What comes down from the heavens has a big effect on the
values of real estate. Take what happened in Stillwater in
1852 for example. Jacob Fisher, who was a surveyor, had
found a small stream called Brown's Creek in back of the
town. He dammed it up and made a lake, and he ran the
water down the hill to power a saw mill. John McKusick
bought the whole operation and had a great business. But
then came May of 1852. It had been raining for many days
and people were just sick of it. It would not stop, and the
soil on the bluffs over looking the town could not absorb
anymore. On May 14 the people heard a rumbling and a
roar as a great chuck of the hill came crashing down. It
covered trees and buildings. It buried barns and shops and
everything along the water front.
Fortunately the hill came down where the land was low ,boggy,
and worthless. John McKusick would have sold it for
a $1.25 and acre. Now he felt he was ruined, for his mill was
covered along with the 5 acres that the avalanche buried.
For several days he lamented the disaster of almost 20 feet of
mud that entombed his mill. But when it dried up he found
that he owned 5 acres of new land by the rivers edge. It was
excellent land for business purposes. The land slide
converted his swamp into usable land, and he began selling it
for five hundred dollars an acre. Much of the present
business area of Stillwater is now located on this land that
was created by rain from heaven.
The flip side of this is Sodom and Gomorrah where the
heavens rained down burning sulfur, and real estate values
fell to zero. The land became so totally worthless that it
became the symbol of God's worst judgment for the rest of
history. To be like Sodom and Gomorrah was to be hell
bound. They were so completely devastated that to this day
nobody knows for sure where this real estate is. What the
heavens rain down can do wondrous things to the real estate
of this world, and to the people who live on that real estate.
That is why any influence we can have on the God who
controls what falls from the sky can make a big difference in
this world.
Abraham was just such a man, for he could move the
God who moved the forces of nature. Abraham was the
great intercessor of the Bible. This prayer of his for Sodom
is the first intercessory prayer of the Bible, and it is one of
the most remarkable prayers in all the Bible. An intercessor
is one who pleads with God on behalf of others. Much
prayer is seeking God's gifts and guidance for your own life,
but the intercessor seeks them for the life of others. In the
case we are looking at the others are people who deserve
judgment. They are so godless they would laugh Abraham
to scorn if they knew he was pleading for them. But we still
see Abraham pleading on their behalf, and we can learn
some important truths about interceding from Abraham.
The first is-
I. THE INTERCESSOR IMPRESSES GOD.
It is impressive to see just how impressed God was with
the fact that Abraham cared enough about these godless
people to plead for them. God is very impressed with people
who care about other people enough to pray for them.
There are many people in the world who never get a chance
to experience the mercy of God and get a second chance. It
is because there is no person who intercedes on their behalf.
The Bible reveals that if nobody cares about people who are
going to be judged, they are judged. But if someone cares
enough to intercede for them, God is impressed with that
love and compassion, and He will be open to compromise.
This sounds like heresy doesn't it? God compromising!
Yet, that is precisely what we see God doing because of
Abraham's intercession. Abraham is bargaining with God.
He starts with the plea that if there are 50 righteous people
in Sodom that God spare the city for those 50. God agrees
that this is fair enough. Abraham is immediately aware that
he may have been too optimistic. Sodom was a hell hole and
how could he expect there to be 50 people unspotted by such
corruption? He became a rapid realist and knew he had to
convinced God to come down from this original agreement.
Abraham is very clever and he uses the argument of
triviality to get God to lower the number required to spare
the city. "What is 5 people less than 50? Certainly you
would not condemn the city for the lack of a mere 5 people.
So what if there are only 45 righteous-will you spare it for
that many?" God agrees and Abraham keeps on lowering
the number until he gets to 10. He was too optimistic even at
that level, but honors this man of intercession, for God is
willing to compromise where he sees true concern.
God makes it clear that where there is no concern, and
where there is no intercessor, it makes a big difference in His
actions. Listen to these words of God in Ezek. 22:30-31. "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
fierce anger..." God could not find an intercessor. There
was no Abraham who cared enough to plead for mercy for
these sinners, and the result is that God's judgment fell on
them. Had there been an intercessor there could have been a
compromise and a second chance given.
Is God really that impressed with the intercessor? Yes
He is, and that is why the ministry of intercession is one of
the most important there is, for it moves God to compromise
and make deals for the sparing of those who deserve
judgment. Some Christians think it is really being a
spiritual giant to take a strong stand and never make
concessions. If the law has been broken, then let the violator
be judged with the maximum penalty. God, on the other
hand, is looking for a way to show mercy. If He can find
someone who cares enough to intercede for the guilty, He
will be open for a deal. Abraham said, "Shall not the God of
all the earth do right?" That is precisely the way God is. He
will always do the right thing, and the right thing is to find a
way to beat evil and overcome it. When God has to judge
and let His wrath fall, then evil has won a victory. God is
ever looking a way to prevent that. He has no pleasure in
judgment and the death of the wicked.
The sending of His Son to die for the sins of the world
gives every sinner in history a second chance to escape
judgment and be saved. Jesus ever lives to intercede for us
that we might again and again escape the judgment we
deserve, and instead experience the marvelous mercy of God.
It is true that the Old Testament is full of the wrath of God,
and at times you wonder if God delights in it because of its
frequency. But the fact is, God hates judgement and loves
mercy. That is why He is so impressed with the intercessor.
The intercessor gives God the basis for mercy. It gives Him
a just reason to hold back His wrath and patiently wait to
see if judgment can be avoided. God can never care less
than any other person, and so if there is an intercessor, God
will listen. The ministry of intercession makes such an impression
on God that it is one of the primary forces of history. That is
why Paul wrote in I Tim. 2:1-4, "I urge, then, first of all,
that requests, prayers, intercession and thanksgiving be
made for everyone-for kings and all those in authority, that
we may live peaceful and quiet lives in all godliness and
holiness. This is good, and pleases God our Savior who
wants all men to be saved and to come to a knowledge of the
truth." God wants intercessors because He is pleased with
those who care, and they play a major role in who is spared
and saved. In the light of importance of the intercessor it is
tragic to think that there are people who have no one who
cares enough about them to intercede for them. There are
people everyday who suffer the judgment of God because
they had no intercessor.
They deserve their judgment just as Sodom did, but they
might have been spared if someone had cared. God is
willing to make a deal. He is flexible and not locked in like a
computer to destroy on command at a certain point. The
program can be altered by the presence of an intercessor.
God is willing to listen to any angle and try to save rather
than judge. Even when the cup of wickedness is running
over God is willing to seek some way of escape. This side of
God is a side we need to see, for it motivates us to be
intercessors. Who knows what may be accomplished if we
care enough to pray? In a fallen world compromise is a
necessity. Even God does not say it is all or nothing. Give
me 10 righteous people and I will let the evil of the rest be
spared. Just give me a fraction of hope that the future can
be changed and I will tolerate the present evil. That is the
compromise God is willing to make, and that is why it pays
to plead with God.
I know this is suppose to be a negative thing to do, and it
is one of the stages of death and dying when people with
terminal diseases try to make a deal with God. It is the fox
hole prayer that says, "God get me out of this alive and I'll
go to church and tithe and be the best neighbor in town." I
know there is a lot of nonsense committed with this concept
of making deals with God, but lets not throw the baby out
with the bath water. Abraham is not praying for his own
hide. He is interceding on behalf of others. There is a lot of
difference. It is okay and necessary to pray for yourself, and
Christians need to do plenty of this, but in this area of
prayer it is easy to get self-centered and operate on the
childish level of gimme, gimme, gimme. This is not what we
see in Abraham here. He is interceding for others. He is
making a deal for the sake of others and not his own skin.
God is willing to compromise when He knows someone
else cares enough to seek away to spare the wicked from
judgment. Compromise has its evil side, but we ought not to
neglect its positive side. Compromise says I will be willing to
change my plan for another if there is hope that good can
come of it. God was willing to spare a lot of wicked people
who would go on being wicked if there was some sign that a
hand full of righteous people could survive in that
environment and have hope of changing it. God believes
that where there is a few righteous there is a way to change
things. Give Him 10 righteous people in a mass of the
unrighteous and He will hold back judgment to see what the
10 can do to modify the evil. God is an optimist, and if there
is a ghost of a chance of good making a difference, He will go
for that chance.
That is why God is amazed when there is a lack of
intercessors. When they can make all the difference in the
world it does not make sense that they do not exist. Isa.
59:15-16 says, "The Lord looked and was displeased that
there was no justice. He saw that there was no one, He was
appalled that there was no one to intercede."" In a world
where often the only hope is intercession God is appalled
that there is no one who cares enough to intercede. But He
is so impressed when He finds an intercessor, especially for
the very wicked, as was the case in Sodom, that He is willing
to bend to the limit to find a way for mercy.
In the light of this fact one of the greatest roles in the
kingdom of God is the role of the intercessor. To be an
Abraham type person is to care enough for a lost world to
intercede for it, and possibly give a specific sinner in it to be
saved from certain judgment. This is possible because the
intercessor impresses God.
Intercession leads to a lot of believe it or not stories. One of
the greatest generals of World War II was Erwin Rommel.
He almost took Africa for Hitler. He was right at the gates
of Cairo and victory was in his grasp, but then the whole
plan unraveled. In the book Rees Howells, Intercessor by
Norman Grubb we are told that Rees had a group of people
who were interceding for Africa at that very moment. They
were praying that Rommel would be defeated. It seemed
like a futile prayer for the battle was already lost. But God
is impressed with intercessors, and when God is impressed
strange things happen.
The British had just set up an 8 inch water line for fresh
water. On that day they were testing it for 3 hours with salt
water. Fresh water was too precious to use for testing. It
was during that three hour period that the Germans
attacked. They shot the line full of holes and began to gulp
down the salt water because they did not realize what it was.
In the hot desert sun of 120 in the shade they were
immediately immobilized. With black tongues hanging out
they gasped for air and life. They threw down their weapons
and surrendered, and the Bible lands were saved.
The stronger was defeated by the weaker because of the
power of the intercessor. Had the Germans attacked a
couple of hours earlier or later they would have taken the
land, but thanks to God's providence in history they were
defeated by their timing.
Intercession does not manipulate God, but it does
impress Him, and He responds to it. It is not a matter of
certainty, however. Abraham saw Sodom go up in smoke in
spite of the effectiveness of his intercession, and many who
see miracles and wonders happen through intercession also
see many unanswered prayers. There is no formula by
which we can control God, but intercession is a means by
which we can impress God and possibly get a hearing that
can lead to His acting in our favor. Erwin Prange in A Time
For Intercession tells of interceding for a pilot who had a
broken ear drum and he was healed, but of 4 others he
interceded for who were not healed. He prayed for one man
who wanted to quit smoking and he became nauseous at the
smell of tobacco right away and never smoked again. But
many others had no such experience. The point is that
intercession does not give you the power to control God and
guarantee results. It is just the key means by which we get
God's attention, and a possible answer that may never be if
we do not intercede. The second thins we see is,
II. THE INTERCESSOR IMPACTS MAN
This does not seem to be supported by the facts, for
Sodom and Gomorrah were utterly destroyed and wiped
from the face of the earth. It would appear that all the
interceding of Abraham was much ado about nothing. It was
a much answered prayer that in the end was an unanswered
prayer. He got God down to ten, but he just as well had left
it at 50, for it was a hopeless cause he was pleading. This is
the most successful prayer never answered, and you might
ask, what is the point of it all when it didn't change
anything?
But that is just the point, it did, and the prayer was
actually fully answered to the extent that God could do so
consistent with the facts. Abraham pleaded that the
righteous not be destroyed with the wicked, and that prayer
was fully answered. It was not a lot but Lot and his two
daughters were saved, and it was a direct result of
Abraham's intercession. In Gen. 19:29 we read, "So when
God destroyed the cities of the plain, He remembered
Abraham, and He brought Lot out of the catastrophe that
over threw the cities where Lot had lived." God
remembered Abraham. That is, He listened to his
intercession and the result was that Lot and his girls were
spared. Lot became the father of the Moabites, of whom
Ruth was one, and she became the great grandmother of
David, and she is in the genealogy that led to Jesus the
Messiah. The whole future of God's plan of salvation was
impacted by this prayer of intercession. It even touched
those who were judged and destroyed, for it had an impact
on history all the way to Jesus.
Jesus will be the ultimate judge of all men, and He says
in Matt. 11:23-24, "And you, Capernaum, will you be lifted
to the skies? No, you will go down to the depths. If the
miracles that were performed in you had been performed in
Sodom, it would have remained to this day. But I tell you
that it will be more bearable for Sodom on the day of
judgment than for you." The compassion of Abraham for
those wicked people lives on in the heart and mind of the
Messiah, and in the end they will still be dealt with in mercy.
The point is that intercessors cannot ultimately fail.
First of all they please God by being intercessors, and there
is no higher success than that. It pleases God that you care,
and even if God cannot spare those you intercede for
because they will not cooperate and respond to His grace, it
is still a successful ministry. God loved Abraham in a special
way because he cared about people. He gave him the
greatest promise in the Bible when He promised that
through His seed He would bless all the people of the world.
The whole plan of salvation is a fulfillment of this promise to
Abraham. Every sinner on earth can be saved through Jesus
who is the seed of Abraham. Abraham is in the center of the
whole plan because he cared about lost people and was an
intercessor.
To be an Abraham means that you become a person
who cares about others and it will to intercede on their
behalf. It is to stand in the gap and link these people to the
merciful heart of God. Caring might not change them, for it
did not change the people of Sodom, and it did not change
the people of Jerusalem that Jesus wept over. Intercession is
not fool-proof, but it is always successful just because it
pleases God and makes you more like Christ. The rich
young ruler walked away and Jesus failed to win him, but
Jesus wept because He never failed to care. That is the
success of the intercessor. They never fail to care. They
impress God and impact man in ways that may never be
known in this life.
Abraham did his best and when the cities he pleaded for
were wiped out he did not say, "That is the last time I waste
my breath pleading with God." He just moved on to the
next stage of life and made the best of it. He did not say that
prayer does not work. He recognized the limitations of what
can be done by prayer. God as limits too. He could not say,
"Okay Abraham, just ask me to spare Sodom if there is one
righteous man," for he knew Lot was there, and so the whole
evil population could be spared for this one man. Many
wonder why Abraham didn't keep going. He was on a role,
and so why not go all the way to one? If God would spare it
for 10, why is the lack of a mere 9 people the cause for their
destruction? Just 9 more people could have spared them all.
There comes a point where that logic has to stop. If Lot
had lived in Sodom all that time and had not won another
person into the kingdom of God, then it was obvious there
was no soil fit to receive the seed. It there had been 10, it
would show signs of growth, and the possibility of that 10
becoming 20, or many more. Where God can see the seed
planted and growing there is always hope. But where there
is no growth it makes more sense to take the righteous out
and destroy the wicked, and that is what God did.
This reveals the importance of growth. If Christians can
just touch a few lives, it holds back the judgment of God.
God will patiently wait as long as He sees any progress.
That is why intercession is not enough. It is not God's will
that all be like Abraham. There has to be people like
Barnabas who befriended people and Andrew who won
people, and Timothy who trained people in order to have
total success. But the Abrahams are vital to the whole plan
of God. May God help us all to improve in the area of the
ministry of intercession.
