Interceding for the Lost

The heart of God is that no one should perish and that is why he offers salvation to all men! Salvation which is the Father sending his one and only son and the son sending the Holy Spirit so that we might become heirs In Christ.

We must have the same heart for the lost, we should desire to see the people we love experience the same salvation we have, it is by the sovereign grace of God that we can pray and he uses those prayers in salvation.

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Wildfire, the youth branch of Hope to Families, seeking unity and community, helping people

come to know Jesus and pointing people to the local body. Our scripture today is taken from

Genesis 18, starting at verse 20 to 33. So the Lord told Abraham, I have heard a great outcry

from Sodom and Gomorrah, because their sin is so flagrant.

I am going down to see if their actions are as wicked as I have heard. If not, I want to know. The

other men turned and headed towards Sodom, but the Lord remained with Abraham.

Abraham approached him and said, Will you sweep away both the righteous and wicked?

Suppose you find fifty righteous people living there in the city, will you still sweep it away and not

spare it for their sake? Surely you wouldn't do such a thing, destroying the righteous along with

the wicked. Why, you would be treating the righteous and the wicked exactly the same. Surely

you wouldn't do that.

Should not the judge of all the earth do what is right? And the Lord replied, If I find fifty righteous

people in Sodom, I will spare the entire city for their sake. Then Abraham spoke again. Since I

have begun, let me speak further to my Lord, even though I am but dust and ashes.

Suppose there are forty-five righteous people rather than fifty. Will you destroy the whole city for

lack of five? And the Lord said, I will not destroy it if I find forty-five righteous people there. Then

Abraham pressed his request further.

Suppose there are only forty. And the Lord replied, I will not destroy it for the sake of the forty.

Please don't be angry, my Lord.

Abraham pleaded. Let me speak. Suppose only thirty righteous people are found.

And the Lord replied, I will not destroy it if I find thirty. Then Abraham said, since I have dared to

speak to the Lord, let me continue. Suppose there are only twenty.

And the Lord replied, then I will not destroy it for the sake of the twenty. Finally, Abraham said,

Lord, please don't be angry with me if I speak one more time. Suppose only ten are found there.

And the Lord replied that I will not destroy it for the sake of the ten. When the Lord had finished

his conversation with Abraham, he went on his way and Abraham returned to his tent. Let's pray.

Thank you, God, that your word still speaks. And the words spoken to Abraham are still alive and

active and have the power to transform every person in this room. Lord God, we all bring Luke

before you and ask that you would fill him by your spirit.

Thank you for meeting with him and speaking to him over the last while. Thank you that you'rethe God that wants to commune with us. Lord, we lay down distractions and we cast worries upon

you now.

And I pray that you would help us to receive what you have for us today. Amen. Amen.

Thank you, dear. Had to. Had to.

I mean, there are some incredible characters in the Bible, right? I mean, hands up, who would

like to be compared or known like the father of the faith, Abraham? Man, they're like the father of

the faith. Show of hands, who would like to be known as that? Father of the faith, anybody? Go

on, be brave. Now's the time.

Father of the faith, right? Of course. And so whenever I got my topic for praying for the lost, you

can imagine my excitement. I mean, praying and praying for the lost.

And when I got my example of Abraham interceding for the lost, I started thinking about what my

main teaching point or application for us would be. That it would go something like, Abraham,

he's amazing. Father of the faith, look at how he prays.

We can be amazing like him and pray, and then we can go like, go us, we're amazing too. And

that would be nice. But as I read, as I studied, and more importantly, as I examined myself, it

became clear that that's not what God was communicating in this text.

Pastor and teacher, Voddie Buckham said that whenever it comes to characters like these in the

Bibles and stories like these, we have to be careful to avoid moralistic teaching. That means that

we don't look to Abraham, we look to God. It is true that by God's grace, he saved people like

Abraham and makes it possible for them to live out the design of God.

And so they give us examples of people, not people that we should follow, but instead practices

that we should model. And the conclusion must always be not glory to Abraham and look how I

am like Abraham, but instead we must sober ourselves to what God is communicating in this text

to us. That our living out of anything good, including the prayers of intercession, are solely

because of God's sovereign grace and justice, despite our rebellion against him.

This teaching will first humble ourselves to who we are without Christ. And then it will encourage

us because of who we are in Christ and because of our identity in Christ, how we can, listen to

this, participate in the will of God. That is a breathtaking and shattering paradigm that someway,

somehow, us sitting here are going to participate in the will of God.

Now, this story acts as a metanarrative scripture in that it reflects the Bible as this unified story

that points to Jesus. And Abraham's role in that story is similar to our role, so that's good, in that it

is the election of God out of his sovereign grace to choose Abraham to be a recipient, to receive

that grace. Abraham, like us, is undeserving to be chosen by Yahweh to be saved.Yet his faith in the promise-keeping God sees that it is counted to him righteousness and that he

can become part of the story of humanity, which began in Genesis, which we learned about last

week, the Proto-Evangelion, meaning the first gospel that from woman would come a seed who

would strike the head, bruise the heel, leave captivity captive, and make it possible for people to

be saved, whether that be retroactively in the past, now in the present, or in the future, and will

make it possible for us here and now to intercede for the lost. In this story, Abraham finds himself

interacting with the God of the universe, engaging in what is described as intercessory prayer, for

who? For the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah. Now what you need to know about these cities

historically is that they were so corrupt and evil that an outcry came up to God that resulted in him

completely destroying the cities.

In Ezekiel, God gives description of the city and gives explanation as to why he destroyed it. He

doesn't have to give us explanation, but by his grace and mercy, he does. Ezekiel 16 49 says,

Behold, this was the guilt of your sister Sodom.

She and her daughters had pride, excess of food, prosperous ease, but they did not aid the poor

and needy. They were haughty and did an abomination before me, so I removed them when I

saw it. But I mean, what was happening prior to the story for Abraham to find himself dialoguing

with God, requesting that God would relent from destroying Sodom and Gomorrah, where his

nephew Lot resided? What had Abraham done to merit such a privilege to be standing here with

God now? He must have done something good, right? It must be something that sees us raise

our hand and remember Abraham as this great faith figure that we want to be.

We could never be more wrong. I mean, let's track Abraham's story for a second. Let me

eliminate this.

Abraham, in and of himself, in and of himself, outside of God, was a wicked man who did wicked

things. Genesis 12, we first read of God's sovereign grace, catch that, that'll come up again, when

he calls Abraham. Abraham receives the call through his faith.

And so because of that faith, that calling that came from God, it is counted to him righteousness.

That's where his righteousness and any of our righteousness originates from. God.

For us, new covenant believers, that righteousness is imputed, placed on us directly by God

because of the sacrifice of Jesus. With God and his grace, it is not meritorious with humanity. It is

the merit of the Son that gives explanation for anything good that takes place in our lives.

In the same chapter, Abraham is called. It is recorded that he went into Egypt and sold his wife

away, allowing her to be raped by another man. In chapter 14, sovereign grace is witnessed

again when Abraham is blessed by God through Melchizedek.

He acts as this archetype of Jesus. Then in chapter 15, sovereign grace is seen again and

Abraham is given a covenant, a promise by God. Then just a chapter later, Abraham has sex withhis wife's maid.

In chapter 17 and 18, sovereign grace is seen again when God says, I am El Shaddai, I am God

Almighty, and I want to give you a sign of my covenant, circumcision. In chapter 18, God

promises Abraham a son, which is then followed by the story that we've just read, where God

allows and blesses Abraham to come and intercede and commune in prayer. Following the

destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah recorded in chapter 19, which we'll get to, chapter 20

records Abraham, you're not going to believe it, again giving his wife away to another man.

Let's think about that for a second. Twice Abraham gave his wife away to another man. Who

thinks that's noble behavior or wicked behavior? He had sex with his wife's maid.

Can we spot the theme in Abraham's life? What is being revealed about God and man in this

story of intercession is what is being revealed to us about God and man in the life of Abraham as

a whole. And what has been revealed to us about God and man in the life of Abraham as a whole

is what is being revealed about God and man in the Bible story as a whole. And what is being

revealed about God and man in the Bible is what is being revealed by God and man in our day-

to-day living.

What's being revealed? This, man is sinful, God is holy, Man is faithless. God is faithful.

Everything that God is, I am not.

Everything I am, God is not. But because of God, I can now be and I can now have. This is

sovereign grace.

Sovereign grace. But despite sovereign grace, God extended through his promises and his

blessing in Abraham's life. Abraham responded with grotesque sins.

Yet for every sin we read of God's provision and grace once more. That's because our God,

although sin abounds, grace abounds more. This is who we are in this story.

We are Abraham. We are dead in our trespasses and even despite grace saving us, we still have

sinned against God and our lives reflect the same theme of Abraham's life. That although sin

abounds, grace abounds more.

So come and pray. This is the gospel and these are the truths that we need to know when we,

like Abraham, come to pray. That when we who were once lost, now because of grace, can be

saved and can intercede in prayer for others who are lost.

If you think that you're disqualified because of the amount of sins that you've committed, because

of the type of sins that you've committed, that you cannot come to the presence of God, that you

cannot be like Abraham and that you cannot intercede, what we're learning from this story is that

the sovereign grace of God says, come and pray. It is not your merit that gives you standing, it is

my merit. The reason and explanation for you coming to intercede is because Jesus hasinterceded for us already.

That's why we can pray and that's not just something that we could brush off and say I already

know that, that's something for us to ponder and wonder and say what a blessing. So what

actually is intercessory prayer? Well Jesus, when he walked this earth, before he raised Lazarus

from the dead, said when speaking to the Father, I know you hear me always but I say this for the

sake of others. Jesus knew that he was going to raise Lazarus but he was praying to increase the

faith of those around him.

Prayer, that's what intercessory prayer is like. Prayer is not so much for God, he's all-knowing, it's

for us. It's to increase our faith, our understanding, our clarity.

Intercessory prayer is the biblical practice of prayer through the expression of standing in the gap

or intervening on behalf of someone, particularly if not exclusively for those who are not praying

themselves or under judgment. We see numerous examples of those interceding for the lost

including this one from Abraham when he's interceding for Sodom and Gomorrah. So then we

ask ourselves what are the lessons from Abraham's intercessory prayer? Notice how Abraham

embeds his prayer of intercession in the nature of God.

Look at verses 23 to 25. Won't the judge of the universe do what is right? Notice Abraham's

humble disposition in verse 27 when he says, I am but dust and ashes. Notice Abraham's

specificity.

He says if you find 50, 45, 40, 30, 20, 10, lots family would have numbered around or be no more

than 10, which maybe gives explanation as to why Abraham stopped there, telling us that he was

motivated by love. No doubt he was thinking about law as he was interceding. Notice Abraham's

persistence.

He went to the Lord seven times. Notice Abraham experienced the grace of God through

communion with God. Notice Abraham rests in the Lord's nature and lives on.

He doesn't clench his fists and say, I'm not leaving until you do as I say. It just says he goes back

to his tent. He lives on in where he started, the nature of God.

Abraham experienced the grace of God through communion with God, experienced the grace of

God through intercessory prayer with God, experienced the grace of God through the clarity he

received on the nature of God and how God acts within his creation from his nature. He

experienced the grace of God by participating in the will of God through prayer. This is Abraham

through intercessory prayer standing in the gap for the people of Sodom and Gomorrah,

petitioning that God on the basis of him finding ten righteous people would relent from his

judgment that he was going to enact.

Moses is another example of intercessory prayer. When God looked at the Israelite people, hesaid, I'm going to destroy them. Moses stands in the gap and petitions to God that on the basis of

his promises of making Israel great and his grace of leading the people out of Egypt that he

would relent.

Again and again as we see here with Abraham, God in his grace makes intercessory prayer

possible. God in his grace desires to hear from us. God in his grace desires us to stand in the

gap for others and in anthropomorphic language, which just means the best human language that

we can use to describe the interaction between creation and creator.

I mean how do we describe a conversation between the timeless, the eternal, all powerful, all-

knowing, everywhere God and us? There's anthropomorphic language being used here. It is not

that God did not know if there were or weren't ten righteous people in Sodom and Gomorrah. He

said, I heard the outcry and I'm going to investigate.

Again, anthropomorphic language. God isn't going down there with magnifying glass thinking, I

wonder what I'll find here. He's inviting us in to know that he is a mindful God.

He thinks about what he does. He doesn't mindlessly go down to Sodom and Gomorrah. He

knew.

So this prayer of intercession from Abraham is reassurance from what he already knew on God.

Won't the judge of the universe do what is right? God allowed Abraham to answer this with a

resounding yes through this intercessory prayer. I mean God said that he would spare the city if

ten righteous were found.

But God destroyed the city, meaning ten righteous weren't found. Vindicating God as righteous

when he first decreed that he would destroy the cities. Proving true that the judge of the universe

will do and always will do what is right, even if we can't see the full picture.

Intercessory prayer was used here by God to give Abraham reassurance and clarity on the

serenity of his nature. That should excite us, encourage us, and want to worship him. It matters

what I'm about to say next.

Take God seriously and take prayer seriously. Take God seriously and take prayer seriously.

Prayer is not a fruitless exercise.

It is the grace of God in action. It is the demonstration of supernatural power that somehow

involves us. We, the saints, are called to intercede for people to be saved from what? Salvation

means to be saved from something.

What is that something that we are praying that people be saved from? The wrath and the

judgment of God. Jesus said whoever rejects the Son will not see life, for God's wrath remains on

him. It's not found to then be on them.It is already on us. And if we do not accept Jesus, it will remain on us. John 3.36, for the wrath of

God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men.

Romans 1.18. And then we come to our story, if you want to turn to it. Genesis chapter 19, verse

24 to 25. Following the intercessory prayer of Abraham, what actually happens to Sodom and

Gomorrah? Word for word from God.

24.25 of chapter 19, Then the Lord rained down fire and burning sulfur from the sky on Sodom

and Gomorrah. He utterly destroyed them. In some translations it says he overturned them.

It means the same thing. He overturned them by fire and brimstone, along with the other cities

and villages of the plain, wiping out, overturning all the people and every bit of vegetation.

Outside of the family of Lot, God spared nobody here.

If we actually stop to understand what that means, I mean, sometimes we come to these stories

and it's quick, like we read that there. God destroyed the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah, boom,

we move on with our lives. God destroyed the world by a flood, boom, we move on to our lives.

That's not the point here. What does it mean that God destroyed all the living people in Sodom

and Gomorrah? In the time of Sodom and Gomorrah, do we think that babies were living there?

Do we think children were living there? Do we think adults were living there? What does it mean

by all people residing in Sodom and Gomorrah, and what does it mean that God destroyed

Sodom and Gomorrah and all the living people to be found there? This is the God that we

worship. This is the total nature of God.

He has revealed perfectly just, perfectly wrathful, perfectly loving all the time. We are interceding

that people be saved from the wrath of God, and we are a people who intercede that people be

saved from the wrath of God by the grace of God. You know, we can often have great indignation

at the wrath of God for his judgment against these cities.

We think that it lives in contradiction of what we know about God and how we think he should act

whenever we read this. But we actually have to read here. What is God revealing about himself?

And if that contradicts what we think about God, it's us who needs to change.

It's our view that's wrong, and it'll be our worship of him that will be incomplete. Think about the

indignation, the hatred that you might feel from this story of God destroying everyone in these

cities, including babies and kids and adults, all the living people in Sodom and Gomorrah. And

then I want you to compare that to your indignation and your hatred against what the Father did

to the Son on the cross.

We talk about the wrath endured by Jesus from the Father because of the sin he took, and we

have become so sterilized and acclimatized to this truth that we think that it's expected. It is

expected that a holy God would become man and take the wrath of God for us. Nothing is stirredup within us.

We don't think to question God as to why he would do this. That's because it's our sin that led

Jesus to the cross. We look at God destroying every living inhabitant in the Sodom and

Gomorrah, and we are stirred up in anger.

We think, how could that be? That's not right of God to do that. But when it comes to God pouring

out his wrath on the Son, we think, yeah, but that makes sense. We've got it the wrong way

around.

We are the people of Sodom and Gomorrah deserving that wrath, but God and his grace has

sent us his Son so that we might be spared and saved by the grace of God from the wrath of

God. We do not question the nature of God. We do not question how he acts in his creation from

his nature.

We are called to worship him. We worship him because he acts justly towards sin and those who

commit those sins, and we worship God that by his sovereign grace, his justice, and his wrath

that revealed on the cross, on the Son when he took our sin, so that we might not face the reality

that is deserving of humanity that is shown here at Sodom and Gomorrah. We pray like Abraham

that God's sovereign grace would abound in the lives of the lost that we knew.

That before their death, once death then appointed judgment, everyone will die. Everyone will

face judgment, but what will be the next decree? That the wrath that was taken by Jesus is

placed upon the people who did not accept him in this life for eternity. Their wrath will remain on

them because they did not accept, believe, and confess Jesus.

They did not accept his grace that was going to save them from that wrath. There needs to be an

urgency to our message. There needs to be an urgency to our prayer.

It matters that we pray for the lost. It matters that we pray that God would relent, that God would

give them more time, that God by his grace would save them. So how do I intercede in prayer,

Lurk? I mean, we've read this story.

We know who it was written to. We know what is being taught, but how do we translate this

powerful practice of prayer into our lives? Using this story and other scriptures. Matthew 9, 36-37

tells us how we should intercede for the lost.

Jesus tells us. It says, when Jesus saw the crowds, he had compassion on them because they

were confused and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd. He said to his disciples, the harvest

is great.

The workers are few. So pray to the Lord who is in charge of the harvest. Ask him to send more

workers into the fields.We all have people that do not know Jesus in our life. Family and friends. We all know that we're

called to intercede that they be saved from the wrath of God by the grace of God.

And how we intercede is we come to God and we say, God, can you send them messengers?

Can you send them someone who will testify the good news of the gospel? That by hope and by

love they can be saved. That they can have intimate relationship with you here and now for

eternity. Can you send workers? And in self-reflection we must ask, are we the workers to be

sent? The second way is that we rest in the Holy Spirit's help.

Romans 8.26 says, likewise the Spirit helps us in our firmness, for we know not what we should

pray, but the Spirit makes intercession for us with groanings. What does that mean? Whenever

we get down on our knees and pray again, we know the scripture that the Holy Spirit wants to

help us to pray, but what does that actually look like? Well, Cardinal Joseph stated that a more

literal translation would be the Spirit takes hold with us together. This implies that if we don't take

a stand, the Spirit doesn't have anything to take hold with us against.

That is why prayer is so essential to a successful Christian walk. If we don't cooperate with the

Holy Spirit, then we collectively cannot take hold of manifesting God's desire for what we are

praying for. I mean, think about it.

The prerequisite for an answered prayer is the prayer request that is given. How can God answer

a request if a request is never given in the first place? I have confessed and I've repented as I

looked at the history of my life, all the times that God invited me to get down on my knees and to

intercede for the lost, and all the times I didn't. All the times the Spirit says, I want to take hold of

your prayer request.

All the times the Father said, I want to answer that prayer request. But yeah, I didn't bring a

request to be answered. We cannot let that be the testimony of our lives from this day onwards,

right? We have to say of God that I have given my requests.

The Holy Spirit has taken hold of what I have offered. Abraham, he can say that he interceded for

the lost. He brought his requests to God.

Abraham didn't look back at his life whenever Sodom and Gomorrah were destroyed, and he

didn't say to himself, was there an opportunity for me to intercede there? To give a request to

God. Let me summarize by telling you a remarkable story. In the early 1800s, there was a revival

that swept through New England.

Churches in the area had been dried up for a while, and there was no fervor for God. And a man

by the name of Charles Finney felt led by the Holy Spirit to take the gospel to these towns.

Charles became the face of one of America's greatest revivals.

However, he didn't work alone. Behind the scenes was a man standing in the gap, Daniel Nash.He had pastored a church for a long time and once preached the gospel, but he turned to a

ministry of prayer, serving in a quiet room.

Why? Because God called him to pray and he knew just how vital it was to stand in the gap. This

mighty man of God, Daniel Nash, would go before Finney, sometimes weeks before, and he

would rent out a room and sometimes get people in the local area to come and pray with him.

And while people were hearing Finney preach the gospel and were getting saved in a huge

number, Nash was there praying like every life depended on it.

Nash led a solid foundation of prayer for this great revival and many questioned as to whether

there would have been the success that it would have had if it weren't for Nash on his knees.

People say that revival wouldn't have happened.