Men Fighting Back - The Struggle to Beat Back Spiritual Complacency

How many of you have ever tried to cut a trail through the woods or brush? You know if you have that a lot of times, what you have to do is to just beat the stuff back! I remember growing up and cutting trails through the backwater swamps behind my house and we would beat back the thorn bushes to make trails that we could travel through.

Tonight, I want to talk to you about beating back complacency. Complacency is so dangerous to us spiritually, physically, emotionally. When we get to where we just don't care, it is a dangerous place to be.

In our country today, there is a lot of complacency. I hear pastors share about about how they can't get people in the churches to care or to serve. Frankly, we struggle with that here sometimes as well. We also struggle with complacency when it comes to caring about what is happening in our country today.

People are lost. In America, we are at a critical place where values that we have held dear, values that are rooted in the Judeo-Christian moral framework are being abandoned. The sad thing is that we are seeing our future generations suffer as a result of this.

Our morals and values do not automatically transfer to the next generation. We have to teach them to our children.

For some time, I have felt like there was a missing link in the chain of faith between our faithful senior saints and the younger generation. We see two groups of Christians who love the Lord and are actively seeking to worship Him. However, most of the young people coming into the church are not coming because they have parents coming. They have somehow come to understand the importance of being in church or having a desire to worship God. Some of them are just exploring and searching for answers. But there is a missing generation or missing link in the church. We need to repair the chain of faith and strengthen the bond. And, I believe it is incumbent upon Christian men to be the missing link and to stand in the gap to reach our lost world.

Let's take a look at a passage of Scripture that speaks to this subject tonight.

Read text. Pray.

Let me start by sharing a little bit about the background of this passage to help us understand what is going on in the main verse we are going to look at.

Background Facts:

* The priests were "getting fat" off of the ministry and were not doing there job

* They were not feeding the flock the word of God

* They were profaning the holy and treating the holy things as common (v.26)

In addition to all of these things, it was a time of great spiritual apathy. Listen to what verse 18 says,

Ezekiel 22:18 ESV

“Son of man, the house of Israel has become dross to me; all of them are bronze and tin and iron and lead in the furnace; they are dross of silver.

Ezekiel

Dross comes to silver when it is not in use. Their faith was essentially not being used. They were lazy spiritually and wanted the benefits of God, but not the relationship with Him. In essence they were like drug users. God’s benefits are the high they want, but they don’t want to work in the relationship.

So what did God desire?

1. God desires for the godly man to serve as a wall (v.30)

1. What do walls do?

Walls serve to protect and defend. Walls also serve as boundary markers. They define territory. In the ancient world, it was unusual for a city to not have a wall, because when the people were out in the field and raiders came to attack, they would run behind the wall of the city and could defend themselves.

God’s desire for us as men is that we would serve to be a measure of protection for our families and our church. He wants us to protect against the fiery darts of the enemy and defend our faith and our family and our church.

2. What are some of the fiery darts that we can have hurled at us?

The second desire God has for us is:

2. God desires for the godly man to “stand in the breach” (v. 30)

So, what does it mean to stand in the breach? A breach is a hole in the wall. So, if there was a hole in the wall, someone had to fill the hole until the wall could be repaired. Or, perhaps the hole was a permanent hole like a door. It would require a guard to stand there and prevent anyone from getting through.

3. What are some ways that we can serve by standing in the breach?

We can stand in the breach by praying for our families, praying for our church, praying for our nation. It is much easier to defend those you love when the world around them is a much better place. We also have to remember that we are called to go into enemy territory to rescue the perishing. The enemy is not the sinful people of this world, because that would make all of us the enemy. We are called to go and reach them and rescue them from the clutches of the real enemy.

In closing, I want to speak about our role as a kingdom of priests and look at a few examples of standing in the breach.

says,

1 Peter 2:4–5 ESV

As you come to him, a living stone rejected by men but in the sight of God chosen and precious, you yourselves like living stones are being built up as a spiritual house, to be a holy priesthood, to offer spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ.

As Christians, we are called into a ministry of the priesthood of ALL believers. We don’t have a priestly class in the New Testament church. We have pastors, but pastors are supposed to be equippers. Pastors equip the saints for the work of ministry. What that means is that all of these instructions to the priests in the old testament are applicable to us today in some sense. We are called to evangelize and we are called to prayer. This is how we change a culture. Apathy and complacency will kill the mission.

The Bible gives us a few examples of men who stood in the breach for their people and their nation.

1 Samuel 12:23 ESV

Moreover, as for me, far be it from me that I should sin against the Lord by ceasing to pray for you, and I will instruct you in the good and the right way.

Jeremiah 42:2–3 ESV

and said to Jeremiah the prophet, “Let our plea for mercy come before you, and pray to the Lord your God for us, for all this remnant—because we are left with but a few, as your eyes see us— that the Lord your God may show us the way we should go, and the thing that we should do.”

Jeremiah

Psalm 106:23 ESV

Therefore he said he would destroy them— had not Moses, his chosen one, stood in the breach before him, to turn away his wrath from destroying them.

1 Timothy 2:8 ESV

I desire then that in every place the men should pray, lifting holy hands without anger or quarreling;

Conclusion:

God calls us to a ministry of prayer. He call us to be a wall for our families and our churches. He call us to be missionaries who would stand in the gap before him and intercede like Moses on behalf of our nations and world. He calls us to lift up holy hands in prayer as we gather together. So, as we close, lets do that. Let’s lift up our country and families and church and fight back against a do-nothing spirituality.

Application:

Who are some people that you can pray for?

What things in our country do we need to pray for?

Do you struggle with spiritual apathy?

Will you commit to praying for your family, church, nation, and the lost?

Concluding prayer.

Related Media

Related Sermons