Proper 12
Psalm 138; Genesis 18:20-32; Colossians 2:6-15, (16-19); Luke 11:1-13
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God's Righteous Call: The Dilemma of Separation and Intercession
Biblical Question Posed
The question that is put to us in this morning's readings, in the words of St. Paul, which we did not read, but this is the question that these readings force us to grapple with. In the words of St. Paul from 2 Corinthians 6, verse 17, the question for us is whether to “come out from among them and be ye separate,” or whether to remain and bargain for the salvation of a wicked city like Abraham did.
Abraham's Impertinent Plea
In Genesis chapter 18, verse 23, Abraham asks God, “Wilt thou indeed destroy the righteous with the wicked?” Abraham's question borders on impertinence, while Sodom's fate in Genesis 19 looms over his plea. After all, he's questioning God.
At verse 27, he catches himself saying, “I have taken upon myself to speak to the Lord, I who am but dust and ashes.” And finally, he owns his disrespect in verses 30 and 32 saying, “Oh, let not the Lord be angry.” This is not about Abraham showing disrespect.
After all, Abraham was concerned for his nephew Lot and his family who lived in Sodom. As Abraham drives his bargain, he gets God to come down from 50 to just 10 righteous persons for whom the city will be spared. Abraham pleads, “Oh, let not the Lord be angry, and I will speak again but this once. Suppose 10 are found there.”
And God answered, “For the sake of 10, I will not destroy it.” The rabbinic tradition tells us that number 10 corresponds to Lot, his wife, his daughters, and his sons-in-law.
Moses' Revelation of Justice
Moses, the author of Genesis, reveals to us something about God's justice. This story is told to tell us something about God's justice. He's using Abraham's bargaining to underscore the need to “come out from among them and be ye separate.”
Abraham knows that God is just. Abraham is buying time for his nephew and his family because He trusts God's justice. If God has purposed to destroy Sodom and Gomorrah, so be it.
Abraham's not trying really to talk Him out of that. God is justice defined. So if it is God's will to destroy a city, then that is just.
Abraham knows God will not let the righteous perish along with the wicked because that would not be just. That is what Moses wants us to understand as well. God is justice defined, personified.
And so by definition, the innocent cannot perish along with the wicked. Today's world, like Sodom and Gomorrah, revels in sin. We are past masters at defying God's justice.
Yet this wicked world's days are numbered. I believe that. I believe if we're not living in the end times, we are certainly living on the precipice of judgment.
And the number of days that this wickedness will be allowed to persist are numbered. God promises us that the righteous will not perish when the day of this wicked world is over.
Seeking an Escape
In the meantime, are we looking for an escape? A way to stay pure. Asking God to help us avoid the worst of the evil.
Is that what we're about? Are we separatists? Are we trying to carve out a little existence?
In the midst of this wicked world where we can continue as Christians, maybe preserving the salt but hardly being light to the world, just leave us alone, I think, is the impulse that a lot of Christians have.
I certainly have had it. Praying God would let my family and me avoid the worst of the evil. Is that what we're supposed to do?
Are we supposed to hide out? Or are we to plead, like Abraham did, to spare the world that we live in so that us righteous won't be destroyed along with the wicked? Is that the other thing we're supposed to do?
Plead and pray? God, don't destroy this world. We're still in it.
I'm not sure that's quite the setup the Bible has in mind. I'm not sure that that's what the choice is, and we'll discuss that.
Is it worthwhile to ask God to change the hearts of those surrounding us? That's the question I want to ask.
If the choices are hide out and be Christians among ourselves, or pray that the worst passes over us and that God will spare the world for our sake, or a third option, pray that God will change the hearts of those surrounding us.
Is that an option for us? Seems to be. Abraham bargains God's number down.
But that's a negative approach. How much wickedness will You allow and how little righteousness will You accept in order to spare the world? I wonder if the church's vision should be a little different.
I wonder if the church should be about the business of praying those numbers up. Why wouldn't the prayer be, instead of 50 righteous, Lord, how about doubling that number? Let's see 100 righteous in this city.
So that's what we're going to talk about in this sermon.
The Lord's Prayer as a Call for Justice
Framing the Prayer
These questions frame Jesus' instruction to His disciples on prayer, which we read about in Luke's gospel today. The Lord's Prayer. We say it every Sunday that it's a commonplace.
Maybe you say it at night before you go to bed. Maybe you teach your children that. Have you thought about what the petitions really say, though?
Because it's a prayer for justice. It's a prayer for a way out. And it's a prayer for a cure even to wickedness.
Our Father
The two words that it begins with, our Father describes an intimate, even restored relationship with God. You can't call God your father unless your sins have been dealt with. You can't call God your father unless you've already been separated out from the wicked.
Because God is not the father of the wicked. Only the righteous can call God Father. So there is hope in this prayer from the start.
If I can say our Father, then maybe you can too. Let's look at the rest of this prayer.
Who Art in Heaven
Our Father, who art in heaven. Well, God is beyond us and our mortal nature, beyond even our comprehension. That's what that's saying.
Yet Abraham is apparently able to bargain with Him, bargain with someone who is beyond comprehension, beyond mortal nature. And if Abraham can do that, then we can certainly pray to Him as well, as Jesus has taught us.
So despite God being inaccessible and even incomprehensible, we can still talk to Him. We can still pray to Him. We can still have a relationship with Him.
Thy Kingdom Come
Thy kingdom come. Well, what is that really asking? When you pray for a kingdom to come, you're praying for a complete reversal of the kingdom that you're in.
You're praying for the laws to be changed, for the true laws to be established, for the rightful king to return to His throne and establish justice. So when we pray thy kingdom come, we're praying an apocalyptic prayer every time. We're praying for the mystery to be revealed, for the evil to be called out, for the righteous to be upheld.
We're praying for all that when we say thy kingdom come. We're also praying a prayer for the separation of good from evil. We're praying for our situation on earth to change.
So there's hope in this prayer. And the Lord's prayer, that hope echoes Abraham's plea for mercy in Genesis 18. Even as God's justice continues to condemn the unrepentant.
So you see that when we pray for the kingdom to come, we're praying for justice to be restored, which means the unrepentant get their just desserts. But there's also hope in that prayer when we say on earth as it is in heaven, because we want earth to be more like heaven.
That note of hope is what Moses wants us to hear when he describes Abraham's bargaining. And it's what Jesus wants us to feel. He wants us to feel hope when we pray to our Father.
And to His.
Persistence in Prayer and Teaching
The Parable of Persistence
After teaching His disciples the Lord's Prayer, Jesus tells another parable. He describes a midnight visitor who won't let his friend sleep until he gets up to answer the door. We've always thought this was a very funny story.
Guy's knocking outside the window, and then he says, even if he's your best friend, you're not going to get up and help him, but you'll get up and help him to make him shut up. That's the point of the story. He will not get up and give him anything because he is his friend, yet because of his importunity, he will rise and give him whatever he needs.
So Jesus is saying that persistence pays with God and with men. So keep the praying, right? Pray to change wicked hearts.
Pray God to change those wicked hearts. Keep up with it. Even the wicked know how to give good gifts to their children, Jesus says.
That's because they know how to be persistent as well. Persistence pays with God as well with human beings. Jesus describes this persistence in another funny passage in Luke 11, verse 13.
He says, if then you who are evil know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will the Heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask Him, and then He gives what I've always thought was a funny example of giving scorpions instead of eggs and snakes instead of bread.
Hope in Persistence
Note again the hope in this that God wants us to hear. There's hope in this phrase. Ask and it will be given you.
Seek and you will find. Knock and it will be opened to you. That's probably some of the most hopeful phrases in the entire New Testament.
God clearly doesn't want us to persist in wickedness. He wants us to persist in doing good. And that goodness is such that even those of us who are evil know how to give it.
We know how to give good gifts to our children, if you then, who are evil. You don't speak these words. You don't speak the words that Jesus is speaking at this point to a people without hope.
Despite the blanket statement about the human condition, if you then, who are evil... That's basically saying, you who are depraved, you still know how to do good for your children. Take it as a sign of hope that there is opportunity still for you to repent.
Why? Because you know what goodness is. You know how to treat your own children. Now treat everyone that way.
And most of all, treat God that way. Return to God goodness that you owe Him in exchange for all that He has given you.
Joining God's Work
This call to persistent prayer is not just about receiving God's gifts. It's about joining His work to transform the wicked world around us. Jesus teaches us to knock persistently, trusting God to answer.
The prophets, too, saw this persistence as key to God's redemptive plan. You've got to be persistent.
Jeremiah's Promise
In Jeremiah 12, verse 16, God makes a remarkable promise full of hope to the Gentiles. God says, if they will diligently learn the ways of my people to swear by my name as the Lord lives, even as they taught my people to swear by Baal, then they shall be built up in the midst of my people.
What He's saying here is that the wicked taught God's people how to sin. The wicked Gentiles led God's people astray. They infiltrated the church and led the church astray.
And yet, God will not destroy them if they repent. If God's true people, if that remnant teach the wicked no longer to worship Baal, but to worship Jehovah, then what? Then the wicked will be built up as well.
They will be built up in the midst of my people. God says. Imagine a church filled with wickedness and false teaching and lies, and then imagine the righteous springing forth from that.
And where do the righteous come from? It's not an invasion. The righteous come from the wicked who are sitting there in the pews.
God will do that. He will turn from sin. He will turn sin into righteousness if we're persistent.
This is what the meaning is of the persistent friend's knocking. It leads to provision. It leads to the bread being shared with his visitor.
And I also think that the church's persistent prayer, and importantly, this is just as important as prayer. It's just as important. The church has a teaching mission as well.
If we teach the wicked to learn God's ways, we can turn their sin into righteousness. So clearly there's hope. Clearly there is hope for the wicked.
And that hope is found in the people of God, the church. Whether that's the Old Testament church, Israel, or today's church, there's still hope to be found here.
If once upon a time the wicked taught us to sin, then surely we can teach the wicked to do good, and see them built up in the faith. Can we not do that? Can we at least try?
Well, we have to teach them, and we have to teach them to stop being a law unto themselves. That's the root of all evil. Choosing our word and our law over and against God's word and His law.
Do you really think the wicked know what good and evil is? They're wicked. They have no idea what good is.
So you can't leave them in their wickedness. You can't let them tell you what is good. You can't even leave them alone when they say, well, this is good for me, or you do you and I'll do me, or I have my truth.
You can't even do that. You have to tell them what their wickedness is. You have to confront them with that.
That's the teaching role of the church, the prophetic role of the church. So it isn't just about prayer. It's about teaching and proclaiming as well.
The Faith of Abraham and the Lord's Prayer
Continuity of Faith
The faith we find in the Lord's Prayer is the same faith found in Abraham. There's continuity there. It's a continuity of confidence.
It's the confidence that God is just and that He will separate the righteous. He will call them out before His justice is executed on the wicked cities. Remember what the word ecclesia means.
It means called out, right? So you're called out of Sodom and Gomorrah before justice is executed on them. You're called out from that wickedness into the church, right?
The Lord's Prayer, I think, is a continuation of that confidence in God.
Paradox of the Cross
But there's a problem, and it remains in the whole story of the gospel. We're talking here about whether God is just, and I've said to you that He is. And by definition, He will not condemn the innocent along with the wicked.
He will not punish the innocent along with the wicked. The problem is, is that Jesus is innocent. If God is the definition of justice, then Jesus is the definition of innocence.
He's also the definition of righteousness. So how is it that God's wrath should fall on Him as it did when He dies on the cross? Abraham pleaded, “Far be it from thee to do such a thing.”
Far be it from thee to do such a thing. And the cross is that thing. This is a paradox.
To slay the righteous with the wicked? Well, Jesus died between two wicked thieves. What is God doing?
So that the righteous fare as the wicked? That's exactly what happens on Calvary. Far be that from thee, Abraham says.
You can see what an affront to the cross is. You can see what an insult it is to the righteous mind. You can see what an insult it was to God who underwent it.
Shall not the judge of all the earth do right? Well, how can this be? What is this mystery of the cross?
Doctrine of Substitution
Once again, it's the great and mighty doctrine of substitution, of Jesus taking our place on the cross. For just this once in time and eternity, it is just for the righteous to fare as the wicked. It is the doctrine of a mystery that lies so deep in the divine mind that we can never explain it.
For once, God sees fit to punish the one righteous man. The result is that many of the wicked are called out from their doomed cities. And so the words are fulfilled, be ye separate.
This is the call they hear and to which they respond. I pray that all of you have heard this call and that you are responding to it. Either you have responded or you are in the process of responding to this call to be ye separate, to come out from among the wicked cities.
To separate yourselves from the kingdom of this world and be translated, to be transferred into the kingdom of God.
Resurrection's Proof
This is why the resurrection of the body is essential to our faith. We cannot say that Jesus was just a great man whom evil men killed, but whose spirit lives on in all of those who love Him. And that's really what many preachers will preach.
That this is just the spirit of Christ that we enjoy. No, we have to believe in His bodily resurrection and our own, because the resurrection is proof that the final separation of the righteous from the wicked is real.
When we are resurrected in bodies that are glorified and immortal, that is when the final separation will have taken place, when we will be separated from the wickedness entirely. That is the consummation of our adoption. That is what all creation groans and waits for.
Waits for the sons of men to be redeemed. That is the redemption of our bodies. That is the proof, the resurrection, that our hope is not in vain.
When we hope to pray up those numbers from 10 back to 40 and then 45 and then 50 and then 100, we're hoping. And that hope is not in vain because the resurrection is real. The resurrection is proof that the righteous do not perish with the wicked.
The wicked die, and they die forever, condemned by a law of their own making. You see, if you want to be a law unto yourself, fine, so be it. God will let you.
God will give you enough rope to hang yourself by your own law, but you are the judge and executioner. You want to play it that way? Or do you want to play it God's way?
His burden is easy and His yoke is light. His law is not difficult. It's not so far that you have to go up to a mountain to find it.
It's right in your heart. And we know that because even the wicked know how to do good and give good to their children.
Christians' Death and Life
Christians die once. Christians die once to sin in Christ. We symbolize that by our baptisms.
And we live to God forever through Christ Jesus our Lord, but the wicked die twice. The wicked die the death of all men, and then they go on to soul death and condemnation in hell.
Christians only need to experience death once, and that death doesn't even come with a sting. I'm told that when John MacArthur died two weeks ago, among his last words was, where I feel no sting. Can you imagine that?
John MacArthur, the great preacher. At the end of his life, his last words are, I feel no sting. Praise God.
Abraham's Dim Understanding
All this was only dimly understood in Abraham's time when he bargained with God. In hindsight, it seems obvious that he wasn't bargaining for Lot's sake. Lot was righteous.
Lot didn't need Abraham to bargain. Abraham wasn't being practical here. This was a display of his faith.
Abraham was pleading for the justice of God to spare the righteous by calling them out to safety. He did that in hope. He did that in faith.
It wasn't a transaction. He wasn't striking a business deal with God. This was his way of praying the Lord's Prayer.
Be just, Lord. Your kingdom come.
A Better Position to Plead
Beyond Abraham's Vision
We're in so much better position than Abraham or any of our great fathers in faith from the Old Testament. We're in so much better position to plead for our world than Abraham was because we live on this side of the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, right? That cross just divides history in half.
And all of us who have ever lived on the other side of it are in such a better position. We know so much more. There's so much more reason for our confidence and our hope than Abraham ever had, which is why he's such a model for our faith.
But we have so much more to go on. The book is mostly written by that point.
Abraham put his faith in God's justice, but he only dimly perceived how that justice would work itself out in history. Paul tells us in Hebrews 11, verse 10, that Abraham looked forward to the city which has foundations, whose builder and maker is God. This is the man who bargained for the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah and who survived their destruction.
And he longs, what? To see a city that can't be destroyed because it's built on true foundations, foundations of righteousness.
And we have those foundations. We have them right here. They're in every pew sitting right in front of you, the Bible.
We have the complete revelation of the word of God in our Bibles. Is that everything there is to know about God? Absolutely not.
The Bible is not a complete book in that sense, but it's a complete revelation. It's a sufficient revelation of the things we need to know to save ourselves and to save the world around us.
We have the law of God by which we can convict our neighbors of their sin. And that doesn't just mean that we witness the gospel to them, to plead with them, to change, and to pray for them when we refuse. We should be doing that, but that's not just what we can use the law for.
We can use the law to fulfill the dominion mandate of Genesis chapter 1, verses 26 and 28. We can apply the law word of God to convict them literally. You think of that.
You think, okay, I want the Holy Spirit to convict so-and-so because I want him to be pulled out of his sins and I want to see him baptized. That's great. That is an absolutely appropriate use of the law and an absolutely appropriate way to pray.
But I'm saying you can actually use the law to convict them and put them in jail. There is such a thing as a law-abiding citizenry. There is such a thing as a lawful government.
And the law of God is meant to be a useful tool for that. To apply the law word of God to convict them literally of the crimes they commit against whom? Against each other, our neighbors, but also against God.
The apostate wicked world commits crimes against God, not just their neighbor. I think those two things go hand in hand. When your fist is raised to God, it's also going to be raised to your neighbor.
God's word gives us the principles of good government, and we should use that. This is getting back to the point I was making. Is the church simply called to a holy huddle where it prays in catacombs?
I mean, that's what this is, is a virtual catacomb. If we never take the word out into the streets, we might as well be underground. We might as well be in China.
We might as well be back in Rome. We're put here on Main Street for a reason. You can't miss us.
That's because God wants His law to be proclaimed from this pulpit so that the law can be applied in His land. God's word gives us the principles of good government.
Common Law Heritage
And indeed, for over 1,000 years our common law tradition did just that. Common law countries are prosperous countries. They are countries where rule of law prevails, contracts are honored, courts are impartial, and God has been honored because the Bible has been taught.
All that has been eroded in our lifetimes, but it is not (yet) wholly gone. We must work now to shore up those foundations. The church is called to this work.
Pastors especially must take the lead. Now that the Johnson Amendment, which sought to prohibit political speech by churches has fallen, pastors have no more excuse for not speaking out boldly against the evils we see all around us.
We speak out not to condemn, but to bargain with God, to bargain in good faith, as Abraham did, and to pray that instead of sparing our cities and towns because of the tiny number of righteous in them, that He will multiply our numbers. He already promised to do that in Jeremiah 12:16, “they shall be built up in the midst of my people.”
For too long, evil has run rampant. The outcry against us is great and our sin is very grave. We are not looking for an escape, or a way out.
God has given us that already in His son. We escaped the moment we went into the waters of baptism and emerged on the other side of the open tomb. There is no Plan B for us.
Here we are, Lord, your Church, your people. For the sake of the Christ whose Name we bear, help us to save the wicked world around us.
The Church's Mission
The Church must make disciples, not just of “the nations”—which is an abstraction—but the actual nation we find ourselves in! And if that’s too big, then we must catechize the state, and if that’s too big, then let’s try the county, and if that’s too big then we can settle for just the town of Woodbury.
Many of you remember my sermon from the end of June, “Regime Change.” In it, I said I would refer two videos from Project Veritas alleging licentious behavior in a Hartford church. Licentious is defined as “lacking moral restraint, especially in sexual conduct; ignoring accepted rules or standards.”
Churches are prohibited by the state constitution from “excus[ing] acts of licentiousness, or [from] justify[ing] practices inconsistent with the peace and safety of the state.” I and two state senators, Henri Martin and Eric Berthel, asked the Attorney General, William Tong, to investigate. He refused.
That’s on the Attorney General and he’ll have to answer for it, if not to the voters, then to God. This is how the Church makes disciples.
Many of you likely have a view of evangelism that starts with (and goes no further than) sharing your personal testimony through a relationship developed over time. You “earn” (so to speak) the right to share your faith with someone.
This has led to a vision for the local church with heavy emphasis placed on contextualization. Making disciples is like a circus tight-rope walk, a balancing act.
To perform this act successfully, the Church must always seek the center, the center between welcoming the sinner without affirming him, between rebuking the culture without rejecting it. The textbook, literally, for this is called Center Church, by the late Pastor Tim Keller.
This view is often called “missional” and is designed to operate in the pluralist “post Christian” west, as opposed to say, an Islamic country, like Iran, or a communist country, like China. One reviewer of Keller’s books described it, “put[ing] on the native attire of city dwellers. Get[ing] into their world. Do[ing] good works. And win[ning] them by blessing them.”
One church I interviewed at last year conceived of their mission in just these terms. They were more interested in blessing children’s backpacks for back-to-school, hosting family movie nights, or showing up as volunteers with their church t-shirts on to “be a blessing.” There is nothing wrong with any of this.
These were good, conservative, Bible-believing Christians. But when I said I was more interested in taking on Hartford than “being a blessing,” I was told, “Thanks, but no thanks.”
The command of Our Lord in Matthew 28:19-20, the Great Commission, is to “Go therefore and make disciples of all nations… teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you.”
There are three verbs in that sentence, three things we must do: we must make, we must teach, and the nations must observe the Lord’s commandments. This is not missional, it’s didactic. We don’t need to earn the right to do this through meticulous relationship building with sinners.
We already possess the right. We have been commissioned and sent out, like the seventy we read about a few weeks ago. What’s expected of us is faithfulness to this commission.
This is why I’ve challenged the Attorney General to act under the state Constitution to put licentious churches out of business. These churches work against faithful churches like ours. They operate under the Christian name, but they peddle an inferior product, worse, a deadly product, laced with the poison of Satan.
This is also why I’m working with other ministers in this state to take advantage of the demise of the Johnson Amendment. That amendment illegally sought to curb political speech by churches and the pulpit. In the coming months, I hope to help establish an ad-hoc “ministers’ endorsement council.”
From now on, politicians will need to earn the Christian vote in this state—and the support of all people of good faith. This is how we make disciples. This is, quite literally, a means of discipling the state.
Given our history, this is always what was expected in Connecticut, but her ancient churches have abdicated their historic role. We speak out not to condemn the world, but to bargain with God, to bargain in good faith, as Abraham did, and to pray that instead of sparing our cities and towns because of the tiny number of righteous in them, that He will multiply our numbers.
He’s already promised to do that in Jeremiah 12:16: “they shall be built up in the midst of my people.” For too long, evil has run rampant. The outcry against us is great and our sin is very grave.
We are not looking for an escape, or a way out. God has given us that already in His son. We escaped the moment we went into the waters of baptism and emerged on the other side of the open tomb.
There is no Plan B for us. Here we are, Lord, your Church, your people. For the sake of the Christ whose Name we bear, help us to save the wicked world around us.
Preached on July 27, 2025, at the First Congregational Church, Woodbury, Connecticut.
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