The Watchman Series

Introduction

Okay, did you know that for many years Yorkshire was responsible for protecting the whole Western world from nuclear Armageddon? It's true. Up on the North York Moors between Whitby and Pickering, there's an RAF base called Fylingdales. It sort of looks a bit like a box now, but back in the day, it used to look like three giant golf balls, which we would have up on the screen just to sort of jog your memory. But for many years, they sort of stood there on the hill. Yep, if you didn't know, there were more golf balls than just the ones up the road at Menwith Hill.

And the base's primary purpose was to provide a warning should ballistic missiles be launched at the West. It would give a four-minute warning to the UK and pass the warning to the rest of the Western world. A system of sirens was set up across the UK, and when the warning went out, the sirens would sound, and people would be warned. You could go and find shelter in the minutes that remained. The golf balls then stood as watchmen, guardians of the skies in the event of a nuclear attack. Their warning was an essential part of the West's defence. Lives depended on their message of impending danger.

And then, in our passage this morning, Ezekiel is told that he must act as a watchman for the people. That's what we find out in chapter 3, verse 17: "Son of man, I have made you a watchman for the house of Israel." He must speak out a warning to the people of God of the impending judgment. Now that was Ezekiel. That was what he was to do, but I warn you, the implications go far beyond the book of Ezekiel. If we know God's judgment is coming, then we all bear the responsibility of warning others.

Famous Baptist preacher C.H. Spurgeon put it this way: when the camp is in imminent danger, every man should turn watchman. Every man should turn watchman. So it can be easy to detach ourselves from Ezekiel, but in the end, despite all the big visions that we saw last week, he is a believer. He's a believer who hears God's word and then must speak it, and in that sense, we're no different, are we, from Ezekiel? So let's listen in as God speaks to Ezekiel and see what he has to say to us today.

So our first point today—so these are quite long headings—the first point is: our job as Christians is to digest and speak God's word.

Our job as Christians is to digest and speak God's word

Ezekiel is given a two-fold task here. He's to take in, and he's to give out. The taking in is sort of put in the middle section, and that normally highlights its importance in Hebrew writings. So we're going to look at that one first. So firstly, he is to take in. He's told to eat a scroll.

Now you might have heard the expression, you know, "I'll make you eat your words" or "I'll eat my words if" etc. But this is meant pretty differently to that. He's given a scroll by a hand—probably the hand of one of those angelic beings that we saw last week, because they mentioned that they had human hands that would then fit with being handed it with a hand. And the scroll is written on front and back. They're not a Friends reference there if you're into Friends, but it's supposed to be full. That's the idea, with words of lamentation and mourning and woe.

In other words, this is going to be a tough message until chapter 33, but we'll deal with that next year. It's quite a long book. This is not the sort of section of Ezekiel that you get printed on calendars and, you know, you write in cards. I don't think I've ever seen one of those quotes on one of those inspirational calendars from the early chapters of Ezekiel. It's a hard message that he must inwardly digest. He's got to do that first before bringing it to the people. The words need to go into him before they go out to others. He needs to absorb them, which he does—he eats the scroll.

Now some commentators see some reluctance on his part. He's literally told "fill your belly," as though there's a lot to eat—like I said, there are a lot of chapters in Ezekiel. But you'd expect that you'd find this scroll bitter and unpleasant with those words in him, wouldn't you? But instead, he finds it sweet, sweet as honey. It may be a hard message, but it's still God's word. Psalm 119, verse 103: "How sweet are your words to my taste, sweeter than honey to my mouth." There can be sweetness, can't there, even in the words of sadness, of mourning, and lamentation?