DO YOU HEAR WHAT I HEAR?
And as he spoke to me, the Spirit entered into me and set me on my feet, and I heard him speaking to me.
Ezekiel 2:2
We live in noisy times! Radios and TVs, phones and computers, all clamor for our attention. There are also the peripheral noises of cars going by, jets flying overhead, and the general jibber-jabber of people around us. And there is the “visual noise” of billboards and signs that bombard us everyday. We become so overloaded that at night, we replace the din of the day with “white noise” so that we can fall asleep … asleep until the buzz of our alarm clocks wake us to a new, noisy day.
With all the noise around us, it’s hard to hear what is truly important.
That was the situation in Ezekiel’s day. They didn’t have the electronics and mass media with which we contend, but they, too, lived in noisy times. What they heard was the competing claims of men who claimed to speak for God, prophets. There were, to be sure, the true prophets of God; but they were drowned out by the false prophets of the times. These false prophets, like so much of what we hear today, was appealing to the people’s pride, confirming of their preconceived notions, and even supportive of their sin. The false prophets promised peace and security apart from God. And their repeated pronouncements made it hard to hear the true prophet, the true proclamation of God’s Word.
Ezekiel had been among the first wave of deportees, taken from Jerusalem and carried off to Babylon. It is in that foreign land that God calls Ezekiel, 50 years-old at the time, to be his spokesman. In the book he wrote to the people, he begins by detailing the people’s sin against God, showing that the Lord is righteous in his condemnation of this “nation of rebels, who have rebelled against me.” He condemns the nations around Judah who have contributed to the distracting noises. Then, in closing, as the prophets so often do, he holds out a word of hope and encouragement to the people of God.
If we do, we will hear God’s word of condemnation. We have sinned against holy God, broken his law, and tried, by worldly ways, to appease him. As such, we are rebels, deserving of his holy and just punishment. Like Ezekiel, when we come into the presence of God, we recall the words of the psalmist: “Lord, if you should mark iniquities -- if you keep track of our sins -- who can stand?”
The Good News we hear, the Gospel message that is revealed in the Word of God, is that by the Spirit, by the faith he imparts, we can rise to stand before God. Why? Because Jesus has taken the penalty of our sin upon himself. By his sinless life, by his sacrificial death, by his glorious resurrection from the dead, our sins are forgiven, washed away as dirt from our bodies. Now, in the righteousness of Christ, we stand restored as God’s sons and daughters.
The noise of the world, the claim of false prophets, will try to drown out this prophetic message of Law and Gospel. But this is the Word of God, revealed to his prophets and given to us. But, as Jesus said repeatedly, “Whoever has ears, let him hear!”
Listen; do you hear what I hear?