Will you turn with me to Genesis chapter
18 and will you listen as I read
this 18th chapter.
Genesis chapter 18 verse 1 through verse 33.
Now you'll remember that in chapter 17 the
Lord appeared to Abram, confirmed the covenant, and
gave him the sign of the covenant, the
rite of circumcision, and also announced that it
would be Sarah who would be the mother
of the promised seed.
So now still speaking about Abram or Abraham
we read in chapter 18 verse 1, now
the Lord appeared to him by the oaks
of Mamre while he was sitting at the
tent door, 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 now I 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 yourselves under the
tree and I will bring a piece of
bread that you may refresh yourselves.
After that you may go on since you
have visited your servant.
And they said, So do as you have
said.
The word translated sense in verse 5 may
not be accurately translated by sense and I
don't want to get into the details of
it, but it appears that he recognizes this
at least as a providential visit.
Whether, however, he recognized the beings as being
supernatural beings, that of course is something that
it is really probably impossible for us to
be certain about.
Verse 6.
So 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.
Some of the commentators, in fact some of
the Jewish commentators, Rashi, for example, has said
that the word na'er which is used
here for servant, that word also means youth
in Hebrew, is probably a reference to Ishmael
and was one of the means by which
Abraham trained him.
Gave it to the servant or to the
youth 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.
Then they said to him, Where is Sarah
your wife?
And he said, Behold, in the tent.
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 left to herself, saying, After I
have become old, shall I have pleasure, my
Lord, being old also?
And the Lord said to Abraham, Now notice
it's the Lord now and not simply the
man, but the Lord.
So this is a theophany, an appearance of
God.
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?
Since 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.
Now if you have a Bible with a
marginal note, you will notice that the word
translated chosen is really the word that normally
is translated in most of its occurrences, no.
So literally it is, For I have known
him.
But now this is a correct rendering, because
the force of this know is the knowledge
of intimate choice.
And we'll talk about that in a moment
when we get to this in the exposition.
But notice, For I have known him.
Now of course God knows everybody, but there
is a special sense in which he knows
when he chooses.
So for I have chosen 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 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 grave.
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.
Now this is anthropocentric language, that is, language
according to human doings.
Because of course he didn't have to go
down to see what was happening there to
know what was happening there.
But the desire of this is to show
that when the Lord acts, he acts in
justice.
And so he goes down to take a
good look, and the impression you get is
that he's very careful before he determines to
do what he is going to do.
Then the men turned away from there and
went toward Sodom while Abraham was still standing
before the Lord.
The Masoretes, who are responsible for the vocalization
of the Hebrew text, have noted at this
point that they found the text reading not,
and Abraham was standing before the Lord, but,
and the Lord was standing before Abraham, but
that seemed to be a rather improper thing
for them.
And so to correct that untidy looking clause,
the Lord standing before Abraham, they transferred it,
transferred the subjects and objects, and so we
read while Abraham was still standing before the
Lord, which seems more proper.
And Abraham came near and said, Will thou
indeed sweep away the righteous with the wicked?
Suppose there are fifty righteous within the city.
Will thou indeed sweep it away and not
spare the place for the sake of the
fifty righteous who are in it?
Far be it from thee 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 thee.
Shall not the judge of all 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.
That's an interesting expression, because you see, he
is expressing the humanity of a person.
We are dust in the beginning, we are
ashes in the end.
And so we are not very much before
the Lord.
Although I am but dust and ashes.
Suppose the fifty righteous are lacking five.
Will thou destroy the whole city because of
five?
And he said, I will not destroy it
if I find forty-five there.
And he spoke to him yet again and
said, Suppose forty are found there.
And he said, I will not do it
on account of the forty.
Then he said, O may the Lord not
be angry, and I shall speak.
Suppose thirty are found there.
And he said, I will not do it
if I find thirty there.
And he said, Now behold, I have ventured
to speak to the Lord.
Suppose twenty are found there.
This sounds like haggling, doesn't it?
But it really is not.
As one of the commentators says, it's exploring.
Exploring God's attitude toward the situation.
So suppose thirty are found there.
And he said, I will not do it
if I find thirty there.
And he said, Now behold, I have ventured
to speak to the Lord.
Suppose twenty are found there.
And he said, I will not destroy it
on account of the twenty.
Then he said, O may the Lord not
be angry, and I will, shall speak only
this once.
That was his mistake, I guess.
Suppose ten are found there.
And he said, I will not destroy it
on account of the ten.
And I just wonder what might have happened
if he had said, Suppose two.
Or one.
Or lot was there.
And lot, of course, was upon his heart,
no doubt.
But we read that the interview ended.
And you'll notice the Lord ended it, too.
As soon as he had finished speaking to
Abraham, the Lord departed and Abraham returned to
his place.
May God bless this reading of his word.
Let's...
Our subject for this morning in the exposition
of the book of Genesis is Abraham visited
by his friend, or the intimacies of divine
fellowship.
We have just had one marvelous theophany in
the seventeenth chapter, and now in the eighteenth
chapter that is followed by another.
But it is of a slightly different kind,
for in chapter seventeen the Lord appeared evidently
in glorious form, but here in human form.
What we are seeing is really a measure
of the fulfillment of John chapter one in
verse eighteen, even in Old Testament times.
In the prologue to the gospel, John wrote,
you will remember, No man hath seen God
at any time, the only begotten Son, who
is in the bosom of the Father, he
has declared him.
Now we are certain, of course, that the
primary reference of that is to the incarnation
of the Lord Jesus, but in the light
of these appearances of the angel of Jehovah
and the identification of the angel with the
Lord Jesus, it's clear that there was a
declaration of the eternal God in the Old
Testament through these theophanies.
Micah may be referring to that when he
writes his famous Christmas prophecy, Thou Bethlehem Ephratah,
though thou be little among the thousands of
Judah, yet out of thee shall he come
forth to me, who shall be ruler in
Israel, whose goings forth have been from of
old, from everlasting.
The root translated, out of thee shall he
come forth, is the same as the root
of goings forth, whose goings forth have been
from of old, from everlasting, and it has
been the opinion of a number of Bible
students that Micah alludes to the fact that
while there is one great coming forth when
our Lord was born in the manger in
Bethlehem, nevertheless there were anticipations of it in
the Old Testament times.
It is an event, of course, of wide
appeal, and we are therefore not surprised that
we find it in the Word of God,
for the visits of sovereigns to citizens' homes
is of quite a bit of interest, even
in 1979, when little sovereigns visit homes even
in the United States of America.
This one, of course, is one of the
most surprising because the God of heaven is
the guest of the patriarch Abraham.
The Lord Jesus was delighted to visit homes
incognito.
He told Zacchaeus, Zacchaeus, come down from the
tree.
I've got to lodge in your house today.
And then, of course, he lodged with the
disciples on the Emmaus Road after the journey
from Jerusalem to Emmaus.
So here is one of the events in
which the eternal God sits at the table
with human beings, and in this case, Abram
and his family.
I think as we look over Genesis chapter
18, probably the part of it that stands
out most of all in our minds is
the latter part, that great antecessary prayer which
Abraham prays in behalf of Sodom.
This is surely one of the great biblical
passages on prayer.
We like to think of theology as the
queen of the sciences.
That's what it's been called down through the
years.
Well, if that is true, then prayer is
the queen of the experiences.
It certainly is a royal experience.
John Calvin regarded prayer as the true proof
of the fact that one was a genuine
Christian.
He has some words concerning prayer as a
proof of faith.
He says, the principal exercise which the children
of God have is to pray, for in
this way they give a true proof of
their faith.
When a person has been converted, one of
the first things that he does, in fact
the very first thing that he does, for
when the work of regeneration takes place in
his heart and he turns to the Lord
and receives the Lord Jesus as his own
Savior, that is an act of petition as
a general rule.
So the first act of the new life
is to turn to the Lord in faith
and in prayer.
I think one of the most interesting things
in the book of Acts to me is
the way in which the apostle Paul was
identified for Ananas by the angel.
Ananas got the message that he was to
contact Paul.
He was not too happy over that because
Paul was a noted persecutor of the faithful,
but he was to be identified by the
fact that, as the book of Acts says,
behold he prayeth.
So that's the sign of a true Christian,
one who prays.
It's one of the evidences that there is
genuine life, prayer.
Now prayer persistently, of course, is the force
of this passage, but prayer is one of
those experiences of the Christian.
It's like breathing, which mark him out as
being alive.
A prayerful life is the powerful life, someone
has said, and the prayerless life is always
a powerless life.
Mary, Queen of Scots, said, I fear John
Knox's prayers more than an army of 10
,000 men.
One of our modern liberal men has said,
our generation with pride shattered and body bruised
longs for sanctuary, for fruitfulness, for an abiding
home.
Prayer is the true mesa.
Why jibe at prayer as an escape?
The jibe foolishly assumes that we are self
-sufficient.
In a world where microbes are stronger than
men, where sorrow waits, death stalks with violence,
and an aroused conscience is a cave of
furies, to pretend that we need no refuge
is only a pretense.
So those who make fun of prayer are
really the ones that are to be pitted.
Stonewall Jackson.
Have you heard of Stonewall Jackson?
Well, General Jackson said this, I have so
fixed the habit of prayer in my mind
that I never raise a glass of water
to my lips without asking God's blessing.
Never seal a letter without putting a word
of prayer under the seal.
Never take a letter from the post without
a brief sending of my thoughts heavenward.
Never change my classes in the lecture room
without a minute's petition for the cadets who
go out and for those who come in.
And, of course, one of the great things
about prayer is that God hears our petitions
and answers them on both odd and even
days.
Now let's turn to Genesis chapter 18, and
I want you to notice the visit of
this heavenly company first.
We'll spend a little time on the first
eight verses.
We could treat this incident in several different
ways.
We could look at it simply as an
historical incident, because it has some importance for
the history of the development of the divine
revelation.
It holds a place in the history of
the life of Abraham.
It is further, it is a further step
on the way to the accomplishment of the
promised seed, the birth of Isaac.
Or we could treat it morally.
That is the characteristic of modern theology and
of popular preaching in our liberal Protestant churches.
The tendency is to take Old Testament passages
and treat them as simply passages that have
moral application.
Now that is a valid way to treat
the passages of Holy Scripture, because we do
have the lessons of patience, the lessons of
reverence, the lessons of humility, the lessons of
truthfulness, the lessons of faith, and other lessons,
even the lesson of what a wife should
call her husband, as we see in a
moment or two.
So that's a valid approach, but of course
it misses often the major point that we
want to be sure to talk about in
the study of the Word of God, and
that is the spiritual or theological significance of
the passages.
And then as we look at this passage
in that way, we will see that it
is a passage that points on to the
Messiah by virtue of the theophany, even intimating
such doctrines as the Incarnation, the Atonement, the
prophetic priestly ministries of our Lord Jesus Christ.
Well we'll try to combine some of these
things as we go through the passage.
It was siesta time, it was noon time,
and Abraham was resting under a tree near
the opening of his tent.
And no doubt he was thinking about those
promises that had been given him, and specifically
perhaps about the promise that has now been
elaborated to include Sarah as the mother of
the seed, just in the last chapter that
was given.
And suddenly he looks up and there are
three men standing before him.
The text does not say he saw them
coming down the road and watched them.
It does not say a thing about how
they arrived there, and that in itself is
rather striking.
Suddenly they were there.
And we must also point out that while
it says that they were there, and that
there were three men there, we are not
to think of this as a reference to
the Trinity.
For we learn in chapter 19 and verse
1, and we'll take this up in our
next study next week, the Lord willing, that
two of these men were angels, but they
are in angelic form.
Remember in the New Testament there is exhortation
given that we should exercise hospitality before some
have entertained angels unawares.
Well, this is the occasion of that New
Testament comment.
So the New Testament use of the Old
Testament gives us an idea of the meaning
of this passage also.
So he looks up and he sees the
three standing there, and in true Eastern fashion
he feels it absolutely necessary to give them
the greatest of hospitality.
And he does it in such a way
that one wonders if there may not have
been some feeling at least that these men
were sort of special.
For notice what we read in verse 2,
he looked and he saw them, two different
Hebrew words there, the second one meaning more
he saw and understood something about them, but
he ran from the tent door to meet
them.
Verse 6, Abraham hurried into the tent and
he told Sarah, quickly prepare three measures of
fine flour.
And then in verse 7, Abraham ran to
the herd.
He's a man a hundred years of age
now, and you see this old man running
around with his garments flowing in the sun
around noon.
It's something special, and he hurried to prepare
it.
So there is a great deal of hurried
activity suggested.
Now in spite of all of this, however,
we do not have any evidence that Abraham
realized at this point that these men were
more than human beings.
So we'll just attribute it to the Bedouin
hospitality.
One of the ancient men who has written
about Bedouin hospitality described Arabs as dining at
their tent doors in order to invite passersby.
So the result is that Abraham prepares a,
he calls it just a little piece of
bread, but as you can see, it's a
very sumptuous repast that he provides for the
three men.
That is, Sarah provides for them.
And then they agree that they will partake
of the piece of bread, that modest description.
Well, let's look now at the challenge to
Sarah's faith that proceeds out of the incident.
In verse 9 through verse 15, someone has
said God never leaves us in his debt.
That is, he always gives us more.
So then he is always giving more and
more.
And of course, that is what happens here.
And the opening of the ninth chapter signals
something that is going to be new for
Sarah at least.
Then they said to him, where is Sarah
your wife?
Now that's, that must have aroused Abraham's suspicions
because how did they know he had a
wife?
And how did they know her name?
Well, he doesn't say anything about the effect
that question had upon him, but it must
have been at least a surprise to him.
Where is Sarah your wife?
And he said, behold, in the tent.
And then the Lord 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 child bearing.
A great deal of stress is laid upon
this.
Abram's 100, Sarah's 90.
She is past the time of child bearing.
She had already had her change of life.
But even then, she had been barren during
the age in which it might have been
thought that she would be able to bear
children.
So this is emphasized in order to stress
that Isaac is a child of promise, a
supernatural child.
Well, we can all sympathize with Sarah.
We read in Sarah left within herself.
After I become old, shall I have pleasure,
my Lord, being old also?
Now there is something I think rather interesting
about this because I have no doubt in
my mind that when Abraham in the preceding
chapter in that experience of that theophany heard
that Sarah was to be the mother of
the seed the long promised seed, the first
thing that he must have said when he
came back to the tent was, Sarah, you're
to be the mother of the seed, not
Hagar.
And evidently the time lapse between the first
theophany and this theophany has not been enough
for this great man of faith to convince
his wife of the truth of that promise.
She's still doubtful.
Now any man who has not been able
to convince his wife of something can surely
empathize with Abraham.
In fact, it may well be that he
was sitting out at siesta time thinking of
how he could possibly bring Sarah to the
place of faith.
Now when I used to preach the word
of God in the presence of my wife,
I frequently got a similar kind of response.
And in fact, occasionally she would tell others
that.
I think she liked to do that.
She liked to say that, well, he may
be convinced of it, but he hasn't convinced
me yet.
She always said that with a rather superior
kind of attitude too, I thought.
So I empathize with Abraham.
He's tried to bring home this message of
Sarah as the mother of the seed, but
Sarah has not been responsive.
Now she laughs.
I think that's mingled doubt and delight.
In fact, she refers to the relationship in
a purely sensual way.
We read here, shall I have pleasure?
Incidentally, that is an acknowledgement of the fact
that the life of sex between two people
is properly a pleasurable thing.
The Old Testament is not puritanical as the
modern age thinks wrongly, incidentally, of the Puritans.
But she said, shall I have pleasure?
Now you can see that while she is
correct, so far as that is concerned, nevertheless
the depth of her penetration at this point
is very shallow and superficial.
She does not, it appears to me, have
any great interest in the covenant.
It is purely the sensual side of the
thing that impresses her.
And so she says, shall I have pleasure,
my Lord being old also?
It's not a rejoicing in the fact that
she is to be the mother of the
promised covenantal seed.
So Sarah is a person who evidently has
at this point a rather shallow understanding of
spiritual things.
But yet, men notice this.
Notice what she calls Abraham.
Shall I have pleasure, my Lord being old
also?
Now wives, that's what you ought to call
your husband.
My Lord.
Now I know what you're going to think.
You'll say, well, that's what Sarah did.
But what I do is something else.
And furthermore, we're living in New Testament times.
And in New Testament times, we are living
in the age of equality.
The idea of calling my husband Lord, well,
that's absurd.
It is absurd.
I wonder if you'd have been happy around
the apostles.
Because the apostle Peter read this passage.
And I'm going to read it for you.
You needn't look it up.
But it's in the third chapter, first Peter,
in which we read the fifth verse.
For in this way in former times the
holy women also, who hoped in God, used
to adorn themselves being submissive to their own
husbands.
Thus Sarah obeyed Abraham, calling him Lord.
And you have become her children if you
do what is right without being frightened by
any fear.
I must confess, I was never able to
obtain my wife's address of me as Lord.
But it is an ideal for which we
look, men.
It is, however, a true illustration of the
proper relationship that exists between a man and
wife.
Submission on the one hand, reverential submission, and
on the other hand, the kind of love
that Christ had for the church.
So my Lord being old, and the Lord
replies, he said to Abraham, why did Sarah
laugh?
Now Sarah laughed within herself, the text says.
He didn't hear any audible laughing.
And so when we read, why did Sarah
laugh, saying, shall I indeed bear a child
when I am so old?
He not only heard the laugh, that inward
laugh, in Sarah's heart, but he even knew
the tenor and the purpose of that laugh.
In other words, it was not only an
audible laugh to the Lord, but he also
knew the intelligence that was lying back of
it, the things that she was thinking.
Now that must have meant something to Sarah.
And I wonder if it challenged her at
this point to have a faith that was
much deeper than the superficial faith that she
possessed at the moment.
One thing we can say, that this superficiality
of Sarah elicited from the Lord, one of
the great sayings of the Word of God.
For we read in the fourteenth verse, is
anything too difficult for the Lord?
Now let me stop and just point out
one thing that I think is rather interesting.
The word translated difficult is the translation of
a Hebrew root which means wonderful, wonder, wonderful.
It is the same root that is used
for the name of the in Isaiah chapter
nine and verse six.
His name shall be called wonderful.
So what he said was, is anything too
wonderful?
That is, is there anything that provokes too
much wonder for the Lord?
All of his actions are wonder-provoking, and
there is nothing that is too wonder-provoking
for him.
He can do anything.
So this is really one of the great
sayings of the Word of God, and does
not have any answer at all in the
Bible, except possibly the answer that Jeremiah gave
when he, reasoning about this, in the book
of Jeremiah, answered by saying, or made the
positive statement, there is nothing too difficult for
the Lord.
So the idea that God is able to
produce a seed out of a woman who
is past the age of childbearing and an
old man 100 years, that is not beyond
him.
The wonders that he performs encompasses something so
contrary to nature as that, for he controls
nature.
Now, we read that Sarah, she must have
pulled the flap back at this point, and
she denied that she had left.
She denied that that was in her mind.
And we read that she said, I did
not laugh, for she was afraid.
And he said, no, but you did laugh.
Now, I think that's rather interesting too, because
the first impulse of guilt with us is
often deception.
That's the very first thing that we try
to do, deceive those with whom we are
dealing.
In the Garden of Eden, when God came
down into the garden in the cool of
the day and asked, where art thou, Adam?
And then a little conversation ensued, and the
Lord asked why they had done what they
had done.
He quickly turned and laid the blame at
the feet of the woman.
And the woman laid the blame at the
feet or at the body of the serpent.
So the tendency of all of us when
we are caught in our sin is to
try to deceive.
That's characteristic of human nature.
So she said, I did not, but he
said, you did.
Well, there follows then the passage in which
we have the intercession of Abraham for Sodom.
The Lord said that he would not destroy
the land because the iniquity of the Amorites
was not yet full.
He would not yet give it to Israel,
but it is clear that the cities of
the fair Pentapolis, or the five cities around
the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah, their iniquity
was full.
Sodom and Gomorrah had seen the power of
the Lord in Abraham's victory over those kings,
and so they had little excuse for not
believing in Jehovah.
And so we go on to read now
the circumstances of this great intercessory prayer.
The Lord said, shall I?
Well, the men rose up from there and
looked down towards Sodom and Abraham was walking
with them to send them off.
And the Lord then spoke and he said,
shall I hide from Abraham what I am
about to do?
Abraham had been promoted to a very distinguished
position and in the light of this distinguished
position of relationship to the Lord, it was
proper in the mind of God for the
purposes of God to be revealed to him.
The psalmist, remember, said the secret of the
Lord is with them that fear him and
he will show them his covenant.
Those who are the friends of our Lord
Jesus Christ are those who do his will,
the believers who do his will, but it
is to the friends of our Lord that
he reveals himself.
Now that is a very important and of
course a very privileged place, to be a
friend of our Lord Jesus Christ and therefore
the recipient of the revelation or illumination that
comes from one who is the friend of
God.
So Abram is a friend of God and
God says, shall I hide from Abraham that
which I am about to do?
Since Abraham is going to become a great
nation, all the nations are going to be
blessed in him, for I have chosen him,
for I have known him.
I'd like to stop for just a moment
and say a word about that because you
may have a version which says, for I
have known him, but the New American Standard
Bible is undoubtedly correct in rendering this, for
I have chosen him.
If it had been rendered, for I have
known him, it still would mean the same
thing because it is clear that the knowledge
of which he's speaking is not the knowledge
simply of the existence of someone, for he
knows the existence of all.
It's a special sense in which this knowledge
is in the heart and mind of God.
For I have known him.
Now in the Old Testament, this word yathai
is a word that more than once means
the knowledge of intimate relationship based upon a
choice.
Let me give you a text.
Amos chapter 3 verse 2.
The Lord's speaking to the children of Israel.
You only have I known of all the
nations on the earth.
Now God knows all nations, but he says
you only have I known.
So it is in a special sense that
he speaks and of course the context makes
it plain that he's speaking of his choice
of Israel.
It is only Israel whom he has chosen
of all the nations of the earth.
In other words, it is a word that
refers to his distinguishing grace in his election.
He has chosen them alone.
Now when we say in the Bible that
we believe in the doctrine of election, we
do not really tell anybody much at all.
We only tell them that we read the
Bible.
And so we must ask a second question.
If you believe in election, what kind of
election do you believe in?
What do you mean by your election?
Because there are many ways in which we
may understand election, but two primary ones.
There are those who seeking to escape the
idea that God sovereignly elects have said that
God looks down through the years and out
of his foreknowledge determines to choose those who
will believe in him.
In other words, he sees down through the
ages of time those who will believe, such
as I, and he selects them.
And they say yes, I believe in the
doctrine of election, and their election is the
conditional doctrine of election according to foreseen faith.
That's very popular.
That's the general idea of election in evangelical
churches and most of the evangelical churches in
this area of Dallas.
That exists.
People say yes, we believe in the doctrine
of election, but if you ask them what
do you mean, out will come conditional election.
The Bible teaches, however, election as unconditional.
That is an election based upon the sovereign
mercy of God, his sovereign good pleasure.
He elects some, passes by others, because he
elects according to his good pleasure.
That is unconditional election.
Now that is what the Bible teaches.
It is clear the other doctrine is a
very bad doctrine, because it's a doctrine based
on an inferior view of God.
Let me show you how.
It in effect says that God does not
know something until he looks down through the
years to determine it.
In other words, he looked down through the
years and he saw that Lewis Johnson would
believe, and having come to the knowledge of
that, he said, goody, I will choose him.
I will love him.
Well, now we have then a God who
has gained in knowledge, and if he has
gained in knowledge, then it is clear he
was not omniscient.
And if he was not omniscient, then he
is not the God of Scripture.
He is a more limited kind of God.
Thus, the idea that you have concerning election
affects your idea of God.
People think this is only a theological point.
It's not only a relationship to the Lord,
because it affects the way in which you
look at God.
You will have an entirely different view of
God if you believe in sovereign electing grace
from the view that you have of God
when you think of him as a God
who does his work conditionally.
So it is important.
He says, for I have chosen him.
In the New Testament when we read whom
he foreknew, he predestinated.
How then are we to understand foreknowledge there?
Notice it does not say he foreknew what
we would do, but he foreknew us.
Well, it is clear then that that foreknowledge
is the foreknowledge of intimate choice.
It means to enter into the relationship so
intimate that what emerges is an election based
upon his good pleasure.
To know someone in the physical sense in
Scripture is to enter into the closest of
physical relationships.
Adam knew Eve his wife.
The intimacy of personal relationship.
So in the Bible when we read of
foreknowledge, we do not mean that God looked
down through the years and saw who would
believe and then acted accordingly, but he foreknew
an individual, that is he entered into a
relationship of election, selecting them because of his
sovereign good pleasure.
And so we are elect as a result
of that.
And we should be grateful that the love
of God has been set upon us in
that way.
I have chosen him.
So friendship, the friendship between Abraham and the
Lord is the product of sovereign electing grace.
Now I want you to notice another thing.
It says, I have chosen him in order
that he may command his children and his
household after him.
You thought perhaps, not thinking, you thought that
God elected people simply to stir up the
minds of his enemies and make them mad
at him.
You thought that perhaps he elected us in
this way in order that we might simply
sit down and do nothing about it.
Oh no.
He elected Abraham.
He chose him in order that he may
command his children and his household after him
to keep the way of the Lord.
This is a very revealing word on parental
responsibility.
And it suggests to us an important point
about the purpose of God's divine electing choice
or divine electing grace.
So he was chosen in order to train
up his children in the nurture and admonition
of the Lord.
This past week I received a very concerned
call from someone in the congregation at Believers
Chapel, and I was very grateful for it.
And in this call, I was told that
the elders did not understand the condition of
many of the young people in Believers Chapel,
which of course I would grant.
That's entirely possible.
It's not something that we like.
And what I'm going to say is not
in any way to be understood as an
attempt to avoid some responsibility.
But I do want to say this, that
if, as I was told, there is a
great deal of alcoholism, drug addiction, or traffic
in drugs, some sexual immorality among young people,
in some ways attached to Believers Chapel.
Now of course if the elders know about
specific cases, they will do their best to
deal scripturally with those things.
And we do acknowledge that we have made
many errors and mistakes, and no doubt have
sinned greatly in our own responsibilities to the
congregation.
But I want to suggest to you that
the ultimate responsibility rests with the father of
the children.
Now you can see that he says, I
have chosen him that he may command his
children and his household after him to keep
the way of the Lord.
The reason that we do have these problems
in our congregation is because our fathers, we
as fathers, have not assumed our responsibility.
It is not our wife's responsibility to train
up our children in the nurture and admonition
of the Lord, primarily.
Of course we want godly women to train
up children.
But it is the father's responsibility.
It is his responsibility to be the Bible
teacher of his children.
As Mr. Prowse often says, it's a great
statement, it's almost inspired.
He said the best Bible teacher that anyone
will ever have is his own father.
How true that is.
And the responsibility lies right there.
And so I want to exhort you men
who may have neglected your responsibilities.
There is hope.
As you turn to the Lord and begin
to assume responsibility and begin to study the
word of God and assume the headship of
the house, your wife may even call you
Lord one of these days, if you do
your part.
So Abram is chosen with a view to
a very practical kind of relationship.
He's to train up Isaac.
And let me assure you that on the
human level, had he not done his job,
the work of God would have suffered.
Isaac comes along and it's Abraham who trains
Isaac into becoming the meditative kind of man
that he did.
And it's Isaac who trained Jacob and so
on down the way until finally the promised
seed did come.
The content of the prayer I can only
allude to.
It's a very interesting thing.
I'm sure that you know about all that
I would want to say about it.
It's the most remarkable example of intercessory prayer
in the Bible.
Some have said, prompted no doubt by an
anxiety for lot and also a concern for
the name of the Lord because he knew
that some, if God destroyed these cities, would
say the God of Abraham is a very
harsh God.
He is not a just God because he
punishes by this extraordinary kind of judgment and
it doesn't seem to make any difference whether
there are righteous people there or not.
He just punishes.
So he has a sense of regard for
the honor of the name of God.
The appeal is not to covenant grace, as
you can see, but to judicial equity.
So he doesn't haggle with God.
He's exploring the nature of God and trying
to put together the mercy of God and
the justice of God.
He prays six times.
It's interesting it's That's the number of man.
He ceased asking before God stopped giving.
I cannot help but contrast this with Elijah's
prayer in first Kings chapter 18.
After the great victory on Mount Carmel, he
had already announced it was going to rain
soon.
He went up on the mountain.
He told Ahab to eat and get ready
because there was a big shower coming.
He got down on his knees.
Elijah put his head between his knees and
he told his servant, go out and take
a look.
He was on the top of the mountain.
The servant went out, came back, and he
said he didn't see a thing.
Elijah said, go again.
He went and looked a second time.
He came back.
There's nothing there.
He said, go again.
And he came back and he said, go
again.
And he came back again and he said,
go again.
For until seven times the text of Scripture
says, seven, that's the number of perfection.
That's the number that signifies a persistent, a
prayer of importunity that received its answer.
And finally the servant came back and said,
there's a little cloud out there about the
size of a man's hand.
Elijah said, get things, get ready and let's
go.
It's going to have, it's going to be
a downpour.
And that, of course, is what happened.
Now, we do not read that Abram prayed
that seventh time.
I wonder what would have happened if he
had prayed the seventh time.
Of course, but he did not.
We leave it at this.
His prayers were answered to some extent because
Lot and some of his family were saved.
P.
T.
Forsythe was one of the great theologians of
the earlier part of the 20th century.
He once said, it's the will of God
that we should bend his will to ours
through prayer.
That, of course, is not true.
We do not bend God's will to our
will through prayer.
As a matter of fact, speaking from the
divine standpoint, prayer does not change things.
Prayer only changes things from the human standpoint.
God is not changed by our persuasiveness in
prayer.
We do not move him to change his
mind.
And so when we use the expression prayer
changes things, that's a very, very misleading expression.
It's best that we not use it at
all, in my opinion, because you see, answers
are not wrenched from a reluctant God by
importunity.
As a matter of fact, promises and divine
purposes antedate the praying by the sovereign will
of God.
Prayer, however, is the means by which we
lay hold of blessings already promised to us
and already determined to be ours.
That's why we pray in confidence and with
assurance that we're going to be blessed by
God, because it is by means of prayer
that we receive the promises that have been
given to us.
We don't change his mind.
We simply receive what he's already promised and
determined that shall be ours through the experience
of prayer by which we enter into relationship
to the Lord.
Well, our time is up.
I must stop.
It's remarkable the influence that one man or
a minority has on the Lord from the
human standpoint.
And it's also remarkable how much the ungodly
owe to the presence of saints in the
world.
But this passage, most of all, is a
great incentive to persistent prayer.
Persistent prayer is proper when we have received
a delay in answer, or that is when
God has not answered our prayer, either by
a yes or a no.
They are the seed of our discipline and
they deepen the channel of our natures and
enable us to grow in the relationship that
we have to the Lord.
I'm afraid many of us don't know anything
more about prayer than the evening prayer of
that sleepy little girl who prayed, now I
lay me down to sleep, I pray the
Lord my soul to keep.
And when he hollers, let him go, eenie
meenie miney moe.
Praying hard was one of the great prayer
warriors, American missionary of the earlier part of
the twentieth century.
Wilbur Chapman, one of the best known of
the evangelists, had a contact with him in
Britain.
He was in a meeting and someone said,
praying hard is going to be praying.
And he said there was a tremendous transformation
in the meeting, so far as he could
tell, and a number of people responded.
And he said afterwards to Mr. Hard that
he would like to have Mr. Hard pray
for him.
And so, shortly after the meeting, Mr. Hard
came by his room and turned the, walked
in, locked the door, dropped down on his
knees by the side of Mr. Chapman, and
he said for five minutes he didn't say
a word.
He said, I could hear my own heart
thumping, and I could hear his heart beating,
and I felt hot tears running down my
face.
I knew I was with God, he said.
And then finally Mr. Hard spoke and all
he said was, oh God.
And then he said he was silent for
five more minutes.
And then it seemed as if they all
real, or they both realized that they were
in the presence of the Lord, and he
began to pray with petitions that were petitions
such as he had never heard before.
Mr. Chapman said he rose from his knees
realizing for the first time what real prayer
was like.
The best prayers often have more groans than
words.
And I would think that we Christians have
tremendous need for that kind of prayer.
May God give us the experience of persistent,
important prayer for the glory of God.
If you're here this morning and you have
never believed in Jesus Christ, you don't even
have the right to come and receive from
him until you have come through the Lord
Jesus to receive the forgiveness of sins.
May God so bring you to the conviction
of your sin and the conviction that Christ
has died for sin that you receive as
a free gift the forgiveness of sins and
offer the first prayer, the movement of the
soul out to God in thanksgiving from regeneration
for the forgiveness of sins through Jesus Christ.
May today, may this morning be the time
that you take that step by the grace
of God.
So if you're here this morning, come to
Christ.
Put your trust in him.
Turn from your sin and iniquity.
Come to repentance and faith and know the
forgiveness of sins and the wonderful privilege of
approaching the Lord God through Jesus Christ.
Let's stand for the benediction.
Father, we are so grateful to thee for
these wonderful stories which have such important spiritual
truth for us.
We thank thee that we're able to study
the words that the apostles studied and learn
some of the lessons that the apostles were
taught.
Enable us, O God, to respond truly.
The sins that have plagued us, O God,
bring us to confession and forgiveness and purification
and then enable us by thy grace to
please thee in our lives.
For those here who are lost, O God,
work mightily in them to bring them to
him whom to know as life eternal.
We pray through Jesus Christ our Lord.
Amen.