Standing in the gap, vol. 4: the REAL deal (the BEGINING and END of the story)

I know, I know, enough with “the gap” already…but bear with me for one more volume, because this is probably the cream of the crop…and I can take absolutely no credit for it…this is what came from sitting with my computer at the dining room table on a Saturday at lunch time. Anna was Miss Scripture Interpretation and Amy was the source of the tip, so they are clearly the brains behind this operation! I guess you can chalk it all up to teamwork, but I’m just the messenger. Bear with me as I put on my “Pastor’s kid” hat and sermonize a bit.

Amy mentioned the other day that there was an Old Testament reference to this idea of “standing in the gap.” The gap is a two layer analogy of sorts…there is a gap between what WHM used to be, and what WHM will be in the future, but the supernatural “gap” is a chasm between us and God that is full of our sin that separates us from Him. Unsure of exactly where this passage was, we talked about being interested to find the context and situation in which the term was used to begin to make comparisons. Webaleh biblegateway.com ☺ I typed “stand in the gap” into the search engine and voila, there it was, Ezekiel 22:30. I know virtually nothing about Ezekiel, so I went and started by reading the whole chapter.

It seems Jerusalem was pretty much a hotbed of sin. The chapter goes on and on about the evil and wickedness going on there at the time…bloodshed, idol worship, mistreatment of the poor and needy, sexual craziness, bribery, extortion…sounds like most places in the world today, eh? The United States and Bundibugyo both. Well, God wasn’t so fond of the situation. God speaks very clearly of his wrath that will surely come to Jerusalem, fiery wrath in fact. Doesn’t bode well for Jerusalem.

Well, this is where verse 30 comes in…

"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 so I would not have to destroy it, but I found none.”

When I read it, I thought, hm, he looked around for someone willing to speak up and say no, don’t destroy Jerusalem, but no one was willing. But here we are in Bundibugyo, willing to stand in the gap and say, no, don’t destroy Bundibugyo. Well, Anna went way deeper. She pointed out, “He couldn’t find anyone because there wasn’t anyone, there was no one who could, no one who could save Jersusalem from their sin.” Likewise, there is no one who can stand in gap between God and me and save me from my sin that separates me from God. No one except Jesus.

Jesus is the only one who can save Bundibugyo from it’s sin. We can be physically present in the gap, but we cannot “mind the gap” so to speak, we cannot fill the gap. We can be representatives of God, we can be the hands and feet of Jesus, but we CANNOT be Jesus to Bundibugyo. But because we are physically present in the gap, physically present here in Bundibugyo, people will look to us to be Jesus to them, they will look to us to save them, but we cannot be their savior. We will fail them. We will be offensive and not love them well. As far as saviors go, as far as looking around for someone to stand in the gap on behalf of Bundibugyo - there is only one, and His name is Jesus.