Ezekiel chapter 22 and I want to take my main text from verse 30. At the end of this black catalogue of the sins of Judah, we read in verse 30, here is God speaking and he says, so I sought for a man among them who would make a wall and stand in the gap before me on behalf of the land that I should not destroy it. But I found no one. So I sought for a man. I sought for a man. For those of you who are unfamiliar with the background to this great prophecy of Ezekiel, let me begin by reminding you of certain details. The Prophet Ezekiel had been deported with King Jehoiachin and a large number of the inhabitants of Jerusalem to the city of Babylon in northern Iraq. You remember how God had repeatedly warned the kingdom of Judah that if she persisted in her idolatrous practices and in her open defiance and rebellion against God then she would be brought into captivity. But in spite of these repeated warnings we read that Judah failed to repent and therefore in the year 597 BC Nebuchadnezzar, the king of Babylon, laid siege to Jerusalem and deported the majority of the inhabitants to the city of Babylon. The full account of this awful and terrible event is recorded for us in the second book of Kings, chapter 24. And at verse 10 following we read, At that time the servants of Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon, came up against Jerusalem and the city was besieged. And Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon, came out against the city as his servants were besieging it. Then Jehoiachin, the king of Judah, went out to the king of Babylon and the king of Babylon took him in the eighth year of his reign. And he carried out from there all the treasures of the house of the Lord, and all the treasures of the king's house, and cut in pieces all the vessels of gold which Solomon, king of Israel, had made in the temple of the Lord, as the Lord had said. and he carried into captivity all Jerusalem and all the captains and all the mighty men of valour, ten thousand captives, all the craftsmen and smiths. None remained except the poorest people of the land. Now at the time of this deportation, the temple in Jerusalem was still standing. And because of this, many of the exiles of Judah began to build up for themselves false hopes of a speedy deliverance and return to their homeland. Surely, they said, the temple is still standing, the house of God. Surely it will not be long before we return again to our homeland to worship. Surely God has not cast off his ancient people forever. It was also a time of many false prophets who were springing up, prophesying lies and deception to the people, telling them, peace, peace, all will be peace, when there was no peace. And thus it was the task of Ezekiel to demolish all such false hopes and to prophesy the end of the state of Judah. And here in this 30th verse, we hear the heart-rending cry of the Almighty. So I sought for a man among them who would make a wall and stand in the gap before me on behalf of the land, that I should not destroy it, but I found no one. Christian friends tonight, these are surely some of the saddest, some of the most tragic words ever recorded in the Old Testament Scriptures. For here was a nation about to be consumed by the fire of God's wrath and anger, and yet no one was really concerned. There was not a man to stem the tide of iniquity, not a man who would endeavour to retrieve the fortunes of his people. There was no one, no one capable of averting the impending disaster. The language used here is picturesque. The wall of righteousness and morality had broken down and thus a flood of evil had come pouring in. Surely there must be someone who would restore the wall and stand in the breach, lest another and more serious flood, the flood of the judgment of God, should come sweeping through and destroy the land and the nation. But alas, there was no one. God could not find a man. And thus we read these horrible words here in verse 31. Friends, tonight the important lesson I think to learn here is this. that a holy God will not permanently tolerate wrong. This was true for the Kingdom of Judah in the 6th century BC and it's equally true for our nation and for the nations on earth today. The divine forbearance of God will not last forever. There comes a time when even God's patience will run out Sin must be punished. Sin must be judged. And what a nation sows, that shall it also reap. In verses one to 12 of this 22nd chapter, we are given a list of this black catalogue of iniquity that caused the people of Judah to fall. And the terrifying thing is that as you read through this black catalogue of wickedness, you would have thought that Ezekiel was not describing Jerusalem in his day, but that he was referring to our capital city of London in our day and generation. For every sin that you find recorded here, you will find prevalent in our society today. There is the corruption, the abomination, the bloodshed, the profanity, the desecration of the Sabbath, the idolatry, the fornication. It's all recorded here in its stark reality. And I believe that as we look out upon our nation tonight, we're already beginning to see the dark clouds of the wrath and the judgment of God upon us. We're increasingly becoming a society and a nation which is being given up by God, given up to uncleanness. And friends, this is true not only of our secular state, but we have to sadly confess that it's also true of the Christian church, largely within our nation. In recent years, we've seen how the enemy is coming like a flood. And we, if we're honest with ourselves, have to confess that the need of our nation is very much the problem and the need of the Church. It's because the Church of Jesus Christ has failed that the nation is as it is. You see, the problem is that the Church is not only in the world, the world is now in the Church. And in these years we have seen how the demarcation lines are being blurred and broken down and it's almost impossible sometimes to detect the difference between the world and the church and the church and the world. Jesus said that the church is called to be a light. It's called to be salt in the earth. And yet we have to sadly confess that the salt has lost its savour. It's lost its effectiveness. It's become so diluted, hasn't it? So corrupted by worldliness that the church is powerless to be that moral disinfectant in society, to turn the tides. The church is in a powerless condition. The church is there just mocked by our leaders and mocked by people in the streets tonight. We're looked upon as a total weak irrelevance. The church, as Jesus said, if it loses its savour will become fit for nothing to be thrown out and trampled underfoot of men. And thus God is looking for people, men and women, to stand in the gap, to stand in the breach against this rising tide of sin. I'm told that Hudson Taylor, during his first missionary furlough home in England, addressed a large missionary conference in Scotland. And he began by relating the story of a Chinese man who fell into the midst of a dangerous river in China and was left to perish by a number of indifferent onlookers. The conference members were absolutely exasperated and disgusted to hear of this callous indifference on the part of the bystanders. But Hudson Taylor wasted no time in applying the illustration. He said, you are very upset by their refusal to save a drowning man from physical death. But what of your indifference to the spiritual death and hopelessness of thousands and thousands who die every year in China without ever hearing of the Lord Jesus? What searching, what challenging words, and how true they are. How cold, how indifferent we so often are to those who are outside of Jesus Christ, those heading for eternal destruction. If we saw a blind person walking dangerously near the edge of a precipice, if you saw Marilyn, hopefully you would shout out and run over and grab her and save her from it. And yet there are countless millions and millions who pass over another precipice into hell and we sit back and we watch them go. How different is our attitude to that of the great apostle when Paul visited the city of Athens in Acts 17 waiting for his fellow workers in the gospel We read that his spirit was stirred within him when he saw the city wholly given to idolatry. His spirit was stirred within him. You see, Paul was visibly moved by the scene before him. The word that is used there for stirred is a very powerful one in Greek. It means literally that his spirit was agitated, his spirit was angered. It was a feeling of holy and righteous indignation towards these empty superficial idols and vanities of men. But it was also a stirring of love, compassion and grief because of the pitiful state of these people in essence. Paul was visibly moved by what he saw. And what he saw and what he felt led him to preach Christ to them. To my shame, I visited the city of Athens. I've stood where Paul stood on the top of Mars Hill with the preaching pose. I've visited as a tourist, snapped photographs. seeing the same shrines, the same temples that Paul saw. The tragedy is that I didn't feel what Paul felt, and I didn't preach Christ to them. Now of course it's true that the modern day Greek doesn't worship these old gods, such as in Paul's time. No, no, it's just an archaeological ruin, isn't it? Of the past, of historic interest alone. But of course the modern day Greek doesn't worship nothing. No man's a compulsive worshipper. They've replaced these old gods with the gods of our modern world. The gods that are worshipped in every city, in every country on the face of this planet tonight. The gods of materialism. The gods of sexual pleasure and sensuality. Gambling. The goddess luck. We see these gods worshipped today, don't we? And when we visit London, well, are we moved? Do we feel anything when we see these modern gods before us? Or have we become so accustomed to them that it hardly registers with us? Listen to Paul agonising over the lost in Romans 9. He says, I say the truth in Christ, I'm not lying. My conscience bears me witness in the Holy Spirit that I have great sorrow and continual grief in my heart. For I could wish that I myself were a curse from Christ for my brethren, my kinsmen, according to the flesh. What staggering words, aren't they? It's almost unbelievable. You see, such was the Apostle's love for men and women that he was willing for himself to be a curse from Christ. The word means literally to be separated from Christ, to be devoted to destruction, to be abandoned to eternal perdition. And Paul was willing for this if it could only result in the salvation of his countrymen. Such was the intensity of Paul's love. Oh friends, is that true of us tonight? Do we know anything of this? Are our hearts so burdened for the souls of men and women, boys and girls, that we regularly plead with God for their souls? I'm told that 30 million people throughout the world pass into eternity every year. That's one person every second. And they either go to heaven or they go to hell. And thus God is looking for men and women with hearts full of burning compassion to stand in the gap, to stand in the breach, and to plead for their never-dying souls. But maybe you're thinking, well, what exactly does it mean to stand in the gap and to build up the wall? How do we engage in intercession for the nation? Well, in Scripture, true intercession always involves two fundamental principles. There are two ingredients that can always be found, and both of them are brought out in what is perhaps the finest example of intercessory prayer for a nation ever recorded in Scripture. I refer, of course, to the great prayer of Daniel in the ninth chapter of his prophecy. And as we read through that great prayer of Daniel's, we find that the first principle is identification. Identification. In all true intercession, there is identification. Listen to Daniel 9, 4 and 5. He says, and I prayed to the Lord my God and made confession and said, oh Lord, great and awesome God who keeps his covenant of mercy with those who love him and with those who keep his commandments. We have sinned and committed iniquity. We have done wickedly and rebelled even by departing from your precepts and from your judgments. Notice that Daniel says, we, we have sinned. Not they or I, but we. And throughout this prayer, Daniel uses that pronoun we as an act of personal identification with the nation. You see the princes, the rulers, and all the people are guilty of the same offence. God has spoken and we have not listened. God has commanded, we have not obeyed. We, we have sinned. And this is something that is not only peculiar to Daniel, we find it also in that great intercession of Ezra, in Ezra chapter nine, five and six. At the evening sacrifice I arose up from my fasting, and having torn my garment and my robe, I fell upon my knees and spread out my hands to the Lord my God and said, Oh my God, I am ashamed and blush to lift up my face to you my God, for our iniquities are increased over our heads and our guilt has grown up to the heaven. You see, Ezra likewise was ready to confess that he too had contributed to the sin and the iniquity of the land. And thus he goes on to confess their sins, not in just vague generalities, but in a most specific and in a most detailed way. We have sinned identification. And friends, did not our blessed Lord Jesus The Lamb of God fully identify himself with us when he left heaven's glory and came down into this world of sin and shame? The writer to the Hebrews tells us he took not on him the nature of angels, he took upon himself the seed of Abraham, wherefore in all things he had to be made like his brethren that he might fully identify himself with us as our great high priest. And friends, if we are to truly intercede for our nation, then we need to humbly identify ourselves with the sin and the iniquity of our land. Identification. But then there is another element that is vital to intercession. Not only identification, but also pleading. The element of pleading. You see, the very word to intercede itself means basically to plead, to petition, to make an urgent appeal on another's behalf. That's intercession. Listen to Daniel. Daniel 9.19. Oh Lord, hear. O Lord, forgive. O Lord, listen and act. Do not delay. For your own sake, my God, for your city and your people are called by your name.' Here was Daniel wrestling, agonising with God for his people. I think to a large extent we evangelicals seem to have lost the art of pleading, pleading in our praying. When did we last wrestle and agonise with God for our land? When did we last knock on the gates of heaven with a burning intensity for our country? When did we last really plead with God and lay hold on Him that in wrath He would remember mercy? In Isaiah 59, 16 we read the heart-searching words, And He saw that there was no man and he wondered that there was no intercessor. Is God saying the same thing to his people here tonight? Well, let's search, let's examine our hearts. But finally, what sort of a person is God looking for to stand in the gap, to build up the wall? What's the identikit of the true intercessor that God is looking for? Well, listen to the amazing words. He says, so I sought for a man. I don't think this is confined only to men. No, no, it includes women as well. And thank God throughout the ages of the church there have been those great female intercessors. Many of our churches would have packed up long ago were it not for these faithful sisters interceding, standing in the gap. But God says, so I sought for a man, I sought for a woman. What an incredible answer. You see, God is not looking for a multitude. He's not looking for an army. And nor does it say that God is looking for a great person, a perfect person. You'll never find them. No, no, he says, I sought for a man. I sought for a man. And what an encouragement tonight, because if one person standing in the gap, standing in the breach, can turn away the judgment of God from destroying a nation, then what would happen if all of us were to do the same? Do you know there's a marvellous illustration of that, an example of it, that took place in that great spiritual awakening that broke out in the city of New York in 1857. There was a man in the city by the name of Jeremiah Calvin Lamphere. What a name. Clearly he came from a Christian home. a good name. But he was not an ordained Christian minister, as you might have thought. He was just an ordinary member of the local church in the city of New York, seeking to evangelize, seeking to do all the good he could for others. And he felt a deep burden to pray for the people of New York, for his nation. And he began to pray and to plead with God for mercy and to pray for conversions and a spiritual awakening. And then he started to pray that God would show him what he must do. You see, he didn't just want to be part of the problem. He didn't just want to, in a self-righteous way, complain about the present crisis. No, no, he identified himself with it, and he wanted to be part of the solution, part of the answer. And so he prayed, Lord, show me what I must do. And you know, the Lord eventually put it into his heart that he should start a prayer meeting for the businessmen of the city of New York. He should hold it weekly, and it should be at the hour of noon for an hour between 12 and 1, when most people in New York finish their work for lunch. And it would be open to anyone to come in and pray. So he started the first one on the 23rd of September, 1857. And this is what happened. The first half hour he was all alone. We might have expected that. Then one, then another and eventually five people joined him. The following week the numbers grew to 20 and the following week to 40. The meeting was so good that they decided to have a daily prayer meeting in the city. And after a few weeks, the numbers had grown to over a hundred. And by the 23rd of October, Lamphia called upon the newspaper editors to take notice of what was happening in the city. After three months, the numbers had reached four figures. And after six months, some 25 different prayer meetings were held throughout the city. It was the beginning of revival in America that saw some two million souls added to the church. It all began by the prayer of intercession of one man. One man, what an encouragement. And you can read about this in a wonderful book by Samuel Prime. called The Power of Prayer, the New York Revival, published by Banner of Truth. It's still in print. One of the finest, one of the most encouraging books I've ever read in my life, and I've read it several times. And sell your shirt to buy it. It will do you good. but one man standing in the gap, standing in the breach. And what God did in the 19th century, he can do in our day and generation. He can do it again. God is able, God is willing. Oh, let's rise to the challenge in these days. Let's ask God to pour out that spirit of prayer and supplication upon the hearts of his people. Let's be united together in a concert of prayer that we might pray for the honour and the glory of his great name to be made known and manifest again. Let's pray that God in wrath would remember mercy and revive his church and make Jerusalem again a praise in the earth. May God grant it so for his glory. Let's pray. O gracious God, how we thank you that you are indeed a merciful God. There is no one who has grace so rich and free, and yet we acknowledge that you are a holy God, a righteous God, who does not pass by sin. Lord, sin will be punished, sin will be judged, and we confess, Lord God, that we as a church, we as your people, have contributed, Lord, to the sin and iniquity of our land. And we realise, Lord God, Lord, there is so much, Lord, that displeases you, so much, Lord, in our own lives, Lord God, that is not right. O Lord, how we pray that you will indeed, Lord, pour out that spirit of prayer upon us. Awaken us, we pray. Lord, grant us a season of refreshing from your holy presence. In wrath, remember mercy. Lord, indeed do not take your blessing from us. Lord, rend the heavens and come down in these days, and make Jerusalem again a praise in the earth. Lord, begin that work in me, begin it in us. Lord, grant us that burden of prayer we pray, that burden for the souls of men and women, boys and girls, that we may wrestle with you, that we may stand in the breach, because we ask this for your glory. Amen.