00:00Hello everyone, this is William Chambers. It is good to be here with you all on this beautiful day.
00:06Let us look into the Word of God. If I had a title for today's message, I would call it
00:12They Won't Respond. Preach Anyway. Oh, They Won't Respond. Be Obedient Unto God Anyway.
00:25And I'm not talking about just preachers, because we're all supposed to carry the gospel.
00:31Be obedient to what God told you to do. Even if you're not a preacher, you are still supposed to
00:36spread this gospel believer. Some of the hardest obedience and some of the hardest preaching,
00:44I should say, isn't to a loud crowd. It's to a silent one. Can you give truth, love,
00:53and do it consistently and get nothing back in return? What am I talking about? Can you give
01:03truth and love and get no response? Consistently give truth and love and get no acknowledgement
01:10at all and get no visible results, no visible change at all. Get nothing back in return.
01:17God sent Ezekiel and said unto him, even if they don't respond, you are still to speak to them. You
01:25are still to reach out and love them and give them my word. I want you to have pure obedience.
01:32Obey me when you don't see results. Obey me when they're not responding. Help us today. Let's look at
01:38the text. For they are impudent children and stiff-necked. I do send thee unto them, and thou
01:45shalt say unto them, Thus saith the Lord God. And they, whether they will hear or whether they will
01:52forbear, for they are a rebellious house, yet shall know that there has been a prophet amongst them.
02:00God is telling Ezekiel, you are a prophet. I give you my message, and I'm sending you to a rebellious
02:07house. You have my message to carry to people that will not respond to what you were saying. So God
02:14tells Ezekiel, you will have an uncertain response. Whether they will hear or forbear, it's going to be
02:22uncertain. You will not know. God starts by removing all expectations from Ezekiel. Oh, you're expecting
02:30to impact people. You're expecting for people to change. Ezekiel, I'm going to remove it from you.
02:35Whether they respond, change, or not, it doesn't even matter. You are still sent. You are not sent
02:42because they will respond. You're sent because I have sent you. Many of us struggle to pour out truth,
02:49to pour out love, and to pour out consistency into silence, into indifference, into a lack
02:59of response. But oftentimes, that is part of the assignment that God has for you. It's built into
03:07the assignment. They're not going to respond, Ezekiel. That is part of the assignment. Help us
03:11today. Sometimes when people don't respond, it feels like rejection to us. It feels like indifference to
03:16us. It feels like even defeat to us. But God is telling Ezekiel, you're going to have to deal with
03:21the emotional weight of preaching the gospel without a response. Ah, help us. He said, not only will there be
03:27an uncertain response, but there is going to be a certain resistance. They are certainly going to
03:34resist you. He said, for they are a rebellious house. God is laying it all out for Ezekiel. He's
03:41saying, God identifies the environment before sending the man. I'm going to tell you exactly
03:47what you're walking into. I don't want you to have any illusions. I'm going to remove all illusions
03:51from you. God told Ezekiel that you should expect hard hearts. That's what I'm sending you to. That's
03:59the type of environment. You should expect there to be silence. You should expect there to be resistance.
04:04He said, I don't want you to be surprised by this. I don't want you to be confused or discouraged
04:09by
04:10this. This is where I'm sending you. Ezekiel, you're not walking into openness. You're not walking
04:15into an easy mission. You're walking into opposition. Ah, praise be unto God. Have you
04:22ever walked into opposition? Has God ever given you a difficult assignment? I'm sending you to a
04:29rebellious house. Meaning you're not dealing with individuals, Ezekiel. You're dealing with an
04:35environment. What do I mean by an environment? They have shared beliefs. Their beliefs are cultural.
04:41Their beliefs are reinforced. Their beliefs are collected by the whole entire group. Maybe even
04:48generationally passed down. Meaning that their beliefs are so entrenched and that's where I'm
04:53sending you. They are not ready to hear what you have to say. But if you wait, Ezekiel, for them
04:59to
04:59open up. If you wait for them to soften. If you wait for them to respond, Ezekiel, you may never
05:06go.
05:06I'm sending you to a rebellious people. Now, what I love about this text is God still, even though I'm
05:14sending you to a place where they will not respond or it's uncertain if they will respond and they will
05:19resist you. You can still impact an environment even though it doesn't respond and it resists. You can
05:27still have an impact. God said he guarantees an impact. He said they shall know.
05:36God promises the results. They gonna know. But these are not the results that Ezekiel was looking
05:41for. Sometimes the results that we want, meaning we want people to change. God does not say that
05:46they will repent. God does not say that they're going to respond to you. He does not say that they're
05:50going to change. He said that they shall know. Meaning conviction will sit with them. Their
05:57memories will remain with them. And this truth that you're speaking will echo in their lives later.
06:03Although they may not change, it'll echo later. God told Ezekiel, I just want you to be there and
06:09leave a record with them. Leave a record that I have came amongst them in the form of a man
06:15of God,
06:16that my message has come by a man of God and I have come with my word by a man
06:22of God in their
06:24presence. Your presence, Ezekiel, is a witness to them. Your presence alone, they shall know,
06:33will be a reference point. Your presence alone will be a marker in their life that I have sent a
06:40man of
06:41God their way. So there is an impact here. One of the biggest deception that we have is, if I
06:47don't
06:48see a response, then there's no response happening at all. But God tells Ezekiel that the response is
06:55going to be, they shall know. Have you ever, I've had a man of God speak something to me years
07:00ago when
07:01I wasn't even listening. And then decades later, that thing made sense. God says they will know,
07:08meaning, meaning something is happening inside them internally, meaning that something is being
07:16registered and something is being stored inside of them, Ezekiel. Meaning when I send you Ezekiel,
07:23they will not be able to say, I didn't hear. They will not be able to say, nobody told me.
07:30They will not be able to say, I didn't have a chance. Your obedience will remove that response
07:39from them, Ezekiel. What am I trying to say today? They won't respond, but you are to go tell them
07:47the
07:47word of God anyway. Even if they don't respond, God is still doing something in the background. God
07:54doesn't just waste anything. The word of God does not return to a void. Something is happening. Even
07:59if you're just there to put a record down that God has been here. You have been warned. You have
08:06gotten the warning, message delivered. Whatever you do with the message is up to you. I deliver the
08:11message. Preach anyway, even if they don't respond, help us Lord to do that. In Jesus name,
08:16we pray and say, Amen.
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