Dennis Tuuri

Sermon Text Today

Genesis 18:1-16

Sermon: “Abraham’s Hospitality and Diligence in His Callings”

Please stand for the reading of God’s word. Genesis 18.

Then the Lord appeared to him by the terebinth trees of Mamre as he was standing in the tent door in the heat of the day. So he lifted his eyes and looked, and behold, three men were standing by him.

And when he saw them, he ran from the tent door to meet them and bowed himself to the ground and said, “My Lord, if I have now found favor in your sight, do not pass on by your servant. Please let a little water be brought and wash your feet and rest yourselves under the tree. And I will bring a morsel of bread that you may refresh your hearts. After that you may pass by inasmuch as you have come to your servant.”

They said, “Do as you have said.” So Abraham hurried into the tent to Sarah and said, “Quickly make ready three measures of fine meal. Knead it and make cakes.” And Abraham ran to the herd, took a tender and good calf, gave it to a young man, and he hastened to prepare it. So he took butter and milk and the calf which he had prepared, and set it before them. And he stood by them under the tree as they ate.

Then they said to him, “Where is Sarah, your wife?” So he said, “Here in the tent.” And he said, “I will certainly return to you according to the time of life, and behold, Sarah, your wife, shall have a son.” Sarah was listening in the tent door which was behind him. Now Abraham and Sarah were old, well advanced in age, and Sarah had passed the age of childbearing. Therefore Sarah laughed within herself, saying, “After I have grown old, shall I have pleasure?

My lord being old also.” And the Lord said to Abraham, “Why did Sarah laugh, saying, Shall I surely bear a child since I am old? Is anything too hard for the Lord? At the appointed time I will return to you according to the time of life, and Sarah shall have a son.” But Sarah denied it, saying, “I did not laugh,” for she was afraid. And he said, “No, but you did laugh.”

Then the men rose up from there and looked towards Sodom and Abraham went with them to send them on their way.

Let’s pray.

Father, we thank you for this delightful account placed in the most important part of the text of Genesis and life of Abraham. We pray that you would bless us, Lord God, by your Holy Spirit. Take this word, write it upon our hearts, transform us and make us a people who are diligent in all that we do, who run and hurry to do things that you want us to do, and those who love strangers, in Jesus’ name we pray.

Amen. Please be seated.

—

So in the context of the church calendar, we just went through the Ascension Sunday and then Pentecost Sunday. So we now begin the second half of the church calendar year, which is all about the life of the church, or the life of Jesus through the church. So we’ve moved from the Gospel of Luke into the book of Acts via the Ascension and Pentecost. And the church—not as long as some of the other marks on the Christian calendar—but the church has for some time also celebrated the beginning of the church year, so to speak, the church half of the year, as Trinity Sunday.

And so while today’s sermon is not on the Trinity, it is on living in community, which is what Trinity is all about. And so there is a link there for us. But I thought it would be good. Christine brought me some studies she had done in this text, oh a month or two ago. And she noticed some things, and I thought it was very good, and so I decided to go ahead and preach this sermon at some point in my sermon series.

And it seemed good to have it at the beginning of the section of the church year that focuses on what we do now as servants of Jesus Christ—how we work in the world, now that we’ve been filled with the Spirit, we’re at the right hand of Jesus. How does this practically work itself out in how we conduct ourselves? And so that’s what I’m going to talk about today: Abraham, looking at his activities, both as a sign of who it is to be a disciple or follower, a devout follower of God.

So these characteristics of Abraham are specifically in terms of hospitality, but I don’t think they’re restricted to that. They’re indicators of who he is and who we’re to be in Christ. At the same time, we don’t want to miss the specific context, which is his hospitality. So I can do three points—alliterated sermons. I used to do it all the time. So let’s try that.

So we’re going to talk about the context of Abraham’s diligence and hospitality. Then we’ll talk about ten characteristics of Abraham’s diligence and hospitality. And then we’ll talk about consequences.

So: the context for this nice little narrative, some characteristics drawn out from the narrative of what hospitality looks like in the life of Abraham, and then what happens as a consequence of Abraham’s hospitality.

—

So first, let’s talk a little bit about context. This is, of course, very meaningful. Lots of stuff going on in Genesis. In Genesis 17, just before this, was the account of God appearing to Abram and changing his name, assuring him that he would have a son. Abraham, like Sarah in today’s text, fell down laughing on his knees at the thought that he would have a son with Sarah. This was astonishing to him. So that’s what happens in 17.

And so God promises him this. And God changes his name from Abram to Abraham. So Abram means “father.” Abraham means “father of many.” So he goes from being a daddy when he’s not a daddy to now, when he’s still not a daddy, being given a name “big daddy.” And now he’s got to tell people, “This is my name,” and they’re going to, of course, say, “Well, that’s interesting.”

So it’s sort of like being a Christian today. You know, you have all these promises and stuff, but they’re not evident in our lives.

The other thing, like today, is that we know what the rest of the story is. We know at the end of the little section I read that these men look to Sodom and they’re going to go there and they’re going to judge Sodom and Gomorrah. We know the rest of the story. And so this places this hospitality narrative in between this promise that all the nations will be blessed through Abram and his seed, and his name being changed, and Sarah’s name being changed, and then judgment.

So this is a time of judgment, I guess, is the point here. This looks like a nice little hospitality narrative, and it is, but it’s happening at a time when great wickedness exists within walking distance of where Abraham is and where Lot lives.

So in a way, it’s kind of like our time today. There’s big stuff going on. There’s big sin and rebellion. Now, while we don’t want to completely equate the homosexuals of today with the homosexuals of Sodom and Gomorrah, there are two different things. But sexual sin—which is to say sexual selfishness—that may be a good way to talk about these things in a more generic way. Sexual selfishness has become so radically apparent in Sodom and Gomorrah that they will try to have sex with these two angels that Abraham is now entertaining.

So things have gotten really bad, and what that means is really selfish. Sodom is also condemned in the prophets for not caring about the poor. It’s total selfishness, you see. And the opposite of that is the selflessness of this old man, a hundred years old or so, running around in the heat of the day getting everything ready to help somebody that he doesn’t even know. It’s apparent from the text that he doesn’t know it’s God at first.

So we have a time of great judgment. And it seems like God would be giving us more didactic instruction in chapter 18 about all this stuff happening and what Abraham has to do to avoid things and blah blah. But no, the introduction to the story of judgment on Sodom and Gomorrah is this beautiful hospitality narrative.

So it’s sort of like us today, right? What are we going to do? I’m going to preach on “Shelter from the Storm.” We need that message too in a couple of weeks—that there are difficult times we live in. But here, what are we supposed to do in a time of great judgment, right? Destruction of cities and it looks like the world’s coming to an end. Well, you do what Abraham did. You practice hospitality. You practice caring for other people. You practice, you know, who Jesus created us to be. And it may seem pointless, but it’s not pointless at all, as we get to the consequences of his hospitality.

So that’s sort of the context here.

I wanted to point out too that I mentioned that in 17, God announces to Abram—who changes his name to Abraham—that he’s going to have a son, and Abraham laughs. In 18, as the story unfolds, yeah, they’re going to Sodom and Gomorrah, but their other mission is to tell Sarah that there’s going to be this son born. Okay, so God told Abraham in 17, and in 18 it seems very specific: when God starts talking about Sarah and “Where is she?” and then he makes the announcement. He wants Sarah to hear this.

So he’s really there to let—to give Sarah the same message that he had given Abraham. And Sarah’s response is similar. She laughs.

Now, that laughter thing is interesting, right? Because we know that the son that will be born, his name means laughter. And in fact, from Hebrew people that I read, when Sarah says, “I did not laugh,” if you take those Hebrew letters and switch them around, it’s Isaac’s name.

So it’s very directly related to laughter. Sarah laughs, then she denies it. Well, she was half right, right? I mean, she laughed within herself. The text says she laughed to herself. And so then when God says, “You laughed,” she says, “I didn’t laugh.” In other words, “I didn’t laugh out loud,” right? So she’s half right. But what is that? That’s equivocation of terms, really, right? That’s the sort of speech, you know, that Satan uses when he kind of redefines terms and things.

So she’s—it’s not commendable. It’s not really a truthful statement. And God corrects her. He says, “No, but you did laugh.”

But look at that correction. “Sarah, you’re lying. Lying is a really bad thing. Cut it out.” No. “Now you laughed.” Sort of see God smiling. Yeah, you laughed. Sarah, the reason she equivocated with her terms, the reason she kind of lied, was because she was fearful. The text tells us that. We just read it. She was frightened.

And fear is a big part of what leads us into sinfulness, into equivocation, into a lack of truthfulness, into all kinds of sins. Fear is common as a root cause of sin. And God helping Sarah along doesn’t bang on her and make her more fearful. He kind of jokes with her, kind of has, you know, an interesting retort, corrects her, but he does it in such a loving, wonderful way, and he, as a result, kind of quiets her fears.

Very important pastoral information for us with each other, right? Fear drives us into sinful stuff frequently. And what we need to do with each other is to calm ourselves down.

So we’re looking at our country. We’re looking at Sodom, or whatever it is. We don’t know what the Supreme Court’s going to do this next month. It’s okay. We have deep stability. God told Abraham, “You’re going to be big daddy.” And he does this, and then he makes him circumcise himself. You know, the irony there is rather obvious, right? I mean, in a way, you know, God’s saying, “Well, you know, don’t trust in your flesh, okay? Trust in me and my ways.”

It’s interesting, too, because when God responds to Sarah’s laughter, the text says he says, “Is anything too difficult for the Lord?” Well, that word “difficult,” yeah, it’s translated a couple of times in the Bible as difficult, but almost every other occurrence it’s translated “wonderful” or “wondrous.”

Now if we accept that translation of the term—is anything too wondrous for the Lord—that changes how we perceive of the promise of the child to a guy who’s a hundred and a wife who’s ninety or so. They’re that kind of age past menopause. The text makes it quite clear it’s going to be miraculous. And you know, you can think of it in terms of God’s omnipotence—he’s powerful, he can, you know, bring a child to a woman incapable of bearing children. That’s significant.

You can think of it as his omniscience, right? God is God. He knows everything. He’s more powerful. But it seems like when God uses this word “wonderful” or “wondrous,” what we want to think about in the text, at the end result of the hospitality narrative, is the wondrous nature of who God is and what he’s doing in the world. God is wonderful. God is a God we should laugh in response to what he does—laughter of wonder and joy.

Our children are laughter because we serve a God who is wondrous. We don’t just serve a God who is powerful and smarter than us and bigger than us and all that stuff. We serve a God who is wonderful in bringing rich blessings into our lives, in spite of all the obstacles in the way, in spite of Sarah’s great hopelessness. That’s really what you have here. They both become hopeless in terms of having a child, even though God has promised Abraham.

But in response to our hopelessness, God brings great hope, and he does it in wondrous, beautiful ways.

Now, you know, we can miss that in the text, and so often we miss it because we’re looking for a different kind of God in these texts. We’re looking for the God who is powerful, the mighty and awesome God, and all that stuff. And of course, God is omnipotent. He’s omniscient. All those things are important. The fear of the Lord is important.

But understand that the narrative here gives us a picture: in its context of peace, doing small acts of kindness for strangers as the antidote, the opposite of what’s going to happen in the context of Sodom. In the midst of a horrible time of judgment, we’re calm and we go about loving people and serving strangers and we go about waiting for the wondrous acts of God to be revealed, in spite of things that don’t seem like they can happen to us. We have hopelessness in these sorts of times, or in times in your life when you’re going through difficulties.

But this text is a beautiful text that God does—is anything too wondrous for God to accomplish? He’s that kind of God for us. Yeah, he’s omnipotent. Yeah, he’s omniscient. But he’s a wonder-making God. And that’s the context for this.

There’s a contrast between 18 and 19: the life of godly people doing simple things, being blessed wondrously by God, and then the life of ungodly people and the destruction that comes upon them. And then you’ve got Lot sort of halfway in between those things.

So that’s part of the context.

—

Now I’m talking about hospitality. And again, I talked about this when we went through spiritual gifts a while back, but the word hospitality in the New Testament—well, let me read this verse. Hebrews 13:1-2: “Let brotherly love continue. Do not forget to entertain strangers, for by so doing some have unwittingly entertained angels.”

That’s probably a reference to our text, right? Abraham entertains strangers and unwittingly—he doesn’t find out till toward the end of their stay with him—that this is God and a couple of angels. He doesn’t know. The text makes it clear. He looks, he sees three men. The text says. So we see through Abraham’s eyes. This is three people, three strangers.

And so we’re admonished to entertain strangers because by so doing you might actually entertain angels. Now, that’s what Abraham did. He entertained the Lord and two angels, angels of judgment.

Now the text can also mean that angels can be ministers or pastors—messengers of the word. So that’s probably true too. But don’t miss the connection here back to us. And the New Testament gives us several admonitions to entertain strangers and to love them. The very word that we translate “hospitality” in the New Testament—that we be sure they exercise hospitality. That word is a combination of two words: “philo”—love—and “xenia”—strangers. So it means literally “a love of strangers,” okay? It doesn’t mean be hospitable and have your friends over a lot and party and that kind of stuff. That’s good. It’s good to have joyful times like that. That’s part of the Christian life. But that’s not quite what hospitality is. Hospitality is what Abraham is doing here. He’s entertaining, he’s loving strangers.

When we get to the characteristics, we’ll see how we’re supposed to love strangers and also how we’re supposed to live our Christian lives generally. Romans 12:9-13 says this: “Let love be without hypocrisy. Abhor what is evil, cling to what is good, be kindly affectionate to one another with brotherly love. In honor, giving preference to one another, not lagging in diligence.”

We’re going to see diligence on Abraham’s part here. “Fervent in spirit. This guy is running around in the heat of the day. And the heat of the day then wasn’t like a nice 80-82 degree day in Oregon City. This is the Middle East. This is hot territory. He’s not doing anything in the middle of the day because it’s hot, but he’s fervent in spirit. He’s going to run around in the heat of the day serving the Lord.”

And ultimately the desire or motivation to serve strangers is to exhibit the characteristics of the Lord. We’re serving the Lord. Jesus came, not in spite of being God, to serve people, but because he was God. Philippians 2 says that’s why he comes and serves us, right? Undeserving strangers.

Verse 12: “Rejoicing in hope, patient in tribulation, continuing steadfastly in prayer, distributing to the needs of the saints, given to hospitality.”

So given to hospitality is one of the characteristics of what love in the Christian life is like. And as I said, when you read “given to the love of strangers,” that’s what it would literally be.

1 Timothy 3:2 and Titus 1:8 list hospitality as a requirement for church officers, right? These are talking about overseers in the church. We often use the word “pastors” or “elders.” In 1 Timothy 3: “If a man desires the office of a bishop and overseer”—so our view at RCC is that overseer is one more function for men who are called to be elders and pastors. So we oversee all the operations of the church. That’s why we, you know, have interests in various physical things, the finances, et cetera. We don’t totally delegate things up because we’re responsible to oversee things. So there’s delegation, just like Abraham will do here in a couple minutes—if we get to these characteristics, which we will.

So the overseers have to be given to hospitality as well. 1 Timothy 3:2: “A bishop, overseer, ‘episcopos’—that’s the word. Actually means to look over, right? Overseeing things. Another word from a different language group is ‘supervisor.’ A ‘visor’ is looking, and ‘super’ is looking. Well, looking is ‘visor,’ and looking over is ‘super.’ So you’re looking over the affairs of your family, your business, a supervisor on an assembly line, or in this case the church.”

So a supervisor, a bishop, an overseer then must be blameless, the husband of one wife, temperate, sober-minded, of good behavior, hospitable, able to teach. So before the able to teach is hospitable. It’s a royal virtue. It’s an aspect of trinitarian reality to live in community and not in isolation. So it’s a requirement.

Titus 1: Same thing. “The bishop must be hospitable, a lover of what is good, sober-minded, just, holy, self-control.”

So hospitality is a requirement of church officers. It’s also given in Romans as something that all Christians are to engage in—the love of strangers and entertaining strangers. And then in 1 Peter 4:8: “Above all things, have fervent love for one another, for love will cover a multitude of sins. Be hospitable to one another, be hospitable to one another. Now, be a lover of strangers to each other without grumbling.”

So hospitable means, in its most direct sense, what Abraham does here with strangers. But it says Peter tells us that we’re to exhibit that in the context of the community of the church as well. That’s why I say, you know, Dave and Kathy—they’ve got a stranger in my house. Ronnie Milsap? Never mind. So they’ve got a stranger. You know, when you have a baby, this is a complete stranger. You don’t know what his personality is going to be like, nothing else. You don’t know him. He is a person in the image of God. He’s a stranger.

And when we bring people into the church, they’re strangers to us when they first start visiting. Even when they become members, probably Daryl and Sandy are to some extent strangers to you. So within the church, God wants us not just to get together with our friends and our group and all that sort of stuff. We’re supposed to be lovers with strangers.

When you go to the agape downstairs—the fellowship meal—you know, don’t just always sit with your family. There’s a time there. You can get with your family the rest of the week, but downstairs, think about people you don’t know very well. Sit down with them and use that opportunity not just to, you know, talk about the weather, but use the opportunity that we provide you—if you want to stick around for that—to get to know somebody. Ask them. I didn’t know until we met with Daryl and Sandy a couple weeks ago that Sandy has this great interest in music, has led choirs in the past. I mean, I think we’re going to get some great things from her for the life of RCC. No idea. You’ve got to start asking.

So hospitality is the love of strangers, but it’s also the love of people that, while not completely strangers to you, you might know their name—you need to get to know better. And it’s a mark of the Christian life to do this. And it’s a mark particularly of leadership to do it. Community group leaders—see, that’s your job. One of your big jobs is being hospitable. Not just to have a little group of people that you like, that you know, but to bring in, attempt to bring in others that are assigned to you that you don’t know, and make them comfortable. Go out of your way to make them a priority in your life.

So this is what the Bible talks to us about, and this day in the life of Abraham—you know, the destruction. This is 18 and 19—is basically one day. A day in the life of Abraham is this picture of the importance, the strategic importance of hospitality. And so all these other great things are going on, but at the core, what this text is talking about in its first half of chapter 18 is Abraham’s hospitality.

—

So let’s look now. That’s the context. Let’s look now at ten characteristics. You can take notes. Perfectly acceptable. Probably should.

Ten aspects or characteristics of hospitality. And I think that these are recorded in holy writ—the holy word of God—and they’re put into a very important time in the life of Abraham and the destruction of a good portion of his world in the next chapter. So it’s important for us. And I want to—and so this is in terms of his hospitality, but I want you to think about this kind of diligence that Abraham has, in terms of your vocation, in terms of your marriage.

You know, you’re married to strangers, right? You find that out after a little while. You get married, you don’t know the other person. And the whole point is you’re going to get to know them. You’re going to get to know their sins. They’re going to get to know your sins. And God has you married so you can know each other, so you can help sanctify each other. I mean, that’s what’s going on.

So these are characteristics that can be applied generally, okay?

**First of all, he properly prioritizes.** So prioritization of serving people or strangers, being diligent in what we do. So first of all, you know, we have this aspect of Abraham where these visitors show up. As opposed to, you know, he’s not looking. He’s not making a priority of his own comfort, right? It says he sees them. It’s the heat of the day. He’s sitting in the door of the tent because he needs some coolness and he sees these guys coming.

Now, what do you do if your priority is your own personal well-being or your calmness and stuff? You’re just going to stay sitting there. “Oh, maybe they’ll just pass by. Well, maybe this, maybe that.” But no, Abraham has prioritized this aspect of who he is as an image bearer of God, in covenant with God. He represents God. God visits people. That’s how and why we’re here. Jesus visited us and saved us. And we’re supposed to visit with people.

We’re supposed to place community at a very high priority in our existence. And when our ordinary lives get disrupted by a stranger showing up at the door—I don’t care how hot it is, how much your discomfort might be kicking in, how difficult it might be. “I’m old. I can’t entertain anymore. I’m too old.” No, this is a guy who’s a hundred years old getting up in the heat of the day. Why? Because he prioritizes hospitality. He prioritizes being hospitable to other people. He prioritizes community. He’s not self-centered. He gets at it because he’s properly prioritized it.

So he attends to it, showing his priority.

**Number two, he runs.** Right? That’s what the text says. He lifted his eyes. Behold, and looked. Behold, three men were coming to him. When he saw them, he ran from the tent door to meet them. He didn’t saunter out calmly. No, he’s diligent. He’s at it, right?

I’ll tell you, you know, if you want to do something in life, you have to be diligent. You have to take initiative. Being laid back about things that you know you’re supposed to do—in this case, hospitality—is not ever going to get you to where you need to be. He ran. He was diligent. He took initiative.

A characteristic of hospitality is prioritizing it. But then it’s to do it with diligence and initiative. And this is where I think we see Abraham’s life, not just in terms of his hospitality, but this is a diligent guy. He takes initiative.

I’m going to read a couple of quotes as we go through this. You know, we’re princes of the Lord Jesus Christ. I think Chris pointed that out last week—that we’re royalty. And so one guy said, “You don’t have a silver spoon in your mouth. You have a golden spoon in your palms. Use it. Use it.” So you don’t have a silver spoon. You’re not a consumer. You’re ultimately a king, a king’s son, because the Trinity isn’t about consuming. The Trinity is about service to one another and then service to us. So we don’t have a silver spoon in our mouths. We’ve got golden spoons in our hands. We’re supposed to use them to help other people. Okay? So that’s what we’re to do.

Diligence in service is an aspect of who Abraham is here. He gets up in the heat of the day. He doesn’t wait to be asked for help by these strangers. He doesn’t sit there and wait, “Well maybe they’ll ask me to do something for them.” No, he takes the initiative. Doesn’t that surprise you? I mean, it’s a great story. And he doesn’t know. He clearly sees them as three men here. He doesn’t know it’s God and two angels. All he knows is they’re strangers and they’ve been on a journey.

And he rushes out not to avoid community, but to enhance his own community. And he is diligent there in the prioritization of what God calls him to do. I mean, listen to all these action verbs in verses 6 and 7: “Abraham hurried into the tent to Sarah and said, ‘Quickly, make ready three measures of fine meal, knead it, and make cakes.’ And Abraham ran to the herd, took a tender and good calf, gave it to the young man, and he hastened to prepare it.”

He hurries. He runs. They hasten. They are actively involved. This is a diligent guy. He’s got energy, and he uses that energy for whatever task the Lord God has called him to do. And in this case, he knows he’s supposed to be hospitable. This is the royal virtue. This is the indication that we’re really sons and daughters of the king—is our love of others because that’s who God is. And if we love other people, we’re going to be diligent.

And if we love God in whatever calling we have—if you go to work tomorrow morning someplace, be diligent. Run to your job. Hurry about. Try to get things done quickly. That will produce success in your life, both at work and beyond that as well.

Samuel Johnson says this: “If your determination is fixed, I do not counsel you to despair. Few things are impossible to diligence and skill. Great works are performed not by strength, but by perseverance.” And here’s a great work that Abraham’s doing. He’s going to get great rewards for his labor. And it begins with the prioritization of this, and then it begins with taking whatever job we’ve been given and doing it diligently, quickly, doing it for the Lord Jesus Christ.

**Three, he’s differential, and he uses respectful speech.** So he runs to these guys, right? He ran from the tent door to meet them, leaving his own comfort in the tent door. And then he bows himself to the ground. You know, in the Old Testament, people would run when they saw their relatives coming, right? And to bow down is an act of worship in reference to God. But here, Abraham runs to strangers to do something for them—not his own family. And here Abraham bows down in deference to these strangers.

So he respects them. He prioritizes hospitality. He’s diligent in his hospitality. And he’s differential. He’s differential and respectful in how he approaches the guests that he’s going to serve. So you know, these are models for us. What do we do when an opening for hospitality shows up? New neighbor, whatever it is. Are we diligent? Do we make it a priority? Are we differential to them in our actions, so they know that we’re not just doing some duty? We actually do value and esteem them and want to interact with them and serve them and be a lover of strangers.

**Four, he uses really wise speech.** After he bows down to them, you know, look at what he says here. It’s really so interesting, right? He says: “My Lord, if I have now found favor in your sight, do not pass on by your servant. Please let a little water be brought, wash your feet, and rest yourselves under the tree. I will bring a morsel of bread that you may refresh your hearts. After that, you may pass by inasmuch as you have come to your servant.”

And then they say, “Okay.”

Now, compare what he said—he’s bringing a little morsel of bread. And then when they say, “Okay,” he rushes off to get his wife to make a huge amount of bread. If we look at the measures of wheat that she used—fine wheat, by the way—he then gets a not a small goat or a chicken or something. He gets a calf, a baby calf, a beautiful piece of meat for these guys, and has one of his household prepare that for him. He’s going to serve them a feast.

But he doesn’t want to, you know, intimidate them. He doesn’t want to go out of his way saying, “It’s going to be a really big deal.” He tries to do whatever he can to get them to stay and to accept his hospitality. So he uses wise speech to try to convince them to stay. In other words, it’s a test, and the speech tells us he passes the test of whether you really love the stranger or not.

I mean, you know, what do we do? We’ve got some visitor here at church downstairs, and you start thinking, “Well, can I? Do I really want to do this? Have him over this afternoon. Well, do I have anything ready?” Abraham had nothing in the fridge. They’ve got to do a lot of preparation. He doesn’t have meat ready to be served or bread ready to be served. He’s got ready excuses to not engage in this, but he does engage in it. Why? Because he’s got this great desire to do what God does—to be a lover of strangers.

So Abraham uses wisdom in his speech, okay? He prioritizes hospitality. He’s diligent in whatever task he’s been given to do. He’s differential to these guys and he’s wise in talking with them so that he can get them to actually enter into a time of refreshment for their hearts, which is his goal and desire. He loves them. So he’s a lover of strangers. He’s anxious to persuade them to stay.

**Five. All this indicates that he has this strong desire again, okay?** So the prioritization, the diligence, the differential attitude of bowing down, the wisdom in trying to get them to stay. These are all evidences that there’s a great desire to actually do this. He’s not doing it as a duty, grudgingly. And when we’re given a task from God to do things, we shouldn’t do them grudgingly. That’s what several of those verses in the New Testament say. We should do them with a great desire to do whatever it is that God wants us to do—next, whatever proper authority has assigned to us. We want to do it with all of our heart because it’s coming from God. He’s got a tremendous desire. That’s another characteristic of Abraham’s hospitality and, as I said, of generally his life of obedience to God.

**Six, he’s got a sensitivity to their needs, okay?** He’s got a sensitivity to their needs. He says, “Look, you’ve been on a long journey. No doubt you’re thirsty. I’ll bring some water. No doubt you’re feeling kind of grubby because there aren’t paved roads back then. And so they can wash up as well. No doubt you need some refreshment,” right? So here, sit in the shade of this tree. He looks at their needs and then offers to meet those needs, okay?

And this is actually the beginning of some of the great results of hospitality—is that you actually start to understand who the other person is, right? You know, the Peacemaker book, in the section on negotiations, it talks about the PAUSE principle of negotiation. And the middle of that is the U in PAUSE, which stands for understand. You’ve got a dispute going on with your neighbor, right? You pause. You make preparations, right? You talk to God about it. But what you try to do in the negotiation—I used to be a purchasing manager. Same thing. You try to find out what the other party wants. What are their needs? Many times a commercial contract can be enhanced. It should be enhanced so that both parties are winners. It’s a foolish form of negotiation to try to beat the other guy down. That’s not what God wants. God wants negotiations to show you where your mutual interests of the two parties line up, where those circles overlap. And then you can know, okay, so he doesn’t have much money. Then I give him long terms, ninety days to pay, whatever it is. But the point is you understand the other person.

In Philippians, it tells us about this. Now, don’t look out just for your own interests. Look out for the interests of others. So Abraham in his demonstration of hospitality is doing that. He’s Philippians 2 in practice. He doesn’t say, “I’m the covenant Lord. You’re the little strangers coming along.” Even though he knows that’s true. The promise is going through him. He bows himself to those he’s going to serve and love and help. And then he doesn’t just say, “Well, what do you need?” He looks at them. He ascertains their needs as he sees what they’re doing. And then he seeks to meet those needs.

Biblical hospitality does that. To love a stranger isn’t just, you know, say, “Okay, well, I’ve got to have men.” Think about him. Get to know him some. See how you can be used to meet some of his needs. And that’s what Abraham does here. He’s specifically told—the text isn’t included all these details for no reason. God wants us to think about these things. And what we read, as we think about these things, is that Abraham is taking actions to meet their needs.

Biblical hospitality understands others, meets their needs. They’re sensitive to other people’s needs. And that’s a characteristic of God, right? That’s what Philippians 2 says is that’s who God is. He knows what we need. He comes to us and he helps us with what we need. And so that’s what we’re to do as well.

**Seven, his hospitality employs other people, right?** He’s an overseer. He’s a bishop. And this is why bishops have to be hospitable. But one way bishops do that, one way supervisors in companies do it, one way family heads do it, is by employing other people. Abraham doesn’t do all the work himself. Now, he’s a model to them in terms of his diligence—running around in the heat of the day, a hundred-year-old man. He’s a model to them. But he employs other people.

He goes to his wife: “Get on my mission here. My mission is to love these people. Be submissive to me.” And of course, Sarah’s mission is like Abraham’s mission. She’s a daughter of the king. She knows that the kingly aspects, the royal attribute, the royal virtue is to love other people, even strangers. And so Sarah is with the mission. He employs her. He employs a young lad, right, to help prepare the calf.

And you notice the lad is hurrying to do his task as well. So biblical hospitality involves employing other people. So the whole event continues to build a community of care, love, fellowship together. It’s not just you. You employ the people in your sphere of influence to be hospitable like you are as well.

So Abraham is doing things quickly, but he’s also doing things in an orderly fashion, right? He goes to the manager of the bread stuff. He goes to the kid that does the calf stuff. He’s an orderly sort of guy in loving strangers. He’s not just running around like a chicken with his head cut off. He’s moving to a purpose. And so the text tells us, as we engage in the beginning of the church here in terms of our Christian lives, that’s who we’re supposed to be. We’re supposed to be go people like that. We carry the covenant promise. We carry the characteristics of God Almighty.

And those characteristics are care and love for others. It’s being hospitable and loving even to strangers. And it’s doing that in a diligent, orderly, creative fashion. He’s got to think: I’ve got nothing ready, nothing in the fridge. I better—I’m going to have to do some preparations. So he moves around quick to get it done.

So in your life, young people, pre-teens, teenagers, young adults, you want to succeed in life, this is how you do it. You get initiative. You get drive going. You get labor. You sweat in the heat of the day at times, right? You don’t prioritize your comfort. You prioritize your service to God and to other people. And you do it in an orderly fashion, hurriedly, diligently, quickly. But you do it in an orderly fashion that builds a career.

You want blessings in life? That’s the way you do it. It’s not a one-time shot of trying to hit the jackpot. It’s a life of perseverance, diligence, orderliness, other-oriented, not selfish, properly prioritizing others. That’s what Abraham’s an example of here to us.

So that’s what Abraham does—he employs others.

**And number eight, he’s trained others.** He’s gotten his wife and the lad and everybody in his household to be like him. He’s trained them with tasks, right? The lad doesn’t have to get a lot of instruction at the time.

So to achieve one of the characteristics of hospitality for us is to train most of us—in our families, our children—to be hospitable too, to make it a priority in their lives so that when we need to employ them, they won’t do so grumbling. They’ll be part of the program.

So he trains other people to assist them in the acts of hospitality.

It’s interesting because we know the rest of the story. So after the travel, or after the hospitality narrative, they’re going to go off to Sodom. Abraham sees them on their way. We’ll get to that in a minute. And the Lord speaks to the two angels and says, “Maybe I should tell him, because after all, you know, I’ve chosen him that he would instruct his household in justice and righteousness.”

So God assumes, in the after-narrative, after the hospitality has been given, he reminds us in the text, and he has this conversation with the angels that he’s going to talk to Abraham—friend to friend, associate to associate, almost, right? Amazing. And he’s going to do it because Abram is not just a guy who does justice and righteousness—which means that’s a description of what we just seen. I mean, to do justice isn’t to go change laws all the time. It’s to love the stranger. Hospitality is part of doing justice.

I think the narrative links those things together. And Abraham is not just a guy that’s going to do justice in the sense of being hospitable and diligent in his work and calling. He’s going to train his children that way.

Now, this is real important stuff. Of course, catechisms are good. Of course, understanding of the doctrines of the Reformation are good. But what’s the characteristic here that Abraham is singled out for, as God decides to give this associate-to-associate conversation with him, which leads to the intercession of Abraham for a godless city, by the way? Well, what is it?

It’s Abraham’s passing on justice and judgment. And the specific example of justice is loving strangers. That’s what we’ve just seen. We have to connect those pieces of the narrative together. He hasn’t just told us a story about political action. He’s told us a story about loving strangers and enhancing and building community, as opposed to tearing community apart the way they’re doing in Sodom and Gomorrah.

So, so he employs others, but biblical hospitality trains others as well—to have this aspect of character, but also of a love of strangers that flows over into his life.

**Nine, he’s generous.** What he gets, the feast going. You know, it’s not a morsel of bread. As I said, he’s got tremendous amounts of flour made into cakes. He’s got a fattened calf there, right, to give to them. He gives them yogurt or cheese or some kind of substance. Gives them milk. I mean, you know, he’s really taking care of these guys. It’s a feast. A feast for a king. Feast for, you know, kings plural.

And so in our hospitality, in our giving of ourselves, in our sharing with other people, we’re to be generous. We’re to be generous. So you go home, you’ve got a roast ready for Wednesday. You’ve got new people at the door on Monday. You invite them in. You cook the roast for them. You’re generous with who you are, with what you have, with your time, with your home, and with your goods and services. Okay?

Abraham’s hospitality was a generous hospitality. And notice the way the text tells us that he stands aside. He waits while they eat. One of the first restaurants I went to in Eastern Europe when we went there years ago, it was really interesting how at certain restaurants, you would sit down and you would order and stuff, and then there’d be these waiters, and they’d be in dark corners of the room. They would just be standing there trying to be not seen. But whenever you needed something, boom, they were right there. They were right there.

That service—and that’s the way Abraham was here, okay? He provides a generous feast for them and he continues to manifest his humility and respect for them in the very way he’s described as standing off to the side while they eat.

Abraham’s hospitality is marked by generosity and—

**then finally, the text tells us he sees them on their way.** Easy to miss that. At the end of the feast, they have their announcement to Sarah—very important, right? I mean, they affirm and confirm her and announce to her the child. Minister pastorally to her. Calm her fears using humor. And then it says they looked towards Sodom and they get up and they’re going to leave. And it tells us that Abraham went with them on their way.

Now this used to be a common exercise of hospitality in this country. That’s what you would do if you had visitors. You know, you would see them on their way a little while. And today you maybe walk them out to their car—not just close the door on them as they leave your house. You’d walk them out. You’d go on their way a little bit. And if they’d walked to your house, you would walk them back a little ways, right? Not all the way, but you would.

Why are you doing that? Well, everything you’ve done so far in hospitality has provided more and more interaction between you and them. And so as you see them on their way, it’s one final act of hospitality. And frequently, that final act will be characterized by an intimacy of fellowship, as it is here, in terms of your relationship with those people. It’s all community building. It’s all community building.

And so when Abraham sees them on their way, that’s when this discussion starts to happen. That’s when God says, “Well, I should show it to Abraham. He’s a great guy. He’ll teach his kids justice. He teaches them hospitality, obviously. Let’s talk to Abraham about what I’m going to do.” And then Abraham intercedes for Sodom. And he’s actually interceding for Lot, of course, but also Sodom.

We want to know why, you know, the country isn’t burning in brimstone today, America? Well, if there were ten people in the city, God’s not going to destroy it. We’re the reason why, I think, from one perspective. Lots of Christians in this country. And he wants us to do our job and to bring conversion to people.

Anyway, so it’s when he goes on the way with them that really the deeper fellowship starts to happen in the conversation. And now we’ve got Abraham talking to God Almighty in the context of this little walking along the way with them. And he’s interceding with God for a Canaanite, pagan city.

**So that’s the tenth and final characteristic of Abraham’s hospitality.**

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Now I think all of these are quite important. I think if you didn’t take notes, maybe I’ll try to put them up on the church’s web page or something on Facebook. But I think they’re all given to us here in quite some detail in terms of what Abraham does.

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**Now, what are the consequences of Abraham’s hospitality?**

Well, the consequences are pretty cool, right? Because he has them in, because he does his thing with them, several things happen.

**First of all, he gets the announcement of the child to his wife, right?** That’s pretty important stuff. That wouldn’t have happened if Abraham didn’t invite these guys in. His hospitality resulted in a consequence of a wonderful, wondrous declaration by God of what he would be doing.

**Secondly, he got the inside scoop on what’s going on in his culture, right?** Because of his hospitality, he finds out what God is going to do in the life of Sodom and Gomorrah. He gets the inside scoop. He gets information.

**Third, he enters up with fellowship with God himself,** because he went out of his way and was diligent to meet with people that he didn’t know—three guys coming down the road. Because he prioritized hospitality, did all those things that I just talked about, the end result of that is he gets enhanced fellowship with God. He’s talking with God face to face, so to speak, right? Enhanced fellowship with God as a consequence of Abraham’s hospitality.

**And four, he actually gets to intercede with God.** God hears his intercessions for the place in which he lives. He hears his intercessions as a consequence of Abraham’s hospitality.

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Now, what’s the consequences of not being hospitable? Well, we don’t have to go very far. We go right to the next chapter, chapter 19, and we’ve got guys there, right? And Lot’s kind of hospitable—sort of halfway—brings them in, gives them unleavened bread, not nice cakes. But he brings them in at least. But the people of the city are characterized by a radical selfishness, a radical absence of love of the stranger.

Instead, they want to use the stranger for their own purposes. Now, don’t forget the homosexual part of it. They’re selfish. You know, we can be selfish in terms of our spouses, right? Frequently we are, using them for our own purposes, right? So let’s not get too high and mighty. Jesus warned us, you know, that Sodom and Gomorrah would rise up against the kind of sin that he saw in those people that rejected him out of their great selfishness—selfishness demonstrated by a lack of hospitality and anti-hospitality. “Throw them out here so that we can be selfish with them.” A lack of hospitality, focusing on self-centeredness, trying to please ourselves.

And we can do that even when we entertain strangers. We can do it selfishly. But that kind of selfishness—what’s the consequence of that? Utter total destruction. As it comes to its conclusion, going along—no doubt for years. At some point God just breaks the neck of the cities in that area.

So in a way—and I know there’s a lot more going on here than just this hospitality thing—but there it is. It’s front and center in our narrative. It’s the whole buildup to the discussion of the lack of hospitality in Sodom and the resultant judgment of God.

The blessings of hospitality are great indeed. And the consequences for a failure of hospitality are great indeed as well. May the Lord God grant us grace not to just hear this today and to walk away foolishly, not listening to it, not taking it to heart, not changing our lives.

May he use this text today to make us those who inherit great blessings from him out of our simple desire to love people the way he loved us.

Let’s pray.

Father, we thank you for this text. We thank you, Lord God, for the reminder once more not to be selfish, but to seek to serve other people. We thank you for the tremendous example that Abraham is in these few short verses to us, and then the great blessings that you gave him because of that. We pray, Lord God, that as we offer ourselves to you afresh, we would do so committing ourselves as we come forward with our tithes and offerings to be people that are marked by a love of strangers.

In Jesus’ name we pray.

Amen. Amen.