Sermon Tone Analysis

Introduction

How does it make you feel to know that God uses ordinary people to accomplish His purposes?

Makes me feel good knowing that the bar is set relatively low.

You just have to humble yourself and trust in Him.

You don’t have to be perfect or have a PhD.

You have to trust in the Lord and rely on His power.

Proverbs 3:5-6 talks about this reality.

We’ve been studying Abraham’s life and obedience in recent months.

While he hasn’t been perfect, in fact, he’s stumbled often along the way, he’s demonstrated time and time again that he trusts in the Lord.

He obeys whenever God gives him a task.

Does he do it perfectly?

No. Yet, we see that this is a man who has faith in the Lord.

MacArthur points out on page 68 that Abraham has both faith and works.

Why are both important?

Page 68 points out that genuine faith results in heartfelt obedience.

We are a new creation (2 Cor 5:17) and as a new creation, we live differently!

We have a new heart (Hebrews 10:15-18) and God’s law is written on it.

Therefore, our faith in Christ leads to Christlike living.

John 15 shares with us that one who abides in Him will bear fruit.

Galatians 5 speaks of the new fruit that we bear

Tonight we will look at how Abraham prays for a wicked city and intercedes on their behalf before God.

We’ll also look to the New Testament at how Jesus does this for us and how we should pray for others as well.

Please read Genesis 18:16-19.

What is Abraham’s responsibility according to verse 19?

Is this still a responsibility for people today?

He was called to command his children to keep the way of the Lord.

To do what the Bible says to do.

To raise up his children in the way they should walk.

This is a responsibility for parents today as well!

God desires us to live a holy life - we see this in Scripture that God is holy and wants His people to be holy as He is holy.

Yet, we look around and we see that our world is everything but holy.

What is the remedy to this?

We can’t look to the world to tell us how we should act as Christians.

Tony Evans at the Missouri Baptist Convention earlier this week delivered a powerful sermon and reminded us about the Kingdom of God and how the Kingdom is supposed to be of utmost importance in our lives because our world will draw us away from the Kingdom.

He said something along the lines of this: We can’t look to elephants or donkeys to tell us about the lamb.

What’s his point?

We can’t look to society to tell us how to be a Christian because we’re living in an anti-Christian world.

So what is the solution?

We must have people, specifically parents, who train their children up in the way of the Lord.

I saw an interesting piece of research about how quickly we can lose generations in the church.

Take 4 generations.

The first grows up with parents who make church optional.

Their kids grow up and only show up when its convenient.

Their grandkids grow up and never go to church.

Their great-grandkids, therefore, have no understanding of who God is. 4 generations and we can lose millions of people!

God chooses Abraham and his descendants - this is remarkable.

He does this in order to have a people who make His name great throughout the world and to eventually bless all the world through Abraham.

However, we know that we live in a fallen, wicked world.

It was this way in Abraham’s day and it remains this way today.

Please read Genesis 18:20-23.

Put yourself in Abraham’s shoes here.

Would you step up for Sodom and Gomorrah?

No way!

These are wicked people.

They deserve to be destroyed and are a threat to Abraham and his loved ones (Lot).

Yet, he intercedes for them.

He has a concern and love for others that is uncommon for many of us.

This is something we could learn from Abraham’s character throughout Genesis.

We know according to Isaiah 6 that we are sinners and people of unclean lips.

As a result, there is a gap between ourselves and our holy God.

The gap is so pronounced that we cannot climb it, we cannot leap over it, we cannot use technology to avoid it.

We are separated from God as Romans 3:23 shares with us.

We all fall short!

Yet, we also see in the book of Hebrews that through Jesus we can draw near

How can we come before God with boldness?

Because of Jesus’ sacrifice.

There is a closeness and intimacy as MacArthur draws out in our study guide between God and Abraham.

The same exists in our world today between God and His followers.

We are able to draw near to Him because of what Jesus has done.

As a result, we are able to worship Him and come before Him with our requests and leave with boldness and assurance and encouragement.

This is something that our world cannot experience outside of Christ.

This is why it is so significant that Abraham intercedes on behalf of these evil people.

Maybe it makes sense to come before God to lift up a really nice person or a loved one, but a bunch of wicked heathens?

No way!

How can we do a better job of praying for others in our world who we might not always agree with?

Please read Genesis 18:24-33.

People often look at this story as being “unfair” towards the people of Sodom and Gomorrah.

What would have been “fair” in your mind?

Sin deserves punishment.

An entire city being wicked deserves to be punished.

If anything, 10 people being righteous would have been an immense amount of mercy on the part of God.

Because God is just, His people should be as well.

One of the things that we see in Scripture is a call for Christians to seek justice in our world.

We see this at the beginning of our text in verse 19 as Abraham is to command his children to keep the way of the Lord by doing what is “right and just.”

We are called to be like our God and because God is just, we should pursue justice as well.

Abraham isn’t trying to get God to change His mind (as we see in chapter 19 there weren’t any righteous people in these places), instead he is trying to understand God’s plan and purposes.

It’s interesting that we see Abraham go down in units of 10 from 40-30-20-10.

The logical next step would be 1.

It follows that Lot and his family are righteous.

But he isn’t a full citizen of the city (Sodom) we see in Gen 19:9 that he is a sojourner/alien

Abraham is interceding on behalf of this city and praying that God would show mercy on them.

We see that Jesus does this same thing for us as He intercedes on our behalf

What does this mean?

It means that Jesus Christ is praying for us right now.

He loves us.

He is praying for us to be strengthened and to continue to walk in obedience.

This is something that we should do as well!

We should pray for others and pray that the Lord would be gracious, merciful, and encouraging towards us.

MacArthur transitions to a New Testament text - a familiar one at that!

In James 2 as we find the famous Faith without Works text.