When the Gap Lays Vacant — E.A. Johnston

Ezekiel’s Jerusalem and the Vacant Gap

In the time of the prophet Ezekiel, the sins of Jerusalem were so grievous and they were multiplied. The people had moved so far away from God in their daily living that even in their religious worship, the people violated God.

It was a desperate day of apostasy where God's fiery righteous indignation came against the people of God because of their sins and rebellion. God sought for a man of prayer to stand in the gap between the land and God and the sad reality was that God could not find a man of prayer for that tragic hour in Israel's history.

Ezekiel 22 and the Message of the Vacant Gap

The title of my message today, friends, is When the Gap Lays Vacant. My text can be found in the book of Ezekiel. You can turn in your Bibles there now, friends. We will be in chapter 22. We will begin in verse 26.

Here now is the word of God and may the spirit of the Lord attend the reading of his holy word. Her priests have violated my law and have profaned mine holy things. They have put no difference between the holy and profane.

Neither have they showed difference the unclean and the clean and have hid the rise from my sabbaths and I am profaned among them. I will pause here, friends, to say this was a serious sin against the Lord.

God had a bone to pick with the ministers of that day who were corrupt individuals that despised the law of God and committed sacrilege on the Sabbath and God himself was violated by their sinful behavior.

False Prophets and Corrupt Spiritual Leadership

Not only that, there were many false prophets who multiplied in the land who taught false doctrines to the people. We see this is true in verse 28. And her prophets have doubled them with untempered mortar, seeing vanity and divining lies unto them, saying, Thus saith the Lord God, when the Lord hath not spoken.

God’s Search for an Intercessor

Things were so bad in Jerusalem that God could not find an intercessor among them to stand between God and the land. God looked and looked, but he searched in vain. We see this sad calamity in verse 30.

And I sought for a man among them that should make up the hedge and stand in the gap before me for the land, that I should not destroy it, but I found none. In the midst of all the sinful chaos in Israel, God could not locate an intercessor willing to stand in the gap between the people and God so God would not destroy the land.

Spiritual Declension and Compromise in the Modern Church

The sad commentary on the people of God in the days of Ezekiel pales in comparison with our sad day of spiritual declension in our churches and gross immorality in the land. The churches of the land have violated God as well.

They have violated God today through a compromise of the gospel and conformity to the world. They have compromised the gospel by diluting it of all its offense and power to make it more palatable to sinful man.

We have violated God and the cross of his son by refusing to preach man's duty of repentance and the lordship of Jesus Christ. And in our worship, we have conformed ourselves to a sinful society by letting the world into the church.

False Teachers and Doctrinal Error

Secondly, false prophets abound in the land today and they are given places of prominence with big churches, television ministries, and popular acceptance in their denominations. The heresy they teach pollutes many congregations with error.

I've never seen a day since I've been alive where so many pastors are false teachers who are led by a false spirit telling folks this is what God told them when God had not spoken to them at all. And thirdly, as in the days of Israel, under Ezekiel's ministry to them, God sought in vain to find an intercessor among them who was willing to stand in the gap of the hedge between the land and God.

America’s Need for Intercessory Prayer

So too today, God is looking for a man to be an intercessor so God won't destroy America. But the question is, will he find one? Or will America just be destroyed for violating a holy God by a sin-loving society an apostate church that sleeps in her spiritual stupor on pillows of compromise and conformity?

I believe, friends, that sin-loving America has provoked and violated a holy God as she sits on the very verge of destruction. I've never seen a time in my life where God is judging our nation by terrible disasters.

One calamity right on the heels of another of biblical proportions of fires, floods, and earthquakes. I believe Ezekiel 22 is a call to prayer for us today to ask God to raise up an intercessor, to plead for the people, for God to stay his hand of judgment.

I believe an intercessor can change the course of an entire nation. An intercessor is not one who is given to casual, convenient prayer, but one who is burdened by the sins of the nation and the glory of God.

One who is desperate enough with emboldened faith that grabs hold of the horns of the altar in glory and holds on relentlessly until he sees God move off his throne in answer to prayer like the psalmist declares.

Sacrificial Prayer and Standing in the Gap

Then the earth shook and trembled, the foundations of the hills moved and were shaken because he was wroth. Are we willing to spend an evening out of bed and on our faces before God in sacrificial prayer and stand in the gap as an intercessor for the land so God will not destroy it?

Will God find an intercessor among us who is willing to pay the price to gain God's ear with importunate prayer? Or will the gap lay vacant as this nation sends her way into oblivion? Or will the churches be destroyed along with the rest as the church continues to entertain herself and laugh her way to annihilation?

Heaven help us all!