Sermon Transcript
And happy rainy New Year. Um, from what people have told me, it does that a lot in January here. We’ll see if that’s true. I haven’t been here in January yet. Uh, Beth and I were in Atlanta for a couple weeks during Christmas, had a great time, but we are glad to be back with all of you.
Um, so let’s pray this morning. Father, thank you for your word, and thank you for gathering us here together this morning. Thank you for a new year, for new opportunities. Lord, I pray that you would make us new as well. Speak to our hearts, Lord.
Guide us to who you want us to be. We pray those things in Jesus’ name. Amen. Beth and I— that’s my wife— Beth and I have a really good friend in Atlanta, and our really good friend has been looking for a husband.
For, let’s just say, a long time. And Beth and I were talking about what our friend was looking for in a husband a long time ago versus what she’s looking for in a husband today. And her list of what she was looking for 10 years ago was he needed to have a certain eye color, a certain hair color, a sense of style, He needed to want kids, be willing to travel, speak another language, at least be quasi-outdoorsy. On and on and on and on was the list. And today, after looking for a long time, her list is: 1, someone who loves Jesus, and 2, someone who doesn’t try to sleep with her.
That’s it. That’s the list. That’s the whole list. And what’s heartbreaking for Beth and I when we’re thinking about our friend is she can’t find that guy. It’s date after date, prospect after prospect, good decision on her part after good decision on her part, and we’re just watching her make all these good decisions.
She can’t find that guy. There seems to be an extreme shortage of men. There seems to be an extreme shortage of good men, at least. Listening to just many broken hearts over many years, it seems like it’s easier for men to find great women than it is for women to find great men. Not— I’m not saying it’s not hard for men.
Of course it’s hard for men too. I’ve heard all those stories as well. I’m just saying it seems like it might be harder for women So, if you’re wondering why we would call out men in a message specifically, that’s one reason. Another reason is when I was a campus minister, once a month we would partner with a street ministry, and we would go out to people living underneath bridges and give them food. And so, literally, we would go underneath bridges with a sack lunch and give people food and pray with them.
And the street ministry that we went out with had a policy, as much as it was possible, They wanted men volunteers to pray with men who were living out on the street, and women volunteers to pray with women who were living out on the street. What they did not want to happen was a man volunteer— as much as it was possible— a man volunteer to pray with a woman who was living out on the street. Because they said, in their experience, 99% of the time, if a woman was living out on the street, it was because of something a man had done to her. And so the woman living out there wouldn’t have any trust with a man who was praying with her. There’s a certain responsibility and role that men carry, and a particular damage the world feels when he drops that responsibility.
That’s why we need to call out men. So don’t worry, if you’re an equal opportunist, awesome. There will be someday in the future to call out women. Specifically. But today is to remind man of his duty.
Now, if you are a woman, don’t just go to sleep. There’s plenty of here for you too. I just think if you’re looking for a man, either now or someday in the future, or someday in the far future, I think this will give you a pretty good list of qualities to make sure he has before you say yes. Or if you’re the mother of boys, you want to make sure those boys turn into the type of men the world needs. Or if you’re the mother of girls, you want to teach those girls who they are looking for and who to run away from.
That’s part of your responsibility. Or if you are in none of those categories of women, but you are a woman and you have a man in your life, whether it’s your husband, your father, your friend, your boss, your coworker, your boyfriend, and you’ve ever hoped that that man could be more than he is, you’ve ever wanted him to be more of a man than he is, this morning will hopefully give you some specifics to pray for. Notice I, I did not say specifics to criticize him about, specifics to give him the elbow at some point during the next few minutes. I said specifics to pray for. So more on that later.
Now you may not have realized it, but women are not the only ones looking for a good man. God is looking for a good man too. During the 6th century BC, God spoke through the prophet Ezekiel and said— so if you’d like to turn there, Ezekiel 22:30-31. Those are the last couple verses of Ezekiel 22. If you didn’t bring a Bible with you, or if you’re having a hard time finding Ezekiel, we will put the verses on the screen, or it’s in your sermon notes that you picked up.
On the way in. So Ezekiel 22:30-31, God says, I searched for a man among them who would build up the wall and stand in the gap before me for the land so that I would not destroy it, but I found no one. Thus I have poured out my indignation on them. I have consumed them with the fire of my wrath. Their way I have brought upon their heads, declares the Lord.
God. So in this metaphor that God gives us, we’re gonna see: 1, what a man is supposed to do; 2, the reality of his failure; and 3, what God was then provoked to do because man failed. So first, what is a man supposed to do? This is verse 30: Build up the wall and stand in the gap where there is no wall. So I’m sure you know this, but in ancient cultures, the wall around the city was everything.
We can’t really overstate the importance of the wall. Of course, it provided— I mean, you know this— security and protection for the inhabitants of the city. Without the wall, or without a strong wall, invading armies could just come in and capture the city and either kill or enslave you. You may remember when the nation of Israel was in exile in Babylon, and then Babylon became Persia. Babylon and Persia were totally fine with Jerusalem existing as a city, as long as the city didn’t build a wall around the city, because Babylon and Persia wanted to be able to walk into the city and take whatever they wanted and have complete domination over the people still living there.
If there were no wall, they could do that.
From the top of the wall, someone could keep constant watch for approaching danger, whether that was an army or whether that was a flood, because oftentimes there would be a flood because you plant plant your city next to water sources, and water sources can flood, and you’d be able to see danger when danger was still a long way off. And then you could gather everybody inside of the city and close the gates, and so they could be protected before danger actually got to the city. If there were no wall, there could very shortly be no city, no community, no stability, no prosperity, nothing. The void created by a lack of a wall was total. The wall was everything for a city.
And God is saying to man, that is your task. That’s your mission. That’s your calling. You build the wall. Or to break down the metaphor a little bit, in other words, you build assurance your people are safe and prosperous and allowed to thrive and grow.
God is saying, if you wanted it in a tweet, God is saying men are built to build. It means we don’t tear others down. It means in all of our interactions with people, we build others. We work to improve the lives of others. We add to the goodness in the lives of others.
We don’t do anything to damage others. Quite the opposite. We are the thing that makes all of their lives livable. We are the thing that makes their lives peaceful, stable, secure, prosperous, because that’s what the wall does for a city. We don’t add chaos into situations.
We calm chaos. We add order and wholeness. I’m sorry to report to you, but if you get a bunch of men together, the conversation can quickly just start circling the drain. Now, hopefully you’ve had a different experience, but the guys’ lunch table at my high school seemed like it might just possibly be the epicenter of all depravity, ground zero for the generation of the evil in the world. It’s all the conversations about all the girls who walked by, all the plans for the weekend coming up, What would happen at all the parties, all the cutting each other down, trying to step on one another, trying to make someone around the table look stupid.
And I imagine in today’s world— I didn’t have to deal with this, praise the Lord, because I’m an old man— but I’m just guessing in today’s world, all of the, hey, look at this on my phone, all of that is just a celebration of scum. And then I went to college. And got in kind of a little Christian bubble, and I didn’t hear those conversations. So I thought, I guess everybody’s just grown up a little bit. But after graduating, I had a short stint in corporate America before ministry, and I realized nobody’s grown up.
The business trips, the annual corporate meetings— I’m right back at the high school lunch table. And I know when you’re in that situation, the pressure is to fit in and kind of spew forth your own junk to push the conversation even farther down the drain. I totally get that temptation. I understand. But that’s not what a man does.
A man pulls up the conversation. A man adds goodness and virtue. He uses his strength, and he has strength. He uses his strength to push against the decay that that kind of conversation brings. You remember, of course you remember, no one would ever forget, a few months ago when the recording of what Donald Trump said on the set of Access Hollywood was released, and everybody was wondering how anybody could say that, and all the men were like, I’ve heard that kind of thing a lot in my life.
There was another person on the tape who was contributing, going along with the conversation, being pulled into the conversation, however you want to word it, whichever side of that argument you’re on, that was Billy Bush, who had just recently gotten a gig on the Today Show as a host. And because Billy Bush had participated in that conversation, the Today Show quickly fired him. When the tape was released. Now, you may not agree with whether he got fired or not. I don’t really care.
That’s not my point. My point is that it shows there’s an expectation of men not to participate in that kind of conversation. It actually, I think, shows that there’s some level of expectation that we are supposed to stop it when it happens. Now, some of us are better at coming up with things to say, quicker than others of us. Like, what do I say?
How would I get somebody to stop that conversation? I know some of us are better than that than others, but whatever we do, we don’t go along with that conversation. Um, we, we, in any situation, we never add to the hurt and the harm that is happening. We never add worry or stress to other people’s lives either. When people think of you, they should think It’s okay because you are here.
That’s how they thought of the wall. Something terrible is coming our direction, but it’s okay because we have the wall. It’s going to work out because the wall is here. Men, do people think of you that way? Do your coworkers think of you that way?
Does your boss think of you that way? If your boss was worried about the performance of a team and found out you were on the team, would your boss then worry more, or would your boss worry less?
Would your boss say, oh, well, if he’s on the team, there won’t be any kind of problem. Do your wife and kids think about you that way? Do they say, or they probably wouldn’t say this, kids, you could say this to your dad, it would be awesome, but do they feel, hey, Dad adds peace and stability to our family? Or do they feel, Dad actually adds stress to our family? Do they say, when Dad is around, life is easier?
When they say, no matter what kind of day Dad had at work, I look forward to Dad getting home. Or do they say, Dad’s on the way home. I better find something else to do quick.
Ladies who are looking for a husband or someday in the future looking for a husband, little observation. If no one is looking to your potential guy as a source of peace and stability, If his family and friends and coworkers don’t look to him as stability in their lives before you marry him, you are not going to look to him as peace and stability after you marry him. Men, we are called to be the rock that others can count on. We are who others lean against. We are the support others anchor into.
We are the wall.
We spot dangers and threats from far away, and we make provisions to keep others safe. We look out for the well-being of our classmates, our teammates, our families, our friends. And even if we need to spend ourselves, or even if we need to put ourselves at risk to make sure they have what they need to thrive, then that’s what we do. Because remember, we’re still in verse 30. Where there is no wall, we stand in the gap of the wall.
If there is no other way to ensure the protection and growth of our people, we stand in the gap and take the hit the wall would have had the wall been there. So I can imagine a commander telling soldiers, hey, stand in the gap of the wall when an opposing army is coming to invade. And I imagine the soldier saying, Uh, Commander, you want me to stand here with that army coming? Yes, that’s, that’s what I want you to do. But there’s no wall in between me and them.
Um, there’s nothing to protect me from them. Well, soldier, that’s the point. That’s why you need to stand there. Uh, that’s why, that’s why there needs to be somebody filling the gap in the wall. You are now the wall.
You are filling the gap. What if somebody throws a spear at me? Well, then block it like the wall would. If you can do that and stay alive, fantastic. If you need to use your life or you have your life end in order to block the spear and keep the spear out of the city behind you, then that is your job.
So when we’re talking about standing in the gap, of the wall, we see the second job men are supposed to do from this text. Men are built to sacrifice. That’s our second job. For some reason, self-sacrifice— you can explain this phenomenon to me— for some reason, self-sacrifice feels like it can be kind of glamorous when we’re talking about defending a city, or when we’re thinking about the classic picture of the men on Iwo Jima holding the flag up in World War II. But then somehow it changes, and sacrifice can seem unthinkable if we’re talking about a real-world application, like our family needs something, and men, we need to put ourselves second behind our family’s needs.
So if it’s something like driving a minivan, all of a sudden sacrifice is not gonna happen. But men, Okay, maybe in your context, I don’t know your situation, but in your context, the minivan just might be your Beach of Normandy. Um, now I know you’d probably rather be shot at. I get it, I’m there with you. But if you’re doing some kind of calculation in your head and you’re like, yeah, we got 3+ kids, so we need something big, but getting a big enough SUV to haul all of us around would put financial pressure on our family.
And a minivan is less expensive. I guess I could get a used SUV, but I don’t want it to, you know, be all the warranty stuff. The minivan would put less stress, so we could do the minivan, but I just can’t bring myself to drive that. So I guess we’ll get the behemoth SUV, and maybe my wife can cut back on haircuts and pedicures. I mean, the kids can eat more hot dogs and less organic yogurt, and I can— well, I would still need to go out to lunch with all my friends all the time, because really, I mean, the SUV is because of them.
If they didn’t exist, I could be driving whatever I want, so it’s for them, so they should really be the ones to cut back. You see what’s happening there? That man is saying, you sacrifice for something I want, but I am not going to sacrifice for you.
Men, we should always do the opposite. We stand in the gap and take the spear to the throat if we need to. So, if you’re wondering what you should do in a situation in your life right now, just ask yourself some questions. Am I putting up— myself in a hardship situation? Am I the structure and support to help others thrive and grow, or am I looking to others to be in a hardship situation so I can get what I want?
Or we can ask ourselves, how will doing this or not doing this, whatever it is that I’m trying to figure out if I’m going to do, will this build others up? Will this tear others down, or is this going to help others thrive? That’s the question we ask ourselves. I was sitting around with a bunch of my friends after Christmas this year, and we started asking each other, when exactly did Christmas become work? When exactly did Christmas become more work than work is work?
Where did that come from? ‘Cause there’s almost always travel involved, this is what we figured out. It’s either on Christmas Day or sometime near Christmas, so you’re trying to pack stuff into the car, pack stuff into suitcases, you’re trying to get the kids where they need to be, you’re taking naps and feeding schedules into account, you gotta get all the other gear in the car with all the presents, in which presents need to be purchased ahead of time, you might be trying to navigate an airport or traffic patterns without getting run over or being late, or you might be like my cousin, in LA, who they leave for trips in the middle of the night to avoid LA traffic, which they avoid traffic, but then they wake up, or they get to wherever they’ve gone without sleeping, so they’re zombies wherever they are when they get there. And if you’re not going anywhere, you probably have people coming to your house, so there’s the cleaning of the house, which I never understand, ’cause we all know our houses are filthy, but we clean them anyway when people are coming. There’s the making of some kind of food, there’s the buying the food beforehand, there’s the taking into account all the food allergies of everybody who’s coming, There’s the decorating.
There’s, again, coordinating your kids’ naps with the people who are coming and their kids’ naps. And suddenly, just asking a simple question like, what time is Christmas dinner, can set off a logistics nightmare, especially if people are crossing time zones with kids to get there, and you’re trying to figure out when exactly are the kids going to be craziest, and so we don’t want to eat dinner then. When you’re a kid, you don’t think about any of that. You just think, presents! And cousins!
And good food! And pretty lights! This is the best day ever! It’s not until you get older that you realize exactly how it was that presents and cousins and good food and pretty lights all ended up in the same place at the same time. And it’s not just Christmas, that’s basically any time.
Anytime you’re able to relax and have a magical time, it means someone else must have worked really hard. Someone else must have provided the structure and setting so that you didn’t need to think about it at all. Someone else sacrificed so you could benefit. Men, that’s what we do. We spend ourselves so others can benefit.
We are the horse that pulls the cart through the rain and the muck so the people riding in the cart can stay warm and dry. That’s what we were made to do.
See, if we fail on these things, it isn’t just sin. It’s falling short of true manhood. It’s forfeiting our glorious calling. It’s choosing to be less than we were made to be.
Now, if you’re here and you’re thinking about your husband, your boyfriend, your dad, your friend, your son, your boss, and you’re thinking, he falls short of that. He’s not pulling the cart. He’s in the cart. He wants somebody else up there pulling the cart through the rain and the muck. I see him skirt responsibility all the time.
He hurts others with his words. He’s jealous and uses other people to better himself instead of using himself to better other people. If you’re thinking that, here’s what you need to do. Pray for him.
Pray that he would build the wall instead of tear it down. Pray that he would catch a vision of manhood and rise to his calling. And then when he gets it right, which he will do occasionally, when he gets it right, praise him. My advice— this is not the Bible, it’s just my observation, so take it for what it’s worth— just temper the criticism when he gets it wrong. Now, of course, if you’re in some kind of abusive situation, just run.
Always. That’s the default answer. That’s not what we’re talking about. Just in normal situations. Temper the criticism.
And don’t say something like, you aren’t the man that you should be. If you do, you’re going to get huge pushback and a big fight. You will not birth manhood in him. You will kill something in him if you say that. Your words may be true.
Doesn’t matter. His pushback might be sin. I don’t know. But I do know you are not going to help him be more of a man by telling him he isn’t one. You will not get the result that you want through criticism.
Just, for the most part, praise him when he gets it right. Especially if you word it some way like, thank you for being such a strong man for us today. If a guy hears something like that, especially from his wife, he thinks, All right, I’m gonna do that some more. Chest pokes out a little more. He finds a little more confidence.
He feels a little more energized. Men, we can do this for each other too. We can say things to each other like, way to stand up and be a man back there, or, talk about manning up, good work. Complimenting on that level has just something extra in it. And it helps motivate us to what we were made to be.
And men, let’s face it, we need help. We need the prayers and encouragement from those around us because let’s be honest, we fall short of our calling at times.
Men fail.
All men fail.
Fail. Sad truth, God never finds His man. Verse 30, I searched for a man among them who would build up the wall and stand in the gap before Me in the land, so that I would not destroy it, but I found no one. That’s not just in Ezekiel’s day. That’s always.
That’s every day. We gotta feel for Ezekiel here, because he must have felt magnificently inadequate as a man. When he received this message. God tells Ezekiel, or he just speaks right through Ezekiel, I don’t know how it works with a prophet exactly, but he tells Ezekiel, who is a man, I’m looking for a man and I can’t find one.
If I’m Ezekiel, I might have been like, you can’t find a man, huh? You see no man in this area around here. God, you’re saying you’re looking in all the land of which I am standing and you can’t find a man?
Yeah, that’s what I’m saying, Ezekiel. So you’re— it just would double-check in this general area, not even all the, all the land, just, just right here. Um, you’re saying where I’m standing you can’t Find a man. Yeah, that’s right, Ezekiel. Okay, I just, I wanna make sure I get this right before I say it to everyone else.
Let’s just draw an imaginary circle about this big, and then I just wanna make sure you haven’t overlooked anything, and I’m gonna stand in the middle of this circle and say, what do you see in the circle, Lord?
I don’t see a man, Ezekiel.
It’s kind of like when I’m preaching this message and I say there’s a shortage of men.
There’s a shortage of men even when I’m looking in the mirror.
How does God respond to the lack of men?
Verse 31. Thus I have poured out my indignation on them. I have consumed them with the fire of my wrath. Their way I have brought upon their heads, declares the Lord God. And that should be God’s response.
Man has abandoned his post and people have gotten hurt. The city has no wall, or the city has lots of gaps in the wall, and therefore harm is coming into the city. If God cares about the city, He should— this is what He should do— He should pour out His wrath on the men who abandoned their posts, which is all of us.
But let’s look at this. God says, I have consumed them with the fire of My wrath. Or in other versions, I will consume them with the fire of My wrath. Consume. Or it could be translated, finish completely.
Like when I consume hot wings, I finish them completely. Or if you’re my age and you played the old video game Mortal Kombat, and at the end when the other player was really weak and about to die, you could finish him and like lop off his head. Finished. There is nothing left. They are obliterated.
God says, I will consume them with the fire of my wrath.
Did that happen?
It didn’t. It didn’t happen. Some Israelites were sent to exile in Babylon. Some got to stay and work the land and send the profits of the land to Babylon. Some died, but Israel was certainly not consumed or finished completely.
It didn’t happen. And we can’t say, which you might want to say, well, you know, it was the good Israelites who were spared, and the bad ones, those are the ones who were consumed and finished completely and died. We can’t say that, because there were no good Israelites. We just got through saying God cannot find one man Not one. None.
So there were no good ones to spare. And yet, they were spared. They were not consumed. They were not finished completely. So what’s the deal?
Is God a liar? How could He deliver, or how could He promise that type of punishment and not fulfill it? The deal is that judgment was delayed until 600 or so years later, when Jesus would hang on a Roman cross and bear the full weight of God’s consuming wrath. Not because of something Jesus had done. Jesus had no failure.
He never abandoned His post. He always used His strength to build others. Every breath He took was an effort to make life better for us at the expense of Himself. His whole life was a sacrifice because by His own free will, He left the perfect comforts of heaven and came to painful earth to rescue us. And in His death, He said, it is finished.
It is finished completely. The fire of God’s wrath has consumed me. It is finished. His death bought our life. God’s fury was poured out on him instead of on us, and it was poured out on him instead of the Israelites who were spared in Ezekiel’s day.
It was poured out on him instead of Ezekiel. God’s wrath came, but it did not come on the Israelites or on us. It came on Jesus. Men, there’s something that happens in our hearts when we see another man, one of us, turn toward sacrifice instead of run away from it. When we see Christ stand in the gap for us, when we see that there’s a hole in the city wall and the hell we deserve is on the other side and it’s advancing toward us, but then we watch, we see Christ run with enthusiasm to fill that hole, there’s something that comes alive in us.
I’ve never been in this situation, but I imagine it’s a little bit like being in battle and everyone is running away from explosions that are back here. We are trucking it this way, and then we see Forrest Gump running back toward the fire, and he’s gonna go rescue someone. He’s going back to get someone. I think if we saw that, if we saw him running this way when we were headed that way, Wouldn’t courage spring to life in our hearts? Wouldn’t we be inspired to turn and run with him towards sacrifice?
Or at least hesitate in the direction that we were going? Wouldn’t fear and cowardice be transformed into strength and determination?
And if that’s the case, How much more will our hearts be moved when we see Jesus running into the ultimate fire for us?
How much more will we be transformed and join him in true manhood? If we fill our souls with that, we’re going to find new energy to be the men that we were called to be. Men fail.
But by the grace of God and our eyes on Jesus and what he did, how he went and stood in the gap for us, with our eyes there, Christ will restore us.
Christ restores. Let’s pray. Father,
