Earlier we saw how God had assigned to Ezekiel the role of sentinel, giving warning of coming disaster (Ezekiel 3:16-21). Today we see that task reemphasized. As before, it is the sentinel’s job to speak the word of the Lord, trumpeting the alarm to warn of the coming disaster – and if the sentinel is a slacker who fails to tell the sinners of their danger, “their blood I will require at the sentinel’s hand” (33:1-7).

Ezekiel’s message may be very blunt, telling sinners that God declares to them, “O wicked ones, you shall surely die” (33:8). Such a message might lead people to despair: “Our transgressions and our sins weigh upon us, and we waste away because of them; how then can we live?” (33:10).

God’s response is found in a verse we all should memorize: “As I live, says the Lord God, I have no pleasure in the death of the wicked, but that the wicked turn back from their ways and live” (33:11). And there is more: if God has declared to the wicked “You shall surely die,” even then “if they turn back from their sin and do what is lawful and right – if the wicked restore the pledge, give back what they have taken by robbery, and walk in the statutes of life, committing no iniquity –they shall surely live, they shall not die. None of the sins that they have committed shall be remembered against them” (33:14-16).

We should note something here. We might suppose that when God declares “You shall surely die,” that has to be an absolute statement: since there is no “if” or “unless” attached to it, we must take it as an irrevocable fact. But as today’s text shows us, even as blunt a statement as “You shall surely die” is not an irrevocable fact; God does not intend this stark declaration of doom as a final judgment, but rather as a warning to motivate us toward repentance and restoration.

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We have earned your wrath many times over, O Lord; our transgressions and sins are a heavy weight. Yet you take no pleasure in our death; you long instead for us to turn away from sin and back to you. Grant us the grace to believe this, O God, leading us to repentance and newness of life.

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