Last week I spoke about the presence of the Triune God who comes along beside us when we are having a very bad day. Regardless of the circumstances, God wants to be with; God is with us.
Now from that place of trust, we find the prophet Ezekiel sharing a beloved concept in book. The sentinel.
Move 1- Context
As I said last week when speaking about Jeremiah, the southern kingdom of Judah has fallen. In Jeremiah’s day the fall was imminent; in Ezekiel, The fall of Judah has happened. And as it happened several shocking conclusions and details come into focus—things which will challenge the Judean’s faith.
“Contextually we know that “these Judean exiles persisted in their faith; this required that they make a theological shift [a shift they did not anticipate].
[As we also know], Judean religion differed from the practices of the surrounding cultures: They believed they should worship only one God [our God]. The Babylonians, like most of the surrounding cultures, believed there were many gods and goddesses, each of whom had a designated role. Some were in charge of rain or fertility; others represented and fought for individual nations.
The Babylonians would have believed that their conquest of the Judeans meant that the Babylonian god had defeated the God of Judah because the former was more powerful. They would have expected [the] Judeans, like other conquered nations, to stop worshiping a conquered god who had failed them and begin worshiping the Babylonian pantheon [who won the fight]. Instead, the Judean exiles discerned that their one God had not been defeated but had allowed them to be defeated because they as a community had done something wrong.”[1]
And while this image of the Triune God seems off to our hearts and ears, it was how the people felt. For Jeremiah warned them about what would happen if they continued to choose sin over a right relationship with God—and it did anyway. Now Ezekiel is referring back to those moments as God speak to His people in today’s text. These people wrestle with this tension: did they do something wrong to earn this exile or was God defeated?
As we know both conclusions are only partially correct.
We know that they sinned. We know that God allowed them to ‘reap what they sowed.’ Yet God was also not powerless; God was not beaten in the contest of champions—Judah vs. Babylon. Even if the Babylonian Empire was an ancient superpower that was rapidly conquering the ancient world, God did not lose the fight. A tiny nation like Judah could never have prevented its own military defeat against such an adversary.
Against that backdrop, we have Ezekiel’s words to the people to live as sentinels, or perhaps your Bible say, live as watchmen. It is the same word.
Move 2- Sentinels defined
In the Hebrew world a watchman is one who leans forward; they peer in from a distance. Observing. Watching. Wondering. The word also conveys the idea of watching from an elevated position; scanning the horizon. Anticipating movement and announcing what is seen and herein is the evangelistic moment… again, scanning the horizon to announce what is seen. And we know that God’s word calls us, to watch, to witness, and to testify to what we see with our eyes from that position, but also, we are watching something else. Scanning something else…
This idea of being a watchman or a sentinel occurs throughout the entirety of the Old Testament. In every section of the Bible, from the Torah and into the prophets, we read that God calls his people to watch. The people hearing Ezekiel would be familiar with this idea.
But how is it applicable to our work now?
According to our text our watching is not passive. Our observations are also not strictly for us to hold in our hearts.
As we watch, and as we observe, we transition into the active work of ministry. We transition into the work of serious testimony. For we watch, and we are responsible for everyone, that we see.
In verse 7 we read that while we sit as watchmen in this community, we are still actively to seek the Lord. We are still to listen to what God is saying in his word for as our text tells us, God does not want anyone to suffer. He yearns for us all to find and accept Jesus. And as we hear those words, as we study God’s Word together, we are to testify to the community about how God is calling the folks in the community to change their lives.
For our study of scripture is not an academic proposition. Our study of God’s Word is how we build our relationship with our Triune God—but also how we lovingly build a relationship in the community.
We suspend the natural inclination to judge, like a normal watchman/sentinel might, and we suspect our desire to hold up the us/them distinction. Intsead, with God’s word in our hand, and in our hearts, we take the people we see and observe by their hands, and we speak about the Lord to them. We speak about how God wishes everyone find Him.
For Ezekiel also tells us that we have a responsibility in this work. How will the community hear and find Jesus, if we are not actively testifying to His place in our lives and in call that we live into? To echo an image Ezekiel will later show us: How are these bones, these places of death, to live if we do not speak God’s word of life to them?
The sentinels/watchman in the Hebrew tradition lives and grows in a posture of patience. They know, and have experienced, that in Christ, God is at work. They trust the Lord to do the work that only God can do.
Move 3- Psalms
This is the point where we add the psalms into our conversation. The Psalm takes this reflection, this watching, and Psalm 119 shows us the foundation upon which our observation, and eventually our testimony, is based. A continual reflection and study of God’s Word.
For as Christians, we can only share what is in us We can only share what we have studied ourselves and not what someone else has studied around us. We can only teach, evangelize, instruct, what we have internalized into our own hearts and lives—the things that the Holy Spirit has helped us to learn that are indeed transformational. The things that helped us move from those places of death and into the place of life in Christ.
This internalization, this study of God’s Word, it helps us to no longer seek to cast others away because of their sin, but as the sentinels of chapter 33, we care for our neighbors, our family members, even our church, because we, as individuals, have taken the time to observe. To pray. To reflect. To hold God’s Word in our hearts and let the Word of the Lord continually teach us.
We care for others because this who we are and our relationship with the Lord calls us to live in this way. It is not out of duty that we testify to the lifegiving presence of God, it is out of faith.
At Bethesda we see this choice, this posture, every time we assemble our food distribution line and listen to people come to tables. We see it every time we gather to share our grief with them. We see it every time children from our community come to VBS and hear about how changed us. We observe where our neighbors are coming from spiritually, in any sense, and with God’s word in our hearts, we become the Church for them.
Our care is an extension of our time in God’s Word; it is the product of consuming the Word of the Lord (as Jeremiah told us last week) which is the direct work of the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit helps take God’s Word off the pages of our Bibles and it becomes alone for us.
To use an image, the Midrash, which is the primary Rabbinical reflections on God’s Word, the Midrash says that the letters of God’s Word are on fire. Living fire. According to this tradition, the word of the Lord has a crown on its head and stands before us as a living embodiment of God with us.[2] It is not static but alive as Christ is alive in us.
Thinking of the living word of God, draw your mind back to the beginning of our worship where the author of the psalm invited us into worship with God’s word in our hands and hearts.
As we began our worship time together, we used Psalm 119 as our call to worship… The author of this psalm prays to God to saying: “Teach me.” They ask God to “Give me understanding… and I will obey your law.” The emotion of the author continues to grow and build as the passage says, “Turn my heart towards your statues and not toward selfish gain.” “How I long for your precepts…”[3]
This does not sound like the author has a causal relationship with God’s word, but they regularly study and considers what God says to them before re-engaging the people.
If we think of God’s Word as alive, on fire, then this fire can spread to our lives, our faith, our acts of ministry and service. I know that it is easier to stand as a watchman and, as Jonah might agree with, sit there and wait for God to strike down the sinners. That is the easier choice, and we see that so often in this world.
But the Hebrews living in Babylon, trying to figure out how to be faithful when God feels far off, they need to hold God’s Word up to each other as a way of encouragement and testimony—much like we do today in this context and in our work here at Bethesda.
We need to continually return to God’s Word as we watch from a different vantage point what is happening in this word.
Conclusion
As we watch, as we observe, I want to invite you to find someone in this community who you know is lost—regardless of how you define that term ‘lost.’ Find them. For they might just be living as the Hebrews did in a place that feels Babylonian. Separated. Outside of communion with God.
Then when you find them, remember how God’s Word changed your life. Remember how the fire of it spoke to you and helped you return to God. For God wants those people who you think are lost to find a way back to him. For He takes no joy in the death of others. He wants us all to find Him.
But as I have said already, it is our responsibility to take what we see, hold up God’s word, and be who God calls us to be.
[1] https://www.workingpreacher.org/commentaries/revised-common-lectionary/ordinary-23/commentary-on-ezekiel-337-11-7. Accessed on September 1, 2026. Edits added for this message.
[2] Elizabeth P. Randall. Feasting on the Word. Year A. Homiletical section.
[3] All citations from Psalm 119:33-40 come from the NIV translation.
