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. Ezekiel 22:30 Stand in the Breach! The prophet Ezekiel, in chapter 22, lists many things that are going wrong among God’s people. That’s nothing new. There are always many things going wrong among God’s people but the most important thing in that whole chapter is in verse 30. God is looking for someone to stand in the breach for His people. So, imagine for a moment that you are living in a walled city and the most terrifying army in the world is camped outside your city gates. You’re feeling pretty good because you have massive walls between them and you as well as a fortified gate. You can sleep at night even though you know that death and destruction are right outside. I don’t know about you, but that makes me think about my life. I am like one of those Judeans sleeping in relative safety behind the walls. Oh, I know there is bad stuff out there in the world, people denying God, people living as though God did not matter, people making decisions that don’t even include a thought about God much less have any concern about God’s approval of their lives. But all of that seems far away on the other side of the wall. It’s easy to just live your life as a “good person” and not worry too much about what God thinks. But here’s the thing. The wall has been breached and the angry hordes are pouring in. What is a metaphor for us was the reality for Ezekiel. The wall of Jerusalem had been breached and the Babylonians were pouring in like ants at a picnic. We had a nice wall in the middle part of last century. Almost everyone we knew was Christian. Almost everyone we knew went to church. Even people who didn’t go to church all that often knew and agreed that it was important. But then the walls were breached. People began to question why church was important and apparently no one had an answer that was good enough because they stopped coming. Then, after a generation of not being fed Word and Sacrament on a regular basis, their children began to ask why God is important. That is the question being asked today. Why is your God important? Why is He more important than someone else’s god? Can’t we all have whatever god makes us happy? And God is asking, “Who will stand in the breach?” I think it starts with family. If you were sitting with your family and noticed a venomous snake coming through the window behind your family member’s back, you would do something. You would pull them away from the window or kill the serpent or at the very least scream! If a member of your family is not receiving regular Word and Sacrament from the Lord’s house, DO SOMETHING! Stand in the breach! Don’t let their faith just waste away and quietly die. They need to eat! I think that sometimes we have confused standing in the breach with being the sin police. If your family is like mine, every single one of them are sinners! I could spend the rest of my life documenting and addressing all their sins. But God never called me to be a sin policeman. He called me to be a farmer. I’m supposed to plant and water His seed. I’ll be the first to admit that it is easy to forget this, especially when people are waving their flagrant sin in your face and saying, “Nanner! Nanner! Nanner! I’ll do whatever I want.” But that is between them and God just as our sin is between us and God. Our call is to stand in the breach for them, to try to block as much of the enemies’ flaming arrows as we can with our own bodies, and try to get them to eat because only eating will strengthen them so that they are able to fight back themselves. To go back to the venomous snake example, if you saw that snake, you wouldn’t have a discussion with your family member about how they really chose the wrong seat and if they had been on time, and could have sat elsewhere, they wouldn’t be about to die. You would just grab them and pull them out of the way or if it was someone who you really loved, you might jump between them and the snake and take the bite yourself. What you would not do is quietly walk out of the room and hope for the best. You and I have to be the ones to stand in the breach for our loved ones who are spiritually starving to death. We have to find a way to lure them to the table to eat. God welcomes them to His table any way they are. We don’t worry about what sins they have committed or are committing. First, we feed them. Then, as they eat and their faith grows, we will see the sin diminish even as it diminishes in our lives as our faith grows. That’s just the way the Holy Spirit works. The bigger He gets, the less room there is for sin. Stand in the breach. That’s it. The Holy Spirit will do the rest. |