Genesis 18:25 (NASB) “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?”
Do you believe that God is going to judge America? A lot of Christians do, but then again a lot
of them haven’t really given it any thought.
It is not my intention here to try to persuade anyone to think that God
is going to judge America or even that you should give it some thought.
I want to look at the prayer of a man who knew God was about
to judge some cities not too far from where he lived. Every Christian prays, but I’m not sure anymore
if Christians still think of prayer as actually changing anything. After all, they note that God is sovereign,
and apparently whatever happens is His will, so why are we even praying for
things in the first place? I think too
often the idea of the sovereignty of God immobilizes Christians, because they
believe that God controls everything; He does what He wants; everything that
happens is His will.
If our prayers can actually change things, that puts
incredible responsibility on Christians, because what if they don’t pray for
something that needs changing or they didn’t pray for it in the right way?
The fact is that all of our actions have consequences, what
we eat, what we say, the things we do or don’t do. Why should we think that doesn’t apply to our
prayers as well?
We may say that prayer is simply talking to God, but we all
see things every day that just aren’t right and we pray that they might be
different. Do or should our prayers make
a difference, or does God just do what He wants anyway and our job is just to
live with and accept whatever happens?
Abraham believed that prayer can change things. As soon as he heard of God’s plans to destroy
Sodom and Gomorrah, he questioned them, and he questioned God.
Abraham’s prayer had three elements to it that I believe can
help us to understand prayer better and make our prayers more effective. If we don’t believe that our prayers make or
can make a difference in the world, I think we need to look again at the Bible
and what prayer is supposed to be.
The first element of Abraham’s prayer that we need to
understand is argument.
Arguing has gotten a bad name. People yell at each other and call that
arguing. Yelling has nothing to do with
arguing, except that people who don’t know how to argue or think they are
losing an argument often resort to yelling.
Lawyers argue, and debaters argue.
An argument is a line of reasoning, building a case for why
something is either true or untrue, or, as in the case of prayer, why or why
not God should either do or not do something.
To Abraham, it seemed absurd that God would judge the
righteous with the wicked. Surely there
had to be some righteous people in Sodom, and the Judge of all the earth would
surely do right Himself and not destroy righteous people when judging wicked
ones.
Abraham proposed a number of righteous people that might be
in the city, and God accepted that number and agreed not to judge the city if
that many righteous people were found there.
But should that number be the cutoff number? What is the right cutoff number where God
could judge the righteous with the wicked?
So Abraham asked about the possibility that there were a few less than
that fifty. And he then reduced that
number even further until he got it down to ten, and he stopped.
What would have happened had he continued? We don’t know. But we do know that God rescued Lot and his
family out of the city. But what would
have happened if Abraham had not prayed at all?
Would God still have rescued Lot?
We don’t know. But of all the
events in Abraham’s life that were included or omitted in the Bible, this
prayer was included. If Abraham’s prayer
had no effect on the outcome, why was it included in the Bible? What would we have learned from it?
When you pray for things, how do you ask for them?
When you pray for healing, either for yourself or others, do
you remind God that Jesus never turned anyone away who asked Him for
healing? That when Jesus saw a crowd of
people, He had compassion on them and healed the sick (Matthew 14:14)? That the apostles, after having been
threatened by the rulers not to preach or teach in the Name of Jesus,
explicitly prayed that God would extend His hand to heal the sick while they
preached the Word with all boldness (Acts 4:29,30)?
But God surely knows all these things, just like He knew how
many were righteous in Sodom before Abraham asked about them. Did God need to be persuaded and was
overwhelmed by the logic of Abraham’s prayer?
Arguing might be more for our benefit than God’s, in that
being able to make a case why God should answer our prayer bolsters our faith,
and without faith it is impossible to please God (Hebrews 11:6). I’m not sure we can fully explain or
understand the entire relationship between our prayers and the answers to them,
but the Bible is meant to give us understanding in such things, such as we
need, and this is how Abraham prayed. I
can cite other examples of the same dynamic, but I will leave them for future
articles.
A lot of Christians think of God’s will as being completely
individualized such that we can never know ahead of time what His will might
be, that there is no pattern to it. He
might want one thing for one person and for another person in the exact
circumstances, He might want something completely different. God might want one person healthy and another
person sick; He might want one person employed at a good job and another person
unemployed or at a miserable job. He
might want one person to have a problem-free life and another person to have
one problem after another.
I say that God gave us a thousand page book to tell us about
Himself. We say that we know God, but
that statement is meaningless, if we don’t know what God would do in a given
situation. What does it even mean to
know somebody? You know somebody when
you know what they would do in a given situation. How can we say that we know God if His will
is always a mystery to us?
I think we highly undervalue the role that humans are to
play in this world, especially the role of Christians. We want God to do more in the world, and I
think He feels pretty much the same about us.
Why did God tell Abraham what He was going to do? He wanted Abraham to intercede. And why would He want Abraham to
intercede? Because what humans do
affects things. He gave Abraham everything
he asked for, even more. Was it cause
and effect? Let’s just say that we
shouldn’t expect God to do the one without the other.
Prayer can do a lot in changing things, but it makes a
difference how we pray. This is why the
disciples asked Jesus to teach them how to pray (Luke 11:2), and Jesus
did.
But we need to note that this was how Abraham prayed. He made his case why God should not, actually
could not, judge the righteous with the wicked, and the clear implication from
the text is that God listened to Abraham’s prayer and answered it. Abraham did not simply make his request and
ask that if it be God’s will, He would grant it. He made the case that it had to be God’s will
not to judge the righteous with the wicked, and God didn’t.
Which leads to the second element of Abraham’s prayer:
boldness.
You see the idea of boldness more in the New Testament than
in the Old Testament. You read about the
apostles speaking the Word of God with boldness (Acts 4:31). The idea of the Greek word used here is that
of candor and freedom of speaking. Not
the idea of license to say anything whether profane or evil, but the freedom to
say whatever needs to be said, to speak the whole truth, to say what is right
whether somebody else likes it or not, just simply telling it like it is.
But the Bible says also that we have access to God with
boldness (Ephesians 3:12), that we should approach the throne of grace with
boldness (Hebrews 4:16), and that we have boldness to enter the very Holy of
Holies, the Presence of God (Hebrews 10:19).
Abraham didn’t understand the theology behind this boldness
with God, and, according to Paul, this was essentially a new thing that people
could have. But the Bible calls Abraham
a friend of God (James 2:23), and friends speak frankly to each other. God told Abraham what He was about to do, and
Abraham felt free to tell Him why he thought it was a bad idea.
When Christian pray, there are two seemingly opposing
thoughts that may loom in one’s head: on
the one hand, one is talking to God, the
Almighty, the Maker of heaven and earth, The Lord of all creation; and, on the
other, we are talking as children to our Father.
So which should take precedence? Should we think of God as LORD or
Father? The concept of fatherhood in the
Bible carries the picture of an authority figure who we are to honor and who
disciplines us for our own good, so we should not think that we are getting
away with anything by thinking of God more as Father than LORD, but the whole
idea of the New Testament is this new relationship with God where the veil of
the tent has been torn asunder, and where the High Priest could only enter the
Holy of Holies once a year to make atonement for our sins, we have now been
brought into that very place to live.
We may fear God in that we know there are serious
consequences for putting God out of our lives, but those who live in the very
Love and Presence of God need not fear Him but need to learn to delight in His
Presence.
Having said all this, I think the God who knows everything,
all the desires and intents of our hearts, is quite pleased when we are
completely honest with Him in our prayers.
To Abraham, it was just not right that the Judge of the
universe would judge the righteous with the wicked, and He told God so. And just like you tried to persuade your
father to get you your first car, so you need to tell God very frankly why He
should heal you, heal your country, or whatever else it is that is on your
mind.
And, lastly, Abraham had resolve. (I really tried for a C word here but couldn’t
find one.)
Now few of our prayers or life situations play out as quickly
as this did. In a matter of minutes, God
told Abraham what He was about to do, Abraham responded, and then the
conversation was over.
But for most of our prayers, we were not healed immediately,
our child didn’t return home in the next few minutes, we didn’t get a job offer
that day, and the world doesn’t look any closer to world peace than it did
yesterday.
So you prayed. Then
what? Abraham’s prayer took only a few
minutes, but he took it as far as he could go.
For most of us most of the time, the time between when we first
pray about something until we know we have the answer is not as short as it was
here. So what do we do? Some will say, just pray and leave it in
God’s hands.
Some note the principle about faith that says that you must believe
you have already received your answer (Mark 11:24).
A verse that I think of often is Isaiah 62:6–7 (NRSV)
6 Upon
your walls, O Jerusalem, I have posted sentinels; all day and all night they
shall never be silent. You who remind the Lord,
take no rest, 7 and
give him no rest until he establishes Jerusalem and makes it renowned
throughout the earth.
In Luke 11, the disciples asked Jesus to teach them to pray,
and He told them about a man who went to a friend’s house at midnight, because
he needed some things, and though the man inside wanted to go back to bed, the
first man persisted until the other man got up and gave him what he
needed. Jesus then said that we are to
keep asking, keep seeking, and keep knocking.
And we would receive.
I know Luke’s gospel here specifically mentions receiving
the Holy Spirit, but there are other passages in Matthew (Mt. 7:7-11) and Luke
(Luke 18:1-8) where similar teachings are found but with different answers to
the prayers.
The arguments that we are able to make in our prayers should
make clear to us what the will of God is in a particular situation, and the
boldness that we should have based on the finished work of Christ on our behalf
should give us the resolve to hold firm in prayer until the matter is
settled. I wish I could say that this
won’t take long, but we should be prepared to continue as long as it takes.
When you pray for something, how long do you pray for it
until you believe the prayer has been answered?
A week, a month, a year?
Obviously different prayers have different expectations. But the Bible expects Christians to pray and
for those prayers to make a difference. And
we have to pray like we mean it.
If you can’t make a case why God should answer your prayer,
don’t be surprised if He doesn’t. And if
you are not bold in your prayers, I don’t think you fully understand your
position in Christ. And if you don’t
have resolve in your prayers to see them through to the end, it’s probably
because you have neither.
