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The Watchman On The Wall
God's Sacred Charge to
His Watchmen: Build Up the Wall!
Brad Tuttle
Since the very beginning, God
has destined mankind to be keepers or guardians of the land.
According to Genesis 2:15,
God took man and put him in the Garden of Eden to tend and keep it.
It is interesting to note
that the Hebrew root word for garden is to hedge about, to protect and to
defend.
And Eden means "the region of Adam's home,"
or his region, his land.
So "Garden of Eden"
literally means to protect, to defend and build a hedge around your region.
Adam's failure in keeping
God's charge to him resulted in disastrous effects for all mankind.
I have to ask myself, am I
putting a hedge around my family, my church, my region where God has placed me?
Am I doing the best I can to protect and defend my region, the land God
assigned to me?
In real-estate law, when you own land, you own all that is
growing on the surface and/or attached to the land (surface rights), what is
beneath the surface (mineral rights), and also the airspace above the surface
(air rights).
Are we, the church, using all
that God has given us, equipped us with, to put a hedge around our region, to
protect and defend everything on the land, below the land and everything above
the land from the "prince of the
air" (Ephesians 2:2) and his cohorts?
According to Strong's Concordance, "hedge" means to
shut in, formation, protection, fence, to make a hedge or wall.
Based upon the meaning of
garden that we read above, we are to make a hedge or wall of protection around
the region where God has placed us.
A hedge must be a powerful
tool against our enemy because in Job 1:10, Satan accuses God of placing a
hedge around Job, his household and all that he had on every side (an
all-encompassing wall of protection) so that Satan could not lay a hand on him
or any of his possessions.
In Isaiah 5:5, when the hedge is taken away (or broken down; or
never put up in the first place) the vineyard will be eaten up and trodden
down.
With all the godlessness,
immorality, wickedness, murders and suicides, I have to ask myself; doesn't
that describe my region, my country?
God scolds the foolish prophets for not building up the wall
(hedge in KJV) in Ezekiel 13:5.
If we took the time to ask
God, would we today hear this same word of chastisement?
Is not the Lord looking for
us to build up the hedge (make a spiritual wall of protection) around our
region as He did in Ezekiel 22:30.
Using Genesis 2:15 as an example, he has placed us in our
region to tend and keep the land. In the Hebrew, "tend" means to
till, to keep, to dress, to serve and to work the land.
So, we are to not only till
and work the land, but to serve the land and all that is in it.
Spiritually speaking, it
appears that one way we can serve our land or region is to protect and defend
it from principalities, powers, rulers of darkness and spiritual hosts of
wickedness in heavenly places (Ephesians 6:12).
Again, Genesis 2:15 also says we are to "keep" the land; the word "keep" in the Hebrew means to
hedge about, to guard, to protect, to attend to, take heed, to keep, to observe
and to watch.
In the Complete Word Study
Dictionary, it states to "keep" is "a verb meaning to watch, to
keep, to preserve, to guard, to be careful, to watch over, to watch carefully
over, to be on one's guard."
The verb means "to
watch, to guard and to care for."
The word can suggest the idea
of protecting. This is what our captain of heavenly hosts expects us to be
doing right here, right now, in the region He has assigned us to.
That word, to guard or to be a guardian, really speaks about our
assignment, our mission.
To "guard" in
Strong's means custody, a guard, the post, ward, to watch.
A "guardian," per
the Cambridge Academic Content Dictionary, is someone who protects something or
a person who has legal right and responsibility for taking care of someone.
Hasn't Jesus given us the
legal right and responsibility to rule and reign on the earth?
As we saw above, one of the
meanings for "keep" is "to watch"; to be a watchman.
Strong's states
"watchman" means to lean forward, to peer into the distance, observe,
to keep the watch. Wordwealth reflects the meaning as: "To look out, peer
into the distance, spy, keep watch; to scoop something out, especially in order
to see approaching danger, and to warn those who are endangered."
Often, it is translated "watchmen," referring to the
king's guards (I Samuel 14:16) or to those who look out
from a tower on the city wall (2 Kings 9:17).
In other instances, it is
spiritual watchmen, or prophets, who look out, see danger and report to the
people (see Isaiah 52:8; Jeremiah 6:17; Ezekiel 33:2-7).
God sets a guardian or a watchman to declare what he sees (Isaiah
21:6).
So, combining this with what
we have seen in Genesis 2:15, we can surmise He has called us to be watchmen on
the wall, declaring what He reveals to us.
Our captain has made us
watchmen of this region to hear the word of His mouth and to give the people
warning from Him (Ezekiel 3:17).
God's plan for the land is to have watchmen of prayer and
intercession set on our walls.
Watchmen who will never hold
our peace day or night; we who are His servants and by our prayers, put the
Lord in remembrance of His promises, keep not silent and give Him no rest until
He establishes that which He has assigned us to pray for; our family, our
church, our city, our region, our country, our world (paraphrased
from Isaiah 62:6-7, AMP)
We have been given spiritual weapons of warfare (2 Corinthians
10:3-4).
So let us commit in 2018 to
be keepers, guardians and watchmen on the wall, taking a firm stand against our
enemy, praying a hedge of protection around our region.
What we tolerate, will
dominate; therefore, let us stand up and shout "enough is enough," put on our armor, grab our Sword, and
run to the roar!
Brad
Tuttle is a mortgage broker who lives in Fort Collins,
Colorado, with his wife, Juneal. He leads the Spiritual Warfare Attack Team
(SWAT), a group of men from various churches and vocations. They intercede
weekly, sometimes traveling by van (the SWATmobile) to places of great need. A
partner ministry, NOCO Revivalists, provides intercessory prayer support to
pastors and churches in northern Colorado. Brad provides leadership to both.
Brad and Juneal attend Vintage City Church in Fort Collins, Colorado.
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