Ezekiel 22:6 – 12, as so many chapters in the prophets, lists the ways the people of Jerusalem have forgotten God. There will be judgment:

Can your courage endure, or can your hands be strong, in the days that I shall deal with you? I the LORD have spoken, and I will do it. I will scatter you among the nations and disperse you through the countries, and I will consume your uncleanness out of you. And you shall be profaned by your own doing in the sight of the nations, and you shall know that I am the LORD.” (Ezekiel 22.14 – 16, ESV)

As silver is melted in a furnace, so you shall be melted in the midst of it, and you shall know that I am the LORD; I have poured out my wrath upon you.” (Ezekiel 22.22, ESV)

A promise of judgment, concluding with:

• The people of the land have practiced extortion and
• committed robbery.
• They have oppressed the poor and needy, and
• have extorted from the sojourner without justice.

And I sought for a man among them who should build up the wall and stand in the gap before me for the land, that I should not destroy it, but I found none. (Ezekiel 22.29, 30, ESV)

Verse 30 is well known although I haven’t heard it preached in a while. “Stand in the gap…”

If you search “Stand in the Gap” you find organizations. https://www.standinthegap.org/

This one says,

There’s only one response to a gap: stand in it!

So many people want to make a difference in this world, but we don’t know where to start, or maybe we’ve been burned by past experiences. In 1997, two friends and I set out to see if we could develop a repeatable model to “love our neighbors.” After many years and various approaches, Stand in the Gap has become a safe, time-tested model that allows people to know what it feels like to love and be loved.

Another take is the language of Ezekiel reminds one of Moses praying for the people after the golden calf:

Now therefore let me alone, that my wrath may burn hot against them and I may consume them, in order that I may make a great nation of you.”

But Moses implored the LORD his God and said, “O LORD, why does your wrath burn hot against your people, whom you have brought out of the land of Egypt with great power and with a mighty hand? (Exodus 32.10, 11, NKJV)

The psalmist summarizes:

Therefore He said that He would destroy them, Had not Moses His chosen one stood before Him in the breach, To turn away His wrath, lest He destroy them. (Psalm 106.23, NKJV)

“Stood before him in the breach” sounds a lot like “Stand in the gap.” So one immediate application is prayer, and in Matthew 9, the prayer is for people – “laborers.”

And Jesus went throughout all the cities and villages, teaching in their synagogues and proclaiming the gospel of the kingdom and healing every disease and every affliction. When he saw the crowds, he had compassion for them, because they were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd. Then he said to his disciples, “The harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few; therefore pray earnestly to the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into his harvest.” (Matthew 9.35 – 38, ESV)

But prayer is often followed by action:

And he called to him his twelve disciples and gave them authority over unclean spirits, to cast them out, and to heal every disease and every affliction…These twelve Jesus sent out… (Matthew 10.1, 5, ESV)

I see a gap in discipleship training. Some churches do everything but.

So the question is, “What gap has God called you to?”