Are You Standing In The Breach

We are enthralled by hero stories in which one human holds back a great disaster from overwhelming the lives of others. For example, children all over the world know the famous Dutch story of a child who single-handedly saved his town from a flood by holding his finger in a dyke until help arrived. I do not know if “The Boy Who Held Back the Sea” is truth or fiction (or a mixture of both), but I do know that God’s Scriptures are full of this kind of imagery.

In Psalm 106, as the writer is praising God for his steadfast love in dealing with generations of stubborn Israelites, he recounts Moses’ actions at Mt. Sinai when the people “exchanged the glory of God for the image of an ox that eats grass” (vs. 20). When God expressed his resolution to annihilate the people, Moses “stood in the breach before him, to turn away his wrath from destroying them” (vs. 23). Despite the personal toll this experience must have taken on Moses, the unselfish actions of this one man saved the lives of thousands that day.

Years later, after God’s people had settled in Canaan and had become corrupted by idols again, God was looking for another Moses. Although God is committed to punishing evil, he constantly searches for ways to extend his mercy. This time, however, there was no one in Judah with the spirit of Moses. “And I sought for a man among them who should build up the wall and stand in the breach before me for the land, that I should not destroy it, but I found none” (Ezekiel 22.30). The prophets, priests, and princes of the land were too intent on unjustly grabbing for power and riches to care about the state of their nation.

The problem God laments in Ezekiel is resolved in the story of Jesus. Rather than destroying humanity, God himself became the man who stood in the breach, holding back his own righteous anger against our sins. As Paul puts it in Romans 5.9, “Since, therefore, we have now been justified by his blood, much more shall we be saved by him from the wrath of God.” Even as he was hanging on the cross, Jesus was more concerned about the dangerous position of the souls who mocked him than he was about his own pain. “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do” (Luke 23.34).

Are we following the examples of Moses and our Lord by standing in the breach for someone else? If you’re living in a difficult community, family, or marriage, what kind of thoughts occupy your waking hours? Are you more absorbed by how the sins of others have hurt or upset you and looking for ways to see them punished? Or are you more concerned with the hurt that others are experiencing and asking God to forgive and heal them? Standing in the breach is tremendously uncomfortable, but it is the place of glory because God is standing there.

                                                      ~Nathan Combs