I'm going to read this chapter in its entirety. Our text is verses 16-33. I'll read the whole chapter that we might get a sense of the context in which these words of 16-33 are given. hear God's inspired and infallible word. Now, the Lord appeared to him, that is, Abraham, by the oaks of Mamre, while he was sitting at the tent door in the heat of the day. And when he lifted up his eyes and looked, behold, three men were standing opposite him. And when he saw them, he ran from the tent door to meet them and bowed himself to the earth. and said, My Lord, if I now have found favor in your sight, please do not pass your servant by. Please let a little water be brought and wash your feet and rest yourself under the tree and I will bring you a piece of bread that you may refresh yourself. After that, you may go on since you have visited your servants and they said. So do, as you have said, and Abraham hurried into the tent to Sarah and said quickly, prepare three measures of fine flour, knead it and make bread cakes. Abraham also ran to the herd and took a tender and choice calf and gave it to the servant, and he hurried to prepare it. And he took curds and milk and the calf which he had prepared and placed it before them, and he was standing by them under the tree as they ate. And they said to him, Where is Sarah, your wife? And he said, Behold, in the And he said, I will surely return to you at this time next year. And behold, Sarah, your wife, shall have a son. And Sarah was listening at the tent door, which was behind him. Now, Abraham and Sarah were old, advanced in age. Sarah was past childbearing and Sarah laughed to herself, saying, After I have become old, shall I have pleasure, my Lord, being old also? And the Lord said to Abraham, Why did Sarah laugh, saying, Shall I indeed bear a child, when I am so old? Is anything too difficult for the Lord? At the appointed time I will return to you at this time next year, and Sarah shall have a son. Sarah denied it, however, saying, I did not laugh, for she was afraid. And he said, No, but you did laugh. Then the men rose up from there and looked down toward Sodom, and Abraham was walking with them to send them off. And the Lord said, Shall I hide from Abraham what I am about to do? For Abraham will surely become a great and mighty nation, and in him all the nations of the earth will be blessed. For I have chosen him or literally, I have known him in order that he may command his children and his household after him to keep the way of the Lord by doing righteousness and justice in order that he may bring that the Lord may bring upon Abraham what he has spoken about him and the Lord said the outcry of Sodom and Gomorrah is indeed great and their sin is exceedingly great. I will go down now and see if they have done entirely according to its outcry which has come to me, and if not, I will know." Then the men turned away from there and went toward Sodom while Abraham was still standing before the Lord. And Abraham came near and said, Will you indeed sweep away the righteous with the wicked? Suppose there are fifty righteous within the city where you indeed sweep it away and not spare the place for the sake of the fifty righteous who are in it. Far be it from you to do such a thing to slay the righteous with the wicked so that the righteous and the wicked are treated alike. Far be it from you. Shall not the judge of the earth deal justly? So the Lord said. If I find in Sodom fifty righteous within the city, then I will spare the whole place on their account." And Abraham answered and said, Now behold, I have ventured to speak to the Lord, although I am but dust and ashes. Suppose the fifty righteous are lacking five. Will you destroy the whole city because of five? And he said, I will not destroy if I find forty five there. He spoke to him yet again and said, suppose 40 are found there. And he said, I will not do it on account of 40. And he said, oh, may the Lord not be angry. And I shall speak, suppose 30 are found there. And he said, I will not do it if I find thirty there. And he said, Now, behold, I venture to speak, O Lord. Suppose twenty are found there, and he said, I will not destroy it on account of the twenty. Then he said, Oh, may the Lord not be angry. And I shall speak only this once. Suppose ten. Are found there. And he said. I will not destroy it on the count of the ten." And as he finished speaking to Abraham, the Lord departed and Abraham returned to his place. May God bless this reading of His word to our ears and let us go once again before His throne to seek His blessing upon its preaching. Father of glory, God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, we seek your faith now for your illuminating light upon this passage of Scripture. O Lord God, what a great testimony it is to us of your mercy, of your justice, and of the importance of intercessory prayer. We pray, our God, that you would make us mindful of your glorious attributes shown forth in strength here, and that you would teach us the lessons that you would have us to learn. Send the Spirit in great measure now. Harness our wondering Bring us, O Lord, into the heavenly heights that we might gain a new and fresh perspective on your will for us and your holy ways. Hear us, O God, for we pray in Jesus' name. Amen. In Thomas Dick's Philosophy of a Future State, the book that the Lord used to convert David Livingston, missionary to Africa, there is a beautiful prayer made by a Mrs. Shepherd, lady of Somerset Shire, for the conversion of Lord Byron regarded as one of England's greatest poets, but whose fame was also due to his extravagant living and allegations of incest and sodomy. He was famously described by Lady Caroline Lamb as mad, bad and dangerous to know. In Mrs. Shepherd's prayer recorded in Dick's work, she referred to him as one as much distinguished for his neglect of God as for the transcendent talents that God had bestowed upon him. She prayed that he might be awakened to a sense of his danger and led to seek peace and forgiveness in Christ. After the woman's death, her husband forwarded this prayer to Lord Byron. He responded, I can assure you that not all the fame which ever cheated humanity into higher notions of its own importance would ever weigh my mind against the pure, pious which a virtuous being may be pleased to take in my behalf." In this point of view, he wrote, I would not exchange the prayer of the deceased in my behalf for the united glory of Homer, Caesar and Napoleon. Lady Shepherd's prayer for Lord Byron highlights for us the importance of intercessory prayer and prayer for even the most wicked of men, even the wicked men of Sodom and Gomorrah. Abraham's prayer for Sodom serves as an example of the importance and the privilege intercessory prayer. It stands as one of the finest examples in the Bible of intercessory prayer. As we come to this prayer, I want to look at it even as the chapter divisions fall naturally. First, The Lord's initiative in this intercessory prayer of Abraham for Sodom and verses 16 through 21 and then. Abraham's prayer itself for Sodom and for. Any righteous who might be there, including, of course, of great interest to this patriarch, his nephew lot. In the first place, I want you to notice that God is the initiator. We should expect this. He's a sovereign God. He is the one who initiates salvation in us. If not for that initiative on God's part, we would be helpless and hopeless. In our sinful estate, if God had not seen fit to bridge that great chasm between man and himself by his gracious covenant, then there would be no hope for us whatsoever. And so we see also that God is the initiator in this intercessory prayer that Abraham made. He made the first move. He decided to reveal to Abraham what he was going to do in Sodom, and that prompted Abraham then to pray. The Lord is the one who, after the two angels, continue on to Sodom to do the Lord's business. The Lord is the one who is standing and waiting as Abraham presents his plea, and it is the Lord who determines when this intercessory prayer will end, as we see in verse 33. And as soon as he had finished speaking to Abraham, the Lord departed and Abraham returned to his place. But I want to focus our attention in terms of this initiative on God's part on this deliberation that took place, this divine deliberation concerning which Matthew Henry writes that God was pleased to argue with himself. We, as readers of this portion of the book of Genesis, get something of an insight into the divine deliberation of the Holy One. And he says, shall I keep what I'm going to do in Sodom from this patriarch whom I myself have raised up to accomplish my purposes. God was determined that he would invite Abraham into the divine council. Now, when we argue with ourselves, whether verbally or non-verbally, and you don't have to be ashamed if you talk to yourself and argue with yourself, you don't have to think that you're insane. I do it all the time. I argue with myself. Should I do this thing? Should I not do this thing? When we do that, it's because we're in a quandary as to what we ought to do. But God does not argue with himself because he's in a quandary. He argues with himself and records it through the inspiration of Moses' pen in order that we might gain insight as to the reason why he has so revealed his plan to Abraham. And those reasons are twofold. In the first place, it was for Abraham's sake. It was for the sake of this great patriarch, the one with whom he had made covenant. Verse 18 says. We back up into 17, shall I hide from Abraham? What am I going? What I'm going about to do since Abraham will surely become a great nation. a mighty nation, and in him all the nations of the earth will be blessed, for I have chosen him," the New American Standard reads. Literally, and I think a better rendering for this particular word is not rendered chosen anywhere else in Genesis. It's hard to find any place in the Bible where this word which literally rendered means know or known should be translated like this. Why is it that God had chosen to reveal his plan to Abraham? Because I have known him, God says. Because I have entered into this intimate relationship with Abraham. Because Abraham... God was pleased to know Abraham as a friend. This text is the basis upon which the prophet Isaiah and the chronicler of the Old Testament can call Abraham a friend of God. It speaks of the intimacy of the covenant, the covenant of grace, by means of which God enters into this relationship with man. That is the first reason why God reveals this plan. The second reason is for Abraham's posterity. Notice what he goes on to say here in verse 18. Or rather, verse 19, for I have known him in order that I may command his children and his household after him to keep the way of the Lord by doing righteousness and justice in order that the Lord may bring upon Abraham what he has spoken about him. He did so. In order that his plans through Abraham might be accomplished in his posterity. And that he might bring upon Abraham all of the blessings which he is promised all of those things previously spoken. To Abraham by Yahweh, when he made covenant with him, the promise of an heir to the covenant, the promise that he would become a great nation, the promise of the land, all these things which are typological of the great blessings of the covenant of grace fulfilled in the Lord Jesus Christ. The privileges that belong to Abraham. The very reasons that God revealed his plan to him and prompted him to enter into this intercessory prayer for Sodom and God's righteous there are the very privileges that you and I enjoy as children of Abraham, as those who are of the faith of Abraham. God enters into this intimacy with each one of you. so that you are called a friend of God. Not an enemy, but a friend. And it is to the righteous, it is to His friends, that God reveals the nature of His judgment. It is God's covenant children who are enabled to understand His judgment upon the wicked. It's upon those covenant children that God shed light so that they might see the coming judgment that's going to come upon the wicked, the very judgment that we spoke of this morning. And to flee from the wrath to come and walk upon the paths of righteousness in the light that the Lord provides for his children. He holds the torch of his word over the path of escape, so that like Righteous Lot and his family who left the destruction of that city, we might also be spared from the destruction that shall be that shall come upon the city of man here upon earth. Now, you see, this is what prompted Abraham to enter into this intercession, the fact that God had revealed to him what he was going to do in Sodom. Our text goes on and the Lord said the outcry of Sodom, this is the Lord Unveiling before Abraham, his friend. As one who is privy to God's ways and his judgments upon the wicked unveiling before him the plan that he's about to undertake against the city of Sodom, the outcry of Sodom and Gomorrah is indeed great and their sin is exceedingly grave. I will go down now. And see. that they have done entirely according to the outcry which has come to me, and it's not. I will know. This brings us then to our second point in the major part of our text. In Abraham's intercession for Sodom, and I want to look at this prayer. Under five headings in the first place, the scope of Abraham's prayer. He begins with a prayer, verse 23, that the righteous among them might be spared. Will you indeed sweep away the righteous with the wicked? But notice that while he begins with the righteous, the prayer progresses to include even the wicked Of that city, verse 24, suppose there are 50 righteous within the city. Will you indeed sweep it away and not spare? And we might read this the whole place, the whole city. For the sake of the 50 righteous. Who are in it? So we see by way of application, then under this first point that we must learn to pray not only for ourselves, for we notice that Abraham prays for all of the righteous of that city, whomever they might be. Now, we know who he had his eye on. We know that the very one that he had rescued from those five kings, his nephew was his greatest concern. Yet he prays not only for Lot, he doesn't restrict himself to his nephew, but rather he prays for all of the righteous. But furthermore, we must see that it's our duty as believers to pray for the wicked, even the most despicable wicked men and women of the world. Even the Lord Byron's of the world are to be objects of our intercessory prayer. We must learn to plead for the lost that many, even among the most despicable men and women of the earth might be brought into the full. And become. Worshippers of the true and living God. But notice, secondly, the ground of his prayer. He first appeals to God's justice. First, twenty five. Far be it from you to do such a thing to slay the righteous with the wicked so that the righteous and the wicked are treated alike, far be it from you, shall not the judge of all the earth deal justly." God is a just God. Righteousness and justice are the foundation of His throne, the psalmist says. And so Abraham takes the character of God and he pleads that character. It forms the basis of his intercession for the righteous. of Sodom, whomever they might be. Furthermore, he appeals to God's mercy. He knows that God is patient. He knows that God is long-suffering, and so he appeals to God that for the sake of the righteous, he might overlook for the moment the wickedness of that horrid city of the Sodomites, that there might be those spared indeed who might come to the true knowledge of God. As Abraham prays, he discovers that who is both merciful and just. We read in God's answer, verse 26, If I find in Sodom fifty righteous within them, I will spare the whole place, the whole city, on their account. I will not, God says, act against my righteous character. I will indeed spare this place. I will have mercy Thirdly, we want to note the posture of his prayer. Now, we have noted that even though God has appeared to Abraham many times, that these appearings have not become so familiar to Abraham that they have bred contempt for the God who appears to him. And so when when God appears to him, He falls down in his face. He shows proper reverence to Yahweh. And so it is as he comes in this posture of prayer, he shows the proper humility before God. Notice in the first place that as these men turned away from there and went towards Sodom, that Abraham was still standing before the Lord. And it says, Moses writes, that Abraham came near. and began to pray. He came near to God. He drew near to him. And as God will later reveal, after the death of Nadab and Abihu for offering strange fire before God, by those who draw near to me, God says, I will be regarded as holy. And so, Abraham comes, he draws near with reverence to God, and then notice the humility that he shows before the Lord. Verse 27, And Abraham answered and said, Now, behold, I have ventured to speak to the Lord, although I am but dust and ashes. And as he shows that humility, so he shows a proper fear of the God to whom he prays. He realizes that in his intercession for the land of Sodom, in his strivings with the Lord, that he needs to be careful. And so he says, verse 30, Oh, May the Lord not be angry and I shall speak. Suppose 30 are found there. And the Lord says, I might do it if I find 30. Verse 31. Now, behold, I venture to speak to the Lord. Notice how carefully he is he's approaching God, and then finally, in verse 32, he says, oh, may the Lord not be angry. He realizes that he is perhaps exhausting the patience of the one whom, before whom he's bringing these pleas, and he says, Oh, may the Lord not be angry, and I shall only speak just one more time. Please, Lord, listen to my prayer and grant this one last plea. As you come near to God, you do well to acknowledge the vast distance that there is between you on earth and your God, who is in heaven. Our God is an infinitely holy God, and we dare not, even in such strivings as these, even our wrestlings with Him, We dare not approach him irreverently. We dare not approach him arrogantly. We dare not make demands before him. But rather, as this patriarch, we must learn to come with great humility and great reverence and great fear before our God. But then, fourthly, notice the boldness of this prayer. Like one of his descendants whom we know well for his wrestlings with God, Abraham wrestles with the Lord. Before our gaze are enfolded the details of a plea that stands without parallel in biblical revelation. Never has a mortal man prayed like this. What a tremendous example this is to us, and thank God that he's given us such examples in Scripture that we might not be timid in our approach to him. Now, we read this prayer and we stand back and we kind of chuckle at what Abraham does. It would be easy to say that his prayer comes close to haggling with God, but a better word is exploring, searching out the Lord, grappling with the Almighty as to what he might be pleased to do in response to this prayer. Notice that he took the liberty to ask on behalf of a certain number, beginning at 50. And at every point that God grants him a confession, he brings that number lower to 45, and then to 40, and then to 30, and then to 10. He must have thought, surely there are 10 righteous souls in Sodom. And so he goes as low as he dare go. And God is gracious at each gradation of his prayer to grant his request. That's our fifth point, the answer to his prayer. Every time Abraham was bold to bring this specific request before the Lord. God says, I'll do it. I will do it on account of 50. If there are 45 in Sodom, righteous before me, I will spare the righteous and the whole city on account of them. I'll do it, God says, on account of 40 or 30 or 10. Every step of the way, God is gracious And we notice that God answered him exceedingly and abundantly beyond all that he asked or thought. For you know from this account that he never made it to one. And that's all there was. One righteous man. Righteous lot. Patriarch never got that far. He never got down in his countdown to one. And yet, what does God do in his grace? Not only does he spare lots. But he spared his wife and then she if she had not been foolish and disregarding the instructions that God had clearly given. She would have escaped along with. Lot's daughters. And if his sons in law had not foolishly disregarded the warning that lot gave them from the mouth of the Lord himself. And they would have escaped to. What a gracious. And merciful God. We have who answers our requests. You see, we pray. And we in our timidity, I'm afraid, aren't quite as bold as the patriarch is. But our God answers, and he does far beyond all that we ask or think, because he is a merciful, a just, and a gracious God. As we conclude this text I want to highlight two matters of application. In the first place, the importance of intercessory prayer, and in the second place, the great privilege of intercessory prayer. In the first place, then, the example of Abraham's prayer serves to highlight the importance of interceding both for the righteous and for the wicked. Sodom was a city in great moral declension, not unlike the country in which we live. The patriarch steps into the gap and pleads for that city and any righteous that might be found in it. And so we, too, are called to step into the gap and intercede for our nation, for our state, for our city, that God might be pleased to show mercy to a nation that is on the highway to hell itself. Now, there are many examples of the importance of intercessory prayer. The Bible abounds with examples. I want to point you to two, one of which is an example of intercession and one of which. Is a type of Christ intercession, I believe, both in the book of Numbers, you would have read these passages if you're reading through McShane's reading calendar. The first example is Moses, as he pleads for the people after the report from the spy. that came into the land and after the grumbling that began to take place. You remember that report? Joshua and Caleb were alone in their good reports. The rest of the spies brought bad news. There were giants in the lands. Israel could not possibly prevail in that land. And the people, Numbers 14, began to grumble. They rebelled. against God. They lifted up their voices, Numbers 14, 1, and cried and wept that night. And all the sons of Israel grumbled against Moses and Aaron. And the whole congregation said to them, would that we had died in the land of Egypt or that we had died in this wilderness. And God becomes angry with his children. And in verse 11, we see an intercessory prayer taken up. by Moses. How long, the Lord said to Moses, will these people spurn me and how long will they not believe in me, despite all the signs in their midst? I will smite them with a pestilence and will dispossess them and will make you into a greater nation and mightier than they. But Moses said to the Lord, then the Egyptians will hear And for by your strength, you brought them up, this people up from their midst, from the midst of Egypt, and they will tell it to the inhabitants of this land. And they've heard that you, O Lord, are in the midst of this people for you, O Lord, have seen eye to eye while the cloud stands over them. And you go before them in a pillar of cloud by day and a pillar of fire by night now. If you slay these people as one man, then the nations who have heard of your fame will say because the Lord could not bring these people into the land which he promised by an oath. Therefore, he slaughtered them in the wilderness. But now I pray. Let the power of the Lord be great, just as you have declared and notice what he does. He pleads. The character of God. before the throne. The Lord is slow to anger, abundant in loving kindness, forgiving iniquity and transgression, but he will by no means clear the guilty. Pardon, I pray, the iniquity of this people according to the greatness of your loving kindness, just as you have forgiven this people from Egypt even until now. So the Lord said, I have pardon them and notice carefully according to your word." What does that mean? It means that from all eternity, God had decreed that on behalf of the people of Israel, Moses would make this plea And that as a part of that decree, God would spare the people at that moment because of the intercessory prayer that Moses offered on their behalf. Now, that's a remarkable thing. I realize it's difficult when we delve into the decrees of God. But this is a remarkable thing. illustrated for us in this prayer that Moses makes on behalf of the people of Israel. God has ordained that prayer should move His very throne. God has ordained that prayer should influence the very decisions that He makes as the sovereign God. No, it's not as though that God is our puppet. It's not as though he is our pawn and we are moving him wherever we desire. No, not at all. As I said, God decrees that we pray. And God decrees that as a result of that prayer. He'll take action. That's incredible. I'm a more remarkable illustration of the power of prayer. I don't think we can find in all the Bible. Because of Moses word. The Lord said. That he had pardoned them. I'm going to skip over that next illustration, although I think it's a great one. I just mentioned it briefly because we're getting on into the evening here. It has to do with Aaron's actions at Moses' urging in Numbers 16, after Korah's rebellion, when Dathan and Abiram and Korah's families, when the earth opened up and swallowed them, and the people came to Moses and Aaron and said, you're the one that's caused all this. They begin to grumble again. That was the pattern in Israel in the wilderness. They grumbled at their leaders and at. Moses urging Aaron goes and takes some incense. From the fire that burned that was to burn continually ran to the midst of the assembly and he put incense to make atonement for the people as Moses had urged him to do, and verse 48 says that he took his stand between the dead and the living, so that the plague was checked that God had intended to bring upon the people. Aaron, the priest, took his stand between the dead and the living, so that the plague might be checked. This is an action that didn't involve intercessory prayer. Nevertheless, it's typological of the stand that the Lord Jesus takes between us and the wrath of God due to us for sin. Our great high priest, after the order of Melchizedek, takes his stand between us and God and the great plague of his wrath. is checked. We have an intercessor as an example for us, the Lord Jesus Christ. That brings us then to our second and final point of application as we conclude, and that is the privilege of intercessory prayer. We said that what God did in essence was to invite Abraham into the very divine council Now, I've already intimated that that's what God does in our case as well. We are children of Abraham. We are of the faith of Abraham. But I want to point out to you. What God has done. On our behalf, through Christ, to make possible this privilege of intercession, you remember. That on that great and terrible day, when our Lord was nailed to the cross, after he had given up his spirit and uttered those last words, that the veil that separated the holy of holies from the holy place was torn in two. Prior to that, only the high priest could venture into the holy place. Only the high priest had that kind of access to God. But in the death of Christ, God has made a way for us, as his children, into the very throne room of heaven. And so, taking this privilege in and knowing what we know about our Savior, we may come boldly and we may come with great confidence before the throne of grace and do what Abraham did, wrestle with God, strive with God, both for the righteous the unrighteous for our nation and the nations of the world. Now, I think sometimes the thought creeps into our minds that if we don't take up this important duty and privilege, that somebody else will. If we don't, God will get things done anyway. And my prayer is only among a sea of prayers, and maybe it's not important after all. But I remind you in conclusion that God has decreed that we pray. And so when, as friends of God, in the intimacy of the covenant, he moves us. pray. Brothers and sisters, we ought to pray. Take advantage of this great privilege and duty of intercessory prayer. Let's go to God now and ask him to be gracious to us in that regard. Our Father, we confess to you that we do not see the great necessity, the great importance and the great privilege that you have given us to intercede. And so we pray that you would wake us up in our laziness, that you would forgive our prayerlessness, and that you would cause us, O Lord, to be faithful in the duty of intercessory prayer. Teach us, O God, to be wrestling Jacobs. Teach us to be wrestling Abrahams, to come into the council into which we have been admitted by the Lord Jesus Christ and His finished work on the cross and plead our requests before the throne of grace. Help us, O God. Help us in our unbelief, help us in our prayerlessness, but be gracious and merciful to us, O Lord, and move in us and cause us to be great men and women of prayer. We ask in Christ's name. Amen.