Ezekiel 22 - Standing in the Gap

LINK: Ezekiel 22

BACKGROUND

This chapter contains three messages on Jerusalem's judgment:

Why It Would Come (22:1-16)

Ezekiel functions like a prosecuting attorney or judge in a court case as he presents the facts. The two charges were shedding blood and making idols. Blood or bloodshed is a keyword in this chapter and is mentioned seven times. Specific sins that were cited were social injustice (22:7), apostasy (22:8), idolatry (22:9), immorality (22:10-11), and greed (22:12). More important than the sins cited was the core problem: "You have forgotten Me" (22:12).

God's judgment would be dispersion among the nations (22:15). Judgment would lead to God's ultimate goal: "You will know that I am the LORD." Remember that this is a key phrase throughout the whole book of Ezekiel.

How It Would Come (22:17-22)

Judah would be refined like precious metals are refined. Throughout the ancient Near East, metallurgy was already a developed science. Precious metals are refined by intense heat to remove impurities (dross). The dross rises to the top and is thrown away. Israel was like a dross and had become worthless because of her sin. Then, God would melt the dross again in Jerusalem. Judah had retreated to Jerusalem when Nebuchadnezzar invaded. God poured out his fiery wrath on them. The image of an iron furnace is used elsewhere in the Old Testament (Deuteronomy 4:20; Isaiah. 1:21-26; 31:9; Jeremiah 11:4; Ezekiel 24:1-14).

Who Would Be Judged (23-31)

The royal family was like lions that would be judged because they used their power for material gain. The religious leaders did not instruct the people in the Law but let sin run amok among the people. The officials were like wolves that dispensed justice inequitably. The false prophets did not denounce the sins of the people but gave false visions and lying divinations. The people of the land practiced extortion, robbery, and oppression of the needy.

Corruption was so pervasive that God searched for a man to "build up the wall and stand . . . in the gap," but he found no one to lead the people back to Himself (Isaiah 59:1-4, 16)! Therefore, God would pour out His wrath and consume them with His fiery anger.

REFLECTION - Standing in the Gap

I looked for a man among them who would build the wall

and stand before me in the gap on behalf of the land. (Ezekiel 22:30)

This verse inspired David Bryant to write the classic book In the Gap: What It Means to Be a World Christian. (Click on the link for a free eBook download. If the link is broken, message me, and I will send one to you.):

THERE IS A GAP, YOU KNOW . . . and we're in the middle of it right now! Let me explain.

The Gap Defined. It's the Gap between God and man; between God and all that He is and man and all that he is, in every respect. "For there is one God and there is one mediator between God and man, the man Christ Jesus" (1 Tim. 2:5). A mediator implies a gap between two parties that cannot or will not accept each other.

It is also the Gap between God's original intention for humankind -- to be fruitful, multiply, fill the earth with people in His image and subdue it -- and Jesus the Mediator's final restoration wherein a new people will fill and subdue the earth, with Him (Rev. 5:9-10).

For God, the Gap is a very personal issue. First of all, He is one of the two parties involved. Secondly, He has given the distance between His own plan for world redemption and the consummation of that plan. He has given His own dear Son. "He has a plan for the fullness of time, to unite all things in Christ, things in heaven and things on earth" (Eph. 1:10).

But more than that, the mediator has actually sacrificed His own life in the Gap, falling like a seed into soil in order to bring forth fruit (John 12:23-26), to bring many peoples home from the other side of the Gap.

That is why the Gap is a very personal issue for our heavenly Father; that's why He is personally concerned with the distance that remains between Christ's mission and the reaping of salvation's harvest among all nations, between the death and resurrection of our Lord which closes the Gap for all who believe and the imparting of this good news to all the world.

Like Columbus claiming the West Indies for Spain, Christ planted the staff of His Cross in the middle of the Gap and flew the flag of His own broken body to reclaim this world for His Father. He is no "imperialist." He created the world but He also paid for the world -- all of it. His Kingdom is coming, in the Gap . . . but at great cost.

With that kind of personal investment in such a costly claim, God is deeply concerned for the billions of earth's citizens who have yet to hear that there is a mediator, let alone believe and walk across the Gap to home. Our God is as personally committed now to reaching these billions as He was the day Christ died for them.

And, that's why the Gap is a very personal issue for Christians as well. It lies between what God is doing in your life and mine -- as people united forever to the mediator -- and what God still wants to do among all the nations.

Millions, for example, have asked the Savior to quench their thirst with His water of life (John 7:37). But there's a sprawling space between the living river that flows into the hearts of satisfied disciples like us and the glorious day when that river flows out of us to complete Habakkuk's vision: "For the earth shall be filled with the knowledge of the glory of the Lord as the waters cover the sea" (2:14). That's why I say we Christians are right in the middle of the Gap. We have been born again for the sake of the Gap. Someday the waters are to cover the whole earth . . . through us. God is committed to reaching earth's unreached people in a very personal way: through us. (p. 3-4)

I hope the import of David Bryant's words runs deep into your soul because this encapsulates the Scarlet Thread of Redemption!

APPLICATION

God is calling us to a purpose much larger than just studying the Bible in the Bible Book Club. Are you willing to "stand in the gap" in prayer for this cause?

Here is a bit more history behind the book in a reflection by David Bryant years later: 

I CAN STILL recall the moment. It was years after the publication of my book, In the Gap, a phrase taken from Ezk. 22:30. Sitting alone in my family room, grazing through my Bible, I happened upon the text that inspired my 'gap~~ theme to begin with: "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." My eyes fixed on a phrase I had not noticed previously: "stand before me in the gap." Stand, yes. But before God. What did that mean?

An Old Testament commentary revealed that the Hebrew text read "before my face." This phrase was often used to describe the role of a priest in the temple. God had them ministering before His face: in His presence, for His pleasure, at His call, to His glory In other words, in an attitude of prayer.

Immediately, God's plea in Ezekiel 22 took on a new meaning. Not only are we to repair the breach in the wall by throwing ourselves into it wholeheartedly, but we are to do so as a people of prayer. We're the royal priesthood (1 Pet. 2:9), representing God's heart to the nation and interceding before God for our nation. That work of prayer is our only hope that the gap can be closed, the nation revived, the land spared, the enemies defeated, and the purposes of God in Christ fulfilled. 

This "revelation" came to me in the spring of 1984. In June, I found myself providing leadership at the International Prayer Assembly for World Evangelization in Korea. This historic event rallied nearly 3,000 prayer mobilizers from 70 nations to spend a week praying for world revival and strategizing on how to get Christians everywhere to do the same. As I looked out over the sea of faces on opening night, I marveled that God could not say "I found none," as He did in Ezekiel's time, but rather "I found thousands." Today, 13 years later, He can say, "I found millions!"  

(http://www.proclaimhope.org/content/prayMagazine/issue2, no longer there)

Come and join the millions around the world standing in the Gap!

PRAYER

God, thank You for giving Your own dear Son as Mediator who sacrificed His own life to stand in the Gap forever and for us. Lord, lead us in the way You would have us "stand in the gap" between You and the many unreached peoples who do not yet know You. We ask this in the name of our Mediator, Jesus. Amen.