Again a message came to me from the Lord: “Son of man, you live among rebels who have eyes but refuse to see. They have ears but refuse to hear. For they are a rebellious people. (Ezekiel 12:1-2)You tell your kids something and they stand there glassy-eyed while you do so, but you know and they know that they will not remember it not pay attention to it the moment you stop talking.
It really makes you irritated. And it makes you want to tell them harder, or something, to make it, as Jesus said once, sink into their ears. But it probably won’t.
God told a lot of his prophets that they would be talking to a bunch of people who would probably not only refuse to listen, but would also kill the messenger.
In Isaiah 6, the Lord told Isaiah at his commissioning ceremony that no matter how hard he worked or how long he preached: they will not see with their eyes nor hear with their ears, nor understand with their hearts and turn to me for healing (6:10).
Others he told essentially the same thing. You will go and preach what I have told you to say, but they will not hear you. In fact, they will probably become angry at you for disturbing them and may even kill you. Except for the fact that you have done what I have told you to do, and maybe for the few that hear you, your time will be wasted.
A pastor gets up to speak. He looks over his audience. They sit waiting. Most of them are there because they have always come to church on Sunday morning and now they will sit though a sermon like they have always done, too. Many of them are not interested, in fact have their minds engaged elsewhere. Generally, the majority of the group will not remember a thing when they get up from their seats.
But the pastor preaches anyway. Somebody is going to hear this and respond, he hopes. Someone is going to change from what they are doing to what God wants them to do, he hopes.
After several years and maybe even several decades, he realizes that most of them are not listening. All he is doing, as far as they are concerned, is filling up a space that has always been filled up. He is not really doing any good, just preaching a sermon to people that do not care.
Of course, in both Ezekiel’s and Isaiah’s time, people did hear. And they did turn from what they were doing. But the vast majority didn’t. the vast majority were lost.
That was what Jesus was talking about in Matthew 7:13-14: You can enter God’s Kingdom only through the narrow gate. The highway to hell is broad, and its gate is wide for the many who choose that way. But the gateway to life is very narrow and the road is difficult, and only a few ever find it.
Hearing what God has to say and doing it is hard. Most will not. But some will. And it is the fact that some will that drives preachers and pastors on in doing what they do.
It drove the prophets, it drove the apostles, it even drove Jesus. They knew their success rate would be abysmal. Yet they continued doing what God told them to do.
And God blessed them for it.
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