Leadership: A Chilling Responsibility

Ezekiel 3:16-6:14; Psalm 104:16-35; Proverbs 26:25-27

How would you like to hear this at the end of your job interview for CEO?

You’re hired. Here are your keys, here’s your office, here’s your authority, here’s your bank account… Oh! Just one more thing. If the board of directors points you toward an employee who’s thinking about quitting, and you don’t talk to them personally and they quit the company, you’re fired. Or if we’ve got a faithful employee and you don’t give them every reason to stay faithful, and they quit, you’re fired.

How would you like to hear that?

The responsibility God gives his ministers is a thousand times more sobering:

At the end of seven days the word of the LORD came to me: "Son of man, I have made you a watchman for the house of Israel; so hear the word I speak and give them warning from me. When I say to a wicked man, `You will surely die,' and you do not warn him or speak out to dissuade him from his evil ways in order to save his life, that wicked man will die for his sin, and I will hold you accountable for his blood. But if you do warn the wicked man and he does not turn from his wickedness or from his evil ways, he will die for his sin; but you will have saved yourself.

Again, when a righteous man turns from his righteousness and does evil, and I put a stumbling block before him, he will die. Since you did not warn him, he will die for his sin. The righteous things he did will not be remembered, and I will hold you accountable for his blood. But if you do warn the righteous man not to sin and he does not sin, he will surely live because he took warning, and you will have saved yourself. – Ezekiel 3:16-21

You. Ezekiel. I am going to send you to people. And you are to tell them that if they disobey me, they will face my judgment. If you don’t tell them, you die, too.

Whoa!

Father, these words are sobering. Help me to be faithful. Help me to speak up, to take sin seriously and to speak out when you call me to speak up. Men’s consequences are meaningless compared to the consequences You have put before me. Father, I’m afraid I might fail to fulfill this charge. I’m afraid I might fail in the future; I’m afraid I might have failed already. But I lean on Your mercy and grace, just as I urge others to do. So help me to lean so heavily on Your mercy and grace that I willingly face my fears and plunge into the service You have called me to. And may those around me join me in turning sinners from the path of death.