Ezekiel 3:4

The title given to him proves that the people he goes to have lost their special place with God. At the same time it shows that if Israel will not hear, nothing will stop grace from reaching its goal. The message will only go out more widely, and with a deeper, sweeter, fuller message, as we prove in abundance today. This title is itself a foreshadowing of One still to come. He would stand among Israel in a day then still future, and take the title as His own.

It is the title Jesus took as the rejected Messiah who would suffer, be exalted, and return in glory as the Son of man. His servants have the same title, since they are identified with the glory of God. God now declares Himself outside Israel, and even judges Israel by the Gentiles.

With Ezekiel the title speaks simply of his identification with men. He is not the Son of man. He is reminded of how low his condition is, and this only magnifies the grace that has taken him up. It also makes him fit to carry the message he is charged with: not an angel, but a man with human sympathies and a human understanding gained and exercised in human conditions. He is himself the proof of the heart of God behind the hand of the One who is love and cannot change His nature, even when He executes judgment.

Notice the thought underneath: what the servant of God gives out, whether prophecy or teaching, he must first eat, digest and make his own. Nothing ruins us spiritually more than to proclaim and parade knowledge of truth we have not yet made our own in meditation, in prayer, in experience.

Eating, in its scriptural meaning, tells us that the Word was to be taken as one's own. These prophets were to make their own the messages they were sent to deliver. The Bible — to widen the application — is not a book of information to gather and then repeat. It is the voice of God to the soul that reads it. You must hear it for yourself before you can pass on properly what you have heard.

Of Jeremiah and Ezekiel we have the Lord's testimony to the inspiration of their predictions. To the first God said, "Behold, I have put my words in your mouth" (Jer. 1:9); he would therefore speak the words of God. To the second, the Lord said, "You shall speak my words to them, whether they hear or refuse to hear, for they are a rebellious house" (Ezek. 2:7).

When one stands before the Lord, then, like Jeremiah, one hungers for His word and eats it (Jer. 15:16). Then one can pass it on to others: "You shall be as my mouth" (Jer. 15:19). In Revelation 10:10 John cannot prophesy until he has taken the little book and eaten it. Ezekiel speaks out God's words once he has eaten the roll.

The Lord testifies that Israel is even more hardened than any of the heathen nations. The people are shameless and hard-hearted. Ezekiel needed his forehead made as hard as diamond to speak to them the word he had to declare, saying, "whether they hear or refuse to hear."

Ezekiel was to speak the words of the Lord to them, and the sender predicts failure. "The house of Israel will not be willing to listen to you, for they are not willing to listen to me." It was to make no difference to the prophet. His commission was to speak the Lord's words.