The Watchman

God gave Ezekiel a picture of solemn responsibility. A city sets a watchman on its wall, and his task is single and grave. When he sees the sword coming, he must blow the trumpet and warn the people. If he sees the danger and blows the trumpet, and a man will not heed it, that man’s blood is on his own head. But if the watchman sees the sword come and blows not the trumpet, and the people are taken, then, God says, his blood will I require at the watchman’s hand. The watchman who sleeps, or sees and stays silent, is answerable for the ruin he might have prevented.

So thou, O son of man, God says to Ezekiel, I have set thee a watchman. And the order of his duty is exact. Thou shalt hear the word at my mouth, and warn them from me. First the hearing, then the warning. The watchman cannot sound an alarm for a danger he has not seen, nor speak a word he has not first received. He must be awake, and looking, and listening at the mouth of God, before ever he lifts the trumpet. His whole usefulness depends on his being first a hearer, kept alert and fed with the word of the One who set him on the wall.

THE WATCHMAN WITHIN

Now God has set a watchman within every soul, on the wall of the inner city. It is the conscience, the enlightened and vigilant mind instructed by the word, appointed to spy the approach of the enemy and sound the alarm before the danger is upon us. The heart is a city, and it has a wall, and on that wall God has posted a sentry whose task is to see the sin while it is still far off, to catch the temptation while it is only a distant movement on the horizon, and to blow the trumpet before the wall is breached. A soul with a wakeful watchman is warned in time. A soul whose watchman sleeps is taken unawares.

And a sleeping watchman is worse than none, for the city trusts a guard that is not guarding. When the inner sentry dozes, when the conscience is dulled by long neglect and the vigilance relaxed, the enemy comes over the wall unopposed, and the soul that believed itself watched is overrun. There is a searing of the conscience, the apostle warns, a conscience seared as with a hot iron, deadened until it no longer feels or sounds the alarm at all. This is the gravest inward danger, not that the enemy is strong, but that the watchman set to warn us has been lulled to sleep and no longer cries out when the sword is at the gate.

HEAR FIRST, THEN WARN

But the watchman is only as true as what he has been fed, for he must hear the word at God’s mouth before he can rightly warn. A conscience not instructed by Scripture is an unreliable sentry. Left to itself it raises false alarms over things God has not forbidden, and stays silent over the very dangers God most warns against, so that the soul is troubled where it should be free and careless where it should be afraid. The watchman must be fed daily at the mouth of God, taught by the word what is truly the sword and what is not, so that his trumpet sounds for the real enemy and not for shadows.

This is why the keeping of a wakeful conscience and the study of the word cannot be separated. The watchman who does not hear cannot warn. Stand upon your watch, as the prophet did, and set yourself upon the tower, and watch to see what God will say, and let the word he speaks be the eyes and the voice of the sentry within you. A conscience so fed becomes a faithful watchman, seeing the sword while it is far off and sounding a true alarm, neither crying wolf over nothing nor sleeping through the real assault.

HEED THE TRUMPET

And when the watchman warns, he must be heeded. It is a strange folly to post a sentry and then ignore his cry, yet this is exactly what the soul does that hears its conscience sound the alarm and presses on into the sin regardless. The trumpet blew; the soul heard; and it silenced the trumpet and went its way. Do this often enough and the watchman learns to stop blowing, for a sentry whose warnings are always overruled falls at last silent. Heed the trumpet while it still sounds. When the inner alarm goes up, when conscience cries that the sword is near, do not argue it down or drown it out, but stop, and turn, and be warned, while the watchman still has a voice.

And we are, in love, watchmen not only for our own souls but in some measure for one another, for God sets his people to warn as well as to be warned. This is not the meddling that the Scripture forbids, nor a self- appointed policing of others, but the plain duty of love that will speak a true and gentle word of warning to a brother walking toward the cliff, and count it a failure of love to see the sword coming and say nothing. The faithful watchman, having warned, has delivered his own soul, whether the warning is heeded or not, and love will not let him keep a silence that damns.

WATCH IN THE NIGHT

The watchman’s hardest hours are in the dark, when the sword may be coming and he cannot see it, when the long night wears on and nothing can be made out on the black horizon. A voice comes to the watchman in the prophet, asking the question every wakeful soul knows. Watchman, what of the night? Watchman, what of the night? It is the cry of those who wait through the dark for some word of how much longer it will last. And the watchman’s answer is honest and unflinching. The morning cometh, he says, and also the night. The morning is surely coming; and there is also more night to be watched through first.

This is the sober truth the faithful watchman speaks. He does not pretend the night is already over, nor deny that morning will come. He holds both together, the certainty of the dawn and the reality of the dark that must yet be endured. And he keeps his post through all of it, not abandoning the wall because the night is long, not sleeping because the sword is slow, but watching on, hour after hour, until the light breaks. The watch is not kept only in the easy hours when the danger is plain. It is kept most faithfully in the dark, when nothing can be seen and everything must be trusted.

So it is with the watch of the soul through its dark seasons, when the way is obscure and the enemy unseen and the morning seems far off. The temptation then is to leave the wall, to let the vigilance lapse because watching in the dark is wearying and seems to accomplish nothing. But this is precisely when the watch matters most, for the enemy loves the darkness and comes when he thinks the sentry has given up. Keep the watch through the night. Do not abandon the wall because you cannot see. The morning cometh, and the soul that watched faithfully through the dark will not be taken unawares when the sword or the dawn arrives.

And the watchman watches in hope, for his whole vigil leans toward a morning he is sure will come. He does not watch as one who expects the night to be endless, but as one straining toward the first grey light in the east, certain it will break, aching for it. This hope is what keeps a sentry at his post through the coldest and longest watch, and it is what keeps the soul vigilant through its dark seasons, the sure knowledge that the morning cometh, that the night, however long, is numbered, and that the faithful watch will end not in ambush but in dawn.

So keep the watchman on your wall awake and fed. Do not let the conscience be dulled by neglect or seared by long disobedience until it can no longer sound the alarm. Feed it at the mouth of God, that its warnings may be true. Heed its trumpet the moment it blows, and do not teach it silence by overruling it. For God has set a watchman in you, and much of the safety of your soul hangs on whether that sentry is awake and hearing and free to cry out. I have set thee a watchman, God says; therefore hear the word at my mouth, and warn.