Reading from the Old Testament this morning, and also our sermon text, comes from Genesis 18, page 14 in your Pew Bibles. Genesis 18, beginning in verse 16 and reading through the end of the chapter. Genesis 18. Then the men set out from there, and they looked down towards Sodom.
And Abraham went with them to set them on their way. The Lord said, shall I hide from Abraham what I am about to do, seeing that Abraham shall surely become a great and mighty nation, and all the nations of the earth shall be blessed in him? for I have chosen him that he may command his children and his household after him to keep the way of the Lord by doing righteousness and justice so that the Lord may bring to Abraham what he has promised him. Then the Lord said, because the outcry against Sodom and Gomorrah is great and their sin is very grave. I will go down to see whether they have done altogether according to the outcry that has come to me. And if not, I will know. So the men turned from there and went towards Sodom, but Abraham stood still, still stood before the Lord. Then Abraham drew near and said, will you indeed sweep away the righteous with the wicked?
Suppose there are 50 righteous within the city. Will you then sweep away the place and not spare it for the 50 righteous who are in it? Far be it from you to do such a thing, to put the righteous to death with the wicked, so that the righteous fare as the wicked. Far be that from you. Shall not the judge of all the earth do what is just?
And the Lord said, if I find at Sodom 50 righteous in the city, I will spare the whole place for their sake. Abraham answered and said, behold, I have undertaken to speak to the Lord. I who am but dust and ashes. Suppose five of the 50 righteous are lacking. Will you destroy the whole city for lack of five?
And he said, I will not destroy it if I find 45 there. Again, he spoke to him and said, suppose 40 are found there. He answered for the sake of 40. I will not do it. Then he said, oh, let not the Lord be angry, and I will speak. Suppose 30 are found there. He answered, I will not do it if I find 30 there. He said, behold, I have undertaken to speak to the Lord. Suppose 20 are found there. He answered, for the sake of 20, I will not destroy it. Then he said, Oh, let not the Lord be angry. And I will speak again, but this once suppose 10 are found there. He answered for the sake of 10. I will not destroy it. And the Lord went his way when he had finished speaking to Abraham and Abraham returned to his place. That sends the reading of the words of the Lord from Genesis 18, our new Testament reading. is from First Timothy, Chapter 2. First Timothy, Chapter 2. We’ll read the first seven verses. First Timothy 2.
First of all, then, I urge that supplications, prayers, intercessions, and thanksgivings be made for all people, for kings and all who are in high positions, that we may lead a peaceful and quiet life, godly and dignified in every way. This is good, and it is pleasing in the sight of God our Savior, who desires all people to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth, For there is one God, and there is one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus, who gave himself as a ransom for all, which is the testimony given at the proper time.
For this, I was appointed a preacher and an apostle. I’m telling the truth. I’m not lying. A teacher of the Gentiles in faith and truth.” This ends the reading. The word, let us ask God’s blessing upon the preaching now. Lord, you have spoken wonderful things in your word. You have hidden great mysteries and you have revealed them to your servants, to us, your saints who have the Holy Spirit. And we ask now that you would open our hearts to understand the truth and to know true things from your word. May the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be pleasing in your sight, oh Lord, my rock and my redeemer.
We pray all this in Jesus’ name, amen. So if you’re looking for biblical guidance on prayer, when to pray, how to pray, what to pray for, You might not think about our Old Testament passage this morning. That might not be the first passage that comes to mind. Maybe it made more sense to you that I would be preaching out of 1 Timothy 2 with a sermon titled Pray for the City. But this is a great passage for us to reflect on as we think about the practice of prayer.
As we’ll see in our story today, here we have God, the God of the universe, inviting his people, inviting Abraham here and also, as we’ll see, inviting us into his situation room as he makes important decisions about the world. His phone line is open and he’s ready to hear our desires and to incorporate them even into his plan. And I think that the reason we’re slow to pray is that we don’t all realize just how ready God is to hear our prayers, how God invites us to bring our desires to him, how he actually will take them into account and not just file them away in a dusty cabinet somewhere in his office. And in fact, I didn’t, it’s not just that his phone line is open. It’s really that he’s calling us as here in our passage this morning, he calls, he consults Abraham about what he’s going to do to Sodom and Gomorrah.
And that all of this is true, as we’ll also see from our passage, because Jesus Christ won this privilege for us. And so that’s why it’s important for us to meditate this morning. on Genesis 18. We see God inviting Abraham here to weigh in on his plan to judge Sodom. And we see Abraham reasoning with God in an attempt to save the whole city. Now, maybe somewhat ironically, this is an instance of a prayer that really doesn’t seem like it worked all that well, because the city ends up being destroyed. As we’ll see this evening, if you come back. And yet we also see that the Lord folds Abraham’s reasoning into the final decision that he makes. He listens to his servant, Abraham.
And so today we’ll look at this story in three parts. First, we’ll consider more broadly what we learn about prayer from the text about the practice of prayer. Then we’ll look more specifically at Abraham’s situation as he intercedes with the Lord on behalf of Sodom. And then finally, we’ll consider our own situation today.
So then, first of all, what is prayer? What can we learn from it, from this passage? Here we see an example of prayer. It’s not the sort of example where he’s on his knees praying in his prayer closet or something like that. He’s just having a conversation with the Lord, but this is what he’s doing. God decides to share with him his plans to destroy the city of Sodom, and Abraham responds.
And so that’s the first thing that we will consider. Prayer happens when God invites us to voice our desires in his situation room. And if we’re clear on this, it will help us to answer two further questions. The first being when we should pray. Well, we should pray when God invites us.
We see in our text here that Abraham receives a special revelation from the Lord, inviting him to weigh in on the Lord’s decision. The Lord says, because the outcry against Sodom and Gomorrah is great and their sins are very heavy, I will go down and see whether they have done everything that has been reported to me. And if not, I will know. Now the Lord doesn’t explicitly say what he’s going to do if they have, but Abraham knows that what’s coming is the destruction of Sodom. The Lord lets Abraham in on what he’s about to do. And that gives Abraham this opportunity to very piously and humbly and cautiously approach the Lord to pray for the city.
So in the same way, we ought to form our prayers in response to the special revelation that God has given us in our Bibles. There are so many commands to pray throughout the Bible and instructions for what to pray for and in what situations to pray for. When we’re sick, when we need wisdom, when we see a brother or sister going astray. In 1 Timothy, praying for our leaders. And in a few minutes, we’ll see one of the more surprising things we should be praying for as Christians when we think more carefully about the content of Abraham’s prayer in this passage. So then if we are praying at the Lord’s invitation, it’s important for us also to understand why the Lord invites us to pray in the first place.
Look at what the Lord says to himself as he deliberates, as it were, about whether he’s going to extend this invitation to Abraham. In verse 17, the Lord says, shall I hide from Abraham what I am about to do? For Abraham is surely going to become a great and mighty nation and all the nations of the earth will be blessed in him. For I have chosen him that he might command his children and his house after him, that they may keep the way of the Lord by doing righteousness and justice so that the Lord will bring upon Abraham what he has promised concerning him. So we see that the Lord doesn’t just invite anyone into his council room. He invites Abraham only because he has a very specific plan for Abraham’s life and for his descendants. It’s through Abraham that he’s one day going to bring about justice and blessing for the whole earth.
And this is going to be so, if you noticed, because Abraham’s descendants are going to keep the way of the Lord as he taught them. And then God’s promises are going to pass upon Abraham. Now we know from the history of Abraham’s descendants that this took a little while to happen. The ancient nation of Israel traced their ancestry to Abraham, but they certainly didn’t keep the way of the Lord.
And so they received curse and not blessing. They lost their status even as an autonomous nation, as people who were granted the land, the good land of Canaan. They’re far from a great and mighty nation. For most of their history, they were small and insignificant.
And it wasn’t until Jesus Christ himself came that God’s plans and his promises for Abraham were completely fulfilled because Jesus Christ of all the descendants of Abraham was the only one who actually obeyed the law of God, who kept the way of the Lord perfectly, who did righteousness and justice, suffering the curse of disobedience as well in his shameful death on the cross.
Jesus Christ did this so that all of Abraham’s descendants even though they themselves had failed to keep the way of the Lord so that the blessings here in Genesis 18 would come upon the descendants of Abraham and indeed upon the whole world. That all of Abraham’s descendants could partake in the richness of God’s promises to Abraham. And after Christ, we do see that Abraham’s seed becomes a great and mighty nation because we read in the New Testament that all those who trust in Christ for salvation are children of Abraham. All of you here today, if you’re trusting in Christ, are children of Abraham. And to confirm this to us, Jesus Christ himself tells us in John 16 that God will accept every prayer that his people offer in Jesus’ name, in the name of the greatest descendant of Abraham, the one who obeyed on behalf of the whole family. So we may be almost 4,000 years removed from Father Abraham, but we are still his descendants. We share in his blessings, the blessings that God poured out on him and promised so many millennia ago. And so we know that the Lord invites us, has given us sonship, and he invites us, just as he did Abraham, to offer up our desires to him in prayer for the sake of Christ. So with those preliminary considerations on prayer, let’s turn now to consider the specifics of Abraham’s situation here as he intercedes for the city of Sodom.
The Lord sets this up by telling him that the outcry against Sodom and Gomorrah is very great and their sins are very heavy. Now at this point in our story, we don’t really know what the sins of Sodom are. Earlier in Genesis, when Abraham’s nephew Lot decided to settle in Sodom, the narrator, Moses, gives us a very brief and cryptic remark about Sodom.
He says, now the men of Sodom were wicked and great sinners in the sight of the Lord. If you come back this evening, you’ll see that Sodom warrants a level four travel advisory from the State Department. Don’t, don’t travel there. To pass through Sodom at this point in history has become a death wish due to their hostility to outsiders and their insatiable lusts.
And later on in scripture, the Old Testament and the New Testament writers often reflect upon the sins of Sodom and use it as a comparison, as a comparison for the worst parts of the sins, especially of the people of Israel. Ezekiel tells us that their sin was a neglect for the poor and the needy, while the rich lived in abundance, that they were proud that they raised their fists in opposition to God and they did abominable acts. The prophet Jeremiah describes sins like those of Sodom. He compares them to committing adultery, lying, and encouraging those who are doing evil rather than encouraging those who are doing good. They riled up those and encouraged those who were doing evil. The Apostle Peter as well in the New Testament says that Sodom was filled with licentiousness, not just sexual immorality, but a complete disdain for social norms, for the law of God. Jude says they committed sexual immorality and perversions and compared Sodom to those in his day who reject authority, reject God, and even blaspheme God and the angels.
It’s interesting that The men of Sodom in the next chapter will, in fact, blaspheme and try to abuse the angels. And here, the Lord himself tells Abraham that there is an outcry against Sodom, which should remind us of all the way back in Genesis 4 with Cain and Abel. When Cain kills his brother Abel, the Lord tells Cain, your brother’s blood is crying out to me from the ground. Now we see all of the victims of Sodom have arisen in the heavenly court to plead with the Lord to bring an end to the wickedness of this city. And I belabor this point so that we can see while the sins of Sodom are particularly heinous, particularly extreme.
They’re the same kinds of sin that we see in the world around us. We see in the church around us. The New Testament writers especially indict false teachers in the church of these sorts of sins. The prophets accuse the leaders of Old Testament Israel of these sins.
There are also sins, though, that we find in our own hearts, lying, adultery, an indifference to the poor, to the immigrant, an indifference to evil, so long as we don’t, you know, we aren’t harmed by it or we benefit from it. These are the very same sins, even that we as forgiven and purified in Christ that we still must struggle against in our own hearts. Thankfully, we have been given freedom from these. We’ve been given the power to resist them by the Holy Spirit who dwells in us, but they still tug at us, seeking to draw us back into our former ways and away from God.
Now, once the Lord reveals his plan of action, Well, first when he reveals the cause of his action, now he reveals his plan. I’m going to go down to see whether they have done everything that I’ve heard that they’ve done. And if not, I’ll know. We should be clear here that God, in fact, knows everything. God technically didn’t need to send angels down to investigate things for him. The Bible is clear about this elsewhere. In fact, if you go home this afternoon and you read Job 34, you’ll find a reflection on God’s greatness and on his justice and on his power by saying that the Lord shatters Kings overnight without investigating.
He doesn’t need to investigate. He just knows what’s going on in the world. And when action is required, he just does it. But the Bible is so comfortable with God’s omniscience that here, it doesn’t belabor this point, this technical point of theology.
It’s almost spoiling the whole thing, the fact that I’m reinforcing this for you, that God does know everything, because here the Lord reveals himself. as someone who cares so deeply about justice, that he’s not just going to wipe out a whole city because of some rumors that have reached his ear. He’s going to give Sodom a proper trial. And he’s going to give them one more chance to show that they’re not so thoroughly debased.
But if they are, God will know. And Abraham knows what’s coming. Those two angels are not just sent as spies on a reconnaissance mission. The Lord, before they leave, also hands them the nuclear football. The entire arsenal of heaven is standing at the ready. The Minutemen are in the silos, depending on what the investigation turns up.
And so it’s at this precarious moment in world history that the Lord picks up the red phone and he calls one last, makes one last call this time to Abraham. Now we’ve already seen that God has special plans for Abraham. And that’s one of the reasons why Abraham has such a privilege, but don’t forget that Abraham has skin in the game. Abraham has relatives in the city. His nephew Lot decided just a little while ago to go down and pitch his tent in Sodom. So Abraham, the Lord knows that he more than almost any outsider cares about the outcome of this crisis. And so the Lord invites Abraham’s comment. Now at this point, Abraham does something that should be maybe unexpected.
And we might expect Abraham to plead on behalf of his nephew, Lot, to say, whatever happens, make sure Lot gets out of there. Make sure he’s on the last plane out of the city. But instead, Abraham pleads for the entire city, that the entire city would be spared for the sake of Lot and for the sake of, Abraham hopes, other righteous people who might still be there. that the disaster be averted entirely. And we’ll return to this at the end in our last point. But for now, as we consider Abraham’s strategy, I’d like us to notice a couple of things.
First of all, Abraham is exceedingly respectful in his pleas. It’s almost comical. how this all goes about, how Abraham slowly whittles away the number of people that God is going to spare the city for the sake of. And each time he demeans himself, let my Lord not be angry and I will speak.
I am but dust and ashes. I am going to speak one more time. And in this way, he bargains lower and lower with the Lord. 50, 45, 30, 20, 10. And at each juncture, the Lord concedes. For the sake of 50, I won’t destroy the city. For the sake of 45, I won’t destroy the city. For the sake of 30, well, 40, I won’t destroy the city. For the sake of 30, and so on.
This shows us the posture of reverence that even Father Abraham, the one chosen by the Lord, the one invited by the Lord to weigh in on his most important decisions, he still assumed a posture of humility when he approached the throne of grace. May we be like Abraham in this regard. The second, you’ll notice that Abraham is quite calculated in how he bargains with God, how he prays to God.
He doesn’t make any appeal to emotion. He doesn’t say to God, well, but that’s just mean. Like you can’t destroy a whole city or live and let live. Now don’t mishear me. I’m not saying that Abraham isn’t emotional or impassioned in his prayer. Obviously he cares about the outcome so much so that he would risk angering the Lord to intercede for the city. But what I mean is just that his prayers are based in reason.
Will not the judge of all the earth do justice? Now in Hebrew, as well as in English, the word for judge and the word for justice, they’re related. They come from the same root. It’s obvious, even from the meaning of the word, that a judge is someone who’s supposed to do justice. And can a just judge punish the righteous alongside the wicked?
Abraham manages to reason with God until God agrees to withhold judgment, even if there are only 10 righteous people in the city. Of course, we’ll see tonight that there is scarcely one righteous person in the city. The one who is saved, Lot, is only saved, we’ll read, for the sake of Abraham’s intercession. The Lord remembers Abraham and brings Lot out of the city. It’s not just not because of his surpassing merit. But nevertheless, Abraham’s prayer is heard because he uses reason.
He appeals to who God is, how God has revealed himself, what God has promised to do in formulating his prayers. Think about the prophet Daniel too, later on in history, when he reads in the book of Jeremiah that the Lord promised to send Israel into exile for 70 years. And then to bring them back, he looks around and he realizes that the 70 years are up. And so he formulates a prayer based on the promises that God has made to his people. Daniel approaches God to appeal for forgiveness, to remind God of his covenant.
And likewise, when we pray, We don’t appeal to our own merits. We don’t try to manipulate God. We don’t try to repeat empty truisms like live and let live, nothing of the sort. Rather, we appeal to what God has promised to do, how God has revealed himself and his character as a just and a loving God to us.
In our prayers, as it were, we remind God of what it is that he’s promised to do. of who he is and what his desires and his plans that he’s revealed to us are. And it’s those prayers that will be effective. So that was Abraham’s situation on the eve of the desolation of Sodom. What about our situation today? Yes, prayer is God’s invitation to us to enter into his courtroom, to voice our concerns and our desires to him, to intercede. How can we learn from this? So God is inviting us to pray today. As we conclude, I’d like us to reflect on a couple of ways our situation today compares to Abraham’s, and we’ll return to some of these themes again this evening.
First of all, Jesus tells us that there is a sin greater than the sin of Sodom, and a fate even worse than the fate of Sodom. Jesus says that those who reject him, those who reject the ones whom he sends, those who reject the gospel and who persecute Christians, they’ll have a fate worse than Sodom’s on the last day when our Lord comes to judge the nations in power. Sodom’s fate was merely a temporary earthly rain of fire and brimstone. But the fate of those who reject God, those who reject Christ, is everlasting hellfire. That’s why the Apostle Peter says that Sodom and Gomorrah happened as an example of what’s going to happen to the ungodly. And likewise, just as God said the outcry of Sodom against Sodom and Gomorrah has risen to his throne room.
John in Revelation six gives us a window into the throne room of God today. When the lamb opens the fifth seal of the scroll, John sees under the altar, the saints, the souls of those who have been killed for the sake of Christ. And they pray the following prayer.
Oh, sovereign Lord, holy and true, how long before you will judge and avenge our blood on those who dwell on the earth? Now in our own country today, there are very few people who are killed because they are Christians. But around the world, there are still many places where Christians are being killed. or persecuted in other ways, whether systematically or haphazardly, he prayed for them this morning. And the outcry of those who have died unjustly, especially those who have died for the sake of the gospel, rises continually to God, just like the outcry of the victims of Sodom so many years ago. And when you meditate, And these great injustices that continue in our own world, in our own land, in our own city, around the world. It’s tempting to pray the prayer that the saints pray in Revelation 6. Oh Lord, when are you going to judge this wicked place?
But you should notice that that’s not at all the way that Abraham prays in our passage. He of all people, the one who is going to teach his descendants to keep the ways of the Lord, to do righteousness and justice, he would surely have recognized the need for judgment against Sodom. And yet instead he prays that God would stay his hand of justice entirely for a while longer so that his nephew Lot and the other righteous in the city might yet be saved.
We all today are more in the situation of Abraham than we are in the situation of the souls under the altar. None of you in this room, as far as I know, have been martyred for your faith. When you are, and it’s a possibility, you can pray that prayer. When you are under the altar, you can pray a prayer like that. But until then, God calls us to pray the prayer of Abraham.
And that’s why I read for us first Timothy two, where Paul tells us to pray for all kinds of people, for Kings and all who are in high positions, because it’s good. And it’s pleasing in the sight of God, our savior, who desires all people to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth. Now we should pray that God comes quickly, that there would be an end to injustice, that every knee would bow to him. And we know that there will come a time when the Lord and his destroying angels will come for our city and for every city in this world.
But while there is still time, while the verdict is still out, The judgment still hangs over the heads of all who reject Christ at this moment. We must pray for salvation and not for judgment. We must pray that the oppressor comes to saving knowledge of Jesus Christ and turns from his wicked ways. And also that those who are oppressed, and yet so many even who are oppressed, are lost because they do not know God, that they would come to faith. We pray for our unbelieving family members, our unbelieving neighbors, And as Paul says, for all people.
And we do this because we do know that God is still at work in this world. So many of us can look back and see him at work through this word and through the church in our own lives, in the lives of our family and our friends. Many of some of us were saved in part through the prayers of family and of friends who didn’t give up on us. And indeed, throughout the world today, there are so many saints who are praying for conversion and salvation in our day, and we see the fruits of those prayers. But most crucially, of course, we’re saved through the prayers of our Savior, Jesus Christ, the one who loved us and gave himself for us, the one who always lives in heaven to intercede for us.
Let’s go to him now in a word of prayer. Lord, we thank you that you chose Abraham, that all the nations of the earth, even so many of us today here in this room could be blessed through him. through the obedience of his greater son, Jesus Christ, the one who did righteousness and justice, the one who kept all your ways. Lord, we pray for mercy upon your church as it suffers in this world. We pray that we pray also for all who are suffering from injustice and oppression. as was being perpetrated by the city of Sodom so many years ago, and which we still see in our own day.
We ask that you would turn the heart of the oppressor away from his sin towards you, that you would save those who are perishing. We thank you so much for saving us. for your work in our lives. We ask that you would attend to us, hear our prayers, attend to those who do not yet know you, among our friends and among our family members, especially. That we would be good witnesses to them, but that your spirit would be at work drawing them to yourself, granting them knowledge of the truth, repentance, faith, obedience. We thank you for the remarkable example that Abraham has set in our prayers. And we ask that you would help us to know how best to pray. We ask all of these things in the name of the one who prays for us constantly at your right hand, Jesus Christ, our faithful savior. Amen.