Since the creation of Adam, God's usual way of working in our world is through a person. We were created to be His agents in this material world. We are uniquely made: out of the dust (material) and animated by His breath (spirit). We are a link that facilitates the work of the spiritual world in the material world. When God gave mankind dominion (Genesis 1:26), He revealed His desire to accomplish His work through the creatures that bore His image. Every story in the Bible that shows a man of God doing the work of God confirms this pattern. For example, God told Moses, "I have indeed seen the misery of my people in Egypt. I have heard them crying out because of their slave drivers, and I am concerned about their suffering. So I have come down to rescue them from the hand of the Egyptians and to bring them up out of that land into a good and spacious land, a land flowing with milk and honey ... So now, go, I am sending you to Pharaoh to bring my people the Israelites out of Egypt" (Exodus 3:7,8, 10 NIV). Truly, it is God who redeems Israel from Egypt, but He uses Moses to do it.
This pattern -- God choosing to do His work through people -- is consistent throughout the Word. It can be seen as a rule. Thus Amos says, "Surely, the Sovereign Lord does nothing without revealing His plan to His servants the prophets" (3:7). Similarly, preachers of yesteryear used to say, "When God gets ready to send revival, He sets His people praying." And such a rule would explain why Jesus saw that the only solution to the challenge of the size of the harvest was to pray for more workers (Luke 10:2).
Apparently, when God commissioned us to disciple the nations, He intended to achieve His purpose through us and not without us. I have sometimes wondered why God did not use angels to carry the message to the world. After all, angels usually command more respect from those who see them, and they seem to be more faithful than we are in obeying God's commands. But the commission has been given to us mortals, and though we cannot do His work without His enabling, He has chosen not to do His work without our obedience.
The role we are to play is clearly illustrated in the story of Peter and Cornelius (Acts 10). If ever there was a pagan who was a sincere seeker after God, it was Cornelius: devout, God-fearing, generous, and a man of prayer. But his sincerity could not save his soul. An angel appeared to him, but note that the angel did not tell Cornelius how to be saved. Angels have not been commissioned to preach the gospel. The angel told him to send for Peter. At the same time, God was working on Peter. Through visions He was freeing Peter from the false beliefs that hindered God's use of him. God brought salvation to the house of the sincere seeker, but He did it through His empowered agent.
This story shows us the only hope for those seeking God's salvation: the message must get to them through human instrumentality. In our day, it might be through radio, internet, or print. But usually it will be through personal contact of some form. I heard a Cambodian tell a story of a woman whose entire family was wiped out in that country's bloodbath in the seventies. Disillusioned that Buddha did not heed her cries, she prayed, "If there is a God, help me." Her mind heard a response: "Go west." She made her way across the country, eventually finding a refugee camp across the border in Thailand. It "just so happened" that Christians ministered in that camp, and there she heard the gospel and found God by believing in Jesus. God got her and the messenger together just as He has been doing since the days of Peter and Cornelius.
What does God do when there is no one to work through? Ezekiel 22:30-31 gives us the answer: "I looked for a man among them who would build up the wall and stand before me in the gap on behalf of the land so I would not have to destroy it, but I found none. So I will pour out my wrath on them and consume them with my fiery anger, bringing down on their own heads all they have done." Could it be that there are some who could be saved if someone were in the gap, but they won't be saved because no one responded to God's call?
The only hope for the sinner is for someone to reach him with the gospel. Let's pray today about our part in standing in the gap.
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