There is a or there was a TV series. I can't remember the name of it, and I never did actually watch a whole show of it. But in it, the star would receiving a newspaper somehow with headlines about some kind of tragedy to take place in the near future. So his task then was to intercede in time to prevent that tragedy from occurring. Abraham had such an experience. We're told that one day God stopped by for dinner. And as he was leaving, he told Abraham where he was going next. He was going down the valley to visit Sodom and Gomorrah, not to have a fun night out, but to verify that their evil merits judgment. Abraham knew those cities and he knew what awaited them. And it would have to be annihilation. Justice could bring no less. And so the action that Abraham chose became then the first recorded intercession in the Bible. And it presents us with the first of the prayers of the Old Testament saints that we will be examining this summer. Now, our text picks up with God turning to leave. Look with me in verse 22. So the men turned from there and went towards Sodom, but Abraham still stood before the Lord. And 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? Now what you see here, how Abraham sets the terms for the concern that he's presenting before God. Should the righteous fare as the wicked? And this is not a question of whether the righteous must face the same general trials of life as the wicked, but rather are they the face that same judgment of destruction as the wicked? Again, as he says to God, will you, will you need to sweep away the righteous with the wicked? Will you put the righteous to death with the wicked? And so the issue for Abraham is justice, or at least it appears that way. Again, as he says, shall not the judge of all the earth do what is just. I think you would agree this is a rather bold statement from Abraham. He is, after all, as he himself concedes, he's but dust and ashes. And who does he think he is to question the justice of God? You know, Abraham's not asking a question, you know, he's sort of perplexed and he's he's asking a question that he might be instructed. Now, he is instructing God. You know, I wish I could have been there for Abraham, I could have advised him, you know, Father Abraham, you really don't want to go there. A sinful man questioning the holy God. This is not a good situation. Now, Isaiah could have given good caution. Because Abraham, if you had seen what I saw in the temple, the holiness of God unveiled, you would know better than to suggest that God could learn something from you about justice. For you are an unclean person with unclean lips. And indeed, should God not have answered Abraham as he did, for example, Job? You know, when Joe questioned God's judgment, God said, Who is this that darkens counsel by words without knowledge? And we know the Apostle Paul's view on this matter of questioning God's justice. He says in Romans nine, What shall we say then? Is there injustice on God's part? By no means, for he says to Moses, I will have mercy on whom I have mercy. And I will have compassion in whom I have compassion. Indeed, Paul goes on a few verses to say later, who are you, oh man, to answer back to God? And yet the sovereign Lord replies to Abraham. OK. Look in verse 26, and the Lord said. If I find it Sodom 50 righteous in the city, I will spare the whole place for their sake. Now, God's unexpected answer emboldens Abraham, maybe to try to keep whittling that number down, and we can see that he's he's nervous about pushing too far, but yet he's anxious to go as far as he would dare. And so he says in verse twenty seven, behold, I've undertaken to speak to the Lord, I who am but dust and ashes and then verse 30, oh, oh, let not the Lord be angry and and I will speak. Verse 32, oh, oh, let not the Lord be angry and I will I'll speak again. But but just this once. Now, Abraham must be thinking, you know, I can't believe it. He let me knock the number down to 40. Could I try 30? Well, this is unbelievable. I'm still alive and he is yet to get mad. Twenty, we took it. Now, I must be so close to crossing the line, but I'll try one more time. Ten. He he took it. I better stop while I can. And besides, surely, surely there must be 10 righteous. I mean, there's my nephew lot. And certainly he must have some influence with his family and neighbors. Now, let's ask this question, why did God not get angry with Abraham and and why this numbers game? You know, why didn't Abraham simply say to God in the first place, look, God, if there are some righteous, will you not spare the city and just just leave it at that? And why did God himself not get immediately to the bottom line? Abraham, I will judge myself what the number will be. So I want us to think about this, this numbers game. Would you consider how remember how Abraham had couched the issue of sparing Sodom in terms of justice rather than of mercy? He never says that he's concerned about the fate of the wicked. He doesn't contend that Sodom is not deserving of destruction. There is no call on his part for mercy. He says he wants justice and he wants justice for the righteous. So even though then that the term is righteous, it's not the innocent. There's no plea for mercy toward, say, the innocent babies or the oppressed is only expressed, concerned is for the righteous. And by the way, before I go further, I need to say, Abraham knows the dangerous ground he is treading. He certainly would not have needed my counsel and not even Isaiah's to grasp the holiness of God. If you remember, he had his own kind of coming in the presence of God experience back in chapter 15, which depicts that all filled scene where God seals his covenant with Abraham by passing through slain animals that that the Lord had had Abraham prepare. And so we're told in Genesis 15, verse 12, as the sun was going down, a deep sleep fell on Abram. And behold, dreadful and great darkness fell upon him. And then verse 17, when the sun had gone down and it was dark, behold, smoking fire pot and a flaming torch passed between these pieces. Abraham knew who he was dealing with. And I would say that that is why he took the tactic to appeal to God's justice in order to obtain his mercy. In other words, whatever Abraham had to say about preserving justice, what he really wanted was mercy. Abraham did not want destruction to come. If his concern really was a matter of saving the righteous, He could have skipped this playing of the numbers when he had made that case that the righteous should not fare as the wicked. After all, numbers are besides the point when it comes to what is right and wrong. It's not OK to kill some righteous people, at least when it can be avoided. And surely Abraham did not stop at 10 thinking, well, nine righteous people dying, that's OK. And indeed, If saving the righteous were all that Abraham truly cared about, he could have asked God to do what the Lord eventually did, and that is delivered the righteous out of the wicked city and thus from destruction. But Abraham, again, is asking that there be no destruction at all. Now, he shows his hand when he starts whittling down the numbers, and it's clear why he keeps whittling down those numbers. He doesn't think God's going to find very many righteous people. So why not directly appeal to God's mercy? I mean, others do that in their prayers. Well, the answer lies in verses 20 to 21. There, God says, 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. God tells Abraham that he will be determining that Sodom and Gomorrah deserves destruction for their sins. In other words, the time of God's patience has come to an end. He has been merciful for many years, allowing the city to exist. But now he has determined that it is time for judgment to come, and Abraham understands this. It is too late to appeal to mercy, to the judge of all the earth. And so any chance he is going to have, at least in the way that he's thinking, it is to appeal to justice. Now, again, then I want to ask this question. Why doesn't God get angry with Abraham, why does he suffer Abraham's impertinence? God did not ask Abraham's counsel. And yet we are told that the Lord did bother to tell Abraham what he was doing, and he even says why. It's in verses 17 and 19. Shall I hide from Abraham what I am about to do, seeing that Abraham has 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 commend his children in 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. And so the Lord confides in Abraham because, well, because Abraham is his friend whom he has chosen to bless and to become a blessing. As Jesus explained to his own disciples in John chapter 15, No longer do I call you servants, for the servant does not know what his master is doing. But I have called you friends for all that I have heard from my father, I have made known to you. So, all right, then, Abraham is God's friend. But even friends can overstep their boundaries, and surely Abraham must have. And that God is as is as agreeable as one can be in his response. Now, what gives? Well, I like John Calvin's answer to this is what he has to say. I answer that the sense of humanity by which Abraham was moved was pleasing to God. There's no wonder that he is terrified at the destruction of so great a multitude. He sees men created after the image of God. He persuades himself that in that immense crowd, there were at least a few who were upright or were not altogether unjust and abandoned the wickedness. He therefore alleges before God what he thinks available to procure their forgiveness. God is pleased that Abraham grieves for his fellow man. He's not like James and John, Jesus' disciples, you remember, who were quick to ask God to rain fire on a Samaritan town because the citizens were not welcoming. Nor is he like Jonah, angry with God for being merciful to a heathen city. Now, Abraham is more like Christ who wept for the coming destruction of Jerusalem. And so Abraham does what he can do, he intercedes in his in his bundling way. trying to reason with God, who neither seeks nor needs human counsel. Yes, God is pleased that his chosen friend, like himself, does not delight in the death of the wicked. As God says in Ezekiel 18, have I any pleasure in the death of the wicked, declares the Lord God, and not rather that he should turn from his way and live. As God is pleased and he accepts Abraham's simplistic effort at reasoning with the Almighty God, for after all, Abraham does approach God humbly. He isn't really questioning God's justice is is really job was bordered on doing. He wasn't doing it in the way that the questioners to whom Paul was addressing himself in Romans really believing that God is unjust. Abraham was not raving against God. Rather, he is meekly pleading with the sovereign God. The sovereign God who has demonstrated wondrous grace to him in making and sealing a covenant. Now, we know the end of the story, we know what happened, and it is poignantly rendered in chapter 19 and verses 27 and 28. Abraham went early in the morning to the place where he had stood before the Lord. And he looked down towards Sodom and Gomorrah and toward all the land of the valley. And he looked and behold, the smoke of the land went up like the smoke of a furnace. What Abraham saw was that his intercession had failed. And yet it couldn't be said that God failed to keep his promise and in truth, Abraham stopped short of the number of righteous who were available. One. But Sodom and Gomorrah did not fall because Abraham wasn't savvy enough or God found a loophole. They were destroyed for their sins and at the time of judgment had come. But even so, Abraham actually had succeeded in a way that he did not know. For it goes on to say, so it was that when God destroyed the cities of the valley, God remembered Abraham. and sent Lot out of the midst of the overthrown when he overthrew the cities in which Lot had lived. Now, would Lot have been caught in the destruction without Abraham's intercession? Well, I think that is what scripture indicates, for it tells us that God remembered not Lot, but Abraham. And so Abraham was heard and answered in a way that he did not know on that fateful morning. Now, what can we take away from this first intercession that's recorded in the Bible? Well, for one thing, we can learn that it is pleasing to God that we intercede for the world, that we should pray for our communities, for our city and other cities, indeed, for the whole world. For understand this, like Abraham, we know that the day of judgment is coming. And there may be days of temporal judgment to come in certain areas, where and when, we do not know. But full and final judgment will come to the whole earth. So intercede now. Intercede now while there is time for the wicked. The destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah is a warning to the world, a warning that the world ignores. And so we who do heed such warnings in God's word, then we must be the ones to intercede. Indeed, who else can intercede? We are the children of Abraham. We are the ones who belong to God's covenant mediated by Jesus Christ. In Christ, we are the ones who are adopted as children of God. And in Christ, we may come before God, the Father, and be heard. Now, how do we do so? How are we to pray? Well, Abraham sets the pattern for us. We're to pray humbly like Abraham, acknowledging who God is. He's the judge of all the earth, who we are, dust and ashes. Abraham was not presumptuous before God. He didn't say now, Sovereign Lord, you remember, you made a covenant with me and you said you were going to, through me, bless the nations. Well, I think it's time to ante up. And yet at times we say such a thing to God. We'll say something like this, God, I've given up a lot for you. And you promised me blessings. You owe me. And we may be created in the image of God and we are created as new creatures in Jesus Christ, but we're to remember. We are still humans entangled with sin, and as our bodies will someday prove, we are but dust and ashes who stand before the eternal, holy, almighty God. Pray humbly. Pray humbly, but ardently. Reasoning with God, pleading with him, going as far as you would dare, stretching your faith as much as you can. Some commentators are a bit embarrassed by what they do consider to be presumptuous behavior by Abraham. We really know, daring to instruct God about justice. Trying to actually kind of work him down to to Abraham's conditions. But again, God, far from being perturbed, he's agreeable. And I think God was pleased that Abraham was was so moved. I think he liked Abraham daring to ask for more, daring to push the limits beyond his own comfort zone, as Abraham did. I think he likes the child of his being honest in his passion. At times, people will ask me if it's all right to get mad with God. And my response always is to direct them to the Psalms, where they will find all the gamut of emotions. They'll find anger and unabated joy. They'll find despair, confusion, and childlike faith and courageous trust. It's not right to accuse God of being unjust. It's not right to accuse him of doing wrong. But know this, that our heavenly father is more than willing to hear the honest cries of his children. To know what is going on in our hearts, Christianity is a religion in which one is allowed to acknowledge suffering and fear and worry. And our God is one who values honesty over religious pretense. Indeed, he is more pleased with the heartfelt prayer lifted up to him than the calculated speech couched with supposed theological correctness. He wants to hear from us and he wants to hear our passion and our passion for others. Do you love Philadelphia? If not, why don't you? Because it's filled with people like you. And if you do, then pray for her and intercede for her ardently for her crimes are great. Her judgment is deserved and pray for her. Because our inhabitants are human creatures like you. needing the grace and the mercy of God that has been shown to you. Pray for Philadelphia. Pray for your communities in the world with passion. Now, one more word about effective intercession. God had made this further observation about Abraham that we read in verse 19. He said, For I have chosen him. that he may command his children in his household after him to keep the way of the Lord by doing righteousness and justice. So God is not a mere indulgent parent who can't help but give his children whatever they ask, regardless of how they live. Abraham was chosen now, not because he was righteous, but that he might be righteous and that he might live before the world in such a way that the world knows what true righteousness and justice are. And so that is what God requires of us. Now, I'm not about to tell you that God would only answer your prayers according to how you live for him at the time that you are praying. But I will say that we cannot disregard our obedience. This question of obedience. Scripture tells us that if we have offended our brother, we need to make amends before we offer sacrifices to God. Scripture tells husbands that if they want their prayers not to be hindered, well, they need to be considerate to their wives. And how will God hear our prayers? For the city, when our behavior does not distinguish us from the secular citizen who disregards God. And we may be in the city and in the world. But remember that we are citizens of a heavenly setting, we are sojourners looking for that new creation to come. And it is the prayers of such citizens and sojourners that will make the difference for this present world. Now, the real issue for us is not how kind of sort of righteous we can get the world to being. Much, much of us today are just so passionate. We've got to get the world to act a little bit more like we act. What really matters is that we live out the righteousness to which God has called us. And as the descendants of Abraham, we are to carry on the blessing that comes from the promise made to Abraham and through Abraham's seed, the Lord Jesus Christ. Are we to carry on the blessing? By interceding, by praying for this world. by witnessing to our neighbors, by exhibiting the gospel before our neighbors. Brothers and sisters, the world may reject us, the world may disdain us, but let it never be said that we were not passionate for her salvation. We give you praise, our God. Praise to you that you are the God of justice, that you are the God who will sing The complete justice will be carried out in this world, but we praise you, our God. For what is beyond our understanding. That you are also a God of mercy. And you have shown mercy in such an incredulous way that could be beyond our imagination. To the sacrifice of giving of your own son. For this world, for us, while we were still sinners. What love you must have. But what great passion you must have. May we have that same heart. May we love this world, not love the world in the sense of wanting to belong to it and caught up in her pleasures. But may we love this world and wanting salvation to come. For mercy to be shown, as you have shown mercy to us. May we be so moved as our father, Abraham, to pray for Philadelphia, to pray for our communities, to pray for this world. And thus show the world the love and the mercy of Jesus Christ. In his name we pray. Amen.