Beginnings # 6
"He Remembered Abraham"- Working With God On Behalf of our World
Most Believers want to make a difference in the world of which we are part!
We want to see our friends and family come to know God so they share in our hope of eternal life.
We want to see sick people healed, people with broken lives restored to wholeness.
We want to see hatred replaced with love, don’t we?
We want to see lives that are lived aimlessly without purpose given direction and meaning by God.
We want to see evil defeated and goodness established!
Are those achievable goals, worthy of our investment? Of course they are. Each of these are part of God’s commission given to His followers.
HOW are these aims accomplished? That’s the lesson from Genesis today. I invite you to turn to Genesis 18. We will reading another "Abraham" story this morning: a beautiful lesson about prayer and partnership with God that is written around sordid stories of human sinfulness.
PRAY - Genesis 18:1-2, 16-21
Principle # 1 - God’s work must be done at God’s direction
In this story we learn that God has a plan to bring judgment on the city of Sodom and that He discloses that plan to Abraham, who then has the privilege of being God’s partner in the story as it unfolds in subsequent verses. Based on what God showed him, Abraham was called into a place as an intercessor for the city before God.
One of the most important lessons a effective Christian must learn is that we are not need-driven, we are call-driven! Many is the wonderful plan for doing good works that has failed because it was a noble impulse of the human heart that was not based on the purposes of God. Christian, we are surrounded by need. IF we try to do everything, we won’t do anything well or effectively. The question we must ask ourselves as we see need: "What, if anything, does the Lord God want me to do about this?" When we are operating under His guidance and power, we can move mountains and change our world! When we are operating out of our own strength, even with the best of motives, we will accomplish little of lasting effect!
A couple of weeks ago, I briefly mentioned prayer that slides into presumption. This happens when a person attempts to order God instead of being ordered by God. Presumption is a BIG problem for us!
We Americans have such an exalted sense of self and destiny that gets dragged into our relationship with God. We think that surely since we are so clever, He must respond to our demands.
A few years ago there was a hit movie, Patch Adams. It is the story of an unconventional medical doctor who believes in the power of compassion and humor for healing. He is an idealist whose dream to make the world a better place is very nearly wiped out when his girlfriend, following the idealistic ways he taught her, is murdered by a psychotic man she is attempting to help. Patch is so disillusioned he considers suicide and as he stands on the cliff, he addresses God. His manner is so American and so wrong!
"So answer me, please - tell me what you’re doing... You create man, man suffers enormous amounts of pain, main dies. Maybe you should have had a few more brainstorming sessions prior to Creation. You rested on the 7th day - maybe you should have spent that day working on compassion!"
Patch decides not to jump from the cliff, but tragically turns from God, saying "You’re not worth it!"
Patch Adams was hurting terribly, but he also was in the grip of a terrible conceit - "I know better than God. I could do a better job in ordering the world than He is doing."
Presumptive Christians are not to that extreme, but their lives come from the same reversal of roles. "God, as long I’m doing a good thing, I can crawl out on this limb, and it’s Your obligation to keep me from falling." Not so, friend. IF God sends you out on a limb, He’ll care for you. If you crawl out because YOU think it’s a good idea, you have no right to demand that He keep you safe there!
God proposes to destroy Sodom and calls Abraham in as a partner.
Why Abraham? Was he smarter, taller, or richer than others? Of course not!
Two reasons are given in the text:
1. Abraham is ’graced’ to be God’s friend. God says, "I have chosen him."
2. Abraham will teach others what he learns from God. "He directs his household to keep the way of the Lord."
Does God see that kind of intimacy with Him, that kind of surrender to Him in YOUR life?
Do you walk closely enough with Him that He can share His plans and purposes with your heart?
The result of this kind of relationship is a remarkable difference in our effectiveness as a Spirit-filled Christian in this world!
When you are God’s friend because you’ve received His grace, He will entrust you with His words and plans. You will have the ’inside track.’ No, not for selfish gain as we’ll see from the coming verses, but so that you can enter into meaningful ministry on behalf of the world of which you are a part!
Christian, remember this. You can stand in the same with God that Abraham stood! It’s not a place reserved for patriarchs or people who are smarter, taller, or who have executive style hair!
Through Jesus Christ, we are ALL called to be children of God. By the power of the Spirit of God, we can walk righteously before Him. It isn’t our heritage, our education, our economic resources, or even our personality that provides us with the opportunity to be God’s friend. It is a faith response to His grace and an obedient walk that flows out of on-going faith in His promises.
Genesis 18:22-32 Partners with God recognize God’s justice and mercy and give grace as they have received it.
The account we have just read is an amazing one. What might have been had Abraham pulled himself up to stand tall in righteous pride and said,
"Lord, that’s a great idea. Destroy the sinners in those cities. Their perversions and rebellion againt You are well known. Blow them away with a fiery burst of Your judgment!"
That kind of self-righteous pride is allowed to infect our Christian hearts from time to time. It happens in good, Bible-believing churches. This kind of pride always leads to a failure of mercy!
There is much wrong with our nation, much that distresses those who walk with God.
Sensuality, greed, injustice, godlessness are a flood in our land.
As a nation we are taking the great blessings that came to us as ’a city set on a hill’ and squandering them on lives of ever more self-indulgence.
We export the worst parts of our culture through music and film around the world making many think we are nation of prostitutes, drug lords, and millionaires.
We worship at the altar of good feelings.
We think it is our right to exploit the weak and the poor as we grow richer and more powerful.
Christians we must not stand to the side and wait for God’s destruction, rejoicing in the judgment that will surely come. We must allow mercy and humility to be overtaken by a vengeful spirit.
Abraham could not rejoice in Lot’s pending judgment despite being mistreated and abandoned by his nephew. He had brought Lot to the land of promise. Lot had greatly benefited from Abraham’s kindness, but Lot had moved to Sodom where he had been taken in by the godlessness to such an extent he would not readily leave even in the company of rescuing angels! A lesser man might have felt that he was about to see some divine payback, but not Abraham.
We need a heart like that of Abraham; a heart that goes to the Lord and intercedes for change.
"God, don’t judge yet. For the sake of the righteous, withhold your judgment."
Abraham appeals to God’s justice and mercy.
"Will you sweep away the righteous with the wicked?"
"Will not the Judge of all do right?"
Abraham had experienced the mercy of God himself - first in the call out of Ur and later in times of doubt and sin. He prays with such confidence out of HIS OWN EXPERIENCE! There is no smugness, nor is there any self-righteousness in Abraham’s repeated prayful negotiations with the Lord. He knew the merciful heart of God He appeals the attributes of God that he had experienced for himself.
Do you remember where you were before God found you?
Do you ever think where you might be today if God’s gracious mercy had not been extended to you?
Let your experience of His mercy shape your prayers for this world, for those who are enemies of God, and for those who wrongly treat you!
Woven into his dialogue is a deep humility and respect. Yet, there is a passion for people that compels him to press God. He prays that God will spare Sodom and, by inference, his nephew despite their differences and problems!
Does that same kind of passion for people lost in sin and disobedience grip you this morning?
Do you weep for those who are caught up in sin or do you hope for their destruction?
Do you beg God to save pornographers and abortionists or do you eagerly anticipate his judgment on them?
Do you pray for God to turn the heart of that one in your family who is mean, or selfish, or greedy; or do you just wait for them to taste the bitterness that will surely come their way in due time?
Jesus did not call us the "whips" of the earth. He didn’t tell us that we were to assume the seat of judge and jury, pronouncing curses on the sinners that bring sorrow or misery into our lives. He didn’t tell us to rain the curses of Hell on those who ignore the Lord. He called us, "salt and light." We are to be the preservative that keeps a corrupt world from going totally bad and the beacon of hope that shines in dark places to turn hearts back to God.
Tucked into 18.33 is a truth we need to hear again and again.... Gen. 18:33 When the LORD had finished speaking with Abraham, he left, and Abraham returned home.
God was in charge of this conversation!
Do you allow God to lead your prayers? Eugene Peterson writes: "Neither a manipulative control nor a listless passivity is an appropriate model for prayer... Prayer takes the middle voice. In grammar the active voice is when we take action, the passive voice when we receive the action of another, but in the middle voice we both act and are acted upon. We participate in the formation of the action and reap the benefit.... we neither manipulate God or are manipulated by God. We are involved in the action and participate in its results, but we do not control or define it." (As quoted in Prayer, Richard Foster, Harper Collins)
Prayer is a mystery never fully explained.
Why does an all-wise God seek our petitions?
How can our intercessions change the fate of nations when the plans of God have been declared?
Those questions defy complete answers, but we know we are to pray. We observe in our story that Abraham engaged in a long dialogue with God, but it was God who started the prayer and who ended it! In the book of the Romans we are told: 8:26-27 NLT
And the Holy Spirit helps us in our distress. For we don’t even know what we should pray for, nor how we should pray. But the Holy Spirit prays for us with groanings that cannot be expressed in words. And the Father who knows all hearts knows what the Spirit is saying, for the Spirit pleads for us believers in harmony with God’s own will.
What joy to enter a conversation with God that is guided by Him, that is - in the end- an expression of His will. May we all pray in such manner!
There is no doubt about the efficacy of Abraham’s prayer.
Genesis 19: 29 - So when God destroyed the cities of the plain, he remembered Abraham, and he brought Lot out of the catastrophe that overthrew the cities where Lot had lived.
Sodom was not spared judgment but Lot escaped because God heard Abraham’s entreaty.
In Heaven, wouldn’t it be wonderful to learn that someone was drawn out of the path of God’s judgment because God remembered YOUR prayers? Again, it is a mystery. But we cannot ignore the principle that the Scripture repeats time after time after time. Prayer makes a difference!
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If we are walking with God as Abraham did, we too are His friends. Jesus promised us that, as friends of God, we will know the purposes of God and become His partners in His work. In John 15:15 He says: "I no longer call you servants, because a servant does not know his master’s business. Instead, I have called you friends, for everything that I learned from my Father I have made known to you."
The delusion that grips those who do not know God is that life goes on, that there is no judgment. Believers know better than that! Our Father tells us that He will bring all things to an end and that there will be a day of judgment. Our prayers will not make judgment go away. God’s justice ultimately demands it. But, our prayer and faithful obedience to God, can draw many from the city of sin before the hand of God brings its demise.
May we make ourselves available to pray with fervor for the sinful that they may be drawn out of the path of destruction, turned to salvation. May we seek to be the righteous remnant that averts the judgment of God for this time as we implore God for mercy.
May it be said of us, God remembered. Amen.
Jerry D. Scott © 2003
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