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Amen.
You guys can be seated.
If you've got your Bibles, invite you to join me in Genesis, chapter 18.
It's where we're going to be today.
A couple of things before we get there.
Somebody asked me, is that the largest iPad in the world?
I'm getting blind, right?
No.
My iPad died on me this morning.
And I looked at Aaron, I was like, is it okay for me to go up there with my computer?
Because I've read off of a screen for so long.
This sounds weird, but paper terrifies me.
Okay.
So that's why I got this up here.
But also, I want to point you guys to a couple of things that we've got going on.
Number one, if you're a first time guest with us today, thank you so much for being here.
Thank you for worshiping with us.
We count it as a blessing, and it is an honor that you chose to worship with us today.
And there's these cards on the end of either side of your road that you're seated on.
If you wouldn't mind taking some time to fill that out.
And then as you leave today, we've got two options for you.
Number one, you can walk right back here.
The doors you came in on, there's a basket you can drop that right there.
Option number two, this is my preference, if you wouldn't mind.
My wife and I will be back at this table.
We would love for you to hand that to us so we could shake your hand.
Thank you for being here.
And if you have any questions about Willow Ridge Church, it would give us an opportunity to answer those questions for you.
Secondly, so we've got an announcement that I want to share with you guys.
You've been hearing about it at our church years and years and years ago, there was a ministry that began to happen in the life of our church called Man Camp.
And man camp will be happening again in October, I believe.
October 14.
Off the top of my head, I'm trying to grab that.
Jared, is that correct?
October 14, I told Berger, I was like, hey, instead of announcing all the specific details, I want to just take a moment and kind of speak to some vision for this.
Jared Oswald and Tracy Williams sat down with me, like, two years ago, I think, and began to pour out their heart for what man camp was and what man camp is and what man camp could be and what came from that was what, a few weeks ago, we gave a label to in here.
It was that long before the label existed, which was Missional Discipleship.
It's an opportunity where guys who are believers can have an opportunity to bring one of their buddies or multiple buddies to an environment that that lost friend would want to go to, would want to be a part of.
Would want to experience things where they can get out of nature.
They can fish, they can talk, they can eat really good food to where you need to wear stretchy pants right for it.
But that also what can happen and take place there is the truth of.
God can be shared, and Christians who.
Are men can be challenged in their.
Faith, and men who are not Christians.
Can be presented with the gospel.
Jared spoke last year at it, and I walked up to him after it was over with.
My mind was blown away, and the Lord spoke so much to me in the time that my son and I could be there.
So if you're a guy in this room and you've heard the announcement and you'll hear the announcement more until the day comes for October 14 for man camp and you're wanting to take that next step of obedience to the Lord, you got a buddy that loves hunting.
He loves fishing.
He loves being outdoors.
He loves doing those sorts of things.
And he'd come to this.
He would never come to a worship service.
He'd never come to your Bible study.
He would never come to a prayer time, but he'd come to that.
I want to challenge you to get yourself a ticket, to get him a ticket to engage in missional discipleship and to see it was just amazing.
As we sat down last year after the event was over with and there was lots of cool stuff that happened.
My son caught the biggest fish.
I didn't once I got past my bitterness, there was a lot of cool stuff that happened that was beyond fishing, that was beyond hitting a target.
That was about what God was speaking to in the life of the men who were there.
And what's been really awesome to see is so many men take steps of obedience to be disciple makers in their home and at their job and with.
Their family and with their friends.
So if that event speaks to you, it's more than event.
It's an opportunity to see what God can do.
So I want to challenge you to be there that weekend for us.
Jerry, will y'all be back there at the end of the service?
All tickets are online.
Any questions, we'll get you connected with.
Appreciate you.
I know you weren't planning on making you speak this morning.
You did a great job singing.
So they can hear your speaking voice now, right?
So thank you.
All right, so, as we get into this, we're in Genesis 18 this week.
We're in Genesis 19 next week.
This is not some not neat scripture.
I was away this past week from my family.
I went to do some training in Atlanta, Georgia, which I don't like Lexington traffic.
So there's know.
But God provided someone else and he drove, and I just had to sit there and get anxious through it all.
I told Van Ham this morning we were talking about, said, you know, if seminary was the greatest time of my life to dive in and understand and dig deeper into God's word.
I said this training that I went through for four days was the best time that I've ever had in growing as a communicator of communicating vision and purpose and vocabulary and unity around that.
While I was away, I was working on this message.
We'd get back to our hotel room late.
I'd call Aaron, the kids, and talk to them a little bit.
Then I'd dive into Genesis 18.
And it wasn't easy on the last day that I was there.
These two guys that are coaching us and working with us on some things, they would always start off by asking us a question about ourselves that we would need to think about and then that we would discuss around our table.
That was brilliant with how they did this.
You didn't understand how it pertained to what they were going to do.
And then they connected it all together in a powerful way.
But they asked the question to list five things that deeply anger you.
Well, that wasn't hard.
And they said, like, hey, go surface level with it.
One of the guys who's there, who lives there, he said, the thing in the world that angers me the most is traffic.
And God planted me in Atlanta, right?
So I did that.
I'd like to keep that list private.
Then the question was, what about that angers you?
But now dig deeper into that.
So I dug and I dug and I dug.
And then the last thing that he said to write down is, how do you see some of these things in yourself?
And that hurt my feelings.
We're gonna when we read scripture, not just what we're going to read.
And if you haven't skipped ahead, this.
Is Sodom and Gomorrah.
We can embrace an us versus them mentality.
We can forget the mighty work and move of God's grace in us in the deep and dark and sinful areas of our life.
We're not by our work or by our power or by our means have we gained victory, but by the work and the means and the power of God in us do we see victory.
And we can look out in the world and think, us versus them, us, God's people versus them.
And as I sat in my hotel room and as I read through this.
Honestly, not like usually you have some pretty solid direction of where you feel.
Like you're going to go with this.
Like, Lord, I don't know.
I don't know.
And then God wonderfully and beautifully showed me what God was doing in the life of Abraham.
All right, so we're going to get to that, we're going to read and kind of understand this context, but maybe.
Move through most of Genesis 18 pretty.
Quickly and then get here to this end.
So let's read these first eight verses.
And the Lord appeared to him by the oaks of Mammary, and he sat.
At the door of his tent in the heat of the day.
And he, this is Abraham lifted up.
His eyes and looked, and behold, three.
Men were standing in front of him.
When he saw them, he ran from the tent door to meet them and bowed himself to the earth and said, o Lord, I have found favor in your sight.
Do not pass by your servant.
Little water be brought and wash your.
Feet and rest yourselves under the tree while I bring a morsel of bread that you may refresh yourselves, and after that you may pass on, since you have come to your servant.
So they said, do as you have said.
And Abraham went into the tent to Sarah and said, quick three, say as a fine flour, knead it and make cakes.
And Abraham ran to the herd and took a calf, tender and good, and gave it to a young man who prepared it quickly.
Then he took curds and milk and the calf that he had prepared, and he set it before them, and he stood by them under the tree while they here's.
Just quickly, what we see in these first eight verses is the Lord again.
What we've previously seen comes and appears to Abraham and in human form.
And we see this presentation of Jesus Himself in human form before his incarnation.
Among these three men visiting with Abraham, we see Abraham's humility.
We see Abraham's service.
We see Abraham's call to action.
There's so many things that we can.
Look at in this.
And we see all of this.
He ran from the tent of his door to meet them.
And in the Godliness and the custom of his day, he greets them and is hospitable to them.
But he even goes beyond that for these three visitors.
So now let's begin to look at this interaction.
In verse nine, they said to him.
Where is Sarah, your wife?
And he said, she is in the tent.
The Lord said, I will surely return.
To you about this time next year, and Sarah, your wife, shall have a son.
And Sarah was listening at the tent door behind him.
We all get that, right?
Like, you've done that.
Don't say, like, there's a time where your wife or your husband or a friend or your parent was like, I.
Need to take this call in private.
And they walk into the other room.
And then you decide for yourself, does.
The cup on the door actually work right?
For me, growing up, it was your teacher just called.
Wait right here.
I needed a game plan.
I couldn't wait.
I didn't know what they had called about that I'd done that day, right?
And we needed to listen.
And that's what we see with Sarah.
But God repeats his promise to Abraham in a relatively short time for what.
We'Ve seen in Genesis 17.
And he hears these promises of God.
Over and over again and it just warms my heart and reminds me of who God is.
God's not like here you go, grasp it, embrace it, I'm done with it.
God's like, no over and over and over again.
Let me remind you of the goodness of who I am and in these pieces and all of these things that I'm going to do.
And this is God working and God working and God working.
Verse eleven.
Now Abraham and Sarah were old, advanced in years the way of women had ceased to be with Sarah.
They think physically right now if she gets pregnant physically, her body is not doing what it needs to do to get pregnant.
So verse twelve.
So Sarah laughed to herself.
You've been there, right?
You hear something and you're that's cute, but that's funny, that's not going to happen.
Saying after I am worn out and my Lord is old, shall I have pleasure?
Verse 13 then Lord said to Abraham, why did Sarah laugh and say shall I indeed bear a child now that I am old?
Is anything too hard for the Lord at the appointed time?
I will return to you about this time next year and Sarah shall have a son.
But Sarah denied it, saying I did not laugh or she was afraid.
He said no, but you did laugh.
So significantly we see this promise.
This is what Sarah and Abraham, this is what they wanted the most in their lives, to have a child on their own.
And they found it hard to believe that God would feel the promise.
Abraham probably farther along sarah within this God heard Sarah's laugh.
Even though scripture is clear that Sarah laughed internally, this is not an external sound that's there and that there was a sense that her laugh could not be heard by him.
But God heard it nevertheless because nothing is hidden by God, nothing is hidden before Him.
We may think we can, but we cannot.
And I love then though how God.
Treats Sarah in that mean these are God's people.
She went from being someone who was nothing, property of a man to a.
Princess is what God named her.
And God, how he treats her in her.
Grace, in his grace.
Over and over and over again we see this journey that we identify well with Sarah and Abraham of we know what God is capable of, we know what God is going to do and you know what we know what he's done in our life.
But in our mind when he says he's going to do it again, we laugh at him and think that it's impossible for him to do.
And so God treats Sarah.
He responded with dealing with her sin of unbelief, not by taking away the promise.
That's important.
When Sarah laughed and mocked God in all that she knew about who God is in his plan for her life, when it came time to address it, he addressed her sin.
But he didn't take away he didn't take away the promise.
And God would demonstrate through them that nothing is too hard for God, that God can even triumph over the weak faith of his people.
Keep reading.
Verse 16.
Then the men remember it's the Lord and two others.
Then the men set out from there and they looked down towards Sodom and Abraham went with them to set them on their way.
This was customary practice.
Okay?
If you had a visitor that came to you, you would walk with them on their journey till you knew that they knew where they were going.
Okay?
That's what Abraham does.
Verse 17.
The Lord said, shall I hide from Abraham what I am about to do?
Seeing that Abraham shall surely become a great and mighty nation and all the nations of the Earth shall be blessed in him.
For I have chosen him that he may command his children and his household after him to keep the way of the Lord by doing righteousness and justice so that the Lord may bring to Abraham what he has promised him.
So God asks a question.
God doesn't ask the question because he doesn't know the answer.
God asks a question because God wanted to reveal his process of thinking to us, to the readers of Genesis, that we'll see through this, and because of what God is going to bring from Abraham a great and mighty nation, a people, what God is going to do.
And Abraham is going to be the leader of his home and of his people.
God determined that he needed to reveal to him what God was going to do with Sodom and Gomorrah.
And this is a heavy time.
As.
These comments and truths of God's word.
Are going to come forth.
I need us for a moment to.
Not treat this story like an asop's fable.
We need to feel the emotion of the moment.
We need to feel the depravity of the day.
We need to feel all of this.
And God's purpose in revealing to this was not to just share shocking information with Abraham or simply to satisfy Abraham's curiosity.
God, in this moment, wanted to do something in Abraham's life that only God could reveal to him, that only God could do in him in this moment.
And so the weight is building.
In verse 20, then the Lord said, because the outcry against Sodom and Gomorrah is great, the outcry against them, the testimony about them, nothing is false that we are going to read, and their sin is very grave.
God never walks away from the weight of what is happening here.
It's very clear.
Then God says, I will go down to see whether they have done altogether according to the outcry that has come to me, and if not, I will know.
Why?
Why does God sees all, knows all, say to Abraham, I've heard.
It's been told to me.
I'm going to go.
It's because of this.
And I think this has got to be the part as we live as missionaries in our culture, where God and his sovereignty has placed us, where we live in a world that wants to draw a line between teams, is that we have to understand that God is the righteous judge.
God says, look, it's not because of what the people are saying, because the judgments of the Lord are true and righteous, that I am going to go down and be the judge.
I'm going to experience this for myself.
Did he need to not in the ways of God?
Did he need to do this in the mind of Abraham?
Absolutely so that Abraham could deeply understand the character and the knowledge and the integrity of God.
So it starts with this journey that comes to his house and he says, Let me get you some food.
Let me get you some bread.
Let me get you some meat.
Let me get you some water to drink and water to clean with.
Abraham says, Come, be my guest.
Let me walk with you down this path.
And then God says, Abraham, I need to show you who I am.
And from understanding Abraham who I am, you're going to find out who you can be in me.
So, verse 22 so the men turned from there and went toward Sodom, but Abraham stood before the Lord, and then Abraham drew near.
Abraham knows.
He knows what's there.
He knows what they're going to find.
He's going to know how it displeases his spirit.
And Abraham drew near to God and said, will you indeed sweep away the righteous with the wicked?
Suppose there are 50 righteous within the city.
Will you then sweep away the place and not spare it for the 50 righteous who are in it?
Far be it from you to do such a thing, to put the righteous.
To death with the wicked so that the righteous will fare as the wicked.
Far be that from you.
Shall not the Judge of all the earth do what is just?
And the Lord said, if I find Sodom 50 righteous in the city, I will spare the whole place for their sake.
In verse 27, and Abraham said, Behold, I've undertaken to speak to the Lord, I who am but dust and ashes.
Suppose five of the 50 righteous are lacking.
Will you destroy the whole city for lack of five?
And he said, I will not destroy it if I find 45 there.
And again he spoke to him and said, suppose 40 are found there.
He answered, for the sake of 40, I will not do it.
Then he said, oh, let not the Lord be angry, and I will speak.
Suppose 30 are found there.
And he answered, I will not do it if I find 30 there.
And he said, Behold, I've undertaken to speak to the Lord.
Suppose 20 are found there.
And he answered, for the sake of 20, I will not destroy it.
Verse 32.
Then he said, oh, let not the Lord be angry, and I will speak again, but this once, suppose ten are found there.
And he answered, for the sake of ten, I will not destroy it.
And then the Lord went his way when he had finished speaking to Abraham, and Abraham returned to his place.
We live in a world of us.
Versus them and drawing lines in the sand.
And what does Abraham do?
He's not of them.
He's rejected them.
What does Abraham do?
Abraham humbly over and over and over again.
I am like dust before you, Lord, if I can have permission to say this.
This is not an argument.
This is a humble plea.
And Abraham humbly intercedes.
Abraham came near to the Lord, and.
In intercession, draws near to God so that he can pray with his heart.
And Abraham knows that God is righteous, that God is the judge.
And he begins to have this intercession for them.
For them.
Now, next week, we'll see, or if.
You remember back.
Abraham has some vested interests there.
There's his nephew Lot, whom he loves, whom gets a little squirrely from time to time, and Lot's there.
His family are there.
And what I find remarkable is he might have just prayed, lord, get my nephew out.
Lord, in your kindness and compassion, get my nephew out.
But he doesn't.
Instead, he intercedes for the whole, having compassion and brokenness for the people whose sin is great, and what waits them is destruction because of it.
And Abraham intercedes.
I think this is important as we.
Take what we see here and we.
Bring it back to our life and we apply the truth to this culture that we live in.
Abraham not once, not one time seeks to justify, excuse, affirm, or celebrate anything that's happening there, not once.
That's not what we see.
What Abraham does is he simply desires to intercede.
Oftentimes, what I have found in my life as I write that list, of what angers me, as I write that list, of what disgusts me, as I write that list, of what stirs my heart against the culture of this world that I find myself living in.
And then as I begin to write down the things of this world, that the reason why this just drives to such a heart level issue for me.
And then when I take the moment and I look back at those things not the behavior, but the heart and I look back and see that those things can reside in me.
What my heart often wants to go.
To is either to make the villains or to make those that affirm you're.
Against me or I'm with you and Blanket over all of it.
Casting a Blanket statement over it all in that moment.
And it's not what Abraham does, Lord.
If there's 50, there's 45.
If there's 40, all the way down to where there is ten, what if we stopped affirming and stopped villainizing?
And what if we, in the depravity filled culture and world that we lived in, simply started interceding?
Here's why I don't when I'm in my flesh, here's why I struggle with that, okay?
Because their sin offends me more than mine does.
And I'm so glad as a child of God that he doesn't take away his promise for me that in that moment, what he does for me is to remind me of his promise and in his grace for me.
It's okay.
It's good.
It's biblical.
Let sin offend you.
Sin offends Jesus over and over and over again.
When we see this in Scripture, sin offends Jesus.
Jesus never excuses, never affirms sin.
Jesus always confronts it every single time.
No one around Jesus was like, I wonder what he thinks about that.
But everyone around Jesus knew there was a seat at the table.
One of my favorite stories because it reminds me of my journey and my salvation story is found in Luke, chapter four.
If you can turn there's Jesus and.
The woman of Samaria.
Jesus and the woman at the well.
Jesus has been traveling on, and he comes to a town.
He comes to an area that the people there socially would have been considered less than.
We know those places.
We can act like we don't, but we do.
We know the way culture sees that, and we know, honestly, sometimes in our mind how we see those places as well.
And he comes out in the middle of the day.
He's been traveling.
It's hot.
We already saw it was customary in this culture all the way back in the time of Abraham when you had a guest that would come.
You would need some water for a lot of reasons to wash off with.
Your feet and your hands, to wash off your face, but also to drink when Jesus comes to a well during the middle of the day, during the heat of the day, right?
Like, think South Carolina in August with no clouds, but somehow there's 115% humidity, right?
And you've been cutting the grass all.
Day long behind a push mower whose self propel has just broken, right?
You're hot, you're tired.
You're thirsty.
And Jesus speaks to a woman who's there who would not have been there during a traditional time.
The ladies of the day would not.
Have gone out during the middle of.
The day to draw out water.
It was a heavy it was a hard process.
They would have done that early in the morning.
They would have done that during the cool of the day, jesus instead finds this woman, who's doing this very difficult process during the middle of the day when no one else would be out there.
And Jesus finds that it's her and Him, and they begin to talk and have a cultural conversation.
Want to invite you later today.
Go read verses one through nine and.
Then begin to talk about what it.
Means to drink water.
In John, chapter four, verse ten, Jesus says this if you knew the gift of God and who it is that.
Is saying to you, give me a.
Drink, you would have asked Him, and he would have given you living water.
And the woman said to him, sir, you have nothing to draw water with, and the well is deep.
Where do you get that living water?
Okay.
She makes fun of Jesus right there.
Okay?
Like you speak of living water, you have no bucket, you have no jar.
How are you going to get this living water?
Are you greater than our father, Jacob?
He gave us the well and drank from it himself, as did his sons and his livestock.
Jesus said to her, everyone who drinks of this water will be thirsty again.
But whoever drinks of the water I.
Will give him will never be thirsty again.
The water that I will give Him.
Will become in Him a spring of water welling up to eternal life.
And the woman said to Him, sir, give me this water so that I will not be thirsty or have to come here to draw water.
Jesus does something spectacular here.
He gives her an invitation.
She doesn't understand it fully, yet she will.
He invites her to understand that he's different.
He invites her to understand that He's God and that he can give her something, as we just sang before I walked up here on stage, that only can satisfy in Him.
Want to ask you this.
Who wouldn't want that?
He hasn't demanded anything of her.
He simply invited, I have something for you.
How wonderful does this sound for you?
Sometimes we can approach sin that way.
But you see, Jesus wasn't done with the conversation.
Jesus brings her an invitation.
Come and get this from me.
But then Jesus gives her a challenge as well.
Jesus gives her a challenge, and he challenges her sin.
Verse 16 through 18, jesus said to her, go call your husband and come here.
And the woman answered Him, I have no husband.
Jesus said to her, you are right in saying I have no husband, for you have had five husbands, and the one you now have is not your husband.
What you have said is true, and Jesus in grace and truth, extends to her the invitation.
Come to me, all you who are weary and heavy laden, and I will give you rest the invitation to follow Jesus and daily take up your cross and.
Follow me.
How do I take the intercession of Abraham and let that resolve in my spirit and land firmly into the path of calling people to follow Jesus?
Because it's not just found an easy invitation alone, it's not just found in the complicated challenge, but it's what Jesus did.
It's both.
It's both Come and follow me and I will make you fishers of men.
Come and get this water that springs from it eternal life and let's deal with this that is here.
You see, neither fall into an affirmation culture and neither fall into an enemy culture.
Both fall into a gospel culture.
And here's the truth.
One day, whether it was at VBS, whether it was at a worship service, whether it was at a Bible study, whether it was at a youth camp or whether it was like me.
Strangely, in a rock in the middle of a river, you and I were just sitting there by the well, doing what we did.
And Jesus came down and sat beside us and we heard the invitation and received the challenge to follow him.
Next week.
We'Ll get into 19 and that's a difficult, difficult passage.
May we come at it with lord, you are the righteous judge who sees all and who knows all.
And God, my positioning with you is to be who you called me to be a missionary to them.
May I live like it.
Would you pray with me?
God?
I come to you this morning.
Lord.
And I feel like so often when it comes to dealing with the ways and the wickedness of this world that we feel the pressure to jump into a camp that you've never designed us to be a part of.
That we.
Can see and acknowledge and deeply, deeply.
Be disturbed and shaken by the depravity of this world.
But Lord, still have a heart to see those men and women come to faith in Christ.
God, I know that that's who I was.
That's the condition of my soul was there a person standing in an inevitable pathway of wrath.
And God, I thank you.
That I.
Had people who interceded for me, who.
Prayed that I would come to faith.
Who hated my sin, but who loved me.
And God, my prayer.
My prayer for us.
Is that we could see our.
Story in that way, that we could.
See others in that way.
God, may we never back down from the sweet goodness that is the invitation.
To come and follow Christ.
But Lord, may we also not back down with the challenge of come to.
Die so that what comes from that is a follower of you.
God, maybe.
We'Ve fallen into a sin of affirmation or maybe, Lord, we've fallen into a sin of hatred.
Lord, either way, it's not from you.
Lord, would you break our hearts for the people of this world who do not know you, both those next door and on the other side of the earth and everywhere in between.
May our song be sweet, may it be good, may we intercede.
May we pray more for them than we even do, Lord, for ourselves, so that your name would be known, so that one more would come to faith.
And, Lord, we'll give you all the praise and honor and glory.
Thanks again for listening, and be sure to check back next week for another episode.
In the meantime, you can visit us@willowridgechurch.org or by searching for Willowridge Church on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter.