Standing in the empty space
Just as Ezekiel would not have readily understood Starbucks coffee and baseball, so we fail in appreciating walled cities. I have never lived in a walled city seeking refuge from marauding armies. Have you?
It seems a city’s walls can reveal a lot. Thick grand walls enclose thriving cities. Deteriorating walls in disrepair signal a struggling city. If a city’s wall contained a breach, its security would depend upon someone standing in the gap.
Standing in the Spiritual Gap
Through the prophet Ezekiel, God metaphorically alluded to the spiritual decay of both his people and its leadership (Ezekiel 22:25-29) as a city whose walls had crumbled. Justice demanded a righteous judgment, yet love yearned for the spiritual rottenness to be healed. So God “searched for a man among them who would build up the wall and stand in the gap before me for the land, so that I would not destroy it; but I found no one” (Ezekiel 22:20).
Can there be any more tragic words than these? What can be more heart breaking than for God to search among his people for someone to build up ruin lives ravaged by sin, yet find no one who will serve?
The New Search
What God has done before He is doing again. God is searching once again for people to be his tools to reach out to a world chewed up by sin.
Listen to Jesus’ final exhortation. "All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you" (Matthew 28:18-20).
God must punish sin, yet his love has created a way to build up the spiritually dead. God loves people. The question is will he find today among His people those who love him and others enough to stand in the gap?
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