The people of the land have used oppression, and exercised robbery, and vexed the poor and needy: yea they have oppressed the stranger wrongfully. And I sought for a man among them, that should make up the hedge and stand in the gap before Me for the land, that I should not destroy it: but I found none (Ezekiel 22:29-30).

To the “foolish prophets that follow their own spirits (and) are like foxes in the desert”: Ye have not gone up into the gaps, neither made up the hedge for the House of Israel to stand in the battle in the Day of the Lord (Ezekiel 13:4-5).

For the eyes of the Lord run to and fro throughout the whole earth to shew Himself strong in the behalf of those whose heart is perfect toward Him (2 Chronicles 16:9 and Zechariah 4:10).

Throughout human history God has sought a man to be there for Him and stand in the gap to shield the Lord’s people. But rarely has He found one. He certainly hadn’t in 590 BC when Ezekiel penned the prophecies above and the Lord poured out on Israel the “fire of his wrath” because with cruelty they had betrayed the very purpose for which He had called them (Ezekiel 22:31).

But on other occasions the Lord did find a man to stand in the gap, in fact several. Think of Moses who “stood in the gap” (Psalm 106:23) before God and pleaded with Him to spare Israel when the Lord determined to destroy them for worshipping the golden calf (Exodus 33:19). As a result of Moses’ intercession “The Lord repented of the evil He though to do unto his people”.

Then you have Abraham who interceded boldly for the city of Sodom (Genesis 18), negotiating with God down to ten righteous individuals to spare the city from destruction.

Aaron stood between the living and the dead with his censer of incense during a plague in Israel (Numbers 16:46-48), so making atonement and halting the wrath of God. [1]

Samuel cried out all night to the Lord on behalf of King Saul and the nation. God later ranked him alongside Moses as a defining intercessor (Jeremiah 15:1).

Daniel humbled himself and fasted, confessing the sins of his people and pleading for the restoration of Jerusalem in a profound corporate prayer (Daniel 9:1-4).

Esther risked her life by approaching the king unsummoned to save her doomed Jewish nation, declaring, "If I perish, I perish" (Esther 4:16).

Of course, the greatest intercessor of all is the Lord Jesus Christ who when on earth as a man (John 14) prayed earnestly and effectually for all who would come to believe on Him. He “stood in the gap” when He bridged the gulf between God and sinful humanity by dying on the cross. The Bible says He lives forever to intercede for those trusting Him (Hebrews 7:25, Romans 8:34).

But nearer our time there is one man who stood in the gap that is rarely credited for doing so. He is the Apostle Paul. Fact is Paul suffered hugely in his life and ended it in prison for one purpose ordained by the Lord. That was to three times “stand in the gap”. The first was to stand for the people of Israel. As he told the Jewish leaders in Rome, “For this cause, therefore, have I called for you to see you, and speak with you: because that for the hope of Israel I am bound with this chain”  (Acts 28: 20).

But when the Lord moved to “visit the Gentiles to take out from them a people for his name” (Acts 15:14) it was Paul who “stood in the gap” for them as the appointed “Apostle to the Gentiles” (Romans 11:13 and Ephesians 3:1-8). Paul was commissioned to make known the great truth that after thousands of years of only accepting Israel as a chosen people before Him, God now opened his arms to the Gentiles too.

You see, before Paul was sent out by God to preach the “gospel to the uncircumcision” (Galatians 3:7) Gentiles had been “...without Christ, being aliens from the commonwealth and strangers from the covenants of promise, having no hope and without God in the world” (Ephesians 2:12). And, short of being saved by Christ that’s what we still are by nature.

That said, the crowning ministry of the Apostle Paul was to stand in the gap for the third time to both pray for and proclaim the revelation of the “Dispensation of the grace of God” and the MYSTERY.  Here he was the sole instrument to bring in an entirely new world based on a new era in God’s plan of the ages (Hebrews 1:2 where “worlds” translates the Greek word aion meaning “ages”). Thus, he says in Ephesians 3:8-9):

Unto me, who am less than the least of all saints is this grace given, that I should preach among the Gentiles the unsearchable riches of Christ. And to make all men see what is the fellowship (that is, the dispensation or age) of the MYSTERY, which from the beginning of the world hath been hid in God, who created all things by Christ Jesus).

Only to the imprisoned Paul was this secret, hidden by God for all previous human history, first revealed. Only he was commissioned to write to the world of its wonderful blessings (Ephesians 1:3). And he did so at length in Ephesians, Colossians and the pastoral epistles.

What’s more Paul “stood in the gap” to pray for all the “faithful in Christ” …

…that the God our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give unto you the spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of Him (i.e. Christ) . The eyes of your understanding (or heart) being enlightened, that ye may know what is the hope of his calling and what (is) the riches of the glory of his  inheritance in the saints  and what is the exceeding greatness of his power toward us-ward who believe according to the working of his mighty power (Ephesians 1:17-19).

Thus, despite much affliction, the Apostle Paul first “stood in the gap” for Israel, her Jewish people, then for opening the door or faith to the Gentiles and, finally, to bring the greatest blessing of all, the MYSTERY, to all men (Ephesians 3:9). What’s more, he was heard in that he prayed for all believers to be given the spirit of revelation that would help them understand it (Ephesians 1:17-19).

So,  who stands in the gap before the Lord who is Jesus Christ for us grace-saved people today? Why, the Apostle Paul. Who else?

To be continued.

John Dudley Aldworth

Email: johndaldworth42@gmail.com.