Introduction:
A. One Saturday, the new preacher went out to visit in the homes of some of his new church members.
1. All went well until he came to a certain house.
2. It was obvious that someone was home, but no one came to the door even after he had knocked several times.
3. Finally, he took out his business card and wrote on the back “Revelation 3:20” and he stuck his business card in the door.
4. The next day, as he was counting the Sunday offering, he found his business card in the collection plate.
5. Below the “Revelation 3:20” that he had written was the notation “Genesis 3:10.”
6. Revelation 3:20 reads: “Here I am! I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in and eat with him, and he with me.”
7. Genesis 3:10 reads: “I heard you in the garden, and I was afraid because I was naked; so I hid.”
B. Drop in visitation is a thing of the past.
1. People didn’t use to think anything of stopping by someone’s house without advance notice.
2. Not anymore! Now we have to set it up on our Google calendars weeks in advance or set up a Facebook event and check if you are interested, going or ignore.
C. In today’s episode from Abraham’s journey of faith, we are going to witness a very special drop in visit.
1. Can you guess who’s coming to dinner? If you guessed the Lord, you guess correctly!
2. Let’s come along side Abraham and Sarah as they experience this visit from the Lord, and let’s consider the lessons both they and we can learn from the visit.
I. The Story
A. Genesis 18 begins with these words: 1 The LORD appeared to Abraham near the great trees of Mamre while he was sitting at the entrance to his tent in the heat of the day. 2 Abraham looked up and saw three men standing nearby. (Gen. 18:1-2a)
1. The chapter opens at the great trees of Mamre, a place where Abraham has often been in his years in Canaan.
a. Previously, he had built an altar there and it was the place he was when he received word that Lot had been taken prisoner by the kings from the east.
2. We can determine that the timing of this visit is only days, or weeks at the most, after the events of the last chapter because of the prediction of Sarah’s soon-to-be pregnancy, both in this chapter and the last.
3. The narrator clearly tells us that it was the Lord who appeared to Abraham on that occasion, accompanied by two angels.
a. Those angels will be the ones who go into Sodom to warn Lot of the coming destruction.
b. But as we will see, Abraham does not immediately know that the visitors that day are from above.
4. While Abraham sat in the shade at the entrance of his tent in the heat of the day, suddenly three men approached.
a. The three men seemed to appear out of nowhere, which as it turns out, they had.
b. Perhaps Abraham had thought he had dosed for a minute and didn’t see their approach.
c. What Abraham saw was three human travelers, and assumed that they were weary and thirsty as they must have come from the desert.
B. The story continues: When he saw them, he hurried from the entrance of his tent to meet them and bowed low to the ground. 3 He said, “If I have found favor in your eyes, my lord, do not pass your servant by. 4 Let a little water be brought, and then you may all wash your feet and rest under this tree. 5 Let me get you something to eat, so you can be refreshed and then go on your way-now that you have come to your servant.” “Very well,” they answered, “do as you say.” (Gen. 18:2b-5)
1. Abraham responded by immediately running out to greet them with a bow.
a. Bowing was, and still is, the ancient equivalent of a handshake.
b. The phrase “my lord” was a greeting of common courtesy, in the same way we would call someone “sir.”
c. It was not a recognition that one of these three men was in fact the Lord Yahweh.
2. Abraham then extended hospitality to the men by offering a place to rest, and the refreshment of washing and nourishment.
a. People of the ancient Near East extended hospitality to strangers as both a sacred duty and a personal honor.
b. Abraham said, in so many words, “Please do me the honor of letting me make you comfortable.”
3. And when the visitors accepted the invitation, Abraham and Sarah immediately went to work.
C. The Bible says: 6 So Abraham hurried into the tent to Sarah. “Quick,” he said, “get three seahs of fine flour and knead it and bake some bread.” 7 Then he ran to the herd and selected a choice, tender calf and gave it to a servant, who hurried to prepare it. 8 He then brought some curds and milk and the calf that had been prepared, and set these before them. While they ate, he stood near them under a tree. (Gen. 18:6-8)
1. Did you notice the action words in this story?
a. Abraham hurried from the entrance of his tent to meet them.
b. Abraham hurried into the tent to Sarah. “Quick,” he said…
c. Abraham ran to the herd and selected a choice calf, and ordered the servant to hurriedly prepare it.
2. Have you ever known a 99 year old who could move that quickly?
3. I love the fact that they didn’t want their guests to wait too long for refreshment.
a. They could have had the attitude, “We are not going to kill ourselves quickly getting them a meal, if they had given us some advance notice we could have had something prepared.”
b. But that was not their attitude – they wanted to serve – even though the guests were unexpected.
4. I also love the fact that Abraham and Sarah did a lot of the work themselves.
a. Remember, Abraham is a wealthy man with many servants.
b. He could have had the servants do all the work and have the servants serve both his guests and he and Sarah.
c. But that was not how Abraham and Sarah lived – they were “hands on” people – who rolled up their sleeves when there were guests to be served and work to be done.
5. The meal they prepared was a meal fit for a king.
a. The curds mentioned were like cottage cheese, probably served as a fruit salad with figs and grapes stirred in.
b. They enjoyed cups of cool, fresh milk – milk was kept cool and fresh by lowering it down in the well in an earthen container.
c. They enjoyed fire-roasted veal – a tender and mouth-watering meat, and Sarah set out baskets of fresh, hot bread – the three seahs of flour the text mentions would have made enough bread to feed them and send off the guests well supplied.
6. Did you notice that while the guests ate, Abraham stood nearby, but didn’t eat with them?
a. He served them, rather than ate with them.
b. I have had this kind of uncomfortable experience as a guest in my African journeys.
c. I have been made to sit a table in the center of the room with other guests, while the host family, husband, wife and children stood around serving us our food and watching us eat.
d. They would eat later, after we were satisfied, if there was anything left – it was awkward!
D. So the meal for the visitors was going along great and everything seemed normal until the conversation began, and that’s when Abraham realized that his visitors were extraordinary.
1. The Bible says: 9 “Where is your wife Sarah?” they asked him. “There, in the tent,” he said. 10 Then the LORD said, “I will surely return to you about this time next year, and Sarah your wife will have a son.”
Now Sarah was listening at the entrance to the tent, which was behind him. 11 Abraham and Sarah were already old and well advanced in years, and Sarah was past the age of childbearing. 12 So Sarah laughed to herself as she thought, “After I am worn out and my master is old, will I now have this pleasure?”
13 Then the LORD said to Abraham, “Why did Sarah laugh and say, ‘Will I really have a child, now that I am old?’ 14 Is anything too hard for the LORD? I will return to you at the appointed time next year and Sarah will have a son.”
15 Sarah was afraid, so she lied and said, “I did not laugh.” But he said, “Yes, you did laugh.” (Gen. 18:9-15)
2. Here Abraham receives his first hint of the true identity of his three visitors.
a. They ask him, “Where is your wife Sarah?”
b. Only the Lord would know of her recent name change, yet these men knew her new name.
3. If this question didn’t convince Abraham that he was being visited by the Lord, then the next statement would surely establish His identity.
a. The Lord said, “I will surely return to you about this time next year, and Sarah your wife will have a son.”
b. This same promise had been made to Abraham before, and the one who had made the promise was the Lord.
4. This time when the promise was made, Abraham didn’t laugh, but Sarah, who was eavesdropping behind the tent flap, couldn’t suppress a chuckle.
a. Sarah surely knew about God’s conversations with Abraham.
b. Abraham must have told her everything about his encounters with God over the years.
c. But now, for the first time, Sarah was hearing the promise from God with her own ears.
d. She couldn’t help but laugh to herself, thinking, “How could a worn-out woman like me enjoy such pleasure.”
e. In other words, she thought, “I’m no spring chicken, and he’s no Italian stallion anymore. Everything hurts and what doesn’t hurt, doesn’t work!”
f. At 90 years old, Sarah rightfully saw the idea of becoming pregnant as laughable – the delights of motherhood simply don’t come to 90 year old women, not then or now.
5. The Lord said, “Why did Sarah laugh? Is anything too hard for the Lord?”
a. This was the same message the heavenly messenger delivered to the virgin girl in Nazareth when he announced that she would bear a son who would be the promised Messiah.
b. When Mary wondered how this could happen because she was a virgin, the angel went on to explain that the Holy Spirit would make it happen, and then the angel pointed out that her relative Elizabeth had become pregnant in her old age, for nothing is impossible with God! (Lk. 1:36-37)
c. Sarah was caught off-guard by the Lord’s promise and His question.
d. So Sarah denied laughing and denied her inward doubting.
e. But the Lord, Himself knew the truth and simply said, “Yes, you did laugh” and that was the end of the conversation – The Lord had other, graver business to attend to.
E. The story continues: 16 When the men got up to leave, they looked down toward Sodom, and Abraham walked along with them to see them on their way. 17 Then the LORD said, “Shall I hide from Abraham what I am about to do? 18 Abraham will surely become a great and powerful nation, and all nations on earth will be blessed through him. 19 For I have chosen him, so that he will direct his children and his household after him to keep the way of the LORD by doing what is right and just, so that the LORD will bring about for Abraham what he has promised him.”
20 Then the LORD said, “The outcry against Sodom and Gomorrah is so great and their sin so grievous 21 that I will go down and see if what they have done is as bad as the outcry that has reached me. If not, I will know.” 22 The men turned away and went toward Sodom, but Abraham remained standing before the LORD. (Gen. 18:16-22)
1. Abraham and his three visitors left his tent and headed east.
a. The visitors would journey from Hebron roughly 20 miles down the foothills to the lush Jordan River Valley, where the twin cities of Sodom and Gomorrah lay.
b. Abraham walked with them part of the way as a courtesy.
2. The narrator uses a literary device called soliloquy, which is when a character onstage shares with the audience his or her internal thoughts or motivations.
a. Of course, God doesn’t literally have internal dialogues with Himself the way we do.
b. But presenting God in this human manner is another literary technique called anthropomorphism – which means presenting God in human terms to help us understand Him better.
c. Because Abraham is going to play a huge role in God’s redemptive plans, God wants Abraham to understand the way the Lord intends to deal with evil.
3. An important term that God used is “outcry” – “the outcry against Sodom and Gomorrah is so great and their sin so grievous…”
a. The Hebrew term “outcry” describes a “cry for help in time of distress.”
b. The word is used almost exclusively in reference to a cry from a disturbed heart.
c. It is the same word used when Cain killed Abel and God said, “Your brother’s blood cries out to me from the ground” (Gen. 4:10).
d. It would later be used to describe the Israelites’ suffering under Egyptian bondage.
e. The context suggests that the cry heard by God comes against the evil cities from those being harmed by Sodom and Gomorrah.
f. The cries don’t even have to be spoken to God, because the Lord can even hear the deep groanings of our hearts.
4. God speaks of going down to take a look at how bad things are in Sodom, but we know that God is omniscient – all-knowing and doesn’t need to go anywhere to gather information.
a. God did this for our benefit, not His.
5. The utter depravity of Sodom and Gomorrah had become infamous – Everyone in Canaan and beyond knew what went on there.
a. The wickedness of Sodom went far beyond the sexual depravity of its people.
b. The prophet Ezekiel cataloged a long list of sins the people of Sodom were guilty of including, arrogance, greed and gluttony, a lack of concern for the poor and needy (Ezek. 16:49-50).
c. Sounds a lot like much of the world today, doesn’t it?
F. The story continues: 23 Then Abraham approached him and said: “Will you sweep away the righteous with the wicked? 24 What if there are fifty righteous people in the city? Will you really sweep it away and not spare the place for the sake of the fifty righteous people in it? 25 Far be it from you to do such a thing-to kill the righteous with the wicked, treating the righteous and the wicked alike. Far be it from you! Will not the Judge of all the earth do right?”
26 The LORD said, “If I find fifty righteous people in the city of Sodom, I will spare the whole place for their sake.”
27 Then Abraham spoke up again: “Now that I have been so bold as to speak to the Lord, though I am nothing but dust and ashes, 28 what if the number of the righteous is five less than fifty? Will you destroy the whole city because of five people?” “If I find forty-five there,’ he said, “I will not destroy it.”
29 Once again he spoke to him, “What if only forty are found there?” He said, “For the sake of forty, I will not do it.” 30 Then he said, “May the Lord not be angry, but let me speak. What if only thirty can be found there?” He answered, “I will not do it if I find thirty there.”
31 Abraham said, “Now that I have been so bold as to speak to the Lord, what if only twenty can be found there?” He said, “For the sake of twenty, I will not destroy it.” 32 Then he said, “May the Lord not be angry, but let me speak just once more. What if only ten can be found there?” He answered, “For the sake of ten, I will not destroy it.” 33 When the LORD had finished speaking with Abraham, he left, and Abraham returned home. (Gen. 18:23-33)
1. This is truly an unusual and remarkable account.
2. We don’t have the time nor the ability to plumb the depths of all this passage encompasses.
3. Let’s see the points that Abraham tried to make as he negotiated with God in this conversation.
4. Abraham began his appeal based on his knowledge of God’s righteousness, justice and mercy.
a. Abraham knows full well that God would never destroy the righteous along with the wicked.
b. And Abraham actually asked God to spare the wicked for the sake of the righteous.
c. Of course one of our challenges is understanding that our view of righteousness and wickedness is not the same as God’s.
d. We tend to measure evil on a sliding scale and we tend to conclude that the unrighteous are those who are worse than we are.
e. But in God’s eyes, none are righteous on their own.
5. We note that in each of Abraham’s responses to God, he did well to express his humility.
a. He said something like “Lord, I haven’t any right to ask this of you. Who am I? I am just a mere man, nothing but dust and ashes.”
b. Abraham’s genuine meekness before God is the opposite of the pride and presumption with which many people approach God today.
c. God isn’t some genie in a bottle who takes orders from human beings.
6. Another part of Abraham’s approach to God was to focus on the welfare and protection of other people – he was truly interceding for others.
a. As he continued his dialogue with God, he reduced the number of potentially righteous people from 50, to 45, to 40, to 30, to 20 and finally to 10.
b. Why did Abraham stop there? Why didn’t he go down to 5 or even to 1?
c. Abraham probably did some quick math in his head: Lot and his wife make two, he has two daughters who were engaged, that makes 6, surely they had a few righteous servants, or friends that would bring the total up to 10.
d. As we will see in next week’s sermon, 10 righteous people could not be found, and in the end only 3 escaped destruction.
7. The final verse of the chapter reminds us of who is the one who is ultimately in control of all things – and that person is the Lord.
a. “When the Lord had finished speaking with Abraham, he left, and Abraham returned home” (Gen. 18:33)
b. The conversation didn’t end when Abraham had finished speaking with the Lord, but when the Lord had finished speaking with Abraham.
c. Abraham had not initiated the conversation, nor did he conclude the conversation.
d. Rather, God had initiated it and God brought it to a close – God is in control.
II. Application
A. What important lessons can we apply to our lives from today’s episode in Abraham’s journey?
B. First, We must keep in mind that some people we encounter may be angels.
1. You might think I am joking, but I am not.
2. If we believe in God and if we believe in God’s Word, then we have to acknowledge this reality.
3. Hebrews 13:1-2 says: 1 Keep on loving each other as brothers. 2 Do not forget to entertain strangers, for by so doing some people have entertained angels without knowing it.
4. The point is not for us to go looking for angels, but for us to treat everyone like he or she is a representative of heaven.
5. Hospitality is such an important activity – I wish I could spend more time on it this morning.
6. Max Lucado wrote: “Long before the church had pulpits and baptisteries, she had kitchens and dinner tables. Even a casual reading of the New Testament unveils the house as the primary tool of the church. The primary gathering place of the church was the home…Not everyone can serve in a foreign land, lead a relief effort, or volunteer at the downtown soup kitchen. But who can’t be hospitable? Do you have a front door? A table? Chairs? Bread and meat for sandwiches? Congratulations! You just qualified to serve in the most ancient of ministries: hospitality…Something holy happens around a dinner table that will never happen in a sanctuary. In a church auditorium you see the backs of heads. Around the table you see the expressions on faces. In the auditorium one person speaks; around the table everyone has a voice. Church services are on the clock. Around the table there is time to talk. Hospitality opens the door to uncommon community.” (Max Lucado, Outlive Your Life, p. 55).
7. 1 Peter 4:9 says: “Offer hospitality to one another without grumbling.”
8. When we do that, perhaps we will end up even serving angels, but if not then we will be serving the Lord himself who said, “For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited me in…whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers of mine, you did for me.” (Mt. 25:35, 40)
C. Second, we must keep in mind that nothing is too difficult for the Lord.
1. Life threatens to distract us with limitations, but God wants us to think of the possibilities.
2. It seemed impossible for a 100 year-old man and a 90 year-old woman to have a baby.
3. There are many things that seem impossible to us, and they are impossible for us, but the truth still holds that nothing is too difficult for God.
4. If we can keep that reality in mind, then our attitude toward life will change and the difficulties we face will seem less daunting.
D. Finally, we must keep in mind that prayer makes a difference.
1. Prayer opens up the human spirit to the Spirit of God and prayer enables us to take on the character of God.
a. Abraham was never more like God than at the moment he was praying for Sodom.
2. God promises that through prayer He will give us a peace that will guard our hearts and minds.
a. Our circumstances may not change as a result of our prayer, but we will be changed.
b. The problem or crisis we’ve prayed about may still be there, but something will have changed within us - the inexplicable peace of God will displace our anxious thoughts.
c. Through prayer we begin to see things from God’s divine perspective rather than our human perspective.
4. Like a magnifying glass and the sun, prayer serves as a lens to focus God’s power on a single person or situation.
a. Our prayers may not be answered according to our expectations or timetable, but we can rest in the assurance that prayer always focuses the power of God.
5. God is pleased to work in partnership with us and allows us through prayer to affect the timing and accomplishment of His plans.
6. These are a few of the important lessons we learn from this part of Abraham’s journey of faith.
Resources:
Abraham – One Nomad’s Amazing Journey of Faith, by Charles Swindoll, Tyndale, 2014.
Friend of God – The Legacy of Abraham, Man of Faith, by Ray Stedman, Discovery House, 2010.
