Great Old Testament Prayers: Jabez (1 Chronicles 4.9-10)

Introduction

I’m going to read out some names of famous people that were changed by deed poll. See if you can guess who they are. Harry Webb (Cliff Richard). Marian Morrison (John Wayne). Reginald Dwight (Elton John). Grigori Yefimovich (Rasputin). Maurice Micklewhite (Michael Caine). Caryn Johnson (Whoopie Goldberg). We're going to be thinking about names, the names we're given, and the names we give ourselves today.

In the year 2000, Bruce Wilkinson of Walk Through the Bible Ministries found an obscure Bible character and turned him into an international superstar with his 80-page book, The Prayer of Jabez.

It became a worldwide phenomenon, selling 10 million copies, rising to number one on the New York Times Bestseller list. In fact, it turned into a kind of global franchise.

In the years immediately following the publication of that little book, there followed The Prayer of Jabez for Women, The Prayer of Jabez for Teens, The Prayer of Jabez for Kids, The Prayer of Jabez Devotional, The Prayer of Jabez Journal, not to mention Prayer of Jabez music, T-shirts, basketball caps, tea towels, posters, calendars – and even a Prayer of Jabez cup – which presumably overflowed... Overnight, this little-known Old Testament bit part player became a Bible star with a registered trade mark.

And yet Jabez is tucked away, like a needle in a haystack, in the opening chapters of 1 Chronicles, which is largely a list of names. It’s like finding a winning lottery number in middle of the phone directory. Just two verses that contain (according to the guff on the back cover of Wilkinson’s book) “one simple prayer [that] can help you leave the past behind – and break through to the extravagantly blessed life you were meant to live.”

The Legacy of Pain

“What a pain!” Have you ever said that about anyone? Has anyone ever said it about you? It was said about Jabez. It’s what his name means: one who has brought me pain.

I was present at the birth of all four of our children. Nathan, our second, was born just two hours after the first contraction and he popped out almost unnoticed – even though at 7lb 14oz he was the biggest of all. Well Kathie noticed. A bit... But he was the exception.

The other three arrived after long, arduous and exhausting labour. I had to go and have a good lie down afterwards, it quite wore me out!

Kathie did not have an easy time but she didn’t take it out on the kids by naming them Ache, Pain, Agony and Ordeal. She remembers that childbirth was a difficult experience but she’s moved on.

Jabez’ mother had a difficult labour and she never let her son forget it. When she named him Jabez she wanted him – and everyone else to know - that he was a massive inconvenience to her in the delivery suite.

When parents talk, in front of their children, about all the disappointments they have felt with them, all their shortcomings, all their inadequacies and the grief it has caused them... It’s embarrassing, it’s awkward, you feel for the child who’s dying a thousand deaths, looking down in shame.

In modern terms, maybe you would say that Jabez came from a dysfunctional family, with a complaining and controlling mother who inflicted guilt on her children.

Because in spite of his unpromising start in life, Jabez overcame the setbacks created by his upbringing. The Bible says that he was honourable - more honourable than the rest of his family. The key to his victory over his unhappy childhood is his prayer. That was his secret. As someone has said, “The secret of Christianity is Christianity in secret.”

Before we break the prayer down I need to say that it’s not a magic formula. That’s maybe a trap some people fall into buying the book. “If I just say this prayer every day, things will start to go well for me.” No, Jabez poured this out with feeling and faith, born out of the heartache of his humiliation.

The Bible says “Jabez cried out to the God of Israel.” It was his impassioned expression of trust in God that grew out of his real relationship with him. But God has recorded his desperate prayer in Scripture for all time, so there are things to glean.

The prayer has four parts: Firstly, he prays that God will bless him. Secondly, he prays that God will enlarge his territory. Thirdly, he prays that God’s hand will be with him. And fourthly, he prays that God will keep him from harm so that he will be free from pain.

1) Oh, that you would bless me

So firstly, Jabez asks for God’s blessing on his life. I meet quite a few people who ask if it’s OK to pray for their own needs. They feel quite comfortable praying for others but feel it’s selfish to pray for themselves. Jabez wasn’t worried about that, he wanted the best that God has and he believed that God wanted to give it to him.

Jabez knew that the Lord had said to his ancestor Abraham, “I will bless you; I will make your name great, and you will be a blessing.”

Jabez asked for God’s blessing so he could in turn be a blessing to others. Our whole purpose as God’s people, the Church, is to be a blessing to the world – but we have nothing good to offer the world if we ourselves have not been blessed first.

Jabez also knew about Abraham’s grandson Jacob who wrestled with God and said, “I will not let you go unless you bless me.” And he hung on all night until God blessed him so that his descendants would bless the whole world with unbelievable spiritual blessings. Through Jacob’s line the Messiah Jesus came into the world.

Do you say, “Well, whatever, if God blesses me that’s great but if not I’m fine with that”? Again, hear the passion in Jabez’ prayer; “Oh, that you would bless me!” Are you the type who is ready to wrestle with God in prayer, and pour out your soul, just refusing to let go until he blesses you?

Ask God for new blessing on your life. Go on, ask! Pray that he will light a fire in your soul. Pray for a flowing in of favour, a brimming over of blessing, the measure of which is too great to contain and which spills over to enrich others.

2) And enlarge my territory!

Jabez also asks that God will extend his territory, meaning his family will have more land to live in and that his life of faith will have a greater reach. Have you ever asked God for something so big that you could not possibly do it by yourself, it would have to be God? Ask God to enlarge your sphere of influence. Ask him to extend your territory.

At a time of great national humiliation, God spoke in Isaiah 54. This is what he said: “Enlarge the place of your tent, stretch your tent curtains wide, do not hold back; lengthen your cords, strengthen your stakes. For you will spread out to the right and to the left; your descendants will dispossess nations and settle in their desolate cities.”

Look at your circumstances. Take a good look at everything that’s going on in your life. Now look beyond! God wants you to ask him to enlarge your territory.

3) Let your hand be with me

The third thing Jabez asks God for is that God’s hand will be with him.

I remember when I was small we used to go out for family walks along the seafront at Leigh on Sea. We’d walk beside the railway line, past the boat builder’s yards, jump on piles of cockle shells and end up buying toffee apples – and then getting sticky mess all over dad’s car on the way home. But I used to love holding my dad’s hand on those walks. I felt secure and loved.

But that is not what the hand of the Lord means in the Bible. It means his power and favour in the lives of his people. It says in Joshua 4 that God dried up the Red Sea “so that all the peoples of the earth may know that the hand of the Lord is powerful and so that you might always fear the Lord your God.” It says in Acts 11 that “the hand of the Lord was with them and a great number believed and turned to the Lord.”

Ask God today that his hand will be on your life so that you can accomplish something great, something astounding for him. Something so remarkable that when it comes to pass, everyone will have no option than to say, “that could only have been the hand of God.”

4) And keep me from harm so that I will be free from pain.

The fourth and final part of Jabez’ prayer is that God will keep him from harm that he will be free from pain. Causing pain and being called a pain caused him pain and he will have no doubt have caused pain in turn because hurt people hurt people.

Has anyone here heard of kintsugi? It is the Japanese art of repairing broken pottery with gold or silver lacquer. It takes a breakage and makes it into something beautiful. That is what God wants to do with all our pain and brokenness – turn it into something beautiful and one of the ways he does it is through prayer.

But his prayer is that God will intervene so that cycle will stop. It was time to reverse the curse. It was time to sever every unhealthy, spiritual chain. He did not want to cause any more pain. He wanted to be free from all those bad words spoken over his life. He wanted to be delivered from the harm that bitterness and unforgiveness cause. He wanted his life to be a blessing, not a byword for misery.

And God granted his request.

But this prayer is not so much about Jabez as about his God. It’s about the faithful, wise and gracious God who hears Jabez’ prayer and answers it. The Bible says, very simply, “And God granted his request.”

I’m not into quoting poetry in my preaching, but I found this a few days ago and thought I’d share it – because I felt that it might speak to anyone who feels that prayer is just therapeutic and that it doesn’t really change the way God acts in the world.

Some say that prayer is all in the mind,

That the only result is the solace we find,

That God does not answer, nor hear, when we call;

We commune with our own hearts in prayer – that is all.

But we who have knelt with our burden and care

And have made all our problems a matter of prayer

Have seen God reach down from heaven above;

Move mountains, touch hearts in his infinite love.

We know that God works in a wonderful way

On behalf of his children who trust him and pray.

Ending

So often in the Bible people are named by experience.

Isaac means laughter because when he was born, Abraham and Sarah laughed again after years of shame and sorrow. He was named by Abraham and Sarah’s experience.

Joseph, after being rejected by his brothers, sold as a slave, falsely imprisoned and then elevated by Pharaoh called his two sons Manasseh (meaning God has helped me to forget) and Ephraim (which means God has caused me to prosper). They were named after Joseph’s experience.

Jesus renamed Simon (which means reed) Peter (which means rock). He was renamed by the experience of gaining stature as a leader.

Our daughter Anna was born on Good Friday and her name means grace.

Most of us are not named by experience. We are named after people or because our parents like the sound of the name.

But many of us are labelled by experience. Have your experiences labelled you? Have you assumed an identity that is shaped by your experiences? I’m divorced. I’m slow. I failed my children. I’m not very bright. I’m a failure. I’ll never amount to much.

I can still hear in my mind the exasperated voices of the Irish nuns who educated me. “John Lambert, three out of ten! Hopeless!”

Well listen. The Apostle Paul in Philippians 3 says “One thing I do: forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead, I press on toward the goal to win the prize.” It’s odd, he says “this one thing I do” but then he lists two things. He says 1) I forget what is behind and 2) I press on toward the goal.

There’s no mistake. He says “one thing” because in order to go forward, you’ve got to leave the past behind. You can’t move on and advance in life if you’re still carrying resentments and looking back in anger. Forgetting the past and pressing on ahead are one and the same thing. Forget the pain of the past; let it go.

And the Bible tells us that Jabez was more honourable because he refused to allow his name and his label to define him. “All right, so my parents called me pain” he said. “But God calls me to blessing and enlargement, and favour and to be free.”

God’s word says you are a child of God, you are adopted by grace, you are the apple of his eye, you are a new creation – and your past doesn’t determine your future, provided you live in the name God has given you and not the name experience has labelled you with.

Never mind what people have said over you, what has your Father said about you?

Jabez started lie as a messed up person. There are plenty of those around. As Homer Simpson says “The Bible is full of messed up people – except this one guy…”

You know who he means don’t you? Mary gave birth to him in pain as well but just think of the blessing he was to others…

The cross is all about excruciating pain. My sin inflicted unbearable pain on Jesus. His body was filthy from the cell where he was kept. He had spit running down his face. His back was lacerated by whips. There were deep bruises all over him from the beatings he endured. The crown of thorns caused a river of blood to stream down his head. He took upon himself the crushing weight of the sin of the whole world it tore him out of his Father’s presence.

But on the third day he rose again and triumphed over death. That’s how he made it possible for your pain to be the seedbed of his blessing in your life.

Jabez was more honourable than his brothers. His mother had named him Jabez, saying, ‘I gave birth to him in pain.’ Jabez cried out to the God of Israel, ‘Oh, that you would bless me and enlarge my territory! Let your hand be with me, and keep me from harm so that I will be free from pain.’ And God granted his request.

Let’s stand to pray…

Sermon preached at All Saints' Preston on Tees, 28 February 2016

Great Old Testament Prayers: Job (Job 42.1-6)

Introduction

A guy wakes up after surgery and his doctor says, “Well, I’ve got some good news and some bad news. Which do you want first?” So the guy says, “Let’s start with the bad news.” So the doctor says, “We amputated the wrong leg. So you’re going to lose both of them now.” The patient pauses in shock and then he starts screaming and shouting. Then he remembers. There’s good news as well. “So what about the good news, doctor?” “Well the good news,” says the doctor, “the good news is the bloke in the next bed wants to buy your trainers.”

We can laugh but of course for many people the news is only ever bad news. I know a couple who lost their three children to leukaemia before they reached adulthood. I know a man whose wife has been in a vegetative state for two and a half decades. All those people are committed Christians and live surprisingly free and happy lives, though the pain never really goes away.

We all know people who suffer greatly. It can be the woman whose husband’s mind is fragmenting with dementia. It gets worse every day. This is the man she married, but he doesn’t recognise her any more, his personality has changed beyond recognition, he shouts all day and she is exhausted but she can’t bear to put him in a home.

It can be the man or woman who was abused sexually all their childhood. The identity crisis and the shame that broke them as a child has stalked them all their adult life and they feel they’ll never be able to commit to a stable relationship.

Over the next few weeks we are looking at some great Old Testament prayers. Last week it was Abraham’s haggling prayer of intercession. Next Sunday it’ll be David’s beautiful expression of trust in God’s provision. We’ll come across the prayer of a disgraced woman and a desperate man. In these prayers there’s passion, there’s faith, there’s sorrow, there’s restlessness, there’s joy, there’s brokenness - all the emotions of life.

Because prayer is about God being real to us when we allow ourselves to be real with him.

Introducing Job

But today, it’s the prayer of a man called Job from the book in the Bible that’s named after him. On Valentine’s Day, it’s the prayer of a man who became unloved and unloveable.

What do we know about Job? There are two basic things you need to know. First, Job is a good man who lives right and loves God. He’s a model citizen. The Bible calls him “blameless.” Secondly, he suffered a great deal – more than most of us here today will suffer all our lifetimes added together.

One of our most celebrated poets Alfred Tennyson once called the book of Job "the greatest poem in ancient or modern times." That’s quite a complement coming from him.

Some of our colloquial English expressions, even today, come from this book. No one wants to be consoled by a "Job's comforter" and the "patience of Job" is proverbial. It’s the book in the Bible that says, “I know my redeemer lives.”

Job is one of the oldest books we have -not just in the Bible- but in the whole of world literature and it deals with one of the oldest questions of all; why do bad things happen to good people? That’s what we all want to know isn’t it? If God is both perfectly loving and all powerful, why doesn’t he stop children getting cancer?

That’s what the book of Job explores. Most of the book is a long, quite repetitive dialogue between Job and his so-called friends. And the two questions they keep coming back to are these; 1) how can you believe in a good God when everything around you is falling apart? And 2) what goes around comes around - if you suffer badly, how can this not be some kind of karma? And the book of Job shows that easy answers are not helpful at all. Things are a lot more complicated than that.

So here’s how the book goes. In chapter 1, God and Satan are talking about things and the question arises as to whether Job would abandon his faith and curse God if he had to go through hell on earth. Satan says “I think he would.” God says “I know he wouldn’t.” So Satan says “I bet you.” God says, “OK, you’re on.”

Every good drama has suspense and tension - and this is no exception. Because we get all get to hear about the discussion in heaven and the reason why this good man is suffering so much. But Job and his friends never do - even at the end.

In 2011, a video about a man who got struck by lightning, not once but twice, went viral. As it happens, it turned out to be a fake. If ever you see something amazing on the Internet, check it out on snopes.com before you share it around. Christians should really care if stuff is true or not. So this story about an amazing misfortune turned out to be false.

But the truth is that in one day, Job lost all his flocks (which were his source of revenue), he lost all his servants (which were a symbol of his wealth), and his house collapsed on his children, killing them all. If you checked this out with a bit of basic internet research at the time it would be shown to be true. Other Bible authors speak of Job as a real person who actually lived and this man appears in other ancient writings outside the Bible too.

What’s Job going to do? Curse God? Write an angry book called “The God Delusion”? Will he abandon his faith? Will he become a bitter old man?

What happened to him in chapter 1 is bad enough, but to add insult to injury, it also tells us in that all these disasters occur just after Job specifically prays that they won't.

Not long after that, Job breaks out in painful and itchy sores from head to toe and he ends up sitting on an ash heap because nobody wants to see his unsightly appearance.

At which point we're told his wife begins to nag him. "Why don't you just get it over with? Call God names; go on! Perhaps he'll put you out of your misery." Poor old Job. He probably feels like he just wants to be left alone.

Which is when his opinionated mates turn up. By this time, Job is so disfigured by his sores that they don't recognise him at first. When they realise it’s him they get upset – and start to weep and mourn as if they were at his funeral, which I'm sure must have cheered him up no end. What a tonic that would have been. Wailing and dirges, what a blessing.

In modern terms, this one man loses his job, his savings, his home, his family and his health – all in less than a week. His whole world collapses around him in a matter of days.

Most of this book is Job’s response to the battering he gets in chapters 1 and 2. He goes round and round in circles with his friends who try over and over again to tell him that he must have done something bad to deserve what has happened to him.

It would be nice and easy if mass murderers and sadistic tyrants all died slow, painful deaths and good people all lived to a good age and slipped away peacefully in their beds. But we know that they don’t, at least not always.

Life is a Test

One of the Bible’s most repeated truths is this; life is a test. It’s a series of challenges about trusting God. And how we handle all the rubbish life throws us is important – as is how we deal with the good stuff.

A friend of mine, also called John, was betrayed by a work colleague  – stabbed him in the back – the test for him was this: am I going to make it worse by getting my revenge – which is what he really wanted to do – or am I going to break that cycle of sin by blessing instead of cursing?

When you’ve been deeply disappointed and your hopes have been dashed the test is this: are you going to mope around and feel sorry for yourself and turn to drink or lash out with angry words – or can you break that cycle of disillusionment by finding joy in the Lord, which is your strength?

When you’re sick and you’re not getting any better and it’s dragging on, when you’re facing death and you can’t stop the dark thoughts, when you can’t find work and you’re struggling with not enough money, or when singleness is painfully lonely, or when your marriage is emotionally suffocating, or when the children are driving you mad – these things are tests. We all face them. And God is looking for character.

Well, in chapter 29 Job finally gives it both barrels. In his final discourse he longs for the days of his youth, when he was in his prime and everything was fine and dandy. He’s at the end of his rope. He says, “I cry out to you God, but you don’t answer. I stand up and you just look at me. I hoped things would get better, but everything just keeps getting worse.” He says, “You’re going to let me die here aren’t you?”

Then he goes on to say once again what a good life he’s led and how he doesn’t deserve any of what has happened to him and he finishes with a challenge. “I have led a good life. I have suffered more than anyone I know. It’s not fair. I don’t deserve this. Why is it happening? So answer that then, God.”

Life is a mystery

In chapters 38-41 God gives, not an answer but a reply. It’s a reply of 77 questions, none of which Job is able to answer.

God shows Job that he is above him and beyond him and over him. His ways are greater, grander, nobler stranger, and wiser than Job’s ways. Here’s a quick summary:

·         Do you understand the amazing intricacies of my creation, the staggering complexities of it all?

·         Were you there giving me advice when I put it together?

·         Do you care for and provide for the variety of flora and fauna in my creation, how they operate and interdepend?

·         Do you think you could manage the shop in my absence?

·         Can you master my creation? Think of the blue whale for example. Do you have the power and wisdom to control one of them?

·         Do you they listen to you and go where you say?

·         You question my wisdom in my dealings with you, but what wisdom do you have to deal with all of this?

And after those 77 questions, to which the answer each time is “no,” it all falls silent. In chapter 42 Job makes his response.

“I know that you can do all things; no purpose of yours can be thwarted.
You asked, ‘Who is this that obscures my plans without knowledge?’
Surely I spoke of things I did not understand,

things too wonderful for me to know.

You said, ‘Listen now, and I will speak;
I will question you, and you shall answer me.’
My ears had heard of you but now my eyes have seen you.
Therefore I despise myself and repent in dust and ashes.”

There is wisdom in a prayer that says to God:

“What am I doing comparing my ideas of what’s right and wrong with your eternal wisdom?

Who am I to flex the muscles of my knowledge before the might and power of God who made the heavens?

Who am I to nurse a grievance against the righteous judge of all the earth?

I’ve been mouthing off like God owes me a favour – the truth is I don’t know what I’m talking about and every good thing I have is a gift.”

Ending

I want to draw to a close with some words for anyone here who is going through a season of suffering. Like Job, you’re asking questions day after day and no answer seems to come.

I think we all suffer to some extent just because we live in a fragile, broken, fallen, messed up world where everybody, believers included, are hit by the tragic consequences of sin. We don’t live in Paradise. It’s only in heaven that there is no more mourning, crying, pain and death. But there might be a more specific reason behind suffering.

In my experience, people ask four questions when they suffer for a prolonged period.

1. Someone once asked me when he fell ill for six months, “Am I being punished by God for sin in my life?”

My answer is this: God doesn’t punish Christians for sin, but the Bible says that he does sometimes discipline us, with the goal of restoring us to a right relationship with him, which is what is good for us. If that’s the case for you, confess any known sin to him. Repent of any wrong attitudes you know about. The blood of Christ cleanses from all sin and restores health to our souls.

2. A question I sometimes ask when everything seems to go wrong at once is this: “Is this an attack from the devil as I try to press an advance for Christ?”

My answer is this: The Bible says that Satan can and does attack us with personal criticism, doubts, temptations, afflictions, dark moods, fears and more. It says to resist him in the faith and he will flee. Call on God for strength in the time of spiritual battle.

3. One woman once said to me “Maybe I am being selected for a time of testing like Job was?”

My answer is this: It could be. Testing is to refine faith, make it purer and stronger. If you are being tested, seek encouragement and accept help and from your brothers and sisters in Christ. Testing is for a time and it will end. Prove yourself faithful and pass the test. You will be stronger afterwards and blessed.

4. Another woman reflected with me a few years ago about a time of suffering she had just come out of. She said, “I think God allowed me to suffer to soften my heart and teach me compassion for others who are hurting.”

My answer is this: Yes, God does use our pain to increase our compassion and empathy for the broken-hearted. The Bible talks about God being “in all our troubles, so that we can comfort those in any trouble with the comfort we ourselves receive from God.” Resist feeling sorry for yourself. Ask God to open up doors of opportunity so you can bless others through your testimony of how God lifted you during your own season of pain.

Let’s stand to pray…

Sermon preached at All Saints' Preston on Tees, 14 February 2016

Great Old Testament Prayers: Abraham (Genesis 18.16-33)

Introduction

Are you a good haggler? Do you like to quibble a bit over items that have been knocked down in a sale to maybe try and get an extra 10% off? Kathie loves to phone rival utility suppliers and car insurance companies once a year when the contract’s up for renewal and I think she is brilliant at driving them down. “Eon are offering me £15 less a month. If you cannot beat that I’ll just have to switch to them.” “Churchill are offering free breakdown cover. Throw that in and we might have a deal…” And so on. She saves us a small fortune.

My son in law Iain does the same thing but in the shops. He quite shamelessly bargains down poor sales assistants in big High Street outlets. He was in charge of the menswear purchasing for his wedding to our daughter. We went to this retail park and said “Watch this.” He went straight for the shop with the best offers in the window. We spent about an hour trying stuff on (for me, it felt like a couple of months in Guantanamo Bay – I hate shopping).

The time we were taking was really annoying for the sales assistant who just wanted a quick sale so he could attend to other customers. After an hour, finally Iain says, “Look, we’re fairly interested in buying two suits off you, although the shop down the road have better quality ones. I don’t know… Look, why don’t you just throw in a couple of shirts and belts and we’ll call it a deal.” The guy caved in. Anything to get us out of the shop. In the end we got two suits, two shirts, two belts for 60% of the sale price of the suits. I thought, “This guy is definitely good enough for my daughter.”

Well, it’s one thing to do this on the phone and in the shops, but have you ever seen prayer in this kind of way? Having a good haggle? Trying to strike a tasty bargain with Almighty God? I suspect it’s not a model we tend to use readily for our own praying but one of the greatest prayers in the Old Testament is not all that far off what I have just described. And it comes in Genesis 18…

Background

In case you’re not all that familiar with this story, let me try and set the scene for you.

Abraham and his nephew Lot have travelled to a land called Canaan and, to cut a long story short, in Genesis 13 they end up deciding it’s probably best they go their separate ways. So Abraham takes Lot and says “Look north, south, east and west. Which bit do you want?” Lot looks south and sees a wilderness. He looks north and sees scrubland. He looks west and knows there’s trouble from tribal warriors. He looks east towards the River Jordan and sees a well-watered valley. Unsurprisingly, Lot says “I think I’ll take that bit over there, to the east.” And Abraham says “O.K.”

Years later, Lot has made his home in one of the settlements of that plain – in fact, it’s the biggest of them all, a city called Sodom. And it seems he did well there because in Genesis 19.1 we find him sitting in the gateway of the city which means he’s become a man of standing, probably a magistrate or a judge. Two visitors travel from Abraham to see him and spend the evening in his home.

Then there is a quite shocking episode which shows how evil that place was. A mob of men turn up, young men and old men we’re told, they surround the house and call out to Lot to send his guests out so they can rape them in the streets. To his credit, Lot refuses but to his shame, to try and placate them, he says they can abuse his two virgin daughters instead.

But the mob, instead of having any conscience that what they are demanding is wrong, just complain that Lot is being judgemental towards them – it’s there in 19.9. “This fellow comes here from another country, takes our jobs, and now he’s offending us by being judgemental.” (This is all very modern isn’t it?) They get violent, they threaten Lot, and try and beat down the door. It’s clear that Sodom is no place to bring up a family. They can’t stay. It has become a lawless, perverted, violent, wicked place and Lot realises for his and his family’s safety they need to flee at first light. Which is what they do.

That’s the background. As we know, Sodom and Gomorrah are proverbial in our language. People still associate the names of these places with decadence, sin, vice, depravity and overindulgence. We get our English word ‘sodomy’ from the name of that city of course, and in our day, the excesses of that place have become mainstream once again. There’s nothing revolutionary about the sexual revolution. It’s as old as the human race.

These two cities were situated in the Jordan valley by the Dead Sea which is near the northern edge of the biggest and deepest gash on the Earth’s surface; the Great Rift Valley. It starts in Mozambique in southern Africa and runs as far north as Lebanon, just south of Turkey. The Dead Sea is the lowest point of the whole valley – in fact, at 1,400 feet below sea level, it’s the lowest point on Earth. Sodom was the lowest point on earth physically but it was also the lowest point morally and spiritually. People sank to lower depths there than anywhere else.

But people, once again, have become obsessed by the very things that led to the downfall of these cities. Tellingly, such was the constant pressure of the culture around him to accept and condone and excuse and approve what was happening in Sodom that Lot became confused in his own conscience. He didn’t really know what was right and wrong any more.

He had been a righteous man the Bible says, he was a magistrate, but he ended up morally all at sea and messed up. What was he doing offering his daughters for gang rape instead of his guests? It’s totally sick isn’t it? But the constant promotion of sin in a culture strains the conscience. It wears down your sense of right and wrong. It erodes the boundaries of what you know is true. It gnaws away at your ingrained sense of holiness and decency – the attrition of it is exhausting.

It’s why it says in the New Testament, “Do not be conformed to the pattern of this world.” That was written to young Christians in Rome, the most decadent, depraved, debased city in the Empire – the capital of corruption, the home of hedonism, the epicentre of overindulgence. Don’t let the world squeeze you into its mould. This is such a battle for us. And it’s for that world that Abraham prayed.

The Outcry against Sodom

Back to our reading, in v20 God says “The outcry against Sodom and Gomorrah is great.” Understandably. But where did that outcry come from? Was it just that the place was so infamously and manifestly squalid that the situation itself cried out for God to do something about it?

Or was it the outcry from the distressed hearts of parents, of brothers, of sisters who were watching their loved ones getting sucked into this vortex of vice? Was it a crying out to God in prayer that their loved ones would get out of it? How loud is the outcry to God against our great cities today? How loud is the outcry for victims of messed-up lives in London, in Berlin, in Las Vegas and in every city where lives are being destroyed in the ways they were in Sodom and Gomorrah?

The Outcry for Sodom

Well, that’s the outcry against the city, but what follows is an outcry for the city. The Bible shows us Abraham’s frank, courageous and persistent prayer.

It’s frank. “Will you sweep away the righteous with the wicked?” he asks. “Lord, are you just going to lump good people and bad people together? You wouldn’t do that would you?” Abraham knew God’s heart, he was God’s friend the Bible says. So in his prayer he lifts to God the longings, the yearnings, the struggles of anyone left in Sodom who still had a heart for God and his ways.

It’s courageous. “Far be it from you!” he says to God. “You’re not like that, you’re the Judge of all the Earth and you will do the right thing won’t you?” It sounds like he’s not really sure that God will be fair. All of us are tempted sometimes to say that God is not fair. “Why did God allow my friend to die?” “Why didn’t God stop that earthquake in Taiwan?” “Why does God let terrorists commit atrocities?” Abraham challenges God on his record. He’s not asking for mercy. He’s asking for justice.

And it’s persistent. How do you feel when you ask your boss for a pay rise? It’s a bit daunting isn’t it? Well, say the boss agrees. How do you feel now about going back and asking for a little more, maybe £10 more? Probably most people would feel content to have got the boss to say “yes” to the first pay increase. To ask for more straight away feels like pushing your luck.

But Abraham is not embarrassed by persistence. “Would you withdraw your hand of judgement if there were 50 good people in that city? What about 45? And 40? Would you relent if there were just 30? Or 20 then? What if you could only find 10?”

Tragically, there weren’t even 10. Genesis 19.4 tells you how many in the city were corrupted by evil. “Before they had gone to bed, all the men from every part of the city - both young and old – surrounded the house.” There wasn’t even one, let alone ten.

But of course Abraham doesn’t know that in chapter 18. And this isn’t about his pay packet. This is about people. It’s about people living or dying. Six times Abraham asks God to spare the city.

And it’s an encounter. If we go back to 18.1 it says “the Lord came to Abraham.” In v33 it says “he left Abraham.” So there was a coming together. I find in my own life there are times when I just seem to go through the motions, sometimes it feels like speaking to the walls or to the ceiling. In church or in a group it can sometimes feel like a performance. Sometimes I find that I’m not in gear spiritually and I am not really seeking God at all. It is more an exercise than an encounter. But Abraham really seemed to actually meet with God. Oh that our prayers would be an encounter with the living God!

What Happened to Sodom?

Well, we know the story. Lot and his family escaped. Sodom and Gomorrah didn’t. Fire from heaven totally destroyed those cities and they have never been traced - until the last decade. For 3,500 years this place was undiscovered, no one knew where it was, but very recent archaeological digs have possibly located them at last.

Sodom was said to be the largest city east of Kikkar. So archaeologists came to the conclusion that if they were to locate it, their best chance was to start with the biggest archaeological mound around the Dead Sea. And they decided in the end that the prime site was in a location called Tall el-Hamaam, and they started digging there in 2005. They soon found the remains of a city that was inhabited between 3,500BC and 1,540 BC – and that brings us to the time of Abraham.

Steven Collins of Trinity Southwestern University in New Mexico led the project alongside Hussein el-Jarrah from the Jordanian government’s Department of Antiquities. Collins personally supervised over ten years of excavations at the site. They uncovered many things of interest like defences and ramparts, including evidence of a 5 metre thick and 10 metre high city wall. That would definitely correspond with a settlement of the stature of Sodom. They found plazas connected by roads; clearly it was a substantial city. In fact, it was about ten times larger than any other Middle Bronze Age settlement ever before discovered in the region.

The location is of a thriving city because of its location by the River Jordan and on major trade routes - which is how Sodom is described in the Bible. 

Revealingly, this particular city seems to have been suddenly abandoned in mysterious circumstances at the end of the Bronze Age – Abraham’s time. It seems the site became uninhabited after a major trauma.

I have to say in all honesty that different experts have come to differing conclusions, but the team that led the project is convinced what they have found is ancient Sodom. I watched a documentary on the Yesterday Channel last year which weighed the evidence for and against Tall el-Hammam being the location for what we read about in Genesis 18-19.

The thing I found most interesting was a pottery fragment that they found within an ash layer, and the fragment has an unusual -indeed unique- glazed appearance. The thing is, ceramic glazing has never been found on pottery until 1,000 years after the date of that fragment. Laboratory analysis shows that it was exposed to extremely high temperatures, a level that far exceeds that normally used to fire any pottery, ancient or modern.

Was it glazed during the catastrophic demise of the city? Well, again I must say that different experts interpret the evidence in different ways, but it is very possible that we are living in the generation that has discovered Sodom and evidence of its devastating, sudden demise.

Whether they’ve found it or not, the important thing is what Jude says in the New Testament; v7: “Sodom and Gomorrah and the surrounding towns” he says, “gave themselves up [note that expression – they surrendered, they capitulated, they just caved in] to sexual immorality and perversion. They serve as an example of those who suffer the punishment of eternal fire.” That is a serious thing to say.

Ending

Some preachers you listen to can’t stop talking about God’s justice. They go on and on about judgement and hell fire and brimstone. Every Sunday it’s the same angry rant. Everything’s wrong with the world - and it’s all getting worse - and God is very ticked off with everyone.

Other preachers you listen to can’t stop talking about God’s mercy. Every Sunday it’s the spiritual equivalent of My Little Pony. They go on and on about how nice God is, his grace and blessing, and how he just wants to give everyone a hug, a high five and a free ice cream.

Guess who has the biggest congregations by the way…

In Genesis 18 and 19 you get both God’s justice and his mercy in perfect balance. And unless a preacher tells you about God’s mercy; his overflowing kindness and amazing love for sinners and God’s justice; his settled opposition to sin and his resolve to deal with it – don’t give them the time of day.

One day a dying man wrote a letter to Billy Graham. This is what it said; “I turned my back on God over 60 years ago, while I was still in my teens. Now I'm old and dying, and I wish I'd taken a different road. Tell young people not to do what I did. I was a fool, but it's too late for me now.”

And this is how he replied; “Thank you for your letter. When we're young, we often don't realize how life-changing our decisions may be - for good or for evil. Only as we grow older do we begin to see it, and that's especially true for someone in your position.

The Bible speaks of the terrible consequences that await those who “did not choose to fear the Lord” (Proverbs 1.29). But it is not too late for you to turn to God! Yes, your life would have been very different (and much happier) if you had given your life to Christ when you had the opportunity many years ago. But why enter eternity separated from God and his blessings if you don't have to?

God loves you, in spite of the way you've treated him. If you had been the only person on earth who needed it, Jesus would still have gone to the cross and died for you. God loves you that much! Right now, God is speaking to you and giving you a second chance to turn to Christ. Don't make the same mistake you did over 60 years ago. The Bible says, “Seek the Lord while he may be found; call on him while he is near”. In a prayer of faith confess your sins to God and commit your life to Jesus Christ. You cannot change the past, but he can change your future.”

What a great reply!

In dying on that cross, Jesus took us off spiritual Death Row and he willingly took the full punishment for sin on himself.

There doesn’t need to be another Sodom and Gomorrah on Stockton or anywhere else because the punishment for the sins of the world - all of them - was visited on Jesus. The darkness, the agony, the thirst, the heat and the loneliness, the shame – he took it all.

Bless his name, let’s pray…

Sermon preached at All Saints' Preston on Tees, 7 February 2016