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0:01 Welcome to the Daily Blade. 0:03 The word of God is described as the sword of the spirit, the primary spiritual weapon in the Christian's armor against the forces of evil. 0:11 Your hosts are Joby Martin and Kyle Thompson, and they stand ready to equip men for the fight. 0:17 Let's sharpen up.
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0:20 Midnight, April 18th, 1775. 0:23 A small parsonage in Lexington, Massachusetts. 0:26 A writer comes barreling down the road and pulls up at the door. 0:31 He's hollering for the two men that are sleeping inside. 0:34 And a guard, you know, steps in and tries to quiet the man down, as most of the family and most of the town really had gone to bed. 0:40 The writer was a man named Paul Revere. 0:42 And he says, Noise, you'll have noise enough before long. 0:47 The regulars are coming out. 0:50 So upstairs, a window opens and John Hancock leans out and tells Revere to come on in. 0:56 Alongside Hancock is none other than Samuel Adams. 0:59 And these two men are the men that the British want to put in irons. 1:03 All of them are at the house of a man who has been feeding and hiding these patriotic Americans. 1:09 It's the town's pastor. 1:11 His name is Jonas Clark. 1:14 So he's about to turn 45 years old. 1:16 He has 10 children, and nine of them are under the same roof this night. 1:20 He's been Lexington's minister for 20 years. 1:23 He has a 60-acre family farm that he works because his parish salary won't cover his bills. 1:28 And he has written nearly every official paper that the town has sent out since the Stamp Act that occurred that year. 1:34 And one of the main points of discussion for this small group on this night is whether or not the men of Lexington will fight when the time comes. 1:40 And Jonas Clark gave a simple answer to the room. 1:45 I have trained them for this very hour. 1:49 And at dawn the next day, it was discovered that 700 British regulars were in Lexington. 1:54 And there were only 70 American men standing against them. 1:58 And all of them were members of Clark's congregation. 2:01 And then, you know, what occurred next is one of the most famous shots in the history of the world. 2:06 It's fired, but nobody knows who fired the shot. 2:08 But just about everybody started shooting thereafter. 2:11 And when the smoke clears, eight of the American men are dead and ten are wounded. 2:16 These are eight men that Jonas Clark baptized. 2:19 He married them. 2:20 He discipled them. 2:21 And their blood is now on common ground a quarter mile away from his front door. 2:26 And a year later, on the anniversary of this battle, Clark delivers a sermon from his pulpit, a sermon that is still in print to this day, you can go and find it. 2:33 And in it he says that from April 19th, 1775, will be dated in future history the liberty or the slavery of the American world, according as a sovereign God shall see fit to smile or frown upon the cause. 2:48 Again, let's go back to one of those clauses, according as a sovereign God shall see fit. 2:53 So don't miss this, guys. 2:55 This is a Calvinist pastor that is standing over the graves of his own congregants, but he refuses to belittle the sovereignty of God. 3:03 He refuses to take God off of the throne. 3:06 So he served that congregate congregation overall for about a half a century, and he's buried in the old ground at Lexington. 3:14 But now let's turn our attention to Ezekiel chapter 33, and we're going to be starting in verse one. 3:20 The word of the Lord came to me, Son of Man, speak to your people and say to them, If I bring the sword upon a land, and the people of the land take a man from among them and make him their watchman. 3:31 And if he sees the sword coming upon the land and blows the trumpet and warns the people, then if anyone who hears the sound of the trumpet does not take warning, and the sword comes and takes him away, his blood shall be upon his own head. 3:43 He heard the sound of the trumpet and did not take warning, his blood shall be upon himself. 3:50 But if he had taken warning, he would have saved his life. 3:53 But if the watchman seeing the sword coming and does not blow the trumpet, so that the people are not warned, and the sword comes and takes any of them, that person is taken away in his iniquity. 4:04 But his blood I will require at the watchman's hand. 4:08 So, guys, we need to understand what we're seeing here in this passage. 4:11 The watchman being described as not a warrior.
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4:14 He does not himself win the battle. 4:16 He is a man on a wall in the dark, whose entire job is to see what is coming before anyone else on his side does. 4:23 And then he is to sound the alarm to make ready for battle. 4:26 And here's the thing: he would have been worthless on the day when the enemy finally arrived if he had ignored his job and not practiced diligence on all the quiet nights that he was on watch. 4:37 And that's what everyone seems to miss about Jonas Clark. 4:40 The famous night that everyone remembers him for is, you know, April the 18th, 1775. 4:45 But he had been putting in the work for 20 years before that night. 4:49 He spent 20 years writing and delivering sermons, teaching his congregants about the authority of Scripture and the sovereignty of God, catechizing their sons and daughters, and writing the town's papers. 4:59 He was building conviction on a daily, weekly, monthly, and yearly basis based solely on performing discipline in the same direction over a long period of time. 5:09 And remember his words to Hancock and Adams, I have trained them for this very hour. 5:15 So he was only able to say that in 1775 because he did what he did on all the unremarkable years that preceded it, right? 5:23 I mean, you don't build up and prepare men for battle when the emergency is happening. 5:27 It doesn't occur during an invasion. 5:30 You build them up in all the boring years where nothing is going on. 5:34 So I'm going to get into your business a little bit here. 5:36 But as the head of your household, you are called to be the watchman on the wall for your family. 5:40 So this is not a title that you can decline. 5:43 It is given to you by God. 5:44 It's imputed to you. 5:46 God has put you there so that you can see the sword coming. 5:50 And then he expects you to open your mouth after that. 5:53 You don't just keep your mouth shut. 5:54 And look, the sword is coming, guys. 5:56 It's coming for your daughter in the form of a mean direct message through a social media app that all of her friends are on. 6:02 For your son, it's the image that found him on the internet that puts him one click away from hardcore pornography. 6:09 For your marriage, it might be one of the hundreds of small compromises that you have made that will keep you from recognizing the sword as a sword someday, and you just think that all this is normal life. 6:20 So the question ultimately isn't whether or not you will see the sword. 6:24 It's whether or not you have been on the wall long enough to even recognize it. 6:29 And beyond that, have you trained the people in your care for this very hour? 6:34 Because there's going to be a day when your kids or the people that you're discipling are standing on the battlefield, whether literally or figuratively, and you won't be there. 6:43 Remember, Jonas Clark wasn't standing in the line at Lexington. 6:47 His men were. 6:52 So what have you already done? 6:54 Not what do you intend to do? 6:56 Not what will you do later if you get the time. 6:59 What have you already done? 7:02 Also, what are you doing now to prepare your people for that day that is to come? 7:07 Because when the enemy is at the gates, it's already too late.
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7:12 Thank you for listening to today's episode. 7:14 Before you go, if you want to help equip other men for the fight, share this podcast around and leave us a five star rating and review. 7:23 Stay sharp.