I looked for someone 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 no one. (Ezekiel 22:30 NIV)

I do not have a “life verse,” or even a favorite Bible verse. That is not a criticism of those who enjoy such blessings; it may even be a confession that in some domains I have a short attention span. But I would find it easier to list a hundred (or a thousand!) verses that have shaped my life in some significant way than to list one that can claim exclusive influence.

Often these verses have come to me at a well-defined period of my life, and have consequently “spoken” to me with particular clarity and unction. For example, when in recent years I’ve engaged in evangelistic preaching in a hostile context, I’ve often pondered Psalm 36:1 (NIV): “I have a message from God in my heart concerning the sinfulness of the wicked: There is no fear of God before their eyes.”

From my days as a seminary student, I’ve often pondered Revelation 19:6–7 (NIV): “Hallelujah! For our Lord God Almighty reigns. Let us rejoice and be glad and give him glory! For the wedding of the Lamb has come, and his bride has made herself ready.” Doubtless I join millions of other believers in listing Lamentations 3:21–24 (NIV): “Yet this I call to mind and therefore I have hope: Because of the Lord’s great love we are not consumed, for his compassions never fail. They are new every morning; great is your faithfulness. I say to myself, ‘The Lord is my portion; therefore I will wait for him.’”

Yet one verse in particular played a significant role in my calling to vocational ministry.

Will I Wish I Had Given More?

At the time I was studying chemistry at McGill University, and enjoying the work well enough. For a few months I found myself in Ottawa, in a chemistry lab operated by the Canadian federal government, focusing on air pollution. I was thoroughly enjoying my life and labor.

At the same time, I was devoting some of my energy, especially on the weekends, to helping a friend plant a new church a little farther up the Valley. It was not long before I began to wonder if I should be considering vocational ministry. I could not shake off a chorus I learned in Sunday school:

By and by when I look on his face —Beautiful face, thorn-shadowed face —By and by when I look at his face,I’ll wish I had given him more.

Of course, I understood, even then (more than fifty years ago), that some people are called to be chemists, others teachers, workers in waste management, and so forth: for them, the “more” of the chorus includes such vocations. But still, I could not erase that chorus from my mind, and the sense that “more” for me was leading somewhere else.

Standing in the Gap

In September of that year, on a Sunday evening back in my home church in Montréal, I heard a missionary to Haiti, one Richard Wilkinson, give an address on Ezekiel 22:30 (NIV), where God tells the prophet, “I looked for someone 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 no one.”

And my whole being cried out in response, “Here am I! Send me!” (see Isaiah 6:8). The context of Isaiah 6 shows that Isaiah’s volunteering was simultaneously the product of contrition and of presumption; I certainly did not escape the latter.

Nevertheless, that sermon based on Ezekiel 22, where God testifies that he looked for someone to “stand in the gap” before him but found no one, was one of the providential pieces that God used that year to direct me away from chemistry and toward vocational ministry.

How Might the Verse Apply to Me?

I come from a Bible-reading home. We kids were early taught to pay attention to context. As I read God’s words in Ezekiel 22:30, it was clear to me that he was not promising wrath to sinful Canadians in the 1960s, but was threatening wrath on Judea about six centuries before Jesus: that was when no one showed up to “stand in the gap” before God so that he would not have to destroy his covenant people.

“God seeks someone to intercede with him on behalf of his sinful people today.”

To apply it to myself, I implicitly deployed an argument by analogy: just as God sought someone to intercede with him on behalf of his sinful people more than two and a half millennia ago but found no one, so too God seeks someone to intercede with him on behalf of his sinful people today.

Will he again find no one? It is a powerful appeal. I found it so as a young man, and still find it so today.

Standing Through Prayer

Many more years of Bible reading have brought me to think about a number of additional textual details.

Almost two decades later, I heard another preacher expound Ezekiel 22:30 and some related passages. This too occurred during a Sunday evening service, but the location of the church was in Cambridge, England. The preacher was Theo Donner, originally from the Netherlands. After securing a doctorate at Cambridge, he and his Scottish wife went to Medellin, Colombia, as missionaries, where they have served with distinction ever since. The sermon to which I am referring was delivered during one of his periodic sojourns back in Cambridge.

I do not remember all the points he drew from the text, but I recall how he focused our attention on several relevant passages. On the one hand, when the covenant people confess their sin to Samuel — the sin of wanting a king so as to be like the pagan nations around them — Samuel reassures them that “the Lord will not reject his people, because the Lord was pleased to make you his own.” Then Samuel adds, “As for me, far be it from me that I should sin against the Lord by failing to pray for you” (1 Samuel 12:22–23). In other words, intercessory prayer on behalf of the people of God was part of Samuel’s calling.

On the other hand, a different dynamic is disclosed in Amos. When God threatens catastrophic judgment, Amos intercedes with the words, “Sovereign Lord, forgive! How can Jacob survive? He is so small!” The biblical text goes on, “So the Lord relented. ‘This will not happen either,’ the sovereign Lord said” (Amos 7:2 NIV; cf. 7:5–6 NIV). But eventually, God declares, “I will spare them no longer” (Amos 7:8 NIV). The time for intercessory prayer has passed.

Elsewhere, we are told that Samuel is not even to mourn over Saul, once the Lord has rejected him (1 Samuel 16:1). In other words, Ezekiel 22:30 is just one passage that depicts the complex web by which God orders the lives of his people through God-mandated (or even God-forbidden!) prayer. For those drawn to meditate on the mysteries of providence, there is much grist for the mill in Ezekiel 22 and parallel passages.

Standing in the Darkness

Next, the preceding verses of Ezekiel 22:30 show that the sins and failures of the people were widely distributed.

The princes conspire together to “devour people, take treasures and precious things and make many widows within her” (Ezekiel 22:25 NIV); the priests “do violence to my law and profane my holy things” (Ezekiel 22:26 NIV); the officials “are like wolves tearing their prey; they shed blood and kill people to make unjust gain” (Ezekiel 22:27 NIV); the prophets “whitewash these deeds for them by false visions and lying divinations. They say, ‘This is what the Sovereign Lord says’ — when the Lord has not spoken” (Ezekiel 22:28 NIV); and the people “practice extortion and commit robbery; they oppress the poor and needy and mistreat the foreigner, denying them justice” (Ezekiel 22:29 NIV).

“The need to stand in the gap before God is as urgent now as it was six hundred years before Christ.”

That is the context of darkness in which God declares, “I looked for someone 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 no one.”

There are many biblical passages in which God seeks out and appoints prophets, priests, kings, apostles, gospel heralds. In the context of Ezekiel 22, however, God is looking for an intercessor who by God’s own appointment blocks God’s way, as it were (not unlike Moses in Exodus 32–34).

With this verse, set in the context of Ezekiel and in the context of my own life, God challenged me to think more carefully and prayerfully about what he wanted me to do with my life. And the need to stand in the gap before God is as urgent now as it was six hundred years before Christ.

Audio Transcript

What would it look like in your life to know that God loves you — I mean to know that he really loves you? Would that love be proven in a new job? Or maybe a better job? Would it be an open door that will allow you greater financial independence? Maybe it would be to find a spouse. Or maybe deliverance from chronic pain that depletes your energy. Or maybe it would look like being delivered from the consuming demands of a special needs child. What would prove God’s love to you? And what if the answer to that question was something altogether different than what we expected? What if, instead of any of these things, God showed his love to you by letting you die in sickness? Crazy, right? Totally counterintuitive. And yet this is exactly what we read about in John 11:1–44. Listen to this extraordinary story, because in it we find a life-changing lesson God wants all of us to grasp. Here’s Pastor John to explain, in one of his sermons from 2001.

This is John 11. I have used this text now in about five settings in the last couple of months because no other text has gripped me like this in driving home this central point.

Love and Glory

Now a certain man was ill, Lazarus of Bethany, the village of Mary and her sister Martha. It was Mary who anointed the Lord with ointment and wiped his feet with her hair, whose brother Lazarus was ill. (John 11:1–2)

This is clearly a picture of sweetness and love. Mary loved Jesus, and Jesus loved Mary. Mark that word love. It will show up several more times.

So the sisters sent to him, saying, “Lord, he whom you love is ill.” But when Jesus heard it he said, “This illness does not lead to death. It is for the glory of God, so that the Son of God may be glorified through it.” (John 11:3–4)

So now you have two profound realities on the table: love and glory — the love of Christ and the glory of Christ. My question is, How do they relate to each other? Verse 5:

Now Jesus loved Martha and her sister and Lazarus. So, when he heard that Lazarus was ill, he stayed two days longer in the place where he was.

“Until Christ becomes our treasure, we don’t know what it is to be loved by God.”

Notice three things: (1) Jesus chose to let Lazarus die. (2) He was motivated in this by his zeal for the glory of God to be manifest. (3) This motivation is love.

Do you see the word so, or therefore, at the beginning of verse 6? Do you see what it’s preceded by and followed by? It’s preceded by the fact that Jesus loved Martha; Jesus loved Mary; Jesus loved the dying man, Lazarus. Therefore, he did not go heal him but stayed two days longer where he was and saw to it that he died.

Why Do You Want to Be Loved by God?

Now, what on earth could possibly turn that into love? Verse 4: This is not going to end in death. This is all about the glory of God, “that the Son of God may be glorified through it.”

So here’s my definition of the love of God based on this text: God’s love is his doing whatever needs to be done, at whatever cost, so that we will see and be satisfied with the glory of God in Jesus Christ. Let me say it again: the love of God is his doing whatever needs to be done, at whatever cost to himself or to us, so that we will see and be satisfied by the love of God in Christ forever and ever.

Let me confirm this with John 17:24. Here’s Jesus praying for us, and he loves us in this prayer — oh how he loves us in this prayer. John 17:24: “Father, I desire that they also, whom you have given me, may be with me where I am, to see my glory.” If Jesus loves you and prays for you, do you know what he finally asks for you? That you may see him. The ultimate answer to the prayer of love is, “Show them my glory, Father. Show them my glory, and they will have arrived at ultimate satisfaction.”

Why do you want to be loved by God? Yes, not to perish. Yes, not to go to hell. Yes, not to have a guilty conscience anymore. Yes, to have the marriage put back together. But if that’s all you want, you don’t know him. You don’t know him. It’s for life. And what is life? It is to know him and his Son. It’s to fellowship with him. It’s to behold him. It’s to be satisfied with him. It’s to enjoy him. Until Christ becomes our treasure, we don’t know what it is to be loved by God.

Why are you thankful for the love of God today? I hope, before we’re done, God will have worked in your heart so that you see enough of God the Father and enough of God the Son, Jesus Christ, so that you will know and feel that it is not finally for the relief of your conscience, it is not finally for escape from hell, it is not finally for health in our bodies, or reconciliation among our family members; it is finally to bring you home to God, where you can see him and enjoy him forever and ever and ever.

Seeing and Savoring Forever

I want to know: Do you want this? Do you want this? Do you want to be loved by God for God? Do you want to be loved by God for God? Or do you only want to be loved by God because it feels good that he seems to make much of you? Have you taken the American definition of love — being made much of — and so twisted God to fit that definition that the only way you would feel loved by God is if he makes much of you, when, in fact, the love of God is working so as to change you so that you enjoy making much of him forever and ever and ever? And that’s the end of your quest. There isn’t anything beyond it.

“You will be satisfied when you forget yourself and are swallowed up in Jesus Christ, and he becomes your treasure.”

I do believe that is in every heart in this room. And we are all fallen, and we are all sinners. I know that every person in this room has a distorted desire for God, and it’s on the way to being purified. And it’s being tricked. You’re being tricked, many of you, into thinking that the satisfying thing in life is to be made much of: “If I could just get some people to clap for me, to like me, to approve of me, to give me a raise, or to give me an advancement. If I could just get someone to pay attention to me, I would be satisfied.” You wouldn’t. I promise you, in the name of Jesus Christ Almighty, you wouldn’t.

You will be satisfied when you forget yourself and are swallowed up in Jesus Christ, and he becomes your treasure, and he becomes your delight, and he becomes what you cherish and what you value, and you spend the rest of your eternity growing in your capacity to see and savor, to know and to delight in him forever and ever — and it will get better and better and better.