June 16, 2002

Service Theme – "Our God is Our Father"

Ezekiel 22:30

Who Will Stand in the Gap?

1. Introduction

1. Illustration – From eSermons.com: There was a family with three small children who were determined to have a puppy. Mom protested because she knew that somehow or other, she would end up caring for the critter. True to form, the children solemnly promised that they would take care of it. Eventually, she relented and they brought their little puppy home. The children named him Danny and cared for him diligently - at first. But, sure enough, as time passed, Mom found herself becoming more and more responsible for taking care of the dog. Finally, she decided that the children were not living up to their promise so she began to search for a new home for Danny. When she found one and broke the news to the children, she was quite surprised that they had almost no reaction at all. One of them even said rather matter-of-factly, "We'll miss him." "I’m sure we will," Mom answered, "but he is too much work for one person and since I'm the one that has to do all the work, I say he goes." "But," protested another child, "if he wouldn't eat so much and wouldn't be so messy, could we keep him?" Mom held her ground, "It's time to take Danny to his new home." Suddenly, with one voice and with tears in their eyes, the children exclaimed, "Danny? We thought you said Daddy!"
2. Context – We joke a lot about fathers and their roles in our families, but often we really don’t understand what God’s idea of a man is supposed to look like. Ezekiel 22:30-31 shows us just how valuable a father, whether one physically or spiritually, truly can be.

1. Scripture Passage

1. Ezekiel 22:30-31 – "I looked for a man among them who would build up the wall and stand before me in the gap on behalf of the land so I would not have to destroy it, but I found none. ³¹ So I will pour out my wrath on them and consume them with my fiery anger, bringing down on their own heads all they have done, declares the Sovereign LORD."

1. Standing in the Gap

1. In this passage, God has just finished describing the detestable behavior of the leaders of Israel. They’ve been doing stuff that is so incredibly unbelievable that we often have a difficult time relating to this passage. But then God says He’s looking for someone. He’s looking for a leader for a specific purpose. Someone to intercede for Israel so the nation wouldn’t be destroyed. It’s interesting to note that it wasn’t enough for Ezekiel to intercede. God needed another leader.
2. Before you tune me out, men, because you don’t consider yourself a leader, you need to realize that you’re dead wrong. You are a leader. You are either the leader of your family, or a spiritual leader that others look up to, or both. You may say, "Brian, you’re wrong because I don’t believe this Christianity mumbo-jumbo!" That doesn’t matter, because your beliefs rub off on someone, whether you’re a Christian or not. If you are a man God has ordained you to be a leader either in His house or your own, and you can’t get past that. You are a leader, and God is asking you today to repair the wall and stand in the gap.
3. What exactly does standing in the gap mean? In Bible times, the only protection your home had against the enemy was the city wall. If the city wall was broken down, anyone who wanted to could come in and steal what was valuable and destroy the rest. Likewise, today there is an enemy who wants to break into your home and steal what is valuable and destroy the rest. His name is Satan, and he is our enemy whether we realize it or not. Jesus said that Satan’s role is to steal and kill and destroy (John 10:10). The only way to defend our families from Satan is through the shed blood of Jesus Christ. So if you don’t believe in Jesus and haven’t received Him as your personal Lord and Savior and aren’t following after Him wholeheartedly, you are leaving yourself and your family wide open to our enemy’s attacks. You are leaving your loved ones and those who look up to you defenseless against a never-ending onslaught of evil. You are just like those corrupt leaders in Israel.
4. If you do believe in Jesus and have received Him as your personal Lord and Savior and are following after Him wholeheartedly, but you aren’t interceding for your loved ones and for those who look up to you, you’re still leaving them defenseless against our enemy. It’s not enough to have only those we consider to be prayer warriors interceding for our loved ones and our church. Men, we’ve got to take the initiative and build up the wall and stand in the gap, or evil will destroy all we hold dear. We miss the point if we come down hard on our culture as the enemy, because removing ourselves from our culture will not solve the problem. The problem is evil. Satan is evil personified, and if we don’t stand against him by the power of the blood of Jesus Christ, all we hold dear will be destroyed.
5. You see, gentlemen, God is calling us to set spiritual boundaries around our church and our families and our homes. God is calling us to stand at the point of attack and fight! If we don’t, our faith will be killed off, our loved ones will be destroyed, our joy in life will be stolen. Men, we’ve got to fight for a change! We’ve got to stand in the presence of God and fight! We’ve got to, as the Petra song puts it, get on our knees and fight like men! We’ve got to intercede for our church and our families and our homes, or the consequences of our evil will come crashing down on our heads, just like it did on the heads of the people of Israel. God is bound by His holy nature to destroy evil, and we allow evil to invade what we hold dear, we’ll get destroyed too. We tend to think of God as being love, which He is. But He is more accurately holy love, and His holiness will not allow evil to stand in His presence. Do we want all we hold precious to us to be destroyed because evil personified has invaded it? As men, we’ve got to stand in the gap! We’ve got to intercede!
6. One question comes to mind. What is that question? That’s right – how do I intercede? In his book Intercessory Prayer, Dutch Sheets describes the Hebrew word used for interceding as indicating a meeting. Interceding is meeting with God. More importantly, it is meeting with God for God’s purposes. According to Sheets, intercessory prayer, or prayer that intercedes, involves five things. First, we create a meeting with God by bringing a need to Him. Second, we ask for God’s protection for whoever or whatever we are praying for, establishing spiritual boundaries of protection. Third, we thank God for giving us the burden to pray for this need, and then we carry away the needy person’s burden in prayer. That involves the biblical principle of bearing someone else’s burdens or weaknesses. Fourth, we come against Satan and his plans, binding them by the power of Jesus’ blood. In doing so we meet the enemy to break his bondage over someone. Remember Jesus said in Matthew 16:18 that the gates of Hell would not overcome the church. Gates were defensive structures, so we have to take them on to bind what needs to be spiritually bound and loose what needs to be spiritually loosed. Matthew 16:19 – "I will give you the keys to the kingdom of heaven; whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven." We don’t need to be running around binding and loosing like maniacs, but binding the plans of the enemy and loosing people from his grip are definitely a part of standing in the gap. So we create a meeting with God, then establish spiritual boundaries of protection. Next we take on the burden of the person we’re praying for, then we bind Satan’s plans. That brings us to number five – we do it all in the name of Jesus. We pray that out loud, because it bases all of our prayers on the work Christ has already done. As Sheets puts it (pg. 88), It’s representing Him…administering what He has already accomplished…enforcing His victory. That’s what standing in the gap is – enforcing God’s purposes and plans, bringing spiritual life where there is now death, calling in His protection, and setting those we hold dear free to follow and serve Him.
7. There are a couple of points I want to make right here. First, you will follow and serve either Satan or God. If you aren’t following God, then you are automatically following Satan. That’s the way things work spiritually. You can deny it, suppress it, ignore it, or even rant and rave against it, but the bottom line is that you are serving a spiritual master. If it’s not God, it’s Satan. Second, I’m not advocating that we drop everything and do nothing but intercede. There are folks that are called to do that as their major spiritual work. But intercession is also something that all of us are called to do within the context of our relationship with Jesus Christ and the work He has for us in the church. If you are a teacher, besides interceding for your family you should be interceding for your students. If you have the gift of mercy, besides interceding for your family you should be interceding for those you are showing mercy to. You get the picture. Standing in the gap is something we are all called to, and especially we men. Whether or not we actually do it is up to us.
8. Illustration – In "Chicken Soup for the Soul," Jack Canfield and Mark Victor Hansen share this story. "It's a fascinating story that comes out of the 1989 earthquake which almost flattened Armenia. This deadly tremor killed over 30,000 people in less than four minutes. In the midst of all the confusion of the earthquake, a father rushed to his son's school. When he arrived there he discovered the building was flat as a pancake. Standing there looking at what was left of the school, the father remembered a promise he made to his son, "No matter what, I'll always be there for you!" Tears began to fill his eyes. It looked like a hopeless situation, but he could not take his mind off his promise. Remembering that his son's classroom was in the back right corner of the building, the father rushed there and started digging through the rubble. As he was digging other grieving parents arrived, clutching their hearts, saying: "My son! "My daughter!" They tried to pull him off of what was left of the school saying: "It's too late!" "They're dead!" "You can't help!" "Go home!" Even a police officer and a fire-fighter told him he should go home. To everyone who tried to stop him he said, "Are you going to help me now?" They did not answer him and he continued digging for his son stone by stone. He needed to know for himself: "Is my boy alive or is he dead?" This man dug for eight hours and then twelve and then twenty-four and then thirty-six. Finally in the thirty-eighth hour, as he pulled back a boulder, he heard his son's voice. He screamed his son's name, "ARMAND!" and a voice answered him, "Dad? It's me Dad!" Then the boy added these priceless words, "I told the other kids not to worry. I told 'em that if you were alive, you'd save me and when you saved me, they'd be saved. You promised that, Dad. 'No matter what,' you said, 'I'll always be there for you!' And here you are Dad. You kept your promise!" May we as men have the same persistence in standing in the gap for those who need it the most!

1. Conclusion

1. Men, God is calling us to make a commitment today. He’s calling us to commit to standing in the gap for our church, our families, our homes, our communities, and our nation. What will we choose to do?
2. Gentlemen, if you are willing to commit as a spiritual leader wherever God has placed you to standing in the gap and interceding, please come forward and stand up front right now. And after all the men are gathered up front, I would like the ladies to gather around us and pray for us. Then I’ll close us in prayer. So men, if you’re committing today to stand in the gap for God, come forward now.