Real Friendship and the Pleading Priest

[0:00] We hope that you enjoy this teaching from Christchurch. This material is copyrighted and no unauthorized duplication, redistribution, or any other use of any part is permitted without prior consent from Christchurch.

[0:15] Please consider donating to this work in the San Francisco Bay Area online at ChristChurchEastBay.org. Happy Sunday. Good morning.

[0:28] I'm Tonya and I'm part of the Oikos in the Oaks and Women Reading Women monthly book club groups. Today's scripture reading is from the book of Genesis chapter 18 verses 16 to 33 as printed in your liturgy.

[0:43] A reading from the book of Genesis. When the men got up to leave, they looked down towards Sodom and Abraham walked along with them to see them on their way.

[0:54] Then the Lord said, shall I hide from Abraham what I'm about to do? Abraham will surely become a great and powerful nation and all nations on earth will be blessed through him.

[1:05] For I have chosen him so that he will direct his children and his household after him to keep the way of the Lord by doing what is right and just. So that the Lord will bring about for Abraham what he has promised him.

[1:19] So then the Lord said, the outcry against Sodom and Gomorrah is so great and their sins so grievous that I will go down and see if what they have done is as bad as the outcry that has reached me.

[1:31] If not, I will know. The men turned away and went towards Sodom, but Abraham remained standing before the Lord. Then Abraham approached him and said, will you sweep away the righteous with the wicked?

[1:44] What if there are 50 righteous people in this city? Will you really sweep it away and not spare the place for the sake of the 50 righteous people in it? Far be it from you to do such a thing, to kill the righteous with the wicked, treating the righteous and the wicked alike.

[2:00] Far be it from you. Will not the judge of all the earth do right? The Lord said, if I find 50 righteous people in the city of Sodom, I will spare the whole place for their sake.

[2:14] Then Abraham spoke up again. Now that I have been so bold as to speak to the Lord, though I am nothing but dust and ashes, what if the number of the righteous is five less than 50?

[2:26] Will you destroy the whole city for lack of five people? If I find 45 there, he said, I will not destroy it. Once again, he spoke to him. What if only 40 are found there?

[2:39] He said, for the sake of 40, I will not do it. Then he said, may the Lord not be angry, but let me speak. What if only 30 can be found there?

[2:50] He answered, I will not do it if I find 30 there. Abraham said, now that I've been so bold as to speak to the Lord, what if only 20 can be found there?

[3:02] He said, for the sake of 20, I will not destroy it. Then he said, may the Lord not be angry, but let me speak just once more.

[3:13] What if only 10 can be found there? He answered, for the sake of 10, I will not destroy it. When the Lord had finished speaking with Abraham, he left and Abraham returned home.

[3:26] The grass withers and the flowers fade, but the word of our God stands forever. Good morning, Christ Church. We're about halfway through this sermon series in Genesis, and so I thought it'd be fitting after today's service to offer a Q&A on this sermon, on the book of Genesis, on the Bible, on really any question you would like to ask.

[3:56] We'll gather up for a Q&A after this service. But last Sunday, we were looking at the same chapter, Genesis 18. The Lord came, and he said, where's Sarah?

[4:07] And Sarah laughed, and God transformed her laugh. So this is picking right up where we left off. In verse 17, the Lord says, shall I hide from Abraham what I'm about to do?

[4:21] And that's basically like saying, I probably shouldn't be telling you this, but. Right? It's tipping your hand. It's revealing your intentions. It's letting the cat out of the bag.

[4:33] The Lord clearly does not want to hide from Abraham what he's about to do. Why? Because he's chosen Abraham to be his covenant partner.

[4:45] And we kind of see that in verse 17. Shall I hide from Abraham what I'm about to do? Abraham will surely become a great and powerful nation, and all nations on earth will be blessed through him, for I have chosen him, so that he will direct his children and his household after him to keep the way of the Lord by doing what is right and just, so that the Lord will bring about for Abraham what he has promised him.

[5:09] In other words, if Abraham and if all the people of Abraham are going to be a community, are going to be a nation through whom the blessing of God goes out to all the nations of the earth, if they're going to be a people who keep the way of the Lord, a people who do what is right and what is just, a people who are righteous and who are just, then they must necessarily be involved with God.

[5:43] They must be participating with God in his work in the world. And this means that Abraham and the people of Abraham need to learn to be a people of prayer.

[5:59] They've got to learn how to pray. Shall I hide from Abraham what I'm about to do? That's an invitation to pray. And it actually leads to the first full prayer with petitions recorded in the Bible, one of the greatest prayers in all of the scriptures.

[6:16] And what we learn here right off the bat is that prayer is not our idea, it's God's idea. And prayer is never, it never comes at our initiation, it comes at God's initiation.

[6:28] If you ever sense that you should pray, it's because God is prompting you to pray. Prayer is answering God.

[6:39] Prayer is responding to God's word, responding to God's spirit. And the God that we meet here in the story is a living God. He's a real God who speaks and who invites us into his presence and who prompts us to pray and who listens to us and wants a personal relationship with us.

[7:00] And prayer is the conversation that keeps the relationship alive, right? Just like any other relationship we have, we have to talk to that person. And so there's lots of different kinds of prayer in the Bible, but we're going to ask three questions today.

[7:15] What is intercessory prayer? What fuels this kind of praying? And how can we contend for our city? What is intercessory prayer?

[7:26] What fuels this kind of praying? And how can we contend for our city? If you look at verse 20, 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.

[7:45] If not, I will know. And then the men turned away and went towards Sodom, but Abraham remained standing before the Lord. Then Abraham approached him and said, will you sweep away the righteous with the wicked?

[7:59] So we've heard already in verse 19, Abraham is called to form this family. He's called to form a whole nation, in fact, that will keep the way of the Lord and will do what is right and what is just.

[8:13] But what do those words actually mean? And what do they have to do with this outcry that's coming up to the Lord? Well, the Hebrew word, tzedekah, which means righteousness, it's about the day-to-day living of a person who conducts all of their relationships in their family and in society with fairness and generosity and equity.

[8:41] And a righteous person is someone who will disadvantage themselves in order to advantage the community.

[8:53] And a wicked person is someone who does the opposite. A wicked person is someone who will disadvantage the community in order to advantage themselves. That's tzedekah, that's righteousness.

[9:05] And the Hebrew word mishpat, which means justice, is all about giving people what they are due. If someone is due punishment or if someone is due protection, you give them what they're due.

[9:19] And over and over in the scriptures, mishpat describes taking up the care and the cause of four different kinds of people, widows, orphans, immigrants, and the poor.

[9:31] And we describe these as the quartet of the vulnerable. These are people who have no economic power, no social power.

[9:42] They're so easily neglected and ignored, so easily exploited and harmed. And so when the Lord says in verse 20, a great outcry about grievous sins has come up to me, it's all about tzedekah and mishpat.

[9:58] It's all about these cities who have become so corrupt, so vicious, so cruel, so violent, that victims of unrighteousness, victims of injustice are crying out to the Lord for righteousness and justice.

[10:15] You guys with me so far? Okay. So the prophet Ezekiel, interestingly, in Ezekiel 16, the prophet says, the sin of Sodom is that she is arrogant, overfed, and unconcerned.

[10:30] She does not help the poor and the needy. And God doesn't stand aloof to that. He stands in judgment on that. And you might say, well, I don't believe in a God of judgment.

[10:43] I believe in a God of mercy, right? But if you have a God who hears the cries of people who are oppressed, who are being absolutely crushed, and he never actually judges their oppressors, is that actually a God of mercy?

[10:59] So what you have here is both a just and a merciful God who hears this outcry, and he asks Abraham to intervene. Shall I hide from Abraham what I'm about to do? No, I'm not going to hide it.

[11:10] And Abraham knows that, and Abraham turns in verse 23, and it says, Abraham approached him and said, will you sweep away the righteous with the wicked? And this term, approached, it's a legal word.

[11:24] It means to approach the bench, to approach the judge, right? It's like a courtroom where Abraham's been invited to become the legal representative of this pagan city before Almighty God.

[11:41] And he goes to the bench, and he begins to intervene. He begins to argue a case. He begins to contend for the future of this city.

[11:52] And what's surprising as he's making his case is that if you know anything about the story, Abraham's nephew, Lot, and his whole family is in this city, but he doesn't mention them at all.

[12:02] And Gordon Wynnum is a great Old Testament scholar. In his commentary, he says this. He says, this text, Genesis 18, has all kind of links with the great intercessions of Moses and of Samuel and of Amos and of Jeremiah, who all pleaded to God on the nation's behalf.

[12:22] They pleaded on Israel's behalf. But he says here, Abraham is, he's not praying for his own people, he's praying for Sodom. And that, Gordon Wynnum says, that makes this episode unique among prophetic intercessions.

[12:40] Because Abraham's not praying for his own needs. He's not praying for his grocery list of, I need this and I want that, give me this, give me that. Nor is he praying for his own family or his own people, his own tribe, people who believe like him, look like him, share the same race, the same God.

[12:59] No. It says that he's praying for Canaanite pagans. He's praying for the whole city. He's praying for people who, even at this moment, are doing wicked things.

[13:11] And he's just laying himself out before God for their good. So this is a prayer that's remarkably unselfish, remarkably outwardly facing, broad, inclusive, universal.

[13:27] Because Abraham knows that he's been blessed to be a blessing, right? Back in Genesis 12. And that's repeated here in verse 18. All the nations of the earth will be blessed through him. And one of the primary ways that Abraham understands how this blessing is going to go through him out to all the peoples is through prayer.

[13:46] Through intercessory prayer. And so at first glance, as Abraham begins to talk to God, and is talking God down from 50 to 45 to 40 to 30 to 20 to 10, it sounds like we're listening to two Middle Eastern people in a marketplace haggling over the price of melons.

[14:05] Right? But it's actually profoundly deeper than that. There's something profoundly theological going on here where it says in verse 23, Abraham approached the bench and he said, Will you sweep away the righteous with the wicked?

[14:22] What if there are 50 righteous people in the city? Will you really sweep it away and not spare the place for the sake of the 50 righteous people in it? Far be it from you to do such a thing, to kill the righteous and the wicked, treating the righteous and the wicked alike.

[14:35] Far be it from you. Will not the judge of all the earth do right? See, Abraham's approaching the bench like a lawyer, like a defense attorney.

[14:46] And a good defense attorney will not come to the judge and say, Your Honor, my client is guilty of breaking this law, but don't you think this is kind of a stupid law?

[15:01] Or, hey, Your Honor, can't you just for today forget everything you learned in law school? And just for a moment, like kind of be a little flexible on the standard of the law, and just have a heart and give my client a break?

[15:18] If that's your defense attorney, you need a new defense attorney, because you're not going to win in court. See, Abraham knows how to win in court. He goes back to Genesis 1-2, and he says, God, the facts are, You're the creator.

[15:36] You are the moral standard maker of the universe. You are the righteous and the just lawgiver. And so I'm not asking you to be something you're not. I'm not asking you to do something other than what you do.

[15:48] But Abraham also goes back to Genesis 3 and Genesis 6 and Genesis 13, and he says, You're not just a law-giving and a just God who demands righteousness and justice, but you're also a compassionate God, and you're a gracious God.

[16:06] You spared Adam and Eve, and you spared Noah and his family, and you spared me and my family. You called me out of pagan idolatry to become your person, to be a blessing to all the peoples of the earth.

[16:18] So I know he's calling on the nature of God and the very attributes of God and saying, God, I know who you revealed yourself to be. And so the question that I'm asking you, God, is what if there are both righteous and wicked people in this city?

[16:34] You wouldn't sweep the righteous away with the wicked, would you? Because that wouldn't be right. Wouldn't you rather spare this whole city?

[16:46] Wouldn't you rather just forgive and save this entire city, including the wicked, for the sake of the righteous? He's saying, Look, God, I'm not asking you for the salvation of people in spite of your demands for righteousness, but rather what I'm asking is this.

[17:03] Will you forgive the unrighteous many for the sake of the righteous few? And could you value the righteousness of the few so much that it covers the wickedness of the many?

[17:18] God, could you please spare, could you please forgive this whole city for a righteous remnant that might be inside of it? Because I know that the wicked have failed your moral law.

[17:33] I know they have a guilty record, but is it possible that the righteousness of someone else could cover them and could save them? You see, we all live in a culture of radical individualism, so this makes no sense at all.

[17:49] But for Abraham, he's an ancient person, and so he's pressing God for corporate solidarity and a sense of organic connectionalism. He's pushing God in this direction of collective responsibility.

[18:02] He says, We all know it's true that if one person royally screws up, royally sins, then another person or another whole group of people are going to be negatively affected by that, right?

[18:14] And Abraham says, But what if that principle works in the opposite direction? Is it possible that the righteousness of others could positively impact another person or another group of people?

[18:27] He says, God, is your treatment of the human community going to be based on the wicked record of the many, or could it be based on the righteous record of the few?

[18:41] And at an even deeper level in this prayer, Abraham is saying, God, is it possible that your merciful will to save could become greater than your just will to punish?

[18:53] And is it possible for your divine justice for the sake of the wicked to be somehow subsumed under your divine mercy for the sake of the righteous? How do we apply this kind of praying to our lives?

[19:07] Well, I hope you can see so far that prayer is about more than just shooting up flares and saying, is there anybody up there? It's way more than just writing down little messages in a bottle, sending them out, hoping somebody will read these one day.

[19:25] No, prayer is about crying out to the living God, this God who's revealed himself in the Bible, calling on, grabbing hold of his nature and his attributes and all of his promises and his will and saying, God, I'm not going to let you go.

[19:39] Prayer is about standing in the gap between the creator and his creatures. It's about standing in that place between the living God and the cities in which we inhabit and on the basis of who God says he is, engaging him in a conversation that's both broad and deep, that's both universal and theological.

[20:04] If we're going to be mature Christians, if we're going to be a healthy church, we've got to learn how to pray like Abraham, which means that we've got to get around people who have learned how to pray this way and we've got to get ourselves into resources that can teach us how to pray this way and that's why we're going to keep going in this passage because this is the first resource.

[20:28] So what is intercessory prayer? Second question is, what fuels this kind of praying? It's interesting that when Abraham approaches the bench, he just begins kind of launching all kind of questions at God, right?

[20:45] And he even gets to the point, he says, God, will you really? Will you really? Far be it from you, God. God. It's kind of an intimate and also intense form of communication with Almighty God, is it not?

[21:03] If you look at the Psalms, the prayer book of the Bible, you see the exact same kind of thing. Abraham has this incredibly bold faith where he just, he approaches the bench like he deserves to be there and he moves right into the presence of the judge of all the earth with a kind of accessibility and a kind of familiarity and he just begins to argue, argue his case.

[21:28] And how does the Lord respond to that? Is the Lord displeased with that? Well, verse 26 says, the Lord said, if I find 50 righteous people in the city of Sodom, like you've asked, I will spare the whole place for their sake.

[21:42] And then Abraham spoke up again and he said, now that I've been so bold as to speak to the Lord, though I'm nothing but dust and ashes, what if the number of the righteous is five less than 50, will you destroy the whole city for lack of five people?

[21:57] If I find 45 there, he said, I will not destroy it. See, Abraham knows that he's asking boldly, right, he's got chutzpah, as they say.

[22:08] He knows that. But at the same time, he also says, I'm nothing but dust and ashes, which is a profound statement of humility and deference that, again, is rooted in divine revelation.

[22:24] He's going back to Genesis 2. We're nothing but, we're made from the dust, right? Genesis 3, we're fallen sinners who deserve nothing but death and ashes. And most people struggle to hold these two things together at the same time, right?

[22:40] Conservative people tend to say, you know, God is a personal God and he's this imminent God and so we're looking for a sense of the presence of God. We want to draw near to God.

[22:51] We want to experience intimacy with God. We want to approach him. We want to talk to him. But we don't really want to go after God in prayer. We don't want to be too assertive.

[23:03] We don't want to be aggressive like Abraham is in this prayer because that's not appropriate if God is absolute and God is transcendent. It's not respectful enough.

[23:14] It's not formal enough. Who could go to God like that? But on the other hand, liberal-minded people who really have a passion for causes of collective righteousness, causes of corporate justice, they might want to talk to people about these things.

[23:37] Maybe occasionally they'll talk to God about these things. But they certainly won't admit that before the cosmic majesty of God, I'm really nothing but dust and ashes.

[23:50] I really don't even deserve to be here right now. I don't deserve to ask for anything. I'm just weak and unworthy and undeserving. I'm totally helpless, totally hopeless.

[24:03] And you see, neither group, neither Christian here or Christian there, church here or Christian, neither of them are as bold and as humble as Abraham is.

[24:16] Abraham shows us how to approach the bench, how to come to the throne of God, the presence of God, with a kind of confidence and a boldness that's also counterbalanced by deference and humility.

[24:27] And it's clear that the Lord is pleased with this kind of praying. He's pleased with this kind of attitude and this kind of approach because to Abraham's astonishment over and over again, the Lord continues to say yes.

[24:43] And Abraham, if you notice, Abraham is the kind of person who refuses to take yes for an answer. Six times the Lord says yes and six times Abraham with humble boldness and bold humility says, no, I want more.

[25:00] I want more. He's pressing the Lord as far as the Lord can be pressed to go. And he gets him all the way from 50 to 45, 40, 30, 20, 10, all the way to 10.

[25:15] And then the conversation just stops right there. Why? Why is that? Because clearly Abraham would keep going.

[25:27] Right? Abraham would go all the way down to one. But it says in verse 33, the Lord finished speaking with him and so Abraham just went home. The Lord stops Abraham short because he knows there's actually not one righteous person in that city.

[25:46] Abraham's nephew Lot is there, but he's an immigrant. He's not a citizen of the city. And if you know anything about his story, he's relatively righteous.

[25:56] Right? Right? His record, like ours, is pretty spotty. And so the Lord just stops Abraham short and says, there's not even one righteous person in that city.

[26:09] And you see, Abraham is a prophet. Abraham is a priest. And he's doing what prophets and priests do. He's interceding for the city. But the thing about Abraham is the only thing he can really do is argue this case, but he's not able to execute the case.

[26:26] He's not able to close the case. And so what we need is a true prophet. What we need is a high priest who's not able just to argue the case, but is able to execute the case.

[26:41] And that's why we have the New Testament. Right? The book of Hebrews chapter 7, verse 24 says, because Jesus lives forever, he has a permanent priesthood.

[26:54] And therefore, he's able to save completely those who come to God through him because he always lives to intercede for them. Such a high priest truly meets our need, one who is holy, blameless, pure, set apart from sinners, exalted above the heavens.

[27:12] He does not need to offer sacrifices for his own sins. He sacrificed for the sins of the people once for all when he offered himself. What in the world does that mean?

[27:23] Well, you see, Abraham, he's praying for Canaanites who are hostile to him. If you go back and you look at Genesis chapter 14, Abraham's having to keep these pagan Canaanites off with swords.

[27:37] They're trying to attack him. They could hurt him. But he's praying for them anyway. And yet, Jesus, the true prophet, the true high priest, prayed for people who are actually in the act of killing him.

[27:51] Right on the cross, what did Jesus pray? He prayed, Father, forgive them for they don't know what they're doing. Jesus is giving his life for the people he's praying for.

[28:05] Jesus is not only able to argue our case, but he's able to execute our case. Because even though he didn't have to come, he came anyway.

[28:18] And he lived the righteous life that every one of us was supposed to live. And even though he was absolutely innocent, he died the death of a criminal.

[28:29] He died a just death in our place, the death that we deserve to die. And the night before he went to his cross, he prayed, in this great high priestly prayer in the Gospel of John, chapter 17.

[28:41] He said, Father, I want you to love them as you love me. In other words, I want you to treat them like you treat me, as if they were me. And what happens there at the cross is that our legal representative stands before the bench of divine justice and he says, I'm going to do it, Father.

[29:01] I'm going to love you with all my heart, soul, mind, and strength right now. I'm going to love my neighbor as myself. I'm going to die as the one righteous person who's ever lived on planet earth.

[29:15] And so the question that rings out from this text through the rest of the scriptures, will the Lord save the many wicked for the sake of the one righteous? The answer is yes.

[29:28] When you have the right person, yes. and so friends, when you enter into solidarity with Jesus, what happens is that your unrighteousness becomes his and his righteousness becomes yours.

[29:47] And that's what the apostle Paul says in 2 Corinthians chapter 5 verse 21. It says, God made him who had no sin to be sin for us so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.

[29:59] So again, how do we apply this to our lives? Well, yeah, how do we pray like this? First of all, we need to see that we have even more reason than Abraham had to be humble before the majesty of Almighty God because we are so flawed.

[30:25] We are so sinful. We are so much more wicked than we want to admit to ourselves that the eternal Son of God had to come and die in our place on the cross to save us.

[30:39] And so that means that when we come to God, we say that much more than Abraham, I'm nothing but dust and ashes. I know what it took for me to be saved. I'm nothing but dust and ashes. And yet, secondly, we need to see that we have even more reason than Abraham did to be bold before God's throne of grace because we're so loved.

[31:00] We're so accepted that Jesus was glad to die for us. He cares for us at infinite cost to himself. So we don't just come with humility, we come with boldness and we come and we say, this is where you made it possible for me to be and I'm not going to take yes for an answer because I'm here.

[31:21] I'm here because you shed your blood for me to be here. And the third thing we need to see is that we have a true and a better Abraham as our high priest who's sitting enthroned right now as we've said already from Hebrews 7.25, he's always living to intercede for us.

[31:44] And that means that we have a friend in high places. Right? We have a friend in the highest place, the control room of the universe. He was raised from the dead and he was exalted to the right hand of the Father and given all authority in heaven and on earth and that person is our friend.

[32:07] That person is advocating for us with an infallible case, an executed case, a closed case. And that's what gives us the kind of power to pray this way.

[32:25] Hebrews, again, Hebrews chapter 4 says, therefore since we have a great high priest who has ascended into heaven, Jesus the Son of God, we do not have a high priest who's unable to empathize with our weaknesses, but we have one who's been tempted in every way just as we are, yet he did not sin.

[32:47] Let us, therefore, approach God's throne of grace with confidence so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help us in our time of need. If we grab hold of this, this is the thing, this is the fuel, this is the power that will change your prayer life from being non-existent or overly formal or overly vague or just absolutely boring.

[33:17] into a real and living and intimate and passionate and adventurous and indeed risky act of faith. And this is what God wants from his people.

[33:31] It's very clear. He says, Abraham, it's what I want you to be. It's what I want all of your children to be, to learn to pray like this. So what is intercessory prayer?

[33:44] What fuels such praying? Last question, it's very short. How can we do this for our city? How can we contend for our city? One of the commentators I read, his name's Nahum Sarna.

[34:03] He wrote the commentaries for the Jewish Publication Society on Genesis and Exodus. And he said this, he said, until now, Abraham has spoken with God three times.

[34:17] On each occasion, his personal welfare has been the sole subject of discourse. Now a change takes place. This dialogue with God involves a concern for the welfare of others, total strangers.

[34:31] Abraham displays an awareness of suffering and an ability to respond beyond his immediate personal interests.

[34:43] And Sarna goes on, he says, his compassionate behavior at this moment makes him the paradigm of the just and the right. Qualities that are to characterize all of his descendants.

[34:56] Abraham now stands before God to plead for the lives of depraved pagans. He senses kinship with the people of Sodom and feels himself involved in their fate.

[35:12] What if we felt the way Abraham felt? What if we sensed a kinship for the suffering of our city?

[35:24] What if we felt ourselves to be involved not just in our own personal interests but in the welfare and the fate of our city?

[35:38] The New Testament says that every single Christian believer is like Abraham. Right? 1 Peter 2.9 says that the community of Jesus is to be a royal priesthood.

[35:49] And Revelation 1 verse 6 says that Jesus made us to be a kingdom of priests to serve his God and Father. What does that mean?

[36:00] What does it mean to be a kingdom of priests? A royal priesthood that is contending for the spiritual, social, and cultural renewal and well-being and flourishing of our city?

[36:22] What would it mean if we began to turn to God in this kind of prayer more than we currently do? What would it mean if we called on the name of the Lord with this kind of boldness and this kind of humility?

[36:40] If we said, God, we're nothing but dust and ashes and yet, God, we're here at this throne of grace. We don't want to take yes for an answer. What if we were to call out to God and say, God, give us a hunger and a thirst for righteousness and justice.

[36:57] And what if we contended for God not only for our own needs, our own spiritual life, but what if we contended to God for the lives of others, for the next generation, for the whole of our city that doesn't know God?

[37:20] What if we took more ownership like Abraham took ownership over a city he didn't even belong to? What if we began to identify with the problems of our city?

[37:34] What if we began to repent on its behalf? What if we operated with a holy burden that broken people in our city would be mended?

[37:46] What if we cried out to God that people who don't know him would come to know him and be saved by the one righteous person God has provided? And what if we prayed that all who've been rescued by Jesus would live out the righteousness and the justice of Jesus in sanctified lives, holy lives that are fully conformed to his self-giving love?

[38:13] You know, there's many steps we could take in prayer but the one I'll just mention as we close is that we we didn't plan this six months ago but we we just put on the calendar that Wednesday this Wednesday we wanted the church to commit itself to a day of prayer and fasting.

[38:35] Didn't know what text we were preaching today we just put it on the calendar and you're gonna hear about it in a moment we're just calling you to carve out an hour of your day we're giving you a prayer guide you can pray on your own you can pray with other people you can pray at home at work you can pray here we try to eliminate every barrier for you to say no I cannot pray and we would just simply ask I just wanna ask as we close this sermon will you pray?

[39:04] Will you pray like Abraham? Abraham the Lord said he'll preserve the city if there are 50 righteous people in it he'll even preserve the city if there's 10 righteous people in it and so what if we were a little prophetic community a little priestly community that was so filled with love for God love for neighbor that we wanted to go to God in bold humility and intercede for the flourishing of others for the flourishing of our city this would please God I think very very much John Newton who wrote Amazing Grace he also wrote a hymn he says this thou art coming to a king large petitions with thee bring for his grace and power are such none can ever ask too much in the name of the Father Son and Holy Spirit Amen I want to invite you just to take a moment of quiet as we prepare to come to this table holy