We’ve been working on describing people in my English conversation class – their hair, height, weight, overall appearance. It’s interesting to hear the different impressions one person can make. In one opinion the man is tall; the other describes him as average height. One says she’s young, another middle aged. Short hair to one is perceived as long in another’s mind. And on it goes.
In reading through Genesis I’ve come to the story of Abraham. As children we learned songs about him as Father Abraham, the wife of Sarah, father of Isaac, the man who left Ur of the Chaldeans and followed God to a place of promise. We’ve memorized the story of his great faith test as he laid his own son, his only son, on the altar as a sacrifice. And we’ve been told that it was through him that all the peoples on the earth were blessed, that he’s the father of many nations, a man who trusted God.
Though he wasn’t always old, my impression of him remains as an elderly man with long white hair, matching beard and wrinkled, sun-dried skin from years of travel. Yet he was so much more --a living breathing person who felt things, had desires and dreams. Waiting almost thirty years for the birth of Isaac impacted his life, transforming him into the mature man we remember with the white beard and steady faith. Not much is revealed about his emotions, leaving us to fill in the gaps with our own interpretations of how he handled life’s struggles. Was he angry, frustrated, disappointed? Did he often grow restless or irritable? Or was he good natured, going through the motions of each day with little thought of the future? Did he and Sarah discuss their dreams with doubts or with certainty as they waited year after year?
Reading along this morning I came to a verse that caused me to actually think about him differently. He stopped being one dimensional and took on a whole new persona in my mind as I witnessed him not only talking with God but reasoning with him, challenging him to remember his promises. The verse reads, “Then Abraham pressed his request further.” Here I saw Abraham out in the mountains of what would later become Israel talking with the Lord about the impending destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah. After hearing the Lord’s warning that he’d destroy the city if it proved to be infiltrated with wickedness, Abraham’s heart was stirred with compassion. Not only was he concerned about his nephew Lot, but for all the other righteous people, if there were any, who would die along with the wicked.
Reading along this morning I came to a verse that caused me to actually think about him differently. He stopped being one dimensional and took on a whole new persona in my mind as I witnessed him not only talking with God but reasoning with him, challenging him to remember his promises. The verse reads, “Then Abraham pressed his request further.” Here I saw Abraham out in the mountains of what would later become Israel talking with the Lord about the impending destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah. After hearing the Lord’s warning that he’d destroy the city if it proved to be infiltrated with wickedness, Abraham’s heart was stirred with compassion. Not only was he concerned about his nephew Lot, but for all the other righteous people, if there were any, who would die along with the wicked.
In so much of the Old Testament we mainly get glimpses of people falling down in the presence of God, worshipping him in fear. We see them trembling on their faces before the holy God. And while Abraham did the same, worshiping God and giving him a sacrifice, we also see him engaging in discussion with him, much like we witness the disciples doing in the New Testament. He’s having a talk with God about withholding his judgment and, in it, reminds God of his goodness. “Surely you wouldn’t do such a thing, destroying the righteous along with the wicked. Why, you would be treating the righteous and the wicked exactly the same! Surely you wouldn’t do that! Should not the Judge of all the earth do what is right?”
Abraham was calling God to be faithful to his character and his word, something that at first glance comes across as arrogant, absurd. But God wasn’t offended in any way by his boldness, just as he wasn’t put off by the boldness of others who begged for mercy in the New Testament. In fact, God revealed, or unveiled, more and more of his compassion with each succeeding request. His forbearance is contrary to my human nature which displays irritability and takes offense when pressed too much for mercy. "Enough is enough," I cry when someone dares to keep asking for more. But this wasn’t, isn’t, the case with God at all. Abraham pressed him six times for an extension of his mercy, beginning with fifty people and ending with only ten. “Finally, Abraham said, ‘Lord, please don’t be angry with me if I speak one more time. Suppose only ten are found there?’” And God responded, “Then I will not destroy it for the sake of the ten.”
Are you getting the same message I am? That God never wanted to destroy the wicked in the first place, and that relenting was as much a relief to him as it was to Abraham. That Abraham had come to know God's heart through years of walking with him and was voicing God’s own desires without even realizing it. God says that he is a God of compassion who doesn’t delight in punishing the wicked. Abraham was discovering this through his conversation with God, just as Jonah did as he encountered God’s dealing with the Ninevites, just as Moses did as he interceded for the stubborn Israelites, just as you and I do as we go to God time and again with the same requests for mercy.
My husband gave me an article by Tim Keller about the importance of boldness in persevering prayer. In it, he quotes Thomas Goodwin, a Puritan, who emphasizes that God wants us not only to take him at his word but to hold him to it. He writes, “Do not leave him alone. Pester him, as it were, with his own promise. Quote the Scripture to him. And, you know, God delights to hear us doing it, as a father likes to see this element in his own child who has obviously been listening to what his father has been saying.”
It’s astounding to know that regardless of the day God’s promises are unchanging. If he’s said he’s going to do it, he’s going to do it. Nothing will ever alter that. And God doesn't tire of hearing us pray and ask him for help, for healing, for grace to press on. Do you know anyone else like that in the entire universe? I don’t! Even my husband who's willing to endure mental torture listening to me rattle on and on about concerns and desires reaches a point of frustration and boredom. He’s heard it once, twice, a million times and he’s ready to move on.
But God doesn’t become frustrated or lose interest. He’s there waiting, even longing for us to come into his presence, to stay there as long as we want, to say whatever is on our minds, to spend time with us. He’s not in a hurry and never will be. We can’t reach him at a bad time. His perfection doesn’t make him despise our many flaws, but rather moves him to greater mercy and compassion. And it's not the kind of mercy that causes him feel sorry for us but the kind that moves him to action to help us dig out of the pits in life. He wants to see us grow and bloom, to spread our wings and fly.
He didn’t make us plastic creatures who come before him and recite some generic prayers. No, he created us with passion and desires that move us to heartfelt communion with him that sometimes, many times, pleads our case before him with the same passion we’ve seen in our children as they share their longings with us. He’s told us all about himself and his will in his word and he’s excited, I think, when we come to him standing firmly on these promises and reminding him that since he’s promised it, we’re expecting it and we’re holding him to it, in his time. He’s not our puppet and won’t be told what to do. But he’s way, way too big to be offended by our constant needs and requests.
Abraham was a man who had great faith, who dared to take God at his Word. He wasn’t afraid to speak from his heart. He talked with God, just like we do, and God moved mountains in his life, just like he does, and wants to do in ours, if we’ll ask him.
