In spite of this article’s title – “A Very Lovely Song” – it has nothing to do with music whatsoever.
In fact, this is one way in which God made reference to his prophet, Ezekiel, but it was not quite the compliment it sounds like.
Consider Ezekiel chapter 33, verses 30-33:
“As for you, son of man, the children of your people are talking about you beside the walls and in the doors of the houses; and they speak to one another, everyone saying to his brother, “Please come and hear what the word is that comes from the LORD.’ So they come to you as people do, they sit before you as My people, and they hear your words, but they do not do them; for with their mouth they show much love, but their hearts pursue their own gain. Indeed you are to them as a very lovely song of one who has a pleasant voice and can play well on an instrument; for they hear your words, but they do not do them. And when this comes to pass–surely it will come–then they will know that a prophet has been among them.”
Prophets like Ezekiel, you see, were not merely fortune tellers or providers of divine insight into the future; they were instructors of morality in light of God’s future plans (2 Peter 3:10-12). Because Ezekiel had proven himself a skillful prophet, the people greatly desired to come into his presence and hear what he had to say. They talked about Ezekiel like he was a celebrity preacher; he was the hottest topic in the land.
If Ezekiel was getting a big head about such status, we are unaware of it; nevertheless, God informs him that all this attention was not what it seemed. His attentive audience basked in his oratory glow, but did nothing to absorb the message and even less to participate in it. “They hear your words, but they do not do them.”
I suppose some men preach the gospel because it is a steady job, but most yearn to make a difference in people’s lives, to lend them divine counsel so that they will act upon God’s will (2 Corinthians 5:11). Ezekiel’s audience failed him in that most important regard and nothing is more discouraging to a sincere preacher today than to discover that his best efforts go for naught.
Paul despaired that his preaching might be in vain because false teachers sowed tares beside his seed of life (Galatians 4:11). It is not just that a man’s life’s work is disrespected; it is that the souls he thought he was helping were really still lost all along. Not only is Eiffel’s Tower reduced to rubble; he is disillusioned about whether he even built it at all.
Ezekiel’s audience epitomized the ugliness of hypocrisy as they sat as God’s people, hearing his words with no intention of lifting a finger to keep even one. On at least one occasion, Jesus Christ had just such an audience. Like Ezekiel, Jesus was a suddenly popular prophet – he because he displayed the remarkable ability to feed 5000 people with five loaves of barley and two small fish. The next day, the throng hungered again and gathered to be in his presence, not that they might learn and live better, but that the miracle of the free lunch might be repeated. It was not. “From that time many of his disciples went back and walked with him no more” (John 6:66). So long as Jesus fed the lazy, he was to them a lovely song, but when something was required of them, they fled.
What was the problem with the audiences of Ezekiel and Jesus? “The hearts of this people have grown dull. Their ears are hard of hearing” (Matthew 13:15). A certain complacency had overtaken them – subtly in Ezekiel’s day, but literally overnight in Christ’s. No, really, the process is always a gradual one as the novice’s zeal is tempered by experience, occasional failure and disappointments. Religion – going to church in our lingo – ceases to be a spiritual quest and is reduced to a passionless ritual. The Hebrew writer called it “dullness of hearing” (Hebrews 5:11), but do not confuse it with the “itching ears” that Paul warned Timothy about (Second Timothy 4:1-5). Amos said, “They hate the one who rebukes in the gate, and they abhor the one who speaks uprightly” (5:10). Note the difference – those with itching ears will not endure sound doctrine, but Ezekiel’s audience insisted on it – they just ignored it.
And there is the rub. How sound is the church that insists on genuine preaching from the pulpit but refuses to heed that message? Is the congregation’s candlestick dependent solely upon sound teaching or does sound practice matter just as much? Jesus threatened Ephesus’s lamp stand although she had rejected false apostles and other evil men, because the members had left their first love and had become idle and unfruitful (Revelation 2:1-7). It is simply insufficient to announce that any church is sound because its preaching is sound; soundness is also a matter of practice. Insisting on that Old Jerusalem Gospel does little good if it is heard, but ignored.
Ezekiel’s success and celebrity profited his audience nothing so long as they filed away his words without application. The only way to validate the message is to live it. Otherwise, it is but sound and fury, signifying nothing.
