Standing in the Gap

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This will not be traditional Thanksgiving message this morning, as you probably already figured out by the title. I am breaking away from our study in 2nd Corinthians for this week, but it would be a severe stretch and a breach of context for me to attempt to put a thankfulness or gratefulness spin on our passage of study, for it is instead a sobering passage of God’s wrath being prophesied over an unrepentant nation.

It is a passage that leaves a small glimmer of hope, but only by implication, and it is a passage that we can very easily draw many correlations to our own nation as it currently stands; a passage that the church in general and ours in particular would do well to take heed. It is hopefully a passage that will provide a challenge to each of us individually.

Last Sunday afternoon, a familiar verse in the passage I will read in a few moments came to my mind and I could not shake it all week. It is the verse from where the title of this sermon comes from. I’ll choose to say it was the Holy Spirit bringing this verse to my mind for whatever divine reasons He has. So, here we are at our annual Thanksgiving service studying a passage that has nothing to do with thanksgiving.

Turn with me in your Bible to the Prophecy of Ezekiel.

Ezekiel 22:17-31

Let’s pray.

This was a word from God, through the Prophet Ezekiel, to the nation of Judah, primarily the nation who was already in exile in Babylon. Yet, at the same time, this is a word from God, through Ezekiel, to believers today; and it has some amazingly relevant lessons and applications for our world, our nation, and even our church today.

Please keep in mind that the USA is not Israel, nor have we replaced Israel as some misguided preachers and theologians have tried to assert. We can always draw application from God’s Word, but we must be cautious in claiming promises or exacting judgment out of the immediate context of what was being said to the original audience.

My treatment of this passage will obviously be brief; we only have time for me to touch on a few highlights of the significance of this word from God, so let’s get started.

Ezekiel 22:17-22

The nation of Judah, in the time of Ezekiel, was a nation that had long before forsaken Yahweh. After the Solomon died and the kingdom was divided, with the tribes of Judah and Benjamin making up the nation of Judah, and the other ten tribes making up the new Israel, Israel never had a righteous king. Instead, it was a long succession of wicked and idolatrous kings that led the entire nation into apostasy and the worship of false gods. Judah, on the other hand, had a mixed history of righteous kings and unrighteous kings.

God, in His undeserved mercy, gave both nations prophet after prophet to warn them of their evil ways and to call them to repentance. But in most instances, prophet after prophet was ignored, mistreated, abused, and even executed under the demonic wickedness that had invaded the hearts and minds of the kings and the people. Ezekiel was one of these prophets of God that Yahweh sent to His chosen people, particularly the nation of Judah after His righteous judgment had fallen upon them. The nation of Israel had already been carried into captivity in Assyria many decades before, and they would not return to Yahweh until the End Times – they have returned to repopulate the land of Israel in our modern times, but they have not returned to Yahweh in any meaningful manner.

In this passage, we see in a damning illustration of how the entire nation was now considered dross in the sight of Yahweh. Dross can have the appearance of something of worth and value but is essentially worthless. Dross is the impurities that rise to the surface and float in the bubbling caldron when precious metals are heated to extreme temperatures and melted. Goldsmiths and silversmiths would go through this process several times and skim off the impurities before then shaping and molding the valuable precious metal for suitable purposes. The dross was discarded or sold to those who make faux jewelry that has the appearance of the real things but is far inferior to the real thing – an extremely cheap imitation and phony representation of the real thing.

God was calling His chosen people a cheap imitation and phony representation of who they were called to be. His fiery judgment was about to fall, and it would not reveal the valuable and genuine nature of who they were but would only reveal that they were nothing but dross, completely impure through and through. The nation of Israel was so far gone and so immoral and so impure, that nothing of worth or value remained. They were as Jesus called the Pharisees: Whitewashed tombs full of dead men’s bones.

Generations had come and gone by the time of Ezekiel’s prophecy, but Judah at least knew who Yahweh was – it has only been about 70-80 years since the righteous rule of King Hezekiah. Judah no longer worshiped God with any measure of sincerity and they no longer honored or even attempted to apply His Law to their lives, but they still knew that Yahweh was part of their heritage and national identity in some manner. But the Lord God was not real to them or significant in any way, He was not part of their consciousness or daily existence at this time, with the notable exceptions of Daniel and Ezekiel, and possibly a small remnant.

So, the wrath and judgment of God had fallen, but the leadership and the people were still not paying much attention.

Ezekiel now brings a message from Yahweh to those who had been and now were in positions of authority and leadership to some limited extent even in captivity – people who should have been fighting with all of their might to stem the tide of wickedness, to be leading the people to repentance, instead of adding to the wickedness and apostasy. But first, Ezekiel has a judgment from Yahweh on the land of Judah through another illustration.

Ezekiel 22:23-24

Rain, especially in the climate of Israel and Judah, was a sign of the blessing of God. The withholding of rain was often the judgment of God on His people. God even says as much in Leviticus and Deuteronomy as part of the Law of Moses. But rain also provided a cleansing and purification of the land which represented a cleansing and purification of the people.

Here, even though God’s judgment has fallen on the people, they have still stubbornly refused to cleanse themselves in repentance. Figuratively speaking, the rains are still being withheld to cleanse and purify the people of God because they have yet to turn from their wicked ways and turn to Yahweh in repentance for their sins, even in the midst of the day of indignation or the day of their judgment. The people at this time preferred the filth of their sins and rejected the cleansing and purifying power of their God.

Ezekiel 22:25-29

If that does not sound like much of the leadership of our nation and even many of our churches today, I don’t know what does.

The conspiracy of her prophets – those who supposedly had the ministry of a prophet of Yahweh were instead conspiring together for their own material gain and their own prominence and personal power. Even in the midst of judgment, they have no concern for the people that they were supposed to be serving, but instead were only selfishly looking to their own power and personal interests. The similarities to what have already transpired in our country are shockingly relevant to what happened with the nation of Judah. There is nothing new under the sun.

Her priests have done violence to My Law – the very ones who were called to protect and uphold and teach the Law of God, were instead the ones who were violating God’s Law. They have been guilty of intermingling God’s Word with the profane, creating their own brand of righteousness and their own form of morality. They have radically abused their authority by refusing to teach the Word of God and instead teach their own sinful practices as holy.

Every day I see headlines of some so-called pastor proclaiming their own twisted and demonic sewage as if it were consistent with the Bible. Many have endorsed abortion and homosexuality as biblical. Many perform and celebrate same sex marriages. Many preach an abuse of God’s grace to the level of accepting and celebrating any sin and any sinful lifestyle. The Scriptures are twisted and perverted in every conceivable manner to appease the sins of mankind and to normalize profane behavior – and this is coming from our nation’s churches, or at least they call themselves churches.

Her princes within her are like wolves tearing the prey – those in leadership positions were taking advantage of the limited power they had in captivity to destroy the people for their own dishonest gain. Nothing more needs to be said about that being manifest in our nation today.

Her prophets (were) seeing false visions and divining lies – they were speaking to the people as if God had spoken to them when God had not spoken anything to them. They were proclaiming, “Thus says the Lord God” when they wouldn’t know the voice of the Lord if He were standing in their presence. They were all show and no substance, false prophets and false teachers, servants of Satan instead of servants of God.

The people of the land have practiced oppression – as the leadership of the nation and in the churches had gone, so too the people followed suit. And again, this kind of widespread behavior has run rampant in our land. We have seen a rapid escalation in total disregard for morality and a demonic disrespect for authority and law in our nation over the last dozen years. The accelerated growth of this attitude has been shocking to say the least.

Ezekiel 22:30-31

Before God levied His righteous wrath and judgment on the nation of Judah, He 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. How tragic to find no one who was righteous enough, who was holy enough, who was pure enough, who was devoted to God enough to stand in the gap, to be the mediator between God and the nation and draw the people back to Him.

This is one of the saddest verses in the Bible, that Almighty God searched the land, and God doesn’t miss anyone or anything, and He found no one who was still following Him. No one who was dedicated to the Word of God. No one who had any semblance of a relationship with God. This is the definition of tragic.

With the little time we have left this morning, let’s consider some potential applications for us from this account. I’m sure there are many more than I will mention, but I have drawn out four. Keep in mind that because of Jesus Christ, we live under the Covenant of Grace rather than the Covenant of Law, but the applications and probing questions are still worth our prayerful consideration.

Cheap Imitation

The imagery of the dross can and should be cause for us to examine the genuineness of our faith and to give a brutally honest inspection of our Christian lives. First and foremost, are we believers in the sense of how the Scripture defines it instead of how we have chosen to define it?

Most people think that are Christian, but they have based that belief on their own definitions instead of God’s definition. They think that they will be in heaven when they die, but the criteria for making it to heaven is based on lies and faulty information. They think that believing in God does the trick, but the Bible says that even the demons believe in God, yet they tremble because they know that their final destination is hell and the lake of fire.

Scripture is abundantly clear that a Christian is one who has repented of their sins, confessed with their mouth that Jesus is Lord of their life, and by faith truly believed that God the Father raised Jesus from the dead. Jesus is only way of salvation, not any ritual, not any inherent goodness within us, not in any deeds we have done, not by any merit that can be attributed to us. Salvation and eternal forgiveness are by God’s grace alone through faith alone in Christ alone – there is no other means of salvation according to the Bible.

So, the first application for us is are we genuine or are we dross?

Cleansing Power

The second application is similar to the first, but this can also be applied to those who are genuine in their belief, which is where I will go with this imagery that we briefly studied. Are we washed and cleansed and purified by the Word of God? Do our lives reflect the sanctifying presence of God working through us? Are we growing in grace and growing in becoming more like Jesus Christ every day? Or are we doing our thing and picking and choosing which portions of Scripture to accept?

We cannot be casual about our faith. A genuine believer is a disciple of Jesus Christ. One cannot truly say that they are a believer in the sense of being justified by Christ, yet not be a follower and disciple of Christ. We can all obviously have seasons in our lives where we drift away for a while, but the genuineness of your salvation will bear fruit, you will have a desire for the Word of God and a desire to follow what it teaches. God’s Word will have a cleansing, sanctifying, and purifying impact on your life.

Leadership

As genuine believers, we are all leaders in some capacity. You may not have a title and you may not have any position of so-called prominence, but you are indeed a leader in some capacity – it is the nature of being a Christian because being a Christian is progressively becoming like Jesus Christ who was the ultimate leader.

With Jesus as our leader and the model for how we are to lead, we will avoid the human traps of seeking the applause of men, of seeking recognition, of seeking position and authority for the purpose of self-promotion. As followers of Jesus Christ we will be servant leaders who are not abusing our authority and power for personal gain. We will never step on other people to our own benefit. We will never exalt ourselves but will always be serving others as Christ served.

Individual Responsibility

Finally, we must confront ourselves with the sobering and convicting truth of verse 30. If God were scanning our nation, or even our community here in South Park for a man or woman among us who would build up the wall and stand in the gap between God and our land, would He find that person in you?

With the Holy Spirit’s help, are you pursuing righteousness according to how the Bible defines righteousness? With the Holy Spirit’s help are you devoted to God? With the Holy Spirit’s help are you resolved to be that man or woman who is consistently cleansed by His Word and sanctified for His service in whatever aspect that He sees fit?

Or are you comfortable with the way things are? Are you more concerned about your pleasure and leisure and personal comfort, than God’s will for your life?

This is just some of how this passage should impact us this morning. Yield to the Holy Spirit’s call on your life right now.