Bargaining with God

Wishes

I remember as a kid often dreaming or even discussing with friends the big question of: if I had three wishes what would they be.

Of course, there was always the obvious answer - I’d wish for more wishes!

But then inevitably, someone will always say: “but your not allowed to wish for more wishes”

… Well who made you the boss of wishes!

I just love the arguments of children - they’re usually always so innocent and trivial.

But of course, after the argument that defines the rules about what you can and can’t wish for, you get down to business and deciding what to wish for.

Now sometimes as a kid you will come up with some wishes that are for the greater good, but usually most kids (and I was no different), will at least keep one or two wishes for themselves. In my case it was probably something like a million dollars so I could go and buy lots of cool stuff.

As we grow up I suspect rather than becoming less self-focussed we just learn to be a little more sophisticated with our answers.

I just wish everyone could get along. I just wish for some greater financial security.

Now, I’m certainly not suggesting they aren’t good things to hope for, but I think very often, at the centre of these desires is actually ourselves.

Now wishes are one thing. After all, these conversation are usually some theoretical exercise. However, in the real world, it plays out in our prayer lives.

We’re usually corrected from an early age that some self-absorbed prayers are not in line with what God wants.

We tell the child that they can’t pray for a new bike or the latest games console machine. After all, God is not our personal genie ready to grant our every wish and desire.

But somehow as adults, while we are unlikely to be so blatant in our requests we can often end up just a self-absorbed, just with a slightly better spin to it.

Part of the problem is that we fail to see what prayer is. Prayer can so easily become the way in which we get God to do what we want him to do.

Now, you’re probably not going to state it quite as clearly as that, yet I think without realising it, that’s what we do.

Today we are going to look at a passage which one commentator described as the “first full-scale prayer of the Bible”.

That might seem like a funny description, after all, it’s probably not what you ordinarily think of as a prayer, but as we’ll see shortly, it is Abraham conversing with God - and isn’t that just the definition of a prayer: communicating with God.

I’m going to explore this conversation that Abraham has, and from it, I’m going to draw a few lessons that we can learn about bringing certain requests before God. It obviously won’t answer all our questions about prayer, but I believe it will provide an important framework for us.

Incidentally, I’m talking about one aspect of prayer today, as that’s where we are up to in this current series, but where going to be spending much more time thinking about prayer over the 4th and 18th August, so perhaps we can see this as a nice little segue between our current series and the teaching we will get.

Context

But first, let’s set the scene for this passage. It was actually four weeks ago since I last preached from this series, so there’s a good chance you’ve forgotten exactly what’s been going on.

So I might go back a bit further than I otherwise would and remind you of where this series has taken us.

We started right back with Abram (as he was originally known), living in the place of his birth, Ur of the Chaldeans.

Along with his wife, father, nephew and a few other family members, they uprooted from this homeland and went to an area north of what was later to become the promised land.

From there, God gave a direction and a promise to Abram. Abram was to go to the land that God would show him, and there he would become a great nation, and a blessing to all people.

What follows is the story of how this promise plays out - and it’s not exactly as straight forward as you might expect.

As we’ve gone through the series we’ve seen many highs and lows along the way.

The first low comes shortly after the promise, when famine strikes, and in fear, Abram takes his wife down to Egypt, and again in fear, lies about who he’s wife is, leading to a very tricky situation. But God remains faithful to the promise, and despite Abram’s poor choices, brings him back to the land he was promised.

We then see a high point as Abram clings to God’s promise and in the process is able to see off a mighty army that tried to dominate the area.

But then another low point comes as Abram doubt God can make him into a great nation - after all he’s an old man with an old wife, and they have no children. And so we get the affair where they try to take things into their own hands and Abram has a child with the servant Hagar - with the child Ishmael being the result.

But it was the last message I gave in this series (which admittedly was four weeks ago), that gives the immediate context to today’s passage.

Last time we looked at chapter 17 and the start of 18 when Abram finally becomes known as Abraham, and God again reiterates his promise.

But we are now 24 years after the initial promise, and the initial promise was given when he was already 75. So we now have a 99 year old with his wife being 89.

But as we get into chapter 18, we get these three mysterious visitors. While the passage doesn’t describe these three visitors in a particularly explicit way, it is clear that the are divine visitors and there is a lot going for the suggestion that they represent the Father, Son and Holy Spirit - the divine Trinity.

In the first half of the chapter, they state clearly that Sarah is going to have a baby in a year’s time which not entirely surprisingly result in laughter from Sarah who knew she was well past child bearing years.

But then these three divine visitors get up to go, and this takes us into our passage for today.

A walk with God

Now there is something that I believe is actually quite profound in verse 16 which I think is so easy to miss. Quite simply, Abraham walked along with these visitors as they were leaving.

On one level, that probably doesn’t sound very profound at all. After all, you could put it down as an overly fond farewell, but I there is a deeper level here. You see, it actually speaks to the posture that Abraham took with God. It’s a posture that places God in his right place.

You see, this is Abraham walking with the Lord, and as he does so, we see that it is not Abraham that is setting the direction, rather it is God. But walking with the Lord also recognises that God is inviting us into a relationship with him - and I’m going to talk about the mysterious nature of that shortly.

It is interesting to recall that if we go back to the start of chapter 17, the basic command that God gave to Abraham was to “walk before me faithfully and be blameless”.

You see here at Gen 18:16 we quickly gloss over this part of Abraham walking with the Lord, but it is so important.

In fact, I’m going to be as bold as to say that it gives us a glimpse of what it was like for Adam and Eve before the fall, and what it will be like for us in the age to come following Christ’s return.

There will be this beautiful fellowship between us and God.

The reality is that we can have this fellowship now. If you’re a believer, then God has called you to walk alongside him.

For us, it’s not quite the same as Abraham physically walking side by side, but the principle is the same.

Where the walk took them

One thing you can note about Abraham’s walk is how it clued him in to what is happening.

Just look at the text. Now you do have to read a little between the lines, but I think it seems fairly clear.

It tells us in verse 16 that as they went to leave, they looked towards Sodom. When little details like that are mentioned in the Bible it’s usually for a reason.

We then get this curious little conversation (or is it a monologue), where the Lord debates whether to tell Abraham what is about to happen, before in verse 20 he decides to actually tell him.

But before I actually explore what this was, I just want to draw your attention to the fact that the text is pointing us to realise that Abraham was only in a position to realise this because he was walking with the Lord.

In Abraham’s case it’s a physical walk, but for us, it is a spiritual walk.

You see, when we’re not walking with the Lord, we can become so unaware of what is going on that we’re not praying about things because we don’t even know they are happening.

I know that I can be guilty of this. There have been times when I have been involved in various ministries and a number of different issues of varying nature show up.

I get to a point where I think - wow, this is all pretty full on, before somebody more discerning than me points out how we’ve just gone through a spiritual attack. It then dawns on me that I haven’t been praying against such attacks because I’ve been very slack in my walk with the Lord.

And so there is a sense in which, even if you don’t take anything else from this message, just know that it is so important to walk close with the Lord. He is the one who is in control. He is the one who knows what’s going on.

I’m about to explore some of the mysterious interaction between us and the Lord, but if we’re not walking with God, then that interaction will be quite different.

God’s plan for Sodom and Gommorah

Before I look at this interaction, it is worth looking at what God is about to do and we’re told this in verse 20.

Genesis 18:20–21 NIV (Anglicised, 2011)

Then the Lord said, ‘The outcry against Sodom and Gomorrah is so great and their sin so grievous that I will go down and see if what they have done is as bad as the outcry that has reached me. If not, I will know.’

Now this isn’t the first time we hear about Sodom and it’s wickedness.

Way back in Genesis 13, Abraham and his nephew Lot are having a disagreement resulting them going in separate ways. Lot chooses the beautiful land near Sodom, but even at this point we’re told the people of Sodom were wicked and sinned greatly against the Lord.

Now it’s worth making the point here that today Sodom sometimes becomes synonymous with homosexuality. This is largely based on the picture we see in chapter 19 when the people of Sodom surround the house and demand the visiting men to come out so they could have sex with them.

Now I would just suggest that while homosexuality might be part of their sin, the wickedness of this place is so much more than that.

The unusual nature of it

Now, I also just want to make a very brief comment on the nature in which this whole scenario plays out. You see, it seems a bit unusual. For instance, why does God have to physically go down to check things out when he is God and he knows everything?

The real answer is actually, I don’t know. After all, God does things however he sees fit. But it would seem that this episode is playing out in this way deliberately so that subsequent generations can look back and learn from the whole situation - as we are doing now.

The Mysterious interaction

So on that note, let’s look at the interaction that follows between Abraham and the Lord, as I believe this is very instructive for us as we consider how we bring our requests to God.

The bargaining process

Let’s start by looking at the bargaining process that happens.

You see, after God declares his intention of what he will do, Abraham realises that his nephew and all of his connection are living there and that they will get caught up in all of this.

To Abraham’s ears, this does not sound good. And so Abraham asks the very valid question in verse 23: “Will you sweep away the righteous with the wicked?”

Abraham then decides that he should put a number of in. So he asks - what about 50? Would you wipe away the city if there were 50 righteous people.

And, perhaps surprisingly, God agrees - he won’t destroy the place for 50 righteous people.

Then Abraham shows his haggling skills. He then goes to 45, then 40, then 30, then 20 and finally to 10 people.

Each time God agrees that for the requested number of righteous people, he will not destroy the place.

But then he stops. And God goes off to Sodom.

The Mystery

Now before I explore Abraham’s approach, I just want to comment on the mystery of the whole thing. You see, it seems strange negotiating in this way with an all-knowing, all-powerful God. Shouldn’t God know the arguments before they were given to him. But this is part of the mystery. The mystery that God wants to have this interaction with us - he wants us to be part of the process. He doesn’t need us in the sense of needing reminding of various things, but he wants us to journey with him and the result being that we benefit as well. It’s great to just let the mystery be as we interact with God.

Now in this process, there are a number of things that we should take note of because it shows some important things about how Abraham approaches the matter.

Appeal to righteousness and justice

Firstly, Abraham does not appeal to God on the basis of how it is going to affect Abraham.

He doesn’t say: don’t destroy them because I’ve got people I love in there.

Rather his appeal is based on God righteousness and justice.

Look at his original argument when he was asking for the 50 righteous. Look specifically at verse 25:

Genesis 18:25 NIV (Anglicised, 2011)

Far be it from you to do such a thing—to kill the righteous with the wicked, treating the righteous and the wicked alike. Far be it from you! Will not the Judge of all the earth do right?’

You see, justice means the wicked should be punished but not the righteous.

Now of course there is a lot of complexity to this, in that injustice does reign today. But yet there is a fundamental character of God that we can appeal to, and even though injustice occurs, it does not please God, and he is working against it.

It is not that he is unable to wipe it out, but in his patience, he is waiting the right time when this character of his will fully be known.

The point for us is that we need to be appealing to God’s righteousness and justice, not our own selfish means.

This is what happens when you are walking with the Lord. You lose that sense of self-absorption, and instead focus on who God is.

Recognition of God’s sovereign position

Now Abraham’s approach also can correct something that we can be tempted to do when requesting something of God.

You see, the temptation can be to promise God something in return for the request.

So for example, we might say: “God, if you help me pass this exam I promise I’ll go to church more frequently”

The problem with this is that it makes God out as almost an equal.

If you negotiate with other people for instance, there is a bit of give and take. I’ll do this if you do that.

But with God it is different. He is not doing things for us in order that he might get things in return. It completely misunderstands how God works.

God is sovereign, and he give us things because of his love for us.

You can see this recognition in the way Abraham asks. He often preludes his new requests with things like “may the Lord not be angry” or “let me be bold”.

He is speaking this way because he recognises that it is not because God owes him anything, but rather it is a real privilege that he can speak this way.

And here lies an interesting observation of how we pray today.

Now sometimes we can be so quick to point out that Jesus said, ask anything in my name and it will happen, or words to those affect, that we can demand things in a way that expects God just to bow to our wishes.

The reality is however that when Jesus makes such statements such as ask and it shall be given, there is an underlining assumption that you are walking closely with God and that your requests in Jesus name are in line with Jesus because your walking with him.

And here takes us back to the mystery. That mystery of our interaction between what God does and what we do.

The mystery that means God listens to us even though he is sovereign.

If we are to recognise this, we need to pray in such a way that recognises that we are not equal with God, but that we can only approach him because of his love for us.

Conclusion

The story concludes for us in chapter 19. It is not my intention to go through this in any detail, but it does show us how Abraham and the Lord’s interaction plays out.

In the end, two divine beings enter the city. And they see first hand the utter wickedness of the place.

The place deserves destruction and that is exactly what happens.

But while it deserves destruction, from Abraham’s plea, we see saving for Lot and his family. They are warned and allowed to escape.

Now of course Lot is far from perfect. He is not righteous in the sense of God’s righteousness, but because sin did not characterize him in the way of the other Sodomites, God allowed him to escape this destruction.

In the end, God remains perfectly just and righteous.

And it is in this that we need to base our prayers.

Too often our prayer lives become all about ourselves. About what we can do or we can gain. But we need to look at this from God’s perspective. Are the things we do and gain, are they furthering God’s righteous work?

Allow your prayers to be in line with God’s. But this is only possible if you are walking closely with God.

As we do walk closely with God and allow our prayers to line with his, then we can begin to have the confidence that Jesus talks about that whatever we ask in his name, it shall be.

Let me pray...