A Praying Faith Part 2

Let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, looking to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith. God had agreed to spare Sodom if ten righteous were found. Abraham thought he had a sure deal.

Then the smoke rose. So, was his prayer worth it? Today, a probing look at the real purpose of prayer. From the Moody Church in Chicago, this is Running to Win with Dr. Erwin Lutzer, whose clear teaching helps us make it across the finish line. Pastor Lutzer, there were some tough days during Abraham's long journey.

One such day came when a prayer was answered with a decisive no. Dave, the story of Abraham as he pled for Sodom and Gomorrah is one of the most interesting in all the scriptures. When Abraham was finished, he thought for sure that God would spare Sodom and Gomorrah, because, as you mentioned, he believed that there were ten righteous in the city, and therefore God would give his request.

Well, when the smoke rose, I have no doubt that Abraham was shocked. But here's the thing that is so interesting regarding prayer. God did spare Lot and his family. So, you see, even though God didn't give Abraham the prayer of his lips, he gave him Abraham's prayer, the prayer of his heart.

It was Lot that he wanted to see spared, and he got that request, even though Lot ended very badly. The bottom line is God sometimes answers our prayers, but in ways that we could have never possibly predicted. I've written a book entitled The Cross and the Shadow of the Crescent. Let me ask you a couple of questions. Why does Jesus allow Islam to triumph over the church? Here's another question. When a church dies, is it always the fault of the church? That's a question that we need to have answered. Is persecution always good for the church, or does it sometimes destroy the church? Well, those are the kinds of questions I answer in the book The Cross and the Shadow of the Crescent. For a gift of any amount, it can be yours. Here's what you do.

You simply go to rtwoffer.com or call us at 1-888-218-9337. Now let us listen to Abraham as he pleads with God. I think of a woman who said these exact words when they prayed for their pastor who was dying of cancer, and thousands of people prayed, and they had an all-night prayer meeting. She said, if God didn't heal him after all of that prayer, I'm never going to bother him with another request again.

What's gone wrong? What's gone wrong is that we forget that intercession is the second purpose of prayer, not the first. The first purpose of prayer is fellowship and intimacy with God. And by the way, Jesus said, I no longer call you servants. I've called you friends because a servant doesn't know what his master's doing. But I've called you friends because everything that the Father has shown me, I've withheld nothing. I've shared with you all of my secrets, and that makes us friends.

So we are all friends. And the purpose of prayer is really to develop that friendship in such a way that we are so satisfied with friendship with God that even if he doesn't give us what we think he should, we do not give up on prayer because prayer is first and foremost fellowship with the Almighty. What an amazing example of Jesus and the two angels sitting under a tree eating with Abraham. And today Jesus says to us, behold, I stand at the door and knock. If anyone will hear my voice and open the door, I will come into him and I will eat with him and he with me. You will become disappointed with prayer very quickly if you think its first purpose is intercession. The first purpose of prayer is for us to come before the Lord in yieldedness, in faith, and simply learn to enjoy fellowship with God in such a way that whether he gives what we ask for or whether he doesn't, it does not shake us.

It only deepens us in our desire to know him better. You live like that and you'll be at prayer meeting because now the second purpose of prayer is no longer the first purpose. Someday I'm going to preach a message entitled The Idolatry of Second Things. The Idolatry of Second Things.

See, the gifts that God gives us, those are the second things and when they take first place in our lives, when God doesn't give them to us, we say, why bother? Abraham walked with God and so can we. And God's waiting for you to give up all of your prayer lists and they're not wrong to have, but give up all of your requests and learn to spend time in quietness, in meditation, in submission, listening to his voice through his word.

That's where it begins. And then what happened is God says, shall I disclose to Abraham what I intend to do? You walk closely with God and God will lay on your heart certain things he wants to accomplish and you begin to pray about them and they come to pass. I always say that Abraham and God had this thing going.

Wouldn't it be wonderful if all of us could say, we and God, we've got this thing going, this friendship, so that he can disclose to us where he's at rather than us barging into his presence, God, look at this request, there's this need. No, it's the second purpose of prayer, not the first. There's a second lesson and that is that God may choose to deny our requests, God may choose to deny our requests and yet give us what we really want. When God says no to a request, he either, either the answer is denied, it is perhaps delayed, and sometimes it is disguised as it is here. When Abraham was praying and saying, oh God, please don't destroy Sodom and Gomorrah if there are some righteous in the city, there's no doubt that his great concern was for his nephew Lot. And so what he was thinking is, in order for Lot to be spared, God has to spare the city in which he lived. It never dawned on Abraham that maybe God could have a different way of answering his prayer, namely getting Lot out of Sodom and Gomorrah and then destroying the city.

That never crossed Abraham's mind. So Abraham gets, ends up getting what he wants, namely that Lot would be spared and his wife and his family. He got that, but he got it in an entirely different way than the way in which he had prayed.

And that's the way it sometimes is. We pray for one thing and we think we know how God is going to do it. Have you ever noticed how often we're wrong when we think we know how God is going to do something? God seldom does it the way in which I think he's going to do it. He's so creative, he's always got something else that he does instead, but sometimes it is an answer to our prayer that is disguised.

A good example is David. At the end of his life, David says, Lord, I'd love to build a house for you. I want to build a temple. I've got the time. I've got the money.

I've got the organization. I'm getting the materials ready. Let me build you a house. God says, David, the answer is no, but I'm going to build you a house.

Isn't that wonderful? God says, I don't want you to build me one, but I'm going to build you a house. In fact, I'm going to give you a house, namely posterity, that will go on and on, will be part of the divine plan and the divine stream of history.

God says, I'm going to do that for you. Furthermore, he says, I'm going to give you the opportunity to gather the materials and give some instruction to your young son, Solomon, because Solomon is going to build the temple. So, David, even though your motives were right, you wanted to build it for my glory so that I would have a place where people could worship. I want you to know that the desire of your heart, David, is going to be fulfilled. The temple is going to be built, not by you, but by Solomon.

It will come to pass. I'll answer your prayer, but not in the way in which you think that it's going to be answered. Sometimes God gives us, therefore, substitutes.

Substitutes. And when he does it, you know, it's exactly what he wants. So the second lesson is that God may choose to deny our requests and still give us the desires of our heart. Third, the impact of the righteous is greater than their numbers suggest. The impact of the righteous is greater than their numbers would suggest. After all, if there had been ten righteous in Sodom and Gomorrah, God would not have destroyed it. Now, you must understand that this whole world is under the judgment and condemnation of God. And the only reason why God withholds judgment is because this whole world is still populated in various places with his people.

And because the world is populated with the people of God, God, therefore, restrains judgment, and he blesses nations because of the believers that are in those nations. I don't know how to say this without the possibility of being misunderstood, but I want you to know that the world has no idea of the debt that they owe believers. We are seen as obnoxious – and sometimes we are, unfortunately. We are seen as those who impede progress. We are painted by the media in various hues of people who want to impose our values.

We are often misrepresented. But Jesus said, Ye and ye alone – that's what the Greek text says. Ye and ye alone are the light of the world.

Even a candle in a cave can do something. Ye and ye alone are the salt of the earth, preserving society from total decay. What would happen if all the believers would be taken out? Well, then the final judgment of God would fall as it will during the Great Tribulation. Because as long as believers are here, they are salt, and they are light, and they are helping preserve the world from judgment.

Oh, I know what you're saying. You're saying, well, weren't there ten righteous in New Orleans? Well, I think there probably were. I'm saying that with a smile on my face because I'm sure that there were hundreds of righteous in New Orleans – many fine churches there, I'm told. You see, there would have been nothing wrong with God to destroy Sodom and Gomorrah with Lot in it, by the way. In fact, considering the way in which Lot ended up, we can look back and say that perhaps that would have been part of God's plan.

There would have been nothing wrong with that. God chose not to do it that way. Abraham prayed for Lot's safety. God gave Lot safety. It's not wrong in this life for judgment to fall on the wicked as well as the righteous. In fact, they die in catastrophes together all the time. But what would be wrong is if in the final judgment there were not made a separation, so that at last in the final judgment, when eternal destiny is at stake, then of course God makes a very, very clear distinction between those who are considered righteous and those who are counted as unrighteous. But in this life, the wicked and the righteous often die together.

There's so much more that could be said about natural disasters and even the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah, which by the way is the subject of the next message in this series. Today I want to simply end by reminding you that in Jesus Christ we can draw near to the Holy of Holies, and we can intercede for others, we can intercede for cities, we can intercede for families, and by the way, even those of you who are married to unsaved spouses. Did you know that the Bible says that the woman who's a Christian who's married to an unsaved man actually sanctifies him by her presence? The worldling doesn't believe it, but that's what the Scripture says, because it is his people that are good influence on others. But also to remind ourselves that the final decision regarding judgment is in the hands of Jesus. It is Jesus, Lord God Christ, who goes down to see Sodom and Gomorrah, who evaluates it, and the next day you have all of the sulfur and what have you falling from heaven on the city and destroying it. Ultimately, Jesus is the judge of all the earth. He said, I am he who was dead and am alive, and behold, I am alive forevermore, and I have the keys of death and of Hades. I want you to visualize everyone at death going through into a castle, and the only way out of the castle is either the way of life to heaven or the way of darkness and hell, and it's Jesus whom you must encounter, and he makes the decision where you will spend eternity. He made the decision for Sodom and Gomorrah, and he makes the decision for us. But if you trust him, you're exempt from the final judgment.

I love to tell that story about forest fire, actually a prairie fire, and as it was blazing along as it did during the time when there was so much prairie here in the United States and Canada, there was one farmer who realized that the only way he could be spared ultimately is if he lit his own fire, and then he burned one patch of ground after another after another after another so that when the real big fire came, he had to stand where the fire already was, and of course he would not be consumed because the fire had already been there. When Jesus died on the cross, he took our fire. He took our condemnation. He took the wrath of God, and he says, if you trust me, you'll be exempt.

You'll be standing where the judgment already occurred. Abraham, in the presence of Sodom, we in the presence of Chicago, standing before the Lord, the God of judgment. Let's pray. Our Father, we do not pretend that we understand all the nuances of this wonderful account, but we thank you today, Lord, that grace and mercy is a part of your nature. Thank you that you remembered Abraham by rescuing a lot. Thank you today, Father, that we can intercede, but first of all, we must be your friends. First of all, we need to discern your mind and get to know you and see that the primary purpose of prayer is fellowship under the tree and not interceding on behalf of a city, and we pray today that as your word says, if you abide in me and my word abides in you, then you can ask what you will and it will be done.

Has God talked to you today? Could we just have a moment of silence as you now talk to God? Our Father, we ask today in Jesus' name that you'll help us to be the people that we should be in the midst of a country that is turning its back on you. Help us to know what it means to be salt and light, to be ministers of the gospel of Christ, to stand for righteousness and to believe that in grace you are there to help us. Lead us, we ask, and may many people trust Christ as Savior, coming to Him, knowing that they are standing where judgment has already come. In Jesus' name, amen. Isn't it wonderful to know that Jesus Christ died for us, took our place so that we could be spared God's wrath and God's judgment?

That's the good news of the gospel. You know, I've written a book entitled The Cross in the Shadow of the Crescent, an informed response to Islam's war with Christianity. I wrote this book because we visited the seven churches of Revelation, only to discover that there are no such churches in Turkey today, but only mosques. So let me ask you a question. Does Islam's ability to crush the Christian church, is it proof of its superiority, as we are hearing?

These are the kinds of questions that I answer in the book The Cross in the Shadow of the Crescent. I hope that you have a pen or a pencil handy, because for a gift of any amount, this book can be yours. Here is what you do. Go to rtwoffer.com. That's rtwoffer.com, or call us at 1-888-218-9337. As a matter of fact, you can pick up the phone and call right now.

Call 1-888-218-9337. It's time now for you to ask Pastor Lutzer a question about the Bible or the Christian life. William Young experienced sexual abuse from a New Guinea tribe his parents were trying to reach as missionaries. Later, his own life fell apart due to adultery. He found his way out by stuffing the evil done to him into a shack, a metaphor for a dark place hidden deep within himself. In a novel called The Shack, he now writes of being spiritually reborn through an encounter with three people who symbolize the Trinity. Some say he advocates universal salvation.

Others say he's found God's love without the baggage of conventional theology. Patty contacted us to say this, I listen to Dr. Lutzer every morning. I was wondering what he thought of the book The Shack by William Young. Couple of comments, Patty. First of all, I've not read the entire book.

I need to tell you that. I've read a good portion of it. I have also a very good idea of what the book teaches because I've read summaries of it and so forth. Furthermore, I spent some time with the author, and I have no doubt after a good conversation with him that he is one who has come to saving faith in Jesus Christ. He loves God. You have to keep in mind he wrote this book to help his family understand his pain. No publisher would pick it up, and he self-published it, and somehow it got started, and it's become quite a phenomenon, and so many people are reading it today.

You see it absolutely everywhere. Couple of comments. First of all, its theology is very troublesome. When it makes God out to be three people and these three people represent God, the things that they say and the way in which they act are oftentimes, in my opinion, not too godly, so that creates a problem. But I want to say on the positive side that this book has been used to open many people up to the gospel. In other words, if you can think of the human heart as frozen, people are angry with God, they've got deep pain that they've never dealt with, what this book does is it opens the human heart and it lets them see themselves in the story. And even though the book may teach some questionable theology at points and may not be a clear exposition of Jesus being the way, the truth, and the life, the fact is that there are those who read the shack who go on then to begin to attend church, they begin to read the Bible, and so in that sense it has become a bridge for them to the gospel.

I can't recommend the book because of its theology, but I don't think that it has been harmful as such. God sometimes uses imperfect people and imperfect things to prod people toward the Savior, and I think that the shack has done that despite its great limitations. Thank you, Patti, for your question. Thank you, Pastor Lutzer, for your perspective. If you'd like to hear your question answered, go to our website at rtwoffer.com and click on Ask Pastor Lutzer, or call us at 1-888-218-9337.

That's 1-888-218-9337. You can write to us at Running to Win, 1635 North LaSalle Boulevard, Chicago, Illinois, 24. Sodom's debauchery was relentless to the end. The brimstone was on its way as God mercifully sent two angels to rescue Lot's family before the smoke rose. Next time on Running to Win, a story of compromise and of a faith too weak to stand against evil. In short, a worldly faith. Thanks for listening. For Dr. Erwin Lutzer, this is Dave McAllister. Running to Win is sponsored by the Moody Church.