[AI translation] Through this Bible story we are reading, we get an insight into the prayer life of a believer. Prayer is the most intimate of all human affairs, not usually for public display. As Jesus said, "But when you pray, go into your inner room and shut your door and pray to your Father who is in secret." (Mt 6,6) Now here we don't know about each other, who prays how, but the story describes in detail the intimate conversation of a believer with God. Obviously so that we can learn from it. The reason why I have chosen this particular Word today is that in it we see clearly the special task that the Lord God has been teaching us more and more over the last twenty years, that He has been enriching our faith life with the most in the last two decades, and that we all need to learn much more.What is this task, this special Christian task that we, as believers, can do in this world? Well: prayer, and as a service! Not as a mere exercise of piety, not as an exercise in devotion, but as a concrete service for the world! So let us take the details of this description in the hope that the Spirit of God will lead us to greater depths of a truly prayerful life.
1) First, we see that the prayer of the believer is a good in-depth immersion into communion with God. Here is how the story begins. (Gen 18:22-23a) This is important because in the previous verses it is also said that Abraham had been with the Lord before. God had spoken to him, told him what He was going to do about Sodom and Gomorrah, and when the Lord had about finished speaking to Abraham, he had not yet let the Lord go. He stayed there before him, and even sought to draw nearer to him, to answer what he had heard, for now he really knew what he had to bring before the Lord in his supplication. Right now, right now, he cannot go on, he cannot go on with his daily business, that is the most important thing, he must talk to the Lord! Most nem lehet mást csinálni, állatok után nézni, családi ügyeket intézni, most együtt kell maradni Istennel nagy, mély, imádságos közösségben.
I see from this that the time of prayerful fellowship with God must not be rushed! You cannot pray deeply if you do it in a hurry, quickly, hastily - if you cannot get spiritual rest from the feverish chase of life while you are praying. We read in the Gospel that Jesus sometimes spent the whole night in prayer. It is not only possible to be absorbed in the silence of a sleepless night or the stillness of a daily quiet hour or the disturbance of a church - it is also possible to be absorbed in a crowded tram if necessary, or in a busy street - but absorption is an essential condition for true prayer. Can you go deep? Is it not the case that true prayer only begins when you have already stopped? And God would be willing to listen to you, to talk to you, but you don't have the time. Let us try to really give God the time He is willing to give us! Much more than we might suspect depends on our being able to truly immerse ourselves in prayerful communion with God!
2) Then, we see in this Word that the prayer of the believer is a great spiritual responsibility: a responsibility before God to bear the problems of other people, of other nations. That is why it becomes a service! Look, Abraham is not standing before God with his own troubles, but he is standing up for others! He is fighting with God for others! And surely he himself has a lot of problems, troubles, troubles, and surely he is discussing these things with his Lord - but this is not about that, not about the difficulties of his own material or spiritual life, but he is pleading for the people of two great foreign cities! With the great, wide embrace of his prayer, he brings the fate of others before God. If I were to take stock of the many good things that God has done for us, His followers, I would say that one of the best is precisely that He is turning our sense of responsibility towards the world by opening our arms ever wider in prayer! More and more we are coming to understand that our faith in God is not only an invisible relationship with God, but at the same time a very visible, tangible relationship with people, visible and tangible in practical acts of love. We sense more and more that the Church of Jesus is not just a resting oasis in the desert of the world, but an instrument of God through which God wants to work good, truth and beauty in the world, for the good of this world. And in the same way: prayer is not only a devotional spiritual exercise, but also a mysterious channel that transmits God's blessing, help and power wherever the people who pray ask for it! The believer, by his own feeble prayer, is at God's side, and by his supplication he himself is working, as it were, where the supreme decisions concerning the fate of the world are made - he is working with God!
Here, for example, is the last twenty years of our Hungarian people, two decades of a gigantic struggle to survive, to revive a country recovering from the doldrums of a lost war, to almost completely rebuild a country in ruins, to raise the standard of living steadily and gradually from the zero point of twenty years ago. How much part does the prayer of people of faith play in this struggle? How many righteous prayers have helped to advance the results achieved? And how many of the obstacles and mistakes that have arisen in the meantime have been caused by the failure to pray? A true believer, when he sees a mistake, does not complain, does not judge, but - begs, prays! And how many believers' fervent thanksgiving now makes the significance of today's national feast deeper and truer? It is the prayer of believers that can ask God's blessing and help for all these efforts and works that are meant to serve the well-being of a nation! Behold, this is the service which none but ourselves can do in this country, in this world! And I firmly believe, according to God's Word, that the fate of a nation is determined, among all other factors, by the fervency of the prayers of those who pray for it!
But here in the story we see that Abraham is not even praying for his own people, but for a people he does not even know, a people whom he knows only that their lives are in danger! But what has Abraham to do with the people of Sodom? Nothing, in fact! He didn't even live among them, he didn't know their language, they had a different culture, a different past, a different world view, a different morality - they really had no connection with each other, and yet Abraham stands up for them and pleads for mercy for them. He could have said, "What do I care about them, it's their problem! And yet he takes their plight to heart! He feels a responsibility towards them!
Such is the modern believer! A true believer can never say, for example, what I have to do with Vietnam, or the earthquake in Chile, or the problems of the African Negroes. Because it does have to do with them! Because a believer knows, he knows from his own experience that there is grace, because he has already received grace. And he knows that man - all men, he and the people of Sodom - can live only by grace. He sees in the Sodomites also a man in need of grace, because he sees man from God's point of view, from the point of view of the God who made the greatest sacrifice for man's salvation, for his uplifting. That is why he can pray for him with all his heart! Yes, God teaches us to take so seriously the fate of others, the plight of others, the lives of nations, the tragedy of strangers, the perils that threaten humanity, to take them so seriously that we take them upon ourselves, suffering, struggling, fighting, pleading for them - and for them! Yes: for them! To God! For mercy! For life! For preservation! The believer is pained by the misery of the world! For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son that it should not perish! Today, when the radio, the aeroplane, the press bring the continents of the world so close together that we know almost simultaneously of each other's affairs, of people scattered on different continents: it is urgent that we draw closer together spiritually, that our responsibility towards all people be extended - that our prayer embrace the peoples with faith, hope and love!
He is not a man of faith who can look on the fate of foreign peoples living far away with dispassionate indifference and without taking responsibility for it before God! It is not Christ's piety to say: let this sinful world perish, since the return of Christ and the Rapture of believers is imminent, let us not worry about anything but being ready for the great meeting! This is false, sectarian, satanic piety! Christ died for the world! The believer begs for the world! It is precisely this supplication that is the surest door and way to other people, to man, that can truly bring us into communion across distances, even over ten or twenty thousand kilometres!
3) This intercessory prayer of Abraham for Sodom is almost an illustration of what we read in another Word: "And I sought for one of them that would build a wall, and stand before me in the breach for the kingdom, that I might not destroy it; and there was none found." (Ez 22,30) It is as if an enemy force comes upon a city, but the walls can no longer stand the assault, there are cracks and breaks. And now Abraham, with his prayer, stands in one of these cracks and tries to hold back the approaching danger. Such is the supplication of the believer: such is the sealing of the crack, the breach in the world's defensive wall. God allows his own to enter into the crack, into his own, by their prayer, for the kingdom, for the people, for the continent, so that he may not destroy it with his holiness and his righteousness. That is why we read elsewhere in the Bible, "Very profitable is the fervent supplication of the righteous." (James 5:16) That is why the Apostle Paul exhorts us thus, "I exhort you, first of all, to keep up prayers, supplications, supplications, thanksgivings for all men, for kings, and for all that are worthy, that we may live a quiet and quiet life, in full fear of God and in all righteousness. For this is good and acceptable in the sight of our God who saves, who wills that all men should be saved and come to the knowledge of the truth." (1 Timothy 2:1-4) By our prayers we may be the recipients of God's saving grace for others. Paul has this strange saying, "For we know that the whole created world groans and groans together until now." (Rom 8,22) Well, the groaning and groaning of the created world is given voice and expression by the prayer of the church! Let us pray, then, with the knowledge that in our prayer there are behind us - not praying with us, but groaning and groaning with us - all men and creatures! Thus the prayer of the believer becomes a service for the good of the world!
4) But one might say now: for Abraham prayed in vain, he could not stop God's judgment, yet Sodom was destroyed! Beware! It makes profound sense that if there were 50 - 30 - 10 righteous people who deserved God's saving love, there would be hope for Sodom. But this story just shows in all its horror that there is none! There are not 10 righteous people in the whole world who deserve God's goodness! The Bible says in one place, "...there is not even one righteous person" (Rom 10:3). If God would treat the world according to His merits, it would have been over long ago!
But there is one righteous man! One perfectly just man who deserves everything! Jesus Christ! He is the only one who can hold back the judgment that is deserved! And he did, when he stood alone before all of God's judgment at Calvary! There is so much evil out there in the world, and in the little world of our hearts, that if it were not for the one True One, the fate of the world would be truly hopeless! But for His sake, for His merit, God will have mercy on all!
It may be, it is not in vain, it is worthwhile to pray, to faithfully perform the service of prayer!
Amen
Date: 4 April 1965.
Lesson
1Tim 2,1-4