Intercessory Prayer

It was a good.

It was a good one.

It was a good one.

There's also.

I know I've talked about that before because it was also the most

scared I've ever been on the boat ride back into Texoma from there.

Well, if you have your Bibles, turn to Genesis chapter number 18.

We'll jump right in.

Thank you, Ms.

Silvester, for that song.

That was the first time I've ever heard it.

But what a good song.

We've had the opportunity in Sunday school in the youth department

to do a really a bird's eye overview of the book of Revelation.

And I've mentioned it probably 10 or 15 times now.

I've told the teens, I said, look, you're giving your script in

heaven right here in the book, so if you don't know it by the time

you get there, that's on you.

And that is really.

That chorus there is exactly what we'll be saying over and over

and over again for eternity.

And man, what an exciting time that is.

Well, Genesis chapter number 18.

Tonight we're going to start reading in verse number 20.

We'll give you a little bit of context before we, before we jump

in.

The Bible says in Genesis, chapter 18, verse number 20.

Genesis 18 · chapter mention

And the Lord said, because the cry of Sodom and Gomorrah is great,

and because their sin is very grievous, I will go down now and

see whether they have done altogether according to the cry of

it which has come unto me, and if not, I will know.

And the men turned their faces from thence and went towards Sodom,

but Abraham stood yet before the Lord.

Let's pray and then we'll talk on the topic of intercessory prayer

tonight.

Dear Lord, thank you for this day, Lord.

Thank you for the opportunity to be here, God, thank you for the

opportunity to preach in your church tonight.

God, I pray that you would help me to say what you want me to

say.

God, I know that you've laid this on my heart.

Lord, I pray that you would just hide me behind the cross, Lord.

Fill me with your spirit.

Lord, I pray that you would help something.

I say be of something to help of someone tonight, Lord, in Jesus

name I pray.

Amen.

A few years ago, actually, it was right outside of the end of college,

I bought a white Volkswagen Jetta.

Now you can say whatever you want, brother Clay, but I love, love,

love, love this car.

It's got a little turned twin turbo on it.

It's got a little get up and go.

It's fun.

I like it.

And it was my car.

I bought it.

Like, I bought the whole thing.

I went to the car dealership.

I ripped them off because my other car was literally billowing

smoke, and they still gave me money for it on trade in.

Awesome.

I bought it out in California.

I drove it here.

I've had it my entire adult life.

And I've had one problem with it.

One.

And it was on a Tuesday night at visitation.

Me and my wife, we got in the car and we left from here, and we

went and visited someone's house.

And this doesn't happen very often, but it would just by chance

happen this night.

We knocked on the door, and we're like, hey, we're from Heritage

Baptist Church.

Just wanted to thank you for coming by and visiting.

And they said, wonderful.

We're not interested.

Okay?

So we went back and got in the car, and I started and in the car,

and it went.

And it died right there in front of these people's house, of

all places in the world, right?

And so I'm sitting there, and I'm not a car guy.

I don't know anything about cars except for, you know, you put

them in the key.

You put the key in, you turn it on, and then you.

You can go, right?

Well, I did that.

I put the key in, I turned it on, and it didn't go.

Hence the problem with the car.

Right?

Anyways, I had this problem, and it would turn on, but it just.

It wouldn't really go.

It was running real bad.

It maxed out about 15 miles an hour.

And so I finally got it going, and we, like, hobbled around the

corner.

So I'm not sitting in front of these people's houses.

And I started calling all the car guys.

I know, right?

Because that's what you do if you're not a car guy.

You call.

You call a car guy, right?

And so I start calling, and they're like, yeah, it could be this,

it could be that, it could be, you know, whatever.

And so I called brother Chad, actually, and I think you guys had

either just left the church or maybe you're coming that direction.

Anyways, and so he came and got the car, and we decided to Drive

it to O'Reilly's right over here off of Avondale Hazlett.

And so we get in the car and we start going.

And my car has a manual option.

So he's trying to, like, manual mode it, thinking maybe it's

the transmission.

And it's just the entire way we went 10 miles an hour, probably

the whole way annoyed Everybody in the entire city of Hazlett,

right?

Well, we get to O'Reilly's, and they put in the little code,

and we check it, and it turns out it's actually the throttle body,

if you know what that is.

And that was the only issue I had.

Well, we made the decision, really.

Brother Chad made the decision, because I'm sitting there

in the front seat, like, man, I don't know what I'm gonna do.

You know, last time I had a car problem, I just traded it in.

You know, there's smoke out on the outside.

I don't know what I'm going to do.

And so we park it in O'Reilly's, and brother Chad said,

well, hey, we'll come back in the morning with the church trailer.

We'll load it on here.

We'll take it to Brother Clay's house.

I was like, all right, well, the conclusion of that story is we

get to Brother Clay's house, and he said he determined it was

a throttle body by unplugging the throttle body and nothing changing.

And so then, while Ms.

Janae made his lunch, Brother Clay made some phone calls to find

out how much it would cost me to get fixed.

This isn't relevant to the illustration, but it's a good conclusion

to the story.

He comes back and he goes, hey, you got a warranty on the car?

Do you want to use it?

Sure, why not?

Why not, right?

I've only spent 15 hours on this so far.

I guess we'll go ahead and take it to the dealership.

Well, as I was sitting here and I was thinking on the topic of

intercessory prayer, which is really what Abraham does for his

nephew and really for the whole city of Sodom, I started thinking

about what is intercessory prayer?

And the best definition I could think of is when we make others

problems, our problems, right?

And we can think of so many situations in our life where physically

we may help other people and we take their issues and make it

our problem.

Like my car, right?

They had someone who decided it was their problem, too to help

me get my car fixed.

And there's many times that we can look at that.

But here in this passage, I want to look at verse 23.

As we start to dig in here, Charles Spurgeon said, no man can

do me a truer kindness in this world than praying for me.

And that is really where we're going to set the stage.

Look at verse number 23.

Remember, Abraham stood yet before the Lord.

Verse 23.

And Abraham went Drew near and said, wilt thou also destroy the

righteous with the wicked?

Peradventure there be 50 righteous within the city.

Wilt thou also destroy and not spare the place for the 50 righteous

that are therein?

I want you to notice first off this evening, the position of the

intercessor.

The position of the intercessor.

You see, here we have Abraham coming before God rather boldly,

by the way.

And he comes before God.

And that is first off, it requires to be an intercessor, you

have to have a relationship with the Lord, A relationship with

him.

You see, I don't think maybe this would be taken quite as well

if this was the first time Abraham had ever spoken to the Lord.

Right?

If this is the first time he had ever just had a conversation

with God through prayer, I don't know if it would have been

nearly as effective as it was.

But yet Abraham had a pre standing relationship.

In fact, earlier on in the verse, if you have a Scofield study

Bible earlier on in the chapter, this chapter is actually

labeled Abraham the friend of God.

He's already well known at this point as having a deep relationship

with God the Father.

And now through this relationship, he has a position where

he can come to God and plead for the city of Sodom on their own

behalf.

So we see a relationship for the Lord, but also to be an intercessor

requires a regard for the lost.

A regard for the lost.

You see, Abraham's looking at this city and you gotta think, obviously

when he's hearing this news from God that he's gonna go and destroy

the of Sodom and Gomorrah, surely he is thinking about his nephew

and his family that lives there in that city.

Right?

Clearly that's the thought process here.

But what's interesting is he's not asking God to just spare Lot

and his family, is he?

He's saying, would you save the whole city if there be 50 righteous

in the city, just 50 people in the entire city, would you spare

the whole thing?

Now you can read many commentaries and hear many different

opinions on why he threw out the number 50.

I think Abraham thought awfully highly of his nephew Lot.

He probably thought, man, Lot's been living there for years.

He's got kids, their kids are married, maybe some grandkids.

50 doesn't seem like that big of a number, right?

I mean, we have families in our church that are nearing almost

50, probably in total.

Right.

It's not that many people when you consider everything that's going

on.

So Abraham asked for 50 people to spare an entire city, an entire

city from God's wrath.

It takes some care for the lost.

We see here this position of the intercessor, by the way, we're

commanded in the New Testament.

The Bible says, look, not every man on his own things, but

every man also on the things of others.

You see, we're not supposed to, as Christians, just have our

eyes solely here on Heritage Baptist Church, solely on the King

household, solely on those that I care about that are close

to me.

But we're supposed to have our eyes and our mindset on those around

us as well.

If you remember the geography of this area, you remember that there

was a decision made earlier on in the story, in the narrative where

Lot decided to go place his house and his.

His people and his sheep and everything towards the cities of

Sodomorra, Gomorrah, and Abraham went off to the other side,

off into the plains, right?

Yet he's not just concerned about this plain area, maybe a village

or local watering hole or something that's over there, right?

Instead, he's concerned about the whole region, everybody around

it.

Right?

If you could put it this way, he wasn't just concerned about Hazlett.

He was concerned about Keller and Saginaw and Newark and even the

rednecks up in Justin.

He was concerned about all of them, right?

I can say that I have chickens in my backyard and I live there.

So here we see the position of the intercessor.

But I want you to notice secondly this evening, the plea of

the intercessor.

Look at verse 24:25.

Excuse me.

That be far from thee to do after this manner to slay the righteous

with the wicked, that the righteous should be as the wicked

that be far from thee shall not the judge of all the earth do

right.

That's bold, isn't it?

Remember, he's talking to the God of creation, and he's essentially

saying, if you were to destroy the righteous with the wicked, is

that the right thing to do?

Buddy, do you know who you're talking to?

J.

Vernon Green, put it this way.

He said, whenever we look at something and we think God is wrong,

the real answer is we're wrong.

Right?

Whatever God wanted to do here, he was completely just to do

so because he is the just and holy creator, and thus he reserves

the right to deal with humanity as he wishes.

But here Abraham comes boldly to God and he makes a clear and concise

argument for exactly why he thinks God ought to spare these cities.

I want you to see letter A.

This is a petition based on God's justice.

It's a petition based on God's justice.

You see, he's making a plea.

He's making a request of God.

And he's saying, hey, I know you are a just and holy God.

And this doesn't really seem like it's really just to me.

He's making a plea here.

It's really interesting to me just how bold this is.

I don't know if I ever quite realized this before, but not only

is this petition based on God's justice, man, he's persistent,

isn't he?

Look at verse number 26.

And the Lord said, if I find in Sodom 50 righteous within the

city, then I will spare all the place for their sakes, the sakes

of the 50 righteous.

And Abraham answered and said, behold, now I have taken upon me

to speak to the Lord, which am but dust and ashes.

Peradventure there shall lack five of the 50 righteous.

Wilt thou destroy all the city for the lack of 5?

And he said, if I find there 40 and 5, I will not destroy it.

And he spake unto him, yet again, peradventure, there shall

be 40 there.

And he said, I will not do it for 40's sake.

And he said unto him, o, let not the Lord be angry, and I will

speak per venture, there shall 30 be found there.

And he said, I will not destroy it for 20's sake.

What an interesting conversation between God and Abraham.

See, God, and I think we almost make this, like, reading into

the passage or maybe reading into the story, because the Sunday

school version that I remember is Abraham prayed for 50 righteous,

and then God went and didn't find 50 righteous.

And then they come back, and then Abraham asked about 45, and

he went and looked for 45, but there wasn't 45.

But that's not the passage here.

You see, Abraham makes this prayer request to God and he says,

okay, if you find 50 righteous, will you destroy it?

And God says, nah, I'm not going to destroy it If I find 50

people paraphrased.

And then Abraham goes, okay, I am nothing.

But what about 45?

And it's like this constant, almost like negotiation back and

forth.

It's really quite interesting.

There's a book that is out of print.

You can't find it anymore.

I actually looked for it.

It's $400 on Amazon.

It's worth it if you want to get it.

I do recommend it.

It's Effective Prayer by J.

Oswald Sanders.

It's just a tiny little book like 58 pages.

I want to read this little chunk from it.

He says, the processes of prayer and answer are not irrational.

Indeed, God encourages argument in prayer.

While he requires submission to his revealed will, he is not pleased

with passivity.

We are invited to muster and present the strongest possible arguments

for our petition and press it with logic and vigor.

Have you ever thought about this?

The concept of praying so intently to God that we're actually

arguing for what we want?

What a weird idea.

And I gotta be honest, this is something that's captivated me over

the last few weeks and I've had to think about it over and over

and over again.

Because if you're like me, probably the extent of your intercessory

prayer has been, would you pray for so and so?

They have a problem, or Lord, I pray for blank.

That blank would happen, whatever it may be.

And that's probably the extent of my intercessory prayer.

That's not what Abraham's doing though, because his family

is in this city that God is planning on destroying.

Honestly, I probably would be like, yeah, pray for my family, God.

Hope they find safe passage out.

Pray that you would deliver him and bless his food.

Amen.

Right?

I mean, that's kind of the extent of prayer.

But it's gotten so shallow.

The way that we communicate and converse with God has gotten

so shallow.

Yet God invites us and in many times in scripture, even rewards

those who boldly ask what they want from God.

And what's funny here is this is mixed with logic and argument.

As Abraham is looking at God, he's saying, God, you're a just God,

you're perfect.

It's not really super just to destroy the righteous with the wicked.

So how about 50 people?

Would you save them?

And God says, yes, I would.

And then they continue on this whole conversation because then it's

logical.

Well, if God would save it for 50 righteous, maybe he would save

her for 45.

Hey, God would save her for 45.

What about 40?

This is cool.

And then he goes, hey, God, if there is 30 righteous people, would

you save the city?

And I love this answer.

He said in verse 31, Right at the end, per venture shall there

be 20 found there.

And he said, I will not destroy it for 20 sake.

We work all the way down here.

And it finally comes to the conclusion.

God says, I'm not going to find it if we find just 20 righteous

people.

As he works his way down logically arguing with God all the

way down here, he comes to this number where like, hey, that's

the number I'm not going to find and we're not going to destroy

it there.

And then he keeps going.

Look at verse number 32.

And he said, oh, let not the Lord be angry and I will speak peradventure

or I will speak yet.

But this once it is interesting how humble, how humbly

Abraham is approaching God.

He's being super bold, right?

I mean, he's asking God to withhold his righteous judgment on

an entire city for really just a few righteous people.

But then he's mixing it with also, by the way, I am nothing.

I am nothing.

And please don't be angry with me for saying this.

The humility there as he's looking at it and approaching God.

See, he's boldly asking for what he wants, yet he is doing it

with humility as well.

He said, I will not destroy it for 10 sake.

So not only do we see the position of the intercessor here,

even the plea for the intercessor, but I want you to notice

the power of the intercessor.

The power.

You see, we have this whole conversation, this whole prayer.

You start working all the way down logically.

Look at verse number 33.

And the Lord went his way as soon as he had left.

I love this word.

Communing with Abraham.

And Abraham returned unto his place.

Kind of an odd end to the conversation.

You would think maybe given some of the context, you would think

maybe Abraham would have received acknowledgment of whether

or not there were 10 righteous people, right?

No, we just end the conversation, we're done.

It's so interesting, maybe the most powerful picture of intercessory

prayer in the entire Bible.

And Abraham doesn't get an answer.

So interesting.

Now ultimately God answers his prayer request, right?

Lot is saved, his family is spared from the city, but it's just

Lot and his family.

As far as we know, there's no other recorded people that are spared

from this event.

The model intercessory prayer went unanswered to some extent.

See, I think many times we think that an unanswered means that

prayer is not heard.

But Lot and his family being saved is evidence that God heard

and answered his prayer.

Not in the way Abraham wanted.

Abraham wanted the whole city spared.

You can't help but think maybe there is some selfish reasoning there

too, right?

Maybe that's where he got like the cheap hay for his sheep or something.

But either way, he wanted the whole city spared, but God spared

his family instead.

Which I bet if Abraham were standing here, he'd probably say

that's a fair compromise with me, right?

That's probably what he really wanted out of it.

Oswald Chambers said it this way.

He said, prayer does not fit us for the greater work.

Prayer is the greater work.

And this is where this whole study took turn for me because I

started thinking about everything that I had learned about

prayer, this little booklet, effective Prayer, that I had just

read in the last couple weeks.

And I started thinking about all these things, and I thought,

prayer is the greater work.

Abraham's job was done.

He had to pray and commune with God.

And then there was nothing more he could do.

Now, if it were me, I would have said my shallow little, you

know, Lord, praying for my family.

Pray to keep him safe, bless his food.

Amen, Right?

And then I would have rented a U Haul and went to go meet him, right?

Because I'm going to go get them out.

But Abraham doesn't do that.

He lives across the plain from them.

In fact, many times in the story of Abraham and Lot, they interact

with each other or go between the two places.

It's not like he lives forever away.

But Abraham was able to pray this prayer for Lot, his family in

the city of Sodom and Gomorrah, and then be at complete

rest and ease and not take any more action.

Let all the rest of it be in God's hands.

That is so difficult, right?

Because if you're anything like me, your first instinct is to

pray a prayer for a specific request and then make and take actionable

steps to make that happen, right?

Lord, I want to be a millionaire Please bless this.

Buying a bitcoin I'm fixing to do.

Right?

I'm only going 10 cents in, but I'm going to take out a million,

right?

Or whatever it may be that time.

And we take little actionable steps after we pray, when the reality

is prayer is the work that we ought to do.

There are so many things in our lives that are completely and

totally out of our hands, and there's not anything we can do about

it except bring it to God.

And that's all that he requires and asks us to do about

it.

This is the model intercessory prayer, but that's not prayer as

a whole.

I want you to notice intercessory prayer is who we pray

for, okay?

It's who we pray for.

In other words, I may pray an intercessory prayer for one of you.

Whenever we get up here and we have a prayer request, we say, hey,

pray for Ms.

Schmidt, pray for Brother Peters.

Pray for whoever it is we're asking for intercessory prayer from

you to God for them.

Okay, that's intercessory prayer.

But there's one word here that I believe, really it's only found

once in the Bible.

But I have become persuaded it is the key to prayer as a whole.

And Abraham expressed the idea, while the word is not used,

the word is importunity.

The word is importunity.

It's found in Luke chapter 18.

Luke 18 · chapter mention

Sorry, Luke chapter 11.

Luke 11 · chapter mention

Butchered, that one.

It's found in Luke chapter 11 with the parable of the widow woman.

Luke 11 · chapter mention

And Jesus here teaching on prayer.

He talks about this really interesting story where a man who

was traveling comes and knocks on the house of his friend at night.

And the guy says, go away.

We're all in bed, we're asleep, go away.

And the man just keeps knocking and he just keeps asking

over and over and over and over again.

And Jesus says, the man is going to arise and feed him.

He's going to give him what he wants, not because he's his friend,

yet because of his importunity.

Intercessory prayer is who we pray for.

Importunity is about how we pray.

And that's what we see here with Abraham.

He prayed an intercessory prayer with importunity over and

over and over and over again.

I used to laugh at people foolishly.

I don't know what I'm doing.

I'm just going to stop laughing at people and stop having

these thoughts.

Because it all comes back to bait.

I used to laugh at people who told me that you're never more tired

than we have a newborn infant.

Like, okay, whatever, right?

Oh my goodness, man, this kid doesn't sleep how you would think.

The less you sleep, the more tired you are.

That's what I've learned in all of my experience in life.

Yet it is not true with this little tiny human that we have.

I am a fairly light sleeper.

Always have been.

I assume I always will be.

I wake up at just about everything.

Every little noise she makes, I wake up before Mrs.

Keene does.

Usually bassinet's on her side.

So I just, you know, get the baby.

But once I get asleep, maybe you're like me.

It's hard to move, you know what I mean?

You get woken up at 2, 3 o'clock in the morning.

It takes a lot of concern for me to actually get out of bed for

anything.

I've heard my gate open on the side of my house before and I woke

up and heard it and went, there's Nothing really important

in my shop.

It'll be all right, right?

It takes a lot to get me moving at night.

Well, last night, about 2:30 in the morning, we're sleeping and

all of a sudden this baby starts crying like she had been attacked,

man.

I mean, she's screaming her head off.

I know you guys don't believe it because she was all smiling and

happy for every single one of you this morning, but she's screaming

her head off.

She's crying.

She's crying.

I mean, just on and on and on and on it goes.

And I'm laying there and Jessica got up and she changed her

diaper and all this, but she's still just crying over and over and

over again.

And it's not ending now.

This is wrong of me.

I'm aware.

But typically I lay there and keep my eyes closed and I kind of

just wait a minute, right?

Baby stops crying, Mama takes care of her.

That's my freedom to turn around and go back to bed, right?

Well, last night she's crying and she's crying, and then, I don't

know, there's not.

I don't know, this is my term for it.

She puts it into overdrive.

She found that fifth gear, right?

Like, she's not just upset now, she's like really upset.

And she's full fledged top of her lunge, screaming.

And so I reluctantly pulled back the COVID got up and walked

to her.

And my wife picked her up for a minute.

She was still crying, by the way.

Put her here, did nothing, looked at her, put her back to her

mom, right?

That was a failed mission.

Did not do my part.

What's interesting about that, my baby cried with importunity over

and over and over again.

And I got up.

Not because I love her, which I do, not because she wanted me,

which she didn't.

Not because I had anything that could fulfill her needs in that

moment, whatever it was she wanted.

Probably.

I don't know, she probably wanted to like, watch TV or something.

I don't know.

It's weird.

It's kids.

Kids these days.

I don't know what she wanted, but it's not because I had anything

that I could actually do to fix the solution.

Yet because of her importunity, it drove me to action.

Importunity is prayer that pushes the Father to action.

You see Abraham here, he's praying an intercessory prayer, but

he does it with importunity, consistently, over and over, making

his petitions known unto God.

So we could sit here and say, man, we all could be better intercessory

prayers.

And we could, there's no doubt about it.

But this is really cool.

In Hebrews 7:25, it's talking about Jesus.

Hebrews 7:25

It says, wherefore he is also able to save them to the uttermost

that come unto God by him seeing he ever liveth to make enter

session for them.

Even in our weakness of intercessory prayer, the Bible says

Jesus prays intercessory prayers for us.

And then you start to realize, yeah, I am truly capable of nothing,

right?

The one thing that I feel like I can do, which is talk to God and

bring petitions to him.

And the Bible says, hey, don't worry about that, because even then,

you're not really all that good at that.

Jesus is going to do it for you.

He can make intercessory prayer for you.

So what?

What does that mean for our lives?

I don't know about you.

I want my prayers to be effective.

I want my prayer life to mean something not just to me, not just

a notch on my Christian belt that I do, right?

But I want it to be something that has power, something that.

Let's not be coy.

We all know those people that we want to pray for us, right?

Like, we have our prayers and then like, usually there's someone

we know.

It's like typically a grandma or something, you know, and we're

like, I want them to pray for me because when they pray, God listens.

I want that in my life.

Do you want that in yours?

What does your prayer life look like?

What kind of intercessory prayers are you praying for those

who are hurting in our church?

Is it a line item on a list?

Or are we praying with importunity for those not just in

our church family, but for the lost around us?

See, Abraham wasn't just concerned with his family.

The immediate concerns that directly impacted him.

His prayer was for the whole city, for Sodom and Gomorrah.

Lord, if you find just 10 righteous people, would you spare

the whole city?

Intercessory, it's who we pray for.

Importunity is how we pray.

How's your prayer life?

What can you do to make your prayer life deeper and more effective?

Pastor, I've had several conversations with our church family

as we go to hospitals and make visits.