Stand in the gap

 

So I sought for a man among them who would make a wall, and stand in the gap before Me on behalf of the land, that I should not destroy it; but I found no one. --Ezekiel 22:30 (NKJV)

Have you ever been asked to fill in for someone at work?  If so, you are familiar with the concept of standing in the gap.  If you ever played organized sports, you know that if a player is injured or not performing up to his potential, a sub will be sent in to take his place.  If you have ever been in the military, you know that when a front-line soldier is killed or wounded, another will be ordered to stand in his place.

The Bible is filled with examples of men and women who stood in the gap for their people and for God's glory.  Abraham stood in the gap for his nephew Lot with regard to Sodom and Gomorrah (Genesis 18).  God used Joseph to save his family from starvation by bringing them to Egypt (Genesis 50:20).  David interceded for God to stop a plague in 2 Samuel 24.  Esther stood up to the king on behalf of her people.  And we will see later that Moses stood before God to intervene on behalf of the people of Israel (Exodus 32).

So what does the Bible mean when it says God is looking for someone to stand in the gap?  How can we accomplish this task?  I believe Scripture teaches that we are called to prepare, to pray, and to preach.

Prepare

Isaiah 40:3 says, "A voice cries in the wilderness, prepare the way of the Lord; make straight in the desert a highway for our God."  This verse is cited in all four Gospels to describe the ministry of John the Baptist.  I believe it can also describe our calling.

Just as a co-worker would not ask you to fill in for her if she did not think you could perform the task, God prepares us for our own calling.  It's not a magical process.  It usually takes some work on our part.  The Bible speaks a lot about building a wall.  Like any construction project, it requires planning and preparation.  The materials must be purchased and delivered to the job site.  The tools must be available.  And the people must be ready, willing, and able to perform the task.

Ezekiel 13 speaks of a time when false prophets were rampant in Israel.  God warns His people that they should have been prepared for this.  Ezekiel 13:5 says, "You have not gone up into the gaps to build a wall for the house of Israel to stand in battle on the day of the Lord." (NKJV)  Just like building a fortified wall around a city helps prepare the residents for war, the same preparation should take place on a spiritual level.

Pray

Once preparation has been made, we must make use of the tools God has given us.  One of the most effective tools in our belt is prayer.  James 5:16b says, "The effective, fervent prayer of a righteous man avails much."  Prayer has more power than most of us realize.

There was a time when God told Moses to step aside, that He'd had enough of the stubborn children of Israel.  God was ready to wipe them all out and start over, making Moses the patriarch.  Moses stood up on behalf of the people and saved their lives.  Psalm 106:23 says, "Therefore He said He would destroy them, and He would have done so had not Moses, His chosen one, stepped into the gap before Him, to turn away His wrath from destroying them." (AMP)

The Bible says that the Holy Spirit prays for us.  Romans 8:26 says, "Likewise the Spirit helps us in our weakness.  For we do not know what to pray for as we ought, but the Spirit Himself intercedes for us with groanings too deep for words."  Don't ever think of yourself as too weak or too wicked to pray.  Isaiah 59:16 says, "He saw that there was no man, and wondered that there was no one to intercede; then His own arm brought Him salvation, and His righteousness upheld Him." (ESV)

Not only was the state of God’s people bad, but no one among them took the lead in getting it right. Where was the man who would lead the people in righteousness? He could not be found. Where was the intercessor who would plead God’s case to the people, and the people’s repentance to their God? No intercessor could be found.

God waited and waited for a disobedient Israel to turn to Him. He waited and waited for a man to lead them back to Him, or an intercessor to plead before Him. None arose; so the LORD did it Himself. If a man or an intercessor would have stepped out, it would have saved Israel a lot of calamity. But the fact that no man or no intercessor stepped forward didn’t ruin God’s plan. He waited to work in partnership through a man. He waited to work through an intercessor. But God’s work would still be accomplished if none arose. (David Guzik Study Guide for Isaiah)

You can be the person that God is looking for to intercede for His people.  Your prayers can have a mighty effect.

Preach

Romans 10:14 says, "How then will they call on Him in whom they have not believed? And how are they to believe in Him of whom they have not heard? And how are they to hear without someone preaching?" (ESV)

It is not enough to prepare and to pray.  We must also stand up for God and speak truth to power when necessary. Isaiah 63:5 says, "I looked, but there was no one to help, and I was amazed and appalled that there was no one to uphold truth and right.  So My own arm brought salvation to Me, and My wrath sustained me." (AMP)  You and I may be able to avert the wrath of God against someone just by interceding for them and preaching the word of God to them.

There may come a time when it is too late.  Jeremiah 5:1 says, "Run to and fro through the streets of Jerusalem, look and take note!  Search her squares to see if you can find a man, one who does justice and seeks truth, that I may pardon her." (ESV)  If the message is heard and rejected, then the poor sinner has no recourse. Jeremiah 15:1 says, "Then the Lord said to Me, 'Though Moses and Samuel stood before Me, yet My heart would not turn toward this people.  Send them out of My sight, and let them go!'" (ESV)

God help us stand in the gap for those who come into our sphere of influence.  Our voice may be weak, our reach may be small, but help us to prepare ourselves, to pray for others, and to preach the word of the Lord.  Let us stand in the gap for a lost and dying world.

Step out of the darkness

 

Then he said to me, "Son of man, have you seen what the elders of the house of Israel are doing in the dark, each in his room of pictures? For they say, "The Lord does not see us, the Lord has forsaken the land."  --Ezekiel 8:12

DISCLAIMER: What we are about to talk about may cause discomfort, distress, and dismay to so-called "righteous people".  It is not for the spiritually immature.  Divine discernment strongly suggested.

Some people in the church today view porn.  There.  I said it.

I'll go even further.  If you have not been at least tempted at some point in your life to view sexually charged images--in movies, print, or internet sites designed to entice you to sin--then you are either a liar or a saint. 

I was reminded of my own past struggle with this issue in my Bible reading this week.  The words that stood out to me from our focal passage today were "in the dark" and "pictures."  This pretty much describes anyone that tries to live a Christian life but is still tempted by adult magazines, adult movies, and adult web sites.

Now, I know that the abominations Ezekiel wrote about in this passage were about idolatry more than pornographic images.  Verse 10 describes the pictures that were etched on the walls.  "And there, engraved on the wall all around, was every form of creeping things and loathsome beasts, and all the idols of the house of Israel."

The idols that Israel had borrowed from other nations included images of snakes and lizards and other unclean animals.  There may have been images of the sun and moon and other celestial beings, as well (i.e. signs of the Zodiac--horoscope, anyone?)  One of the Canaanite deities that Israel had borrowed was Asherah, a fertility goddess.  You can bet that an image of Asherah was included in the images that Ezekiel saw etched on the walls of the elders in their secret rooms.

The Bible makes a close association between sexual sins and idolatry.  1 Corinthians 6:9-11 says:

Or do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God?  Do not be deceived: neither the sexually immoral, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor men who practice homosexuality, nor thieves, nor the greedy, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor swindlers will inherit the kingdom of God.  And such were some of you.  But you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God.

The Greek word translated here as "sexually immoral" is the term pornos.  When you combine that word with the Greek term graphia, meaning "writing or representation", you get the English word pornography.  While the Bible does not use this specific term, it does condemn sexual immorality.  It also has quite a lot to say about idolatry, which is closely akin to sexual sin.

For example, in the Old Testament account of Asherah worship, there were groves of trees planted to celebrate the fertility of the harvest season.  Some translations use the word "pole" instead of "grove".   Young women would perform sensual dances around these wooden structures.  Some of you might be saying, "We're in the 21st century.  We don't worship idols today."  I submit to you that tonight men all over America will throw dollar bills at nubile women dancing on poles.  Are they not sacrificing to the goddess of fertility?

This type of idolatry of the sensual has permeated our society.  Some men in the church, who have been chosen by God, who have repented of and have been forgiven for all sin, still struggle with sexual immorality.  What do you say to these men?  If you are one of them, how do you overcome it?  Here is something that might help.

Bring it into the light

One of the main problems with sin is that it is done in the dark.  We somehow believe that secrecy hides our activities, so that no one can see it.  If we want to overcome sexual addiction, we need to confess it and bring it into the light. 1 John 1:9 says, "If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness."  James 5:16 says, "Confess your sins one to another, and pray for one another, that you may be healed."

I found this quote on the website for Carnation Home Cleaning (carnationhomecleaning.com/solar-cleaning)

It turns out there’s really something to the idea of opening the windows and letting a little light in. Not only does sunshine illuminate your home and provide a dose of happiness, but it also disinfects. Just 30–60 minutes is all that’s needed to get the benefits of some old-fashioned solar cleaning. In that time, the sun will kill the bacteria on a number of common household items.

And this isn’t just an old wives’ tale. Science backs up the idea of solar cleaning.

In a 90-day study on the effects on sunlight on bacteria, the University of Oregon found that rooms exposed to sunlight have fewer germs. Their findings showed that sunlit rooms had 50% or less viable bacteria than rooms left in the dark.

And did you know UV is used to clean drinking water? If it’s good enough for that, surely it will work in your home.

If sunlight can kill bacteria and purify drinking water, imagine what Sonlight (that is, the light of God) can do to disinfect your soul.

Tear down the idols

When God led Israel to conquer Canaan and the peoples there, His first command was to tear down every idol.  In the same way, if we are to overcome sexual sin, we need to get rid of every pornographic image that we may come into contact with.

Greg Laurie posted this on his devotional page harvest.org on September 20, 2024:

Idols can be many things. But essentially an idol is anyone or anything that takes the place of God in our lives. A lot of things can qualify as an idol in our lives. And it is a true but terrifying fact that a person can attend church every week and still be a full-fledged idolater.

In the Ten Commandments, God tells us that we should have Him as our God and have no other gods before Him.

He said, “You must not make for yourself an idol of any kind or an image of anything in the heavens or on the earth or in the sea. You must not bow down to them or worship them, for I, the Lord your God, am a jealous God who will not tolerate your affection for any other gods” (Exodus 20:4–5 NLT).

Jesus echoed this when He said, “‘You must love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul, and all your mind.’ This is the first and greatest commandment” (Matthew 22:37–38 NLT).

Essentially, Jesus was saying that if you love God with all your heart, soul, and mind, it will dramatically impact the way that you live.

If we love the Lord with all our hearts, souls, and minds, then nothing else can take God’s place in our lives. We won’t be interested in another god any more than someone who just had a delicious dinner of filet mignon would be attracted to roadkill. Our hunger has been met. We’re satisfied.

But when we’re not cultivating a close relationship with God, then it is only a matter of time until someone or something takes His place.

Ever hear the phrase, "Out of sight, out of mind"?  It is much easier to stay sexually pure if we stay away from sexual imagery.  However, that's not enough.  We must also fill the void with spiritual imagery.  Not religious icons or images of saints, but as Philippians 4:8 says, "Finally, brothers, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence, if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things."  Which leads us to our final thought.

Know that God sees us and has not forsaken us

In our opening verse from Ezekiel 8:12 we read that the elders of Israel went into their rooms under cover of darkness, where there were images of idolatry and sexual practice all over the walls, because they said to themselves, "The Lord does not see us, the Lord has forsaken our land."

Matthew Henry the Bible commentator says that this idoltary is based in atheism.  At the very least it is limiting the scope of God's power and His love.  "They think themselves out of God's sight."  Worse still, "They think themselves out of God's care."

"The Lord has forsaken the earth, and looks not after the affairs of it; and then we may as well worship any other god as him." Or, "He has forsaken our land, and left it to be a prey to its enemies; and therefore it is time for us to look out for some other god, to whom to commit the protection of it. Our one God cannot, or will not, deliver us; and therefore let us have many." This was a blasphemous reflection upon God, as if he had forsaken them first, else they would not have forsaken him. Note, Those are ripe indeed for ruin who have arrived at such a pitch of impudence as to lay the blame of their sins upon God himself. (Matthew Henry Commentary on Ezekiel 8)

Friend, if you believe in God, then you must know He is willing and able to save you from idolatrous sexual practices.  Going back to 1 Corinthians 6:11, do not continue to identify with your sin.  You are no longer called a fornicator or a whoremonger (Bible translations of the Greek word pornos.)  Instead, "you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God."  

You do not have to continue to live in your sin.  If you confess and bring it into the light, if you remove the temptations from before you, and if you realize that God is for you and has paid the sacrifice for your sin so that you are no longer bound by it, then you can be free.  2 Corinthians 3:17 says, "Where the Spirit of the Lord is there is freedom."  Call your pastor or a Christian friend to help you.  Ignore those judgy people who have more "respectable" sins, and know that God loves all of us the same.