"For the Sake of One"

There are two basic lines of thought, two basic story lines that run throughout Scripture. Since those lines are generally parallel lines, they can’t cross, but our text this morning is one of the many places where those lines touch, in fact they touch so hard, that you might say that sparks fly.

One line represents our world – run amuck and the mess we’ve been in since Adam and Eve decided for themselves what was good and what was evil. Their decision resulted in separation from God. Their fall spread across our world with an explosive, sinister force that affected every part of life in every part of the world. In our text, Sodom and Gomorrah represent the epitome of that evil.

The second line is that of God’s outreach to His world, also beginning with Adam and Eve. God’s first word to them as they were just beginning their fateful journey away from him was; "Where are you?" Of course, God knew where they were. But His words were also an implicit invitation to return to Him. In our text, Abraham represents the people that God proactively seeks out to bear the torch of God’s blessing, and extend that invitation for this world gone amuck.

A world run amuck. Proud and self-content. Such a world faces inevitable judgment. We people boldly proclaim our freedom. We assert our right to choose. The world around us tells us that if it feels, sounds, looks, smells, or tastes good, well then just do it. If it satisfies what psychologists call a perceived need, well then by all means, buy it or acquire it, by just about any means necessary.

As we all know, evil pockmarks the world around us. Warfare, terror, pandemics, starvation, oppression, ecological travesties surround us on every side. They are daily reminders of our world on its line, its path of separation from God, its path of our self-proclaimed freedom.

But our self-proclaimed freedom is never freedom from God. It is merely freedom from the grace of God.

Don’t our lives have two lines, two paths of travel? One line is the path that we are on when we try to be in charge of our lives. It doesn’t run through the state of God’s grace. It’s the rough path, the path choked with thorns and potholes. It’s the line that causes misery, pain and heartache.

The other line is the path that runs through the river of God’s grace. It’s a path that truly let’s us live lives that are free from fear and strife. It’s a path that lets us live in the peace and love of God. It’s a line where we can experience the peace that passes understanding.

The Sodoms and Gommorahs of this world, the nations and people who prefer to live without God, already live in God’s judgment, with eternal judgment still to come. Abraham understood the gravity of God’s pronouncement of judgment on Sodom and Gomorrah. Abraham knew how wicked those cities were. Scripture tells us that God had heard how wicked those cities were, and Moses tells us in the Book of Genesis that the Lord and two angels went to personally investigate.

Amazingly, Abraham intervenes and intercedes. He begins his intervention and intercession humbly. Boldly he asks for God to spare Sodom and Gomorrah if there are fifty righteous people living there. He is fully aware that in the presence of the Lord that he is nothing but dust and ashes, and he expresses that knowledge when he lowers his request for pardon by five people.

Abraham may seem bold. Maybe we wonder why he would ask the Lord to spare those wicked cities. Certainly as a man of God, the moral and spiritual condition of those people must have been sickening. But Abraham is carrying out the mission for which God had called him. God had promised Abraham that through him, all the nations on earth would be blessed, and that blessing potentially included places like Sodom and Gomorrah.

Not only that, Abraham appeals to God to be faithful to His mercy, even at the expense of His justice. Rather then sweep away the righteous with the wicked, Abraham pleads that God save the cities for as few as ten righteous people. Abraham appeals to God’s own nature – his desire to be merciful to those whom he created.

As fervent, as faithful, as brash as Abraham’s intercession is, Abraham is successful in his intercession for the people of those wicked cities. But ten righteous people could not be found. Imagine his shock and disappointment when Abraham went to the place where he had spoken to the Lord and looked in the direction of Sodom and Gomorrah and saw dense smoke rising, like the smoke from a furnace. The people who had taken the path that lead to separation from God experienced the full force of God’s righteous anger at sin.

It may seem like Abraham’s intercession was useless. It may seem like he failed. But in reality, Abraham’s ministry of blessing for all the nations of the earth continues through his offspring, and takes a new focus as the one Matthew called "The son of Abraham."

That "son of Abraham" was Jesus Christ. In Jesus, those two primal lines collide with clarity and power. Abraham managed to talk God down to ten righteous people. Jesus reduced that number to just one, and became that One himself. On the cross He bore the judgment of God on the systematic evil of this world. Through His innocent death, He brought the blessing that was promised to and intended through Abraham. By His righteousness, He provided the righteousness that we cannot come up with on our own. God’s love and compassion for us sinners is shown in what Christ did for us through his innocent suffering and death.

In his letter to the Galatians, Paul calls "those of faith" the children or offspring of Abraham. We have the double joy of being made righteous through the sacrifice of the "son of Abraham", and being brought into God’s mission.

Through our Baptisms, we have been buried and raised with Christ. Our Epistle lesson says it well; "So then, just as you received Jesus Christ as Lord, continue to live in him, rooted and built up in him, strengthened in the faith as you were taught, and overflowing with thankfulness. See to it that no one takes you captive through hollow and deceptive philosophy, which depends on human tradition and the basic principals of this world rather than on Christ."

Empowered by the Holy Spirit to follow Paul’s advice, God’s promises to Abraham also become promises to us. God told Abraham again, just after he had passed the test of nearly sacrificing his son Isaac that "through your offspring all nations on earth will be blessed because you have obeyed me." Later God told Isaac that he would make his descendants as numerous as the stars in the sky "because Abraham obeyed me and kept my requirements, my commands, my decrees, and my laws."

In our Gospel lesson, the disciples ask Jesus to teach them to pray. As our Lord instructs us, and with the boldness of Abraham as your example, go into his presence boldly and confidently with intercession and prayer.

As the line of the world run amuck and the line of God reaching out to us collide again in our prayers, be assured through God’s promise that everyone who asks receives and the one who seeks will finds, and to the one who knocks, the door will be opened, even for the sake of just one sinner, and for the sake of the One who saved us from our sins. Amen.