Ezekiel 33 begins with God making clear to Ezekiel the parameters of his job.  Ezekiel is required to deliver any word that the Lord gives him for the people.  Clear cut job description.  Just like any job, however, the stipulations of that work are also addressed:  you do it and you’re off the hook, you don’t do it and you suffer for the loss of all who didn’t hear the warning.

God shares with us that conversation with Ezekiel in detail.  He says that if he does what God tells him to and the people don’t listen and die, that’s their own fault, but Ezekiel is in the clear because he did what he was supposed to do.  If the warning isn’t delivered then the people, obviously, won’t heed it and will die and their deaths will be on Ezekiel’s hands – “his blood I will require at the watchman’s hand.”

There are two striking points here.  One, we are just called to do what God tells us to do.  How others respond or do/don’t do their part isn’t our business.  It’s classic Peter– don’t worry about John, you just do you. 

I once had a friend ask me about tithing.  He went to a church where the money might not have been handled well and my friend wasn’t tithing because he felt he would just watch that money “drive off in a Mercedes after the sermon.”  My first counsel was to go to a church whose administration he trusted, but beyond that I have only this to say:  When you arrive before the Master, He will not ask you what a priest did with your money.  He’ll ask what you did with your money. 

Ezekiel was just told to deliver the warning.  What followed wasn’t his burden to bear.

But then there’s a second point.  Ezekiel was a watchman.  He saw danger before others did.  He knew what was coming when others didn’t.  He had insider info.  He had an inside Source.

So do I.

And I know lots of people in danger.  Those people may or may not listen to words of warning, but that isn’t my issue, my burden to carry.  Relaying the warning is.

And if I fail to sound the alarm, their blood will be on my hands.  I will have to answer for that.  They will die in and for their own sins, but I will bear the guilt of having failed to lead them to change, of having withheld the warning. 

I don’t know how to be a watchman.  I do see a clear mandate that as God’s children, as those with privileged and life-giving information, those with an inside Source, I’m called to be one.

Stand on the wall, watch for both the danger on the horizon and those for whom that danger is coming, sound the trumpet, issue the alarm, give them the chance.  We are the watchmen.