 75 yards away, down wind, and they have their backs to you. Yell! Use your diaphragm, like they teach you in preaching class.”
So Bill took a deep breath and put every inch of stomach muscle into a yell that revival preachers around the world would envy: “Hey, sheep! C'mon in!” The blessed creatures didn't move an inch. None even turned an ear.
Tom smiled sarcastically. “Do they teach you the Bible in that seminary? Have you ever read, ‘My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me'?’ Raising his voice only slightly, he said: “Hey, sheep! C'mon in!” All 25 sheep turned and ambled toward them. Tom seized this teachable moment.
“Now, don't you ever forget,” he said. “You are the shepherd to my kids” (Bill Donahue and Russ Robinson, Building a Church of Small Groups, Zondervan, 2001, p. 106-107; www.PreachingToday.com).
God’s sheep will not respond to YOUR voice. They only respond to the voice of Jesus. So make sure it is HIS Word that you speak, not your own.
