The experience which the young priest Ezekiel had to bear among the captives in Babylon is the same in some degree that every serious preacher of God's word has had to expect. The methods of rejection may be various, but the act is the same; it is rejection by men. The number who may be induced to hear his preaching and knocking is much larger than the number of those who really intend to yield the obedience of faith.
I. Consider this melancholy fact. Many hear the word of the Lord, and hear it with interest, who will obey it not. It is quite wonderful how men hear what is well spoken with pleasure, and yet remain quite unaffected by it in their characters and lives. An unconverted man, a disobedient hearer, sometimes is quicker to appreciate the force of a discourse than a converted and an obedient hearer is. The heart of man easily coins self-flattering hopes out of these passing emotions which religious discourses and appeals may excite. "But be ye doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving your own selves."
II. That is the character. Now what is the reason of it? Their heart goes after their gain. Every man who is to follow Christ is to forsake all that he has and become Christ's disciple. So long as their hearts are going after their gains they are deaf, they are blind, to the true meaning of the Gospel. They are absolutely insensible to the whole drift of Christ and His Apostles. They are seeking their own things, and therefore the word has no effect upon them. So long as the heart hankers after the treasures or the pleasures of this world, all the church-going, all the appreciation of this preacher or that, goes for nothing, accomplishes nothing, that has fruit in everlasting life.
D. Fraser, Contemporary Pulpit,vol. vii., p. 168.
References: Ezekiel 33:30-33. W. M. Punshon, Old Testament Outlines,p. 259. Ezekiel 33:32. G. Brooks, Outlines of Sermons,p. 264.