#35. Who Stands In The Breach? Series

Who Stands in the Breach?

Ezekiel 22: 23-31, 2 Kings 25:1-4

Good morning! Please turn in your Bibles to Ezekiel 22:23. Page 664 in the pew Bibles.

On October 4, 1997, me and about a dozen men from the church I was serving at the time jumped on a bus at about 2 in the morning and drove 400 miles to Washington DC for a one day Promise Keepers Rally. If you have never heard of Promise Keepers, it was a men’s ministry movement begun in 1990. Promise Keepers held conferences where men committed to having integrity in their businesses, who would be faithful to their wives and attentive to their children and supportive of their churches. Over the years, Promise Keepers had drawn about seven million men to conferences all over the country.

But what happened in DC that day blew away every expectation. That day, somewhere between 800,000 and one million men gathered on the National Mall for a day of worship and prayer. The National Park Service recorded it as the largest gathering in Washington DC, ever. I’ve never been part of anything like that.

The name of the event was “Stand in the Gap.” It got its name from the passage we are talking about this morning.

Let’s read together, and since we are going to read a verse about standing in the gap, let’s stand to honor the reading of God’s Word.

29 The people of the land have practiced extortion and committed robbery. They have oppressed the poor and needy, and have extorted from the sojourner without justice. 30 And I sought for a man among them who should build up the wall and stand in the breach before me for the land, that I should not destroy it, but I found none. 31 Therefore I have poured out my indignation upon them. I have consumed them with the fire of my wrath. I have returned their way upon their heads, declares the Lord God.”

May God bless the reading of his Word. Let’s pray together.

Stand in the Gap, or in the ESV, Stand in the Breach. There's probably no verse that has been used for men's events more than Ezekiel 22:30. The idea that God is looking for a man who will stand in the gap for him is really, really compelling. It’s inspiring to think that if God can find just one man to stand in the gap and stand against our spiritual enemy, then we could save our country from God’s judgment. And that day in 1997, a million men stood on the National Mall and committed themselves to be that man.

So now, it’s been twenty-five years since that day. How many of you would agree that there is as much if not more of a need for men to step up and lead today than there was then?

So how come it’s been so hard for us to get a men’s ministry going?

I want to suggest to you that the problem isn’t that men don’t want to stand in the gap, or haven’t tried. There are men who are doing the right thing. Godly men who truly love their wives and are raising their children to be godly men and women. There are men who love their church and are serving it.

So I promise you this isn’t a man-bashing sermon. But part of the problem is that we’ve missed a fundamental truth about Ezekiel 22:30, and this morning, I want us to discover what that is.

But first, since this is our first week in the book of Ezekiel, we need to be reminded of where we are in the story. After the death of Solomon, there was civil war in Israel, and it split into two halves. This was the DIVIDED KINGDOM, and it lasted 350 YEARS. In the NORTH we had ISRAEL. In the SOUTH we had JUDAH. ISRAEL had 19 kings. JUDAH had 20 kings. Israel had 0 good kings, and Judah had 8. God sent PROPHETS to SPEAK to his people. And their message was SHAPE UP OR SHIP OUT. [sign]

Well, they didn’t SHAPE UP, and so God SHIPPED them OUT. And in 722 BC, An empire from the NORTH, ASSYRIA, conquered ISRAEL and SCATTERED them all over their empire.

A century later, a new world power arose. BABYLONIA, which was northeast of Judah (If McQueen Smith Road is North, then Babylon is about where our preschool is). Babylonia first attacked Judah in 605 BC. They had a different strategy than Assyria. Instead of SCATTERING the people, they EXILED them. They did it in three waves. The first wave was in 605. This was Daniel and his friends, who we will talk about in a couple of weeks. The second wave was in 597 BC, and that was how Ezekiel got to Babylon. Eleven years later in 586 BC, Babylon would burn down Jerusalem and its temple, and there was a third wave of exiles deported to Babylon.