A promised son & a pleading for Sodom

Genesis 18 and 19 being a pair of passages, certainly chapter 17, 18 and 19, all three of those are right in sequence, but these two passages particularly are a pair. They go together. We're going to be doing 18 this week and 19 next week. They also form a large chiasm. That's a pattern that we've introduced in times past, basically centered on Genesis 19 verses 12 and 13. This chiasm is the idea of a literary mirror image pattern with a turning point in the middle, and that middle is in chapter 19 in those verses there. One of the things that comes out here, too, is after the angel's announcement that Sarah would have a son in a year, this is the one in the early part of chapter 18, there's kind of a growing sense of this ominous and fearful event out in front here that's about to take place. And as we move into chapter 19, we'll see that fulfilled.

Now, chapter 18 has four main parts, and the first part here is the three men come, and we put that men in quotes. We'll explain that in a bit here. Abraham invites them rather vigorously to come and eat a meal there. So that's part one. Part two, the three men, once having finished the meal, tell Abraham that Sarah We'll have a son by this time, and Sarah's listening in the tent. Part three is the three men depart, and the Lord makes note of the fact that in view of Abraham's relationship with the Lord and the promises that the Lord has made, that the Lord should reveal or tell Abraham about these things. and particularly about the upcoming destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah because of their sins. And part four, Abraham pleads for the sake of the righteous in Sodom and the reason his son Lot, excuse me, his nephew Lot lives there right in the city of Sodom. And so there's a pleading back and forth.

We'll go into that. A point we want to make, and you have on your handout, and by the way, if you're joining us here, the page on your handout is the number that we have in the lower right corner of the slide. That is, if it's on your handout. And we join these two together with a box. And the reason is these two parts three and parts four, the last half of the chapter, are actually taking place in parallel. They're simultaneous events. And so we'll just point that out. That's the reason for the box on your handout on those two parts.

Now one question we have, because these men are called men repeatedly, is who are these? We're going to lay out here. The men were the angel of the Lord. We had covered this previously, and we have the note there from the prior time, just a couple weeks back. One of these three men is the angel of the Lord, who is the pre-incarnate Christ. the pre-incarnate Son of God, and then there are two created angels. We'll look at the evidence for that here shortly. So, the three men, they appear as men, but they're in fact the angel of the Lord, who is Christ the Lord before he was born of Mary, and two created angels.

Now, one of these men, the Lord Himself, Genesis 18 makes clear. How do we see that? The very first verse, Now the Lord appeared. Well, what we find subsequently is this is the man, or as he's called, actually speaks as the Lord. Secondly, in verse 13, And the Lord said to Abraham, and it does not appear to be a separate revelation, but one of the men, men with quotes, speaking.

Additionally, there were three who appeared as men initially, and this is Genesis 18.2, and these included the Lord, or the angel of the Lord.

But Genesis 19.1 tells about two angels continuing the story as the same basic account, the continuation. These two angels, who are taken as created beings, referred to as men there in Genesis 19 several times, and you have it listed there in your handout. These two men did two things that were particularly extraordinary, and indications that they're angels and not men, aside from the fact that they're called angels at the beginning of the chapter.

And one of those is they warned Lot of a coming future event. All the rest of the people in Sodom were unaware of this event, so it wasn't like something everybody knew. It was a supernatural warning. Secondly, they also exhibited supernatural powers, as we see as we get into the account next week.

Here are some other indications in Scripture. This is a pattern, actually. Other indications in Scripture that angels appear as men. And one of them you have, and it's also included as a slide on your handout, in Luke 24, 1-5. This is at the time of our Lord's resurrection. Two men suddenly stood near them in dazzling clothing. And I think it had to do something other than the kind of detergent they were using, right? So this dazzling clothing was not an advertising for Procter & Gamble, but was instead a statement that these were angelic beings.

We'll see something very similar, and matter of fact, not too many days later in Acts chapter 1, verses 9 through 11, The Lord ascends into heaven from the Mount of Olives before eleven of the disciples there and suddenly two men in white clothing stood beside them and then asked them this question, men of Galilee, why do you stand looking into the sky? Ever seen a group of people do that by the way? It'll draw attention like crazy. But here are these guys, eleven, looking into the sky and these beings, it says two men of Galilee, why do you stand looking into the sky?

This Jesus who has been taken up from you into heaven will come again in just the same way as you have watched him go into heaven. And by the way, that coming again is spelled out in the book of Zechariah. And that coming again is also said to come right back to this very same location, which is the Mount of Olives. Okay.

But at any rate, there's two different instances, and I think that's not the only ones, but they're certainly indicative, where angels are referred to as men. Why? It's because angels don't always have to look like angelic creatures, and believe it or not, they don't look like little babies, and they typically are not showing up as women either. They have a masculine appearance, even though the indication from Scripture is that they're not reproducible beings, or at least that's not what's intended for them. Alright, so now we have the four parts of this passage. Let's step into part one here. This is the part where the three men come and Abraham invites them to eat a meal. Now one thing I have to tell you, Abraham was intense.

Abraham lived in a tent. That was the idea there. As did the rest of his substantial tent hold of servants, herdsmen, and their families. Remember, even when Abraham went to rescue Lot, that there was 318 that went in that party from his group alone. So you're talking a significant number of people that go along with Abraham.

And they were all living in tents. Like I say, this is a decades-long camping trip. Now, the culture of Abraham's time and place was different than ours, whereas these guys are going on a short camping trip and it's an informal structure. You figure out how to sleep, right? In Abraham's time and in that culture, a tent was a formal structure.

A tent was like our own house had certain kind of rules about, cultural rules and even laws about here's how things are done. One of the things, for instance, that they did was there was in a tent that had a woman in it a partition inside the tent. All it is is a piece of cloth, but it was actually a penalty sometimes even to the point of death for going behind that piece of cloth when you're not supposed to. So they had particular sets of cultural standards and rules that went along with living in this tent.

The tents had flaps that were adjustable. They could put them down if they want to keep the sun out and to keep air from coming through. But they could also lift up flaps and configure the tent in a way so that with the doorway open and the flaps the way they were, a man could watch from the doorway and watch and be on guard. You can stay in the shade while doing so, particularly if you put the tent out so that the shade is quite available. The other thing is to allow a breeze to go through, cross ventilation to go through the tent. Some different things about the tents that made it. So here's Abraham sitting in the doorway of the tent, probably with, you know, getting himself set up with a cross breeze, likely in the shade at the moment, and in the heat of the day.

Now one thing, and a number of you may have been quite aware of this, is hospitality is a cultural mandate. in the culture of the time, and actually in many places in the Middle East now, some respect that is still the case. Various cultures placed a high priority on hospitality to strangers as a key thing.

There's no indication in this particular account that Abraham thought he even knew these three men that came. Abraham held to that cultural mandate, but as we'll see here, he was both humble and generous to them. He was both humble and generous. One is Abraham bowed himself down to the ground. That is, down to the earth. He could have just done a sort of a casual slight bow and that would have been acceptable. But what he did was he bowed all the way to the ground. And looking this over, what's interesting is I couldn't find this showing up again in scripture until the book of Joshua. where an angel appears before Joshua and Joshua bows to the ground.

So this is bowing as the lowest servant here is the role that he's taking. Another thing that was in the cultures was to offer something to these strangers and then it was a standard in the culture that you give more than what you offer. You offer them something they accept and then what you deliver is more than what's offered. What we'll see here shortly is that Abraham not only delivered a little bit more than what was offered, but a lot more than what was offered, as we'll see pretty quickly.

He also stood as a servant would. There were rules, remember we said there are kind of rules about temps and things like that. In the culture, some of the standards were that a servant would never sit down with those he is serving. If his role was one of servant, he would never sit down. The other is that the women would not eat with the men.

And so those are two things that we see happening as we go through this account. All right. He washed their feet. The passage is not abundantly clear, but nobody else is described in this process. Nobody else is described as being present. And so I think the implication may be there that he washed their feet.

This was typically done by a servant. And if indeed it was Abraham who actually did it, then that would have been something that was beyond what would have been expected. Again, it would be fitting with his bowing all the way to the ground, not just sort of a bending at the waist and calling it good. He seems to have acted as a lowly household servant there, even though he had many servants of his own.

And of course, we know of an account of the Lord washing the disciples' feet. It's interesting in this account where the Lord washed the disciples' feet. This, of course, took place about 2,000 years later. But when the Lord washed the disciples' feet, think of it in this context.

Jesus was looked upon as a rabbi. As a matter of fact, in some places in the Gospels, he was called exactly that, rabbi. He was looked upon as a rabbi, as a teacher among the Jews. One of the hard and fast rules among the rabbis is that a rabbi could not ask one of his disciples or students to wash his feet. So what does Jesus do? He goes way beyond that prohibition and washes their feet instead.

Well, Abraham certainly appears to have stepped into a humble place here as he washes the feet of these three men, or at least so it appears. Now, he was more humble, Abraham was more humble than the cultural norm. That is, what was normal in the culture. And of course, you know that we have here in our own church body a cultural norm. You know that. Now, so Abraham was more humble than the cultural norm, alright? He bowed himself to the ground.

I would say the implication that he washed their feet seems to be there, largely because nobody else is really mentioned. And he stood as a servant would while the men ate. And so these indications were that he actually put himself as the lowest of servants before them. Now, as you read the account, the first eight verses, do you get the idea that Abraham understands who he is serving? I don't see that he yet understands who they are. I think he later does. But as you look at it, so far as he can tell, they're just men. Strangers passing by.

And he is not only extremely humble, but also very generous. Let's look at the next account here. Abraham was more hospitable than the already hospitable cultural norm. The cultural norm said, be hospitable. He went beyond that. He served the men as if he were their servant. standing when he actually had the right, according to the culture, to eat with them, but standing instead as a servant, looking at himself as the servant while they ate. Beyond that, he offered them meat, which was beyond the cultural norm, far beyond. As a matter of fact, what he did do, and he did have servants involved in this, is have the servants go and prepare a calf, get some meat in this meal, and that was above and beyond what the culture would require. So he really put himself out humbly and generously for these people. Now here's a slide not in your handout here, but one of the key things here is certainly Abraham was hospitable and the culture called for him to be hospitable, but notice that he was more hospitable and more generous than the culture called for.

And I think one of the things to look at is as believers we are called to test what the culture lays out. We've said before that culture is what we do without thinking. As believers, we're called to test everything by God's Word. The culture may say, oh, this is fine to do. Everybody does this. It's certainly acceptable. But does God say it's acceptable? What does God say?

What Abraham did here is he said the culture was hospitable. I'll go beyond that and be more humble than the culture calls for and I will be more generous than the culture calls for. So he did not let the culture dictate his hospitality. Got that? He didn't just look to the culture.

As believers, we are in a place where we can test everything by God's Word. Yeah, this is what the culture does, but what does God say? This is what everybody else does, but what does God say? Much of what is good, with quotes, in our own culture actually comes from Christians who over time have tested things by God's Word in times past. The world may not recognize that and frequently doesn't.

I give an example here. In New Testament times and actually throughout all of biblical time, it was standard to have slaves. That practice was carried on throughout all biblical times. People had slaves left and right. They sold adults. They sold children. And there was very little restriction on what you could do with or to those slaves.

It was in New Testament times, according to Roman law, permissible for a father to dictate that any of his children be killed at any age. It was permissible to abuse them and there was no law against it nor any police force to enforce it. It was permissible to abandon a child that you didn't want at any time just along the roadway like you see here in the picture. That was permissible under Roman law and everybody accepted it.

We even have one account where a father was angry with his adult son. Slaughtered the adult son in front of a bunch of other men. The other men didn't even flinch. The culture said, that's okay. There was no measure of, oh, that's child abuse, physical or sexual abuse or anything of the sort. Completely okay in the culture.

But Christians over time said, no, that's not right. And Christians have over time had an influence So even in our day, it's often assumed that we just somehow came up with these things. It was actually from Christian influence that things like selling little children and selling your own kids and abusing kids and buying a kid to abuse got made illegal. That's why we have laws and enforcement people in place for that now.

What I have a picture of here, this is a fellow by the name of Granville Sharp. He was a British believer and a New Testament Greek scholar living during the last half of the 1700s. Here was a man who was influential in the culture because of what he saw in God's Word. Let me give you a very relevant example this month. We earlier this month celebrated our Independence Day.

Well, that Declaration of Independence, when it hit the shores of Britain, King George saw this Declaration of Independence and he said, we're going to battle these Americans that are rebelling. The order to begin the battle hit the desk of Granville Sharp. He was the head of British military supply for armaments and everything else that the military needed. He was in charge of all the logistics and military supply for Britain. He saw the order and he said, I will not order armaments or any supplies against the Americans. He refused. He told the king, I will not do it. And the king says, then you will step down, which he did. But it just goes to show you, he said, no, wait a minute.

There's some Christian principles here. He was also instrumental in ending slavery. in Britain, and that's the reason for this picture, showing him next to a slave that had been abused. He was instrumental in ending slavery. Again, what does it amount to?

It's a matter of measuring things in the culture, whether it's a negative thing, in this case, like he dealt with, or a positive thing, and saying, I'm going to not do what the culture does, or I'm going to do more than the culture does, based on what God says.

Well, here's Hebrews 13, 1 and 2 that gives us a perspective on what happened with Abraham. Let love of the brethren continue, Hebrews 13, 1. And then verse 2, Do not neglect to show hospitality to strangers, for by this some have entertained angels without knowing it. This confirms Abraham didn't know. The specific reference here is in verse 18. And then Lot, in chapter 18, and lot and chapter 19 and it shows up again with Manoah the father of Samson also entertaining angels without knowing it in Judges 13. Now we'll move on to part 2. The three men tell Abraham that Sarah will have a son by this time next year as Sarah listens. Now, the conversation here turns from Abraham's food to Abraham's family and shifts here with this verse. The angels first say, where is Sarah?

Not because they didn't know the answer, but just to kind of bring up the question of where is she in actual fact, I think they wanted her to hear. The tent may make it so that she can't see, but she can certainly hear what's being said. And by the way, she's in the tent because it was, according to the culture, not proper for her to be out there eating with the men. So Abraham is standing as a servant. That's a part of the culture. She is in the tent away from the men because it's not permissible for her to eat with them.

The next point here is the Lord, that's the he in verse 10 here, also verse 13, told Abraham that he would return next year, and what did he say? I'll come by here next year. Abraham's wife Sarah would then have a son. Well, this generates a laugh from Sarah. By the way, you might have noticed the prior chapter, Abraham laughs at this news. Now Sarah's hearing it, now she's laughing, okay?

It was a laugh of skepticism. It's like, yeah, right, give me a break. This is impossible. Not happening. Not humanly anyway. If she was past childbearing years, Abraham was too. And so in typical human terms, they say this is not possible. This is not happening.

You have on page two of your handout this chart that we've been kind of walking through here over the last few weeks. We noted here and we'll find out subsequently that Isaac is born when Abraham is 100. So if this is a year earlier, Abraham is 99. So Genesis 18 is a year before that. And then what we find out actually here, here's Abraham is 99. Sarah is 90 now at this time when she's laughing. So they're definitely on in years. The other thing is Genesis 17 and 18 and 19 are all close at this point in time. And so Genesis 17 was when Abraham laughed. 18, we're reading now, is where Sarah laughs.

Okay. Now we're on to part three. And it goes like this. The three men depart. They're leaving after eating the meal and giving Abraham the news. And they depart, and the Lord notes the many sins of the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah. So here's part 3, verses 16 through 21. As these three men are departing, God expresses here, as is recorded for us, in looking at his relationship with Abraham, in looking at the promises he's made to Abraham, He says, I must tell Abraham about what looms for these cities of Sodom and Gomorrah. His nephew is there, and besides that, this is going to be one incredible fireworks display, and he should know what's going on. Right?

So the sins of these cities of the plains cry out. Now, this is a kind of a Hebrew figure of speech. Isn't it interesting? Sins don't just sit there idly and do nothing. They cry out to the Lord. They have not just a whimpering, whispering expression, but a loud expression. There is an outcry that comes from these sins. These sins express something to the Lord and they express offense to His character.

God goes down. Now, this isn't the first time we've seen it. We saw it before when we were studying back in Genesis chapter 11, the Tower of Babel. So this expression, the Lord goes down. Now, this does not mean that the Lord is up in heaven ignorant. It's an expression saying that he looks particularly at this circumstance and is quite intensely aware of the circumstance. One of the things we also saw in chapter 11, and we'll see here shortly, is when God goes down to check things out, judgment follows.

Judgment follows. So here's the pattern. This is something we saw when we were studying in the Tower of Babel. For God to go down and see that the tower of Babel was there, that the humans were building it, was a Hebrew figure of speech. Similar to what we read of in Genesis, God remembers. It's a figure of speech. It's not like God forgot. God takes particular note of when He remembers something.

Now let's step into part four. Remember that part four here is Abraham pleading with the Lord And as we'll see at the beginning of each of those sections, both of those are in parallel. They're both happening as these three men depart. And so that's why we have on your page one representation there, the box around those. Now, Abraham knew that the dooming was looming. Okay? Alright. We're not told directly, although it's quite evident, not told directly how Abraham knew that doom was looming for Sodom.

And you know, I wonder if sometimes the Lord didn't give several indications. One of the reasons why Abraham might have been given a clue is as the men were departing, they looked down at Sodom and maybe he saw the look on their faces. as they went down. Can you imagine that? Imagine, here he is, he's looking at these guys, they're looking down at Sodom, and he's saying, that's not a good look. They're not looking down hopefully at Sodom. They're not looking down with a positive expression. That may have struck him. It may also be that the Lord told him in some way that's not directly revealed here, although it's clear from the passage that he would in some way reveal it. So, one way or another, he had a sense that something was coming down with Sodom and it was not good.

It's already apparent from chapter 14 in our study of Genesis that he already knew the character of Sodom. Remember, he refused to get involved with getting any kind of you know, reward back from the king of Sodom. He didn't want to get in any sort of an obligation with this king. He certainly knew well that his own nephew Lot was a resident and city leader in Sodom. Abraham had already been through one cycle of rescuing his nephew Lot. who had been living there, and he did so, as we made note, at great risk to himself, at least in the cultural context that would have been looked at as risky.

Now, what's interesting is this pleading that he has comes in the sense of dickering or haggling. Now, if you haven't been personally exposed to it, you've very likely heard of some cultures where you never pay full price for anything. You know, you sit there and dicker and haggle and go back and forth. And certainly in the Middle East that would have been standard fare.

Believe me, nothing Abraham bought had barcodes on it. Okay? Alright. Abraham asked if God would preserve, and notice he uses this, the whole city of Sodom for the sake of the, and he goes down the list, 50, 40, 30, 20, and 10. But he underscores the whole city. He's looking to have everything preserved. And he keeps asking about, would you preserve the whole city for the sake of this many righteous, or this many, or this many?

Abraham stopped at ten, but what we'll find out as we get into chapter 19, there weren't even ten. Maybe he should have gone lower still. Nonetheless, that's where he quit. Abraham didn't seem to know, nor had the Lord given him some indications that, hey, there's this impending doom for Sodom. He didn't seem to know that God was going to remove Lot's family and then destroy Sodom. So that seems to have been a part of his asking the Lord.

And, you know, we can be in that spot too. In our prayers with the Lord, a lot of times when we pray, we don't know what all the circumstances are, do we? We don't always know what all the situations that are possible, or actually even are, are about. We oftentimes are in a spot where we're praying with the Lord and haven't got the full set of circumstances. But notice the Lord doesn't shun Abraham's prayer, even though Abraham doesn't seem to understand fully what's about to happen. And the Lord does that with us too, doesn't He? The Lord doesn't say, well, you don't know what you're talking about.

Stop praying. I'm not going to listen to you. No. The Lord instead wants us to converse with Him. even though we may not have the full picture or may not have it until later. The whole city here is not going to be preserved. We're going to find that out. Not under any circumstance. The Lord is going to remove Lot and as many of his family as will go along from the circumstance and then go ahead and destroy the whole city.

One of the reasons I would think is a possibility that Abraham would be concerned about preserving the city? Look at this. This is from chapter 14. Abraham went and with 318 of his own troops, went and brought back Lot and all of Lot's goods and all the people, this is the women and the people, all the goods, all the possessions, brought them all back to Sodom. Guess what's going to happen to all those possessions? Gone. Okay? And a question. How many of those people that were with Lot's household would be preserved? Turns out not so many. So a great deal of Lot's rescue effort would end up for naught. And that may have been one of the reasons why Abraham was trying to say, Lord, can we save this city and not do this? Now, notice the poetic character of Abraham's pleading.

Here in verse 27 and verse 31, he says the same thing at the beginning of his pleading, adding a little extra to the first time. Now, behold, I have ventured to speak to the Lord, which he says again in verse 31. Notice then in verses 30 and 32, O may the Lord not be angry and I shall speak. Repeated again in verse 32. And then as he does the first time, he does finally the last time, he adds a little bit more to it. Only this once, meaning only this one last time.

Now, If we think about this and look at Abraham's pleading, even though we look at it and say, well, Abraham didn't know everything about what was going to take place. That was a part of his pleading. But there's something else I think we should take a look at here, even though I don't think the pleading seems to be a pattern for us to follow. I don't think the Lord intends that we do all this dickering. That pattern is not repeated. You don't, for example, in the New Testament letters see him doing this dickering with God in their prayers. But there is a pattern to follow and that's this.

Abraham could only plead with God by knowing his character. As a matter of fact, as we'll see shortly, he appeals, Abraham appeals to God by God's character and by knowing about the relationship with the Lord. We have record of a lot of these pagan times when the pagans would have their pagan gods and they would kind of off to the side say, I wish I knew what the God wanted. I have no idea. I don't know the God and I just have no idea what the God wants. Abraham instead says, I know God's character. I know that I can talk to the Lord. I know that I can converse with Him. Abraham appealed here on the basis of God's justice.

Genesis 18.25, "...shall not the judge of all the earth deal justly?" He appealed to God's justice. Justice wouldn't treat the righteous and the wicked the same way. He appealed to God's character. But I think that's not all. Certainly, Abraham called God the judge of all the earth. Something else, he saw God as a moral God. This is the reason for this judgment to begin with. The one who will judge all the earth. He himself is the standard of all righteousness.

God does not have things written out in the Bible as to, oh, believers ought to do this and not do that, just because God is being arbitrary. I've talked in the past how when I was growing up on the farm, I would play games with the ants. You put a stick down in front of the ant just to play games with it and see what it'll do. God is not playing little funny games like I did with the ants, with us.

He's not just doing something to say, well, I wonder what you'll do. God has purpose and reason in what He's doing. And He lays things out. He says, this morality is not just because I'm being arbitrary and trying to play a game with you and wondering what you'll do.

God calls for us to live this way and not that because it is a reflection of his own character. He is a moral God. He also is the judge of all the earth, right? So God was seen as having dominion over all the earth. He's not just some local God. He's not some God that has to fight and arbitrate with other gods.

Understanding God's character impacts how we live, just like Abraham had a life that was impacted because he knew God's character. Even his conversation with God was impacted by God's character. Here we are, here living in the Denver area, and do we just do what the rest of the world does? Or do we look to the Lord to say, what do we do and not do? Our understanding of God's character does impact our own lives. It impacts how we live. Abraham could approach the Lord and speak with the Lord because Abraham had a personal relationship with Him. And that is exactly what God intends with us. That personal relationship led to fellowship with the Lord.

The difference between relationship and fellowship, certainly the words have some overlap and are common usage, but the distinction I'd like to make here is that in relationship, that relationship stands. An example that I've used is if one of my children were to come to me and say, Dad, I don't want to have anything more to do with you. My relationship would still stand. They would still be the son or daughter. The fellowship would be broken. But the relationship would still stand. Abraham knew that he had a relationship that was a basis for fellowship. See that? He had a personal relationship. We're going to see, and we have seen already, that as Abraham converses with God, he does so in a variety of ways.

And he does so about a number of things. Sometimes he just worships the Lord. Sometimes he makes a sacrifice in honoring the Lord. He uses a certain name with the Lord. He will talk to the Lord in a variety of ways and about a number of things. Here we see a pleading with the Lord, but in doing so he even acknowledges God's character. It's about a personal relationship with the Lord in the midst of all sorts of things in life. whether it's about our relationships with one another, whether it's about our relationships in marriages and in families, things that make us anxious. We have a basis to talk with the Lord about lots of different things.

As a matter of fact, I'm not sure that there's anything that's really off limits to talk to the Lord about. I can remember some years ago, we had some people visiting that were rather surprised when they saw us gathering around praying about a cow. Can you pray for cows, they asked? Oh yeah, we can pray for cows. You can pray about anything with the Lord.

Our relationship with the Lord need not be, and the Lord does not intend that it be, one-dimensional or narrow. It's about our fellowship. Now, I'm going to lay out some things here, and it's intended to indicate variety. It's intended to indicate that there's a plurality of kinds of things that the Lord intends that we talk with Him about. One of those is adoration. This is worshiping the Lord for who He is and what He has done. This is worshiping the Lord because He is worthy. There is confession.

By confession, I don't mean being preoccupied with our sins or somehow feeling like we've got to sit there and inventory every single one, but simply agreement with God about them. And by the way, God is not interested. Frankly, God's not interested in your sin. What he is interested in is relationship and fellowship, and he just doesn't want the sin to get in the way.

Another one is Thanksgiving. Thanksgiving for what? Basically, Thanksgiving comes from understanding God's grace and God's mercy. We can thank Him for His expressions of grace and mercy in our lives. We love to bring up often, because we should, that we've been blessed with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ.

How many of those did we earn? Zip. It is all by grace. That's why by the time Paul gets to chapter 2, he talks about the riches of His mercy and follows that with the riches of His grace. We can be thankful for all the Lord has blessed us with by His mercy and by His grace. Thanksgiving is the expression of being motivated by God's mercy and grace. It's about His character. Finally, we have supplication. That's just a way of saying things we ask for.

And you can ask for all kinds of things. The Lord intends that we ask for things large and small. And yes, even that the cow would stay well. One of the reasons I bring this up is not so that our prayer life becomes a formula, but just to recognize that there's a sense of variety in our communications with the Lord that's intended. Abraham has presented one here in a kind of a request from the Lord, a pleading with the Lord about Sodom. But in fact, we've already seen and will still see as we study ahead. The Lord intends that we converse with him about all kinds of things in all kinds of ways. And that's my point in having this here. So let's take a minute and let's have a little fellowship with the Lord, OK?

Lord, as we look at this passage, we see the lessons that you're teaching Abraham and thinking about it, I suppose we could look at it and you could have just surprised Abraham and surprised Sarah and said surprise at age 90 and 100, 91 and 100 rather. You've got a baby. But instead he made it as a fulfillment of his promise so that his character would be made known. And we see how Abraham prayed in the relationship that he had with you, that he could bring things to you. and talk with you about things, many things in many different ways.

And Lord, thank you for that relationship and fellowship. When this world is gone, when this life is done and over with, when everything that we see on this planet is out of existence, that relationship and that fellowship with you will still be there as glorious and as grand and as gracious as ever. We just thank you for what you've laid out here in this chapter and we look forward to the things that you will continue to show us. In Jesus' name, Amen.