Our text for today is the call of Ezekiel to his prophetic office. The name Ezekiel means strength of God or God’s strength. As we will see, Ezekiel has a fitting name, because His strength as a prophet of the Lord does not come from within himself, but from outside of himself, from the strength the Lord gives to him. Ezekiel’s name reminds us that we are like Ezekiel. We are not strong, in anyway, because of our own strength. Our faith and strength do not come from within ourselves, but from outside ourselves. The Lord calls us through the means of grace, the Word and the Sacraments. As He calls us He put faith in our hearts and God gives us all His gifts and blessings, forgiveness of sins, life and salvation.
Our text begins with the call of Ezekiel. We read beginning at verse one, “1And [God] said to me, ‘Son of man, stand on your feet, and I will speak with you.’ 2And as he spoke to me, the Spirit entered into me and set me on my feet, and I heard him speaking to me” (v. 1-2). Notice that our text begins with the Lord calling Ezekiel to stand on his feet. When the Lord called him, he fell down. He fell down in awe. Although Ezekiel had fallen down because He heard the Word of the Lord, when the Word of the Lord tells Him to “stand up” on his feet he is raised to his feet by the Spirit who comes through that same Word. As always, the word of the Lord is efficacious, it does what it says, it lifts him to his feet.
As we hear Ezekiel’s call this morning we are reminded that there are different calls from the Lord. The Lord’s first call is to everyone is the call to life. God calls us to life at the moment of our conception. At conception we are called to be the person God would have us to be.
The Lord’s second calling is the call to faith. God’s will is that all people come to faith and know and believe in Jesus. God’s call is to all people, of all places and all times, and yet there are many who resist and refuse the call to faith, yet the Lord still calls and He continues to call until we pass on from this world. For most of us God’s call to faith came while we were yet infants as He called us through the waters of Holy Baptism. For others, God’s call to faith came at a later age through His Holy Word which stirred in us a desire to be Baptized.
The Lord’s third calling is to our vocation. In other words, the Lord would have us to do whatever we do to His glory. Often we equate vocation with job and that is a good equation, but our vocation goes beyond simply our job. Our vocation includes that fact that we serve in many vocations at the same time. For some, you may serve in the vocation as a husband or wife, and a father or mother, a brother or sister and an aunt or uncle, as an employee and perhaps a supervisor, even as a grandparent or mentor. Unfortunately, we often equate the value of a job, one of a persons vocations, with the amount of money that person earns, or the amount of perceived prestige or power one might wield. God equates the value of a person’s job with how well a person serves Him and gives glory to Him through that job or vocation. In other words, the person who does manual labor at minimum wage to the glory of God is serving the Lord and, to put it in human terms, is of greater value to the Lord than the person who makes millions of dollars a year, but does so for his own personal glory and gain. God calls us to our vocation so that we serve Him by serving others.
God calls to life, to faith and God calls to vocation. There is one other calling from the Lord and that is the calling to the office of Holy Ministry. When it comes to this last calling, we understand that the Lord calls only some men to the office of Holy Ministry, that is to be pastors.
Getting back to Ezekiel’s call. The Lord calls Ezekiel for a purpose. We pick up at verse three, “3And 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. 4The descendants also are impudent and stubborn: I send you to them, and you shall say to them, “Thus says the Lord God.” 5And whether they hear or refuse to hear (for they are a rebellious house) they will know that a prophet has been among them’” (v. 3-5).
The Lord calls Ezekiel to speak to a rebellious nation. What is interesting about this calling is the language of the text. The children of Israel are not called the children of God, but are called a rebellious nation. The word for “nation” that is used is “goyim” which is the Hebrew word for nations in general and is often translated as Gentiles. Goyim are non-Hebrew, non-covenant people. In other words, the Lord is intimating, if not outright saying, that these people are no longer the Lord’s people because they have rebelled and refused the Lord’s gifts.
God calls Ezekiel to speak the Word of the Lord. Ezekiel is not to speak his own words, but he is to speak the words which the Lord gives Him to speak. This means that when the people rebel against Ezekiel’s words they are not rebelling against Ezekiel, but against God. Here we are reminded that we are people who act the same way today. It happens too often that someone will disagree with what I, as a pastor, will say from the pulpit. Now, this does not negate the fact that you are to be as the Bereans and you are to check everything that I say against the Word of God and if I do preach something that is contrary to the Word of God, certainly you are to take issue with me. But if what I am preaching is from the Word of God, then if someone takes issue, unfortunately, they will not be disagreeing with me, because I am merely passing on the Lord’s Word. So, they find themselves disagreeing with God.
Back to Ezekiel’s call. The Lord’s call to Ezekiel was not a call for results, or as we may think today, it was not a call for success. Ezekiel was not expected to change the people’s minds. He was not expected to make the people listen and change their ways. He was expected only to proclaim the Lord’s Word to the people. The Lord would take care of the rest and “they [would] know that a prophet has been among them.”
God’s call to us is a call to faith and His call to faith is through means. As we mentioned earlier, for most of us that call was through the means of Holy Baptism, in other words at our baptism God called us to faith. At our Baptism God put faith into our hearts. For others that call was through the means of God’s Word. In either case, God comes to us, God calls to us, God gives to us, through the means He has given us, the Word and the Sacraments. God comes to us through these means to bring us to faith, that is to give us faith, to strengthen us in our faith, to give us forgiveness of sins and to give us eternal life.
God calls us to faith and He calls us to be His holy priesthood. We are all equal in God’s eyes. We are all sinful human beings. We have all sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. And yet, our Lord sent His only Son, Jesus, to give His life for ours on the cross so that we might have forgiveness of sins and eternal life. Thus, we are all equal in God’s eyes as being redeemed children, not of our own, but by the shedding of Jesus’ blood for us. It is Jesus and the shedding of His blood that makes us just and right in God’s eyes. It is faith in Jesus’ shedding His blood, faith given by the Holy Spirit, that moves us to live lives of faith. It all points to God as the prime mover. God does and God gives and we are done to and we are given to.
God calls us to our vocations. As I said earlier, we each serve in various vocations at the same time. The purpose of our vocation is not to serve ourselves but to serve the Lord and we do that in our vocation and vocations by serving others. We serve in the various vocations such as husband and wife, mother and father, brother and sister, parent and child, uncle and aunt, grandmother and grandfather and so forth. We also serve in various vocations when it comes to our work or our job. Whatever our vocation according to our work or our job we are to work to bring God glory. We may think that we are working for our employer, yet we have a higher calling. No matter what our job, we are to work for the Lord. Just think how much more value there is to our work as we realize that we are working for the Lord. This means that we do our jobs in such a way that we bear witness to the hope that is in us and that we do our work to the glory of the Lord.
God calls some men to be pastors. As human beings we are all equally sinners and saints in God’s eyes. Yet our Lord has set certain boundaries, He has given certain roles to us as men and women in His church. He has set certain boundaries and roles for the sake of order and for peace and harmony. One role in particular is that God calls only men and only certain men to be pastors. To put this into a bit of a perspective, God has called women to bear the image of God in that they can procreate, they can give birth to children. God has not given this calling to men. God has called men to be responsible for their families. God has not given this calling to women. So we each have our calling and we each have our role.
God calls us all to be faithful, not necessarily successful. To suggest that God calls us to be successful would necessitate defining the word success. In the Bible, the only times the word success is used is in connection with a military campaign and the success is what is given by God. Our world would define success as a matter of wealth, fame, power, or glory. God does not call us for any of these. God calls us to be faithful. “Be faithful unto death and I will give you the crown of live” (Rev. 2:10).
God calls and He moves in us to not refuse His call. We do not come to the Lord, looking for Him, seeking Him. We do not have a spark of faith in us which we must kindle. To speak in terms of what we are doing is to speak in terms that would suggest that we are enemies of God, spiritually blind and spiritually dead. I think it is so unfortunate that the world, movies, novels, and so forth urge us to look inside ourselves for the answers and yet we know that when we look inside ourselves all we see is the fact that we are sinful human beings fighting as enemies of God. Thus, I would encourage you, I would urge you, look outside yourself. Look to God’s Word. Look to Jesus. It is the Lord who comes to us, looking for us, seeking us. He comes to us through the means of grace, the Word and the Sacraments. He comes to us to gives us the gifts He has to give, gifts of faith, strengthening of faith, forgiveness of sins, life, eternal life and salvation. He comes to give us the gifts earned by the giving of Jesus life for us on the cross. He comes to give us His gifts and to stir in us so that we do not refuse His gifts.
The example of God’s call to Ezekiel reminds us that the Lord has called each one of us. He has called us to faith, through the Gospel and the waters of Holy Baptism. He has called us to our vocation, to work to His glory. And He calls us to be faithful unto death. Most important is the fact that as He calls us He also stirs in us to not refuse His calling. And He stirs in us to give glory to Him alone. To God be the glory for Jesus’ sake. Amen.
No comments:
Post a Comment
Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.