Gen 19:29, Thus it came about, when God destroyed the cities of the valley, that God remembered Abraham, and sent Lot out of the midst of the overthrow, when He overthrew the cities in which Lot lived. 
	Last week, we spent much time in regard to this passage as delineated by the International Standard Bible Encyclopedia. Some aspects were very technical and there were very many scriptures referenced. Hopefully it became obvious to all that the reality that … God remembered Abraham… is a matter for great consideration. It is not just a mere insertion of happenstance, but a key to the vast treasury of God’s heart opened unto us in Jesus Christ. 
It is also, hopefully apparent, that the prayers of the members of the Church, God’s very family in Christ are vital to the full outcome of what God does on this earth. It may seem that our prayers are not heard, but that is never the case. God hears and He answers each one in the majesty of His Omnipotence, Omnipresence, and Omniscience. He does not answer in accordance with what we think is best, but always in His perfect timing and grace and mercy. We may think that He has forgotten and then is reminded by our further petitioning, but that is never the case with our glorious and personal Lord God Almighty. He hears and He responds in all His love and power in the course of what is the very best answer to be manifested in our lives and in our every situation. 
	This morning, let us consider how this great statement has affected all God’s dealings with humanity. Initially, we must go back to the promise made to Abram in Gen 12:1-3. Now the Lord said to Abram, "Go forth from your country, And from your relatives And from your father's house, To the land which I will show you; And I will make you a great nation, And I will bless you, And make your name great; And so you shall be a blessing; And I will bless those who bless you, And the one who curses you I will curse. And in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed." … And in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed. 
	How many of us have taken the time to consider this great promise in the very personal reality of our homes and relations. We tend to read it with a sense of history, that God so blessed Abraham and made this general statement of well-being for all those to follow. Some have limited it to the blessing of only the nation of Israel, thinking that there is nothing in it for the Gentile peoples. Others have looked at it as a generic statement of God’s providential grace operating through His laws of nature to all mankind. 
	However, this was a promise that Almighty God made to Abraham in which He knew that you and me would be so blessed with the free gift of His Only begotten Son, Jesus Christ. This is no minor, generalized declaration of God. It is a specific and targeted announcement of the plan that God put into place to bless all the families of the earth through the triumphant victory of His Beloved Son over sin and death. While not all men will accept that gift and thereby come into the blessing, it is freely offered to all who will so honor God and believe upon His Son and receive that personal salvation.
	But, whether the gift of eternal life in the glorious and direct presence of God is appropriated by each individual, the fact that Christ is ruling and overruling and the Lord of Creation is, in itself, a wonderful blessing to every family unit. He abounds forth in all grace and mercy and hope and love. Those who are so privileged to have Christian friends and relatives are bound up in the exceeding blessing of the saint’s testimony and prayer of God’s love. 
As such, even though we will trace this promise to us briefly through its historical roots, please keep in mind that we are the absolute and individually purposed recipients of the so great love of God> We were in His heart as He declared this tremendous reality of Jesus Christ through the lineage of Abraham to us.
One of the key aspects apparent in God’s fulfillment of this promise is that it is not defined by what we would consider blessing in an earthly sense. When our humanity looks at being blessed, we tend to see it with the vision that everything is going well with us. We think that to be so blessed means that there are no issues and no problems or concerns. This is a vantage point that has no scriptural or spiritual basis. Consider how the Children of Israel fared in their treatment under the hands of Pharaoh, even as the blessed People of God.  
Ex 2:23-25, Now it came about in the course of those many days that the king of Egypt died. And the sons of Israel sighed because of the bondage, and they cried out; and their cry for help because of their bondage rose up to God. So God heard their groaning; and God remembered His covenant with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. And God saw the sons of Israel, and God took notice of them. Please realize that the Israelites were in utter slavery and groaning in their agony and strife. They were miserably subjected to the whims and fancies of the Pharaoh, pawns used to complete all his menial labors. Theirs was a life of misery and woe, yet they were still considered the blessed Children of God. They held to the promise that God had given to Abraham and Isaac and Jacob, and they called out to Him in their dire straits. And God took notice of them. He remembered them and, through Moses, delivered them. 
	Please note that God heard them in their distress and misery. He did not immediately deliver them, but He knew them and He made every provision for their eventual release from captivity. This is something that we need to take to heart in the midst of all our trials and tribulations and hardships. God listens to our prayers and He works mightily to save. However, that salvation may not be in the terms of immediacy and in the manner in which we think He should work. The Israelites had to undergo all the effects of the 10 plagues that were used by God for their eventual release. They did not suffer the full onslaught as did all the Egyptian people, but they were still part of all the agony and the harshness of what it took for God to make Pharaoh finally relent and let His people go. 
Many times our salvation from the ills of this realm comes at the cost of those seeming plagues and storms and hard times that are fully directed by the Hand of God to His ultimate work of release from the enslavement of self. In this, He shows forth the true fact that we are so blessed by His promise given to Abraham all those centuries ago. He works intimately within each one of our hearts and minds to make fully evident that He loves us and is working to establish His perfect character of being in us in Jesus Christ. Therefore, as the Apostle Paul so encourages us, no matter what, we are to rejoice and to give Him thanks for all that He does in our lives at all times, even if it seems to be harsh and terribly difficult. 1 Thess 5:16-18, Rejoice always; pray without ceasing; in everything give thanks; for this is God's will for you in Christ Jesus. 
	This, then, brings us to the declaration of Moses to the Children of Israel before they entered into the Promised Land. Please turn to Deut 9:4-6. Do not say in your heart when the Lord your God has driven them out before you, 'Because of my righteousness the Lord has brought me in to possess this land,' but it is because of the wickedness of these nations that the Lord is dispossessing them before you. It is not for your righteousness or for the uprightness of your heart that you are going to possess their land, but it is because of the wickedness of these nations that the Lord your God is driving them out before you, in order to confirm the oath which the Lord swore to your fathers, to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. Know, then, it is not because of your righteousness that the Lord your God is giving you this good land to possess, for you are a stubborn people. 
	Oft times, we tend to think that God treats us better than others because we consider ourselves to be spiritually superior and blessed with holiness. We hold to some sense that because we know a more excellent way, we are deserving of some kind of elevated consideration. But the truth of the matter is that we are a mean and stubborn people. We are set in our methodology of elevating ourselves above others through some false sense of superiority. God does not see us as greater than others. He does not put us on a pedestal and honor us because we merit or have earned such vain glory. He goes before us singly and purposefully because of His Son, Our Lord Jesus Christ, and for His sake alone. It is because of God’s faithfulness to His promise, His divine oath to Abraham that we are blessed beyond all measure in the satisfaction of the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. 
	We need to come before Him in humbleness of spirit and contriteness of heart, rather than in the self-righteousness of some false sense of worthiness of being. The Psalmist understood this as he set everything in its proper perspective of the lovingkindness of God to remember His covenant of promise. Ps 25:6-9, Remember, O Lord, Thy compassion and Thy lovingkindnesses, For they have been from of old. Do not remember the sins of my youth or my transgressions; According to Thy lovingkindness remember Thou me, For Thy goodness' sake, O Lord. Good and upright is the Lord; Therefore He instructs sinners in the way. He leads the humble in justice, And He teaches the humble His way. 
	Everything of value and beauty and grace and mercy is set in God and His eternal covenant with mankind. He is the One Who made the oath and He is the One Who has fulfilled its every jot and tittle. Please turn to Ps 105:7-12. He is the Lord our God; His judgments are in all the earth. He has remembered His covenant forever, The word which He commanded to a thousand generations, The covenant which He made with Abraham, And His oath to Isaac. Then He confirmed it to Jacob for a statute, To Israel as an everlasting covenant, Saying, "To you I will give the land of Canaan As the portion of your inheritance," When they were only a few men in number, Very few, and strangers in it.
And verses 42-45, For He remembered His holy word With Abraham His servant; And He brought forth His people with joy, His chosen ones with a joyful shout. He gave them also the lands of the nations, That they might take possession of the fruit of the peoples' labor, So that they might keep His statutes, And observe His laws, Praise the Lord! 
	Note a very key truth in this promise of God’s blessing, He brought forth His people with joy, His chosen ones with a joyful shout. No matter how severe the trials, no matter how difficult the situation, no matter how much hardship and suffering we must undergo, He will remember us and He will deliver us with joy. We will know that He is with us through it all. In that reality, we can rejoice and give thanks with hearts that truly embrace His work as good and the perfect means of bringing forth His glory in our lives. 
	As the Psalmist also recounts, God’s remembrance of us is fully set in His lovingkindness. Ps 136:23-26, Who remembered us in our low estate, For His lovingkindness is everlasting, And has rescued us from our adversaries, For His lovingkindness is everlasting; Who gives food to all flesh, For His lovingkindness is everlasting. Give thanks to the God of heaven, For His lovingkindness is everlasting. This is the glorious truth of the manner in which God regards us in His Heart. He thinks of us with lovingkindness and works for and unto us with all His everlasting lovingkindness and tender mercy and grace in full evidence.
	As this morning’s final contemplation of the fact that God remembers us individually with His lovingkindness, please consider the account of the salvation of Cornelius and all his household as recorded in Acts 10:30-33. And Cornelius said, "Four days ago to this hour, I was praying in my house during the ninth hour; and behold, a man stood before me in shining garments, and he said, 'Cornelius, your prayer has been heard and your alms have been remembered before God. 'Send therefore to Joppa and invite Simon, who is also called Peter, to come to you; he is staying at the house of Simon the tanner by the sea.' "And so I sent to you immediately, and you have been kind enough to come. Now then, we are all here present before God to hear all that you have been commanded by the Lord." 
	Cornelius, a Gentile, prayed to God and offered Him alms. He was not of the heritage of the Children of Israel, yet he believed in God. Therefore God heard his prayers and sent the Apostle Peter to deliver the Good News of salvation through Jesus Christ to this so-called heathen. It is in Jesus Christ that the promise to Abraham is extended forth unto any who will but call upon His name. Such is the lovingkindness of God to all the nations in the blessing of His Son. 
	Such is the certainty of the majestic work of Jesus Christ as the Apostle Paul so fully declares in Gal 3:28+29. There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free man, there is neither male nor female; for you are all one in Christ Jesus. And if you belong to Christ, then you are Abraham's offspring, heirs according to promise. Amen.
	The promise is absolutely ours, given in all the lovingkindness and tender mercies of God to you and to me. Let us ever rejoice together in the magnitude of what God has done in His so great love in Jesus Christ for all the eternal ages of ages. Just as God remembered Abraham, so He remembers each one of us in the every detail of our lives before Him in grace and in truth and in a most personal, living relationship. So be it!
Thus it came about, when God destroyed the cities of the valley, that God remembered Abraham, and sent Lot out of the midst of the overthrow, when He overthrew the cities in which Lot lived. Amen.

This morning’s benediction is Ps 150. Praise the Lord! Praise God in His sanctuary; Praise Him in His mighty expanse. Praise Him for His mighty deeds; Praise Him according to His excellent greatness. Praise Him with trumpet sound; Praise Him with harp and lyre. Praise Him with timbrel and dancing; Praise Him with stringed instruments and pipe. Praise Him with loud cymbals; Praise Him with resounding cymbals. Let everything that has breath praise the Lord. Praise the Lord! Amen.