ISAIAH SPEAKS OF GOD’S OTHERNESS , and his distinct purposes, throughout all sixty-six chapters of his prophecies. He touches very briefly on the distinctions of God’s methods in a verse tucked mid-way through the Book of Isaiah: There are times when God will “rise up to do his work, his strange work, and perform his task, his alien task.” (Isa. 28:21b) Throughout the scriptures, from walking in the Garden of Eden with Adam and Eve (cf. Gen. 3:8), to Joshua’s encounter with the angel of the Lord (cf. Josh. 5:13), on to Paul’s encounter with Jesus on the Damascus Road (cf. Acts 9:3-7), or with the angel of the Lord freeing Peter from jail (cf. Acts 12:7), there is evidence of God breaking into human history for his unique purposes as he alters men’s and mankind’s destiny.
We often pray for God to alter our destiny, or that of those around us. There is something or someone outside our power to change, but the need is great, and we are brought to the stark realization that only a movement of God from his realm will change the circumstances in our realm. We seek his will through prayer, and sometimes the answer seems long in coming as we continue in our struggle with unchanged circumstances that await the timing of God.
It was like this for the father of faith, Abraham. God had made him promises about an heir, “your own flesh and blood will be your heir.” (Gen. 15:4) But time goes by, perhaps seeming endlessly to Abraham, who is “ninety-nine years old” now (Gen. 17:1), and is in a period of life with diminishing energy and limited time. Yet God reassures Abraham that indeed Sarah will bear him a son, even in his and her advanced age. “I will bless her and will surely give you a son by her.” (Gen. 17:16) Abraham is the patriarch of an extended family, and he is concerned about his nephew Lot and his family, who live in Sodom, where “the people of Sodom were wicked and were sinning greatly against the Lord.” (Gen. 13:13) That Abraham is a man of prayer is attested to by the entirety of his story from Gen. 15:1 through Gen. 25:11. There is one particular place in his story that we witness God “rise up to do his strange work” (Isa. 28:21b) in response to what must have been a deep struggle in prayer for faith’s progenitor.
It is the heat of the day in the desert climate. Abraham’s tent is pitched beneath the shade of “the great trees of Mamre” (Gen. 18:1), overlooking the plains below, with a view of the Dead Sea and the towns of Sodom and Gomorrah. He is “sitting at the entrance to his tent.” (Ibid) We sense expectation in Abraham. Indeed, he “looks up and sees three men standing nearby.” (Gen. 18:2a) His impulse is to “hurry to meet them and bow low to the ground.” (Gen. 18:2b) His greeting to them implies something more than the culture of hospitality of the A.N.E., though this social tradition cannot be ignored.
It begins with “Let a little water be brought, and then you may all wash your feet and rest under this tree.” Perhaps he gestures invitingly back towards his tent. “Let me get you something to eat, so you can be refreshed.” (Gen. 18:4a) And then he adds, tellingly, “Now that you have come to your servant.” (Gen. 18:4b) Abraham has been looking for an answer to his problems and his prayers, and he believes these three ‘men’ have something to do with it.
Together, they spend time relaxing in one another’s company. The meal takes a while to prepare. Sarah “ bakes bread,” and Abraham has a servant slaughter “a choice tender calf.” (Gen. 18:6-7) Abraham is anxious, as “he stands near them under a tree.” (Gen. 18:8b) The day moves slowly forward, and as each party, both Abraham and the guests, work their way through the obligatory but pleasant hospitality, a moment comes when the purposes of the angels of God begin to be revealed.
They ask, “Where is your wife Sarah?” (Gen. 18:9) After Abraham’s gesture towards her, “One of them said, ‘I will surely return to you about this time next year, and Sarah your wife will have a son.’” (Gen. 18:10) The long-awaited and perplexing promise of God reaches its appointed time; despite Sarah’s incredulous laughter and disbelief (Gen. 18:12), Isaac—whose name means “laughter”—will be born, and along with Abraham and Jacob will become one of the three patriarchs of Judaism, and the prophets of the promise of the Land. The purpose of God is initiated through the first angel. Abraham may have waited long, but for God the timing is perfect.
The process of God’s purposes for the second and third angel begin to be revealed. “When the men got up to leave, they looked down toward Sodom, and Abraham walked along with them to see them on their way. Then the Lord said, ‘Shall I hide from Abraham what I am about to do?’” (Gen. 18:16-17) And he said, “The outcry against Sodom and Gomorrah is so great and their sin so grievous that I will go down and see if what they have done is as bad as the outcry that has reached me. If not, I will know.” (Gen. 18:20-21)
While Abraham’s concerns for the people of Sodom and Gomorrah—but especially for his nephew Lot—are clearly displayed in his interaction with God’s angels, the outcome is inevitable. Sodom and Gomorrah will be utterly destroyed, and it becomes the task of the second and third angels, when that apocalyptic time comes, to display both the power of God’s wrath towards those wicked people as well as his power to save and protect his beloved. “The two angels arrived at Sodom in the evening, and Lot was sitting in the gateway of the city.” (Gen. 19:1) An altercation with lust-driven “men from every part of the city of Sodom, both young and old” (Gen. 19:4) clearly convinces the angels of the Lord that Sodom and Gomorrah are irredeemable. They tell Lot to get his family “or anyone else in the city that belongs to you out of here. The outcry of the Lord against its people is so great that he has sent us to destroy it.” (Gen. 19:12-14) They tell Lot, “Flee for your lives! Don’t look back, and don’t stop anywhere in the plain! Flee to the mountains or you will be swept away!” (Gen. 19:17)
We take sober lessons from this story. It is doubtful that any of us will be involved in the sweeping object lessons of God that alter the outcomes of history on the massive scale that are displayed in Abraham’s life. But each of us has a part to play in a down-scaled setting that may well alter our own destiny and that of people closely associated with. Our tent of meeting is our personal prayer closet. However we may view that place and space where we meet with God, we go into that meeting place with the problems that plague us, the things we have not been able to resolve, and, believing that God can and may help us to sort out such issues, we speak them into the prayer relationship. We cannot ignore the fact that time is part of the solution; and, we must caution ourselves in advance that God’s timing is different than ours. Abraham waited agonizing years before his promised son was born. We also must realize that bargaining with God, as Abraham did, may not change the outcomes to fit our presuppositions. God’s perspective of Sodom and Gomorrah led to a response to the wickedness that existed there without the misplaced compassion of Abraham.
Some circumstances and some people are irredeemable. And, we need to harden ourselves to the pain of loss that may overwhelm us as we pray for our families and loved ones. Lot’s wife made her own choice, ignoring a strident warning, and paid a great consequence. Many of our loved ones make poor choices on a day-to-day basis; some of those choices will engender consequences that we cannot change. Those somewhat predictable outcomes should not, must not, temporize the honesty and fervency of our prayers.
Q. Can I pray, with full assurance, Jesus’ prayer, “Not as I will, but as you will.” (Matt. 26:39)?