“The Sign of Sin”

Scripture: Ezekiel 4:4-13

During the past two weeks, we’ve been following Ezekiel’s journey from being an exiled priest to that of being the Lord’s prophet to captive Israel. When God called him to be his messenger to the exiles, Ezekiel was assured that all he would have to do, basically, is to show up. The Lord would give him the sweetest of all words to say, he would release the tongue of the prophet at just the right time, and he would be the assurance and peace that would calm the fears of his man.
But God would also warn the prophet about the dire consequences of being less than faithful in carrying out the divine directives to their fullest. Life would be hanging in the balance – not only for the one who the message was for, but also for the life of the prophet. The message was for those who were approaching the imminence of death, and their lives were dependent on receiving, and accepting, the words of Jehovah. But Ezekiel’s life would also be placed in jeopardy if he failed to carry out God’s instructions exactly as they were given.

Ezekiel was, no doubt, a bit apprehensive when he accepted the call. Would he hear the words correctly? Would he be able to use the right inflections to convey the true meaning to the people? Would he always have the courage to be faithful in his assignments? And God essentially tells him “Yes, yes, and yes!” – not because the prophet was so special, but because his Lord is.
The message would be about the sin of Israel and Judah that brought about their defeat at the hands of Assyria and Babylon, and God would have them know that the only way back was by his grace. But Ezekiel would have to get their attention before they would begin to listen to the warnings.

Read Ezekiel: 4-8

Think about the ways that God has gotten your attention over the years. Sometimes it may have been like a clap of thunder, and at other times, more like a gentle whisper. But however it may have been delivered, it would have been unmistakable. You knew right away that the Lord was telling you something, and you knew immediately what the message was all about. You could ignore it, certainly, but you couldn’t miss it.
Their Jehovah God had sent both nations prophet after prophet to warn them of the impending doom coming their way, and he used many different ways to tell them. Hosea’s message was punctuated by the story of Gomer, his unfaithful wife, who eventually would be found by her faithful husband. Many of the Lord’s servants were educated men, but the prophet Amos had been called from his duties as a simple shepherd – a humble man – to deliver the message that the people, in their prosperity, had become self-sufficient, arrogant, and oppressive of their own people. The prophet Joel’s message was similar, but imaged as the devastation from a cloud of locust. Some would be sent to the Northern kingdom of Israel, while others would go to the Southern nation of Judah. Most would go to the Jews, but others, such as Jonah and Obadiah, would be sent to other nations. All of these, as well as others, would remind the people of their sinful ways, and would call them to return to God’s way.

Of course, most of the people would ignore the warnings, and calamity would fall on both nations. But the method that Ezekiel was given to explain the condition of the people was much more dramatic than the others. To put the full impact of the nations’ sinfulness into perspective, the prophet was to lie on his side, facing Jerusalem, as a sign of bearing the sin of each nation. Israel had sinned against God for 390 years, so Ezekiel would have to lie on his side for that number of days, and as Judah had turned their backs on their Lord for 40 years, he had to lie on his other side for 40 days.
And he wouldn’t be able to move.

What a perfect demonstration of the impact that sin has on our lives! Sin incapacitates us – we can no longer do anything that is worthwhile. It restricts us in our service to God and it prevents us from walking in his way. We become captives to sin – we can no longer claim to be God’s people, because we are in the clutches of darkness. Sin becomes our new way of life – at first, it may seem restful and pleasant, but as time goes on, our spiritual muscles begin to cramp and atrophy, and we lose all of the abilities and desires that we had when we were free to serve the Lord.
Ezekiel would lose over a year of his life while showing his sinful brothers just what they had been doing in the eyes of Almighty God. That’s what sin does to us – we lose!

Read Ezekiel 4:9:13

And the prophet would live on bread and water for that 14 months, and it would be a scant amount of defiled food at that. The bread that would be made would provide him with about 8 ounces of nourishment a day, and the daily water ration equated to a little over 2 cups. For over a year!
The barley bread that he would eat was a poor person’s meal, and it was the last choice for others. In the first few verses of this chapter (Ezekiel 4:1-3), we read that Ezekiel was to turn his face toward Jerusalem, and pretend that he was placing a siege on the city. Jerusalem was, apparently, still under siege at this time, even though many people from Judah had joined their brothers and sisters from the North in captivity.
Any siege in that day was always devastating on the populace. It was intended to starve the people into either surrender, or to the point that they were so weak that they could never mount a sufficient defense of their city. The prophet was to be the sign of both the siege of the city and the suffering that was experienced inside the city. And all of it because of the sins of the people.

But we know full well that suffering is not unique to the sinful condition. The righteous also go through difficult times, but there is one significant difference. The sinner goes through his suffering alone, while the righteous endure the pain with their God intimately beside them. Which would you prefer – enduring your struggles with only your own finite and insufficient abilities, or going through it with the strength and power and vision of the All Mighty, All Knowing, All Existant God? It should be a pretty simple decision for anyone to make, but people choose themselves over God all the time!
And that is why Israel and Judah had been taken from the land that the Lord had promised them, and into the land of pagans. And this message is no less important for us. Sin hasn’t changed much in the past 2,800 years, and it never will. But as devastating as sin is on the relationship we have with God, the effect that it will have on our lives is just as bad.
Sin is an obstacle to life, and whether we like the thought or not, every Christian has the responsibility to bring it out of the shadows of earth and into the light of the New Day. We may think that Ezekiel’s penance for Israel’s sin was carried out inside of his home. But what kind of demonstration would that be if no one saw it? Ezekiel would have to live out those 14 months in full view of the community if they were to receive the message that the Lord had for them.
And we are in the same boat. We can no longer allow the sins of our community, our state, and our nation to lie hidden behind a curtain of societal justification. I will stop short, though, of suggesting that someone should go down to the village square and lie on the ground for months on end without moving, just to make the point! But we do have to take a stand for those things that are biblically sound, and can no longer quietly stand by while the world leads others into ways that are not of the Lord.
So what signs can we offer? Remembering that Jesus told us to “give to Caesar what is Caesar’s, and to God what is God’s” (Matthew 22:15-22) – [that is an “and”, you know!], we can speak out at governmental hearings when they are considering a Non-Godly action, and we can protest acts that have been implemented; we can stand with other Christians in times of persecution against the Church and individuals; we can refuse to participate in earthly “normalcies” that do not fit with scripture; and above all, we need to be sure that we are doing and saying exactly what our Lord is calling us to do and say.

Ezekiel and Daniel and Amos and Micah and the disciples and Paul and Timothy and Silas and countless other men and women have served as signs against earthly sin for ages. The need hasn’t diminished – as a matter of fact, it may have even increased in the past few decades.
So who will take a stand for God today? Who will name sin for what it truly is – a disgrace against the Almighty, and a death knell for humanity!

How will the world see you? As a sign for the Light, or one that is in favor of the darkness?