Genesis
Lesson Ten
Where Wickedness Rules
By Carol Miller of My Life Ministries
November8, 2015
Genesis 18:20-25; 19:12-16
Review and Overview
In last week's lesson in of Genesis 17,we were more than 25 years into following Abram's journey of faith since the time when he departed from Haran after his father Terah died. We do not know how long Abram had lived in Haran before his father died and he continued his faith walk by moving on down into Canaan. However, after these 25 years of sojourning in Canaan, we were told that Abram was 99 years old and Sarah would have been about 89 (I am basing this estimate of her age on a note in the Ryrie Study Bible that says Sarai was 65 years old when she and Abram went down into Egypt during the famine).
God (speaking of Himself as El Shaddai, “God who can do anything”) appeared to Abram again when he was 99 to renew and further explain all the conditions and blessings involved in His covenant with him. Ishmael was 13 years old at this time. God gave Abram the new name of Abraham and Sarai the new name of Sarah and told Abraham that He was going to make him the father of a multitude of nations; He would establish the covenant to be an everlasting covenant throughout all the generations that issued from him; He would also give him all the land of his sojournings; and He would give him a son by his wife Sarah. They were to name this son, who was the recipient of the covenant, Isaac. Then Abraham interceded for his son Ishmael and God also blessed Ishmael with a promise to make him the father of twelve princes and of a very great nation. At this time, God placed some requirements on Abraham of (1) walking before Him in wholehearted obedience and of (2) accepting and carrying out the sign of the covenant upon every male descendant and every male slave eight days old and older within the household throughout all the generations to come. Abraham got up and carried out this requirement of circumcision immediately after God departed from him. This was the beginning of a truly “circumcised life,” spiritually speaking, for Abraham. (Phil. 3:3)
Genesis 18:1-19:
This story takes place only a very short time, probably a few weeks at most, after God's appearance to Abraham in Genesis 17. This is easy to discern because inGenesis18:10 the Lord says to Abraham that He will return to him at “this time next year” and Sarah will have the promised son. At verse 21 of the previous chapter, God had spoken of the birth of Sarah's son coming at “this same season next year.”
The re-announcement of Sarah's pregnancy is really only one of two reasons for the appearance of the three men at the oaks of Mamre on that hot day when Abraham was sitting at his tent door. The men, who were really two angels along with the Lord Jesus Christ in one of His pre-incarnate appearances, were not recognized by Abraham as angels accompanying The Lord until after he had paid them all the usual courtesies of the customs of that day.
It was after they announced that Sarah would have a son by this time next year and overheard her laughing to herself and asked, “Why did Sarah laugh? Is anything too hard for the Lord?” that Abraham recognized who his guest were.
By that time, the three were ready to proceed to their second purpose for being there. After rebuking Sarah by saying that she did indeed laugh and she would indeed have a son by this time next year, the men arose and looked toward Sodom.
The angels did not reveal their intentions, but it seems obvious from the fact that the three came by to visit Abraham that the Lord had always had it in His heart that Abraham should know of His plan to bring a great judgment down upon Sodom and Gomorrah. Genesis 18:17-19 are very poignant in the way they express the respect and love and friendship that the Lord held in His heart for Abraham. Abraham was his very special chosen recipient of the covenant who had walked in faith and close personal relationship with Him for over 25 years. He knew Abraham well and He knew that he would intercede for the righteous individuals of those cities.
Another side of this act, on the Lord's part of communicating His plan to Abraham, is that the Lord does not judge men capriciously. Read Amos 3:7-8. He does not punish without warning, and as the covenant relationship was with Abraham, it was Abraham who would bear the burden of knowing the plan and interceding. Of course, the Lord also simply desired to save Abraham's nephew Lot and Lot's family for Abraham's sake (Genesis 19:29). He desired to have Abraham's intercession put before Him in order to satisfy all righteousness in showing special grace and mercy towards Lot and his family. So the Lord confided in Abraham all that He was planning to do in response to the outcry concerning Sodom and Gomorrah.
Genesis 18:20-21: “Man's Sin”
On the last page (inside cover) of our lessons there is a map of The Dead Sea. The Dead Sea lies below sea level and has no natural outlet to the south. It is divided by a peninsula (or “tongue”) protruding from the eastern shore. Above this peninsula the waters are extremely deep, but south of the peninsula the waters are very shallow. Geologists tell us that this lower portion of the sea was formed in the relatively recent past. It is very likely that this is the area once called the “valley of Siddim,” the region that “Lot lifted up his eyes and saw” when he made the fatal choice to dwell in Sodom (Genesis 13:10-12). This area is noted for its heavy concentrations of minerals. Genesis 14:10 tells us that it was full of bitumen pits. At some point during the second millennium B.C. an intense seismic explosion and conflagration engulfed four of the five cities in the valley (Sodom, Gomorrah, Admah, Zeboim), leaving only Zoar, the small city where Lot asked to go. Thus, modern geological information confirms the biblical account in Genesis 19 of the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah.
Genesis 18:20:
The “outcry” (of Sodom and Gomorrah) here in this verse is translated simply “the cry” in the King James Version, and the original Hebrew mentions “the protests” that have come to the Lord. The Lord tells Abraham that the collective outcries are very great. The word “outcry” may mean “the sufferers' cries” or the cries of the victims, as we can imagine that at least the younger people, children and teenagers, would have suffered greatly in the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah. But this description of an enormous outcry may simply mean that the sin of these two cities had reached a point that creation itself could no longer tolerate it and was crying out to God for relief.
The language communicates that it is time for divine judgment. The verse concludes that “their sin is very grievous” or extremely serious. The sins of these two cities were so numerous and extensive that the two city names have come to be associated with the most wicked sexual perversion and violent human behavior. Read Jer. 23:14; 1 Pet. 2:3-9; Ezek.16:49-50. As deplorable as the sin of sodomy was and is, we should also take careful note of the fact that the prophet Ezekiel listed haughtiness, gluttony, excessive materialism and neglect of the poor and needy along with the abominable things that revealed the decadence of these cities.
Genesis 18:21:
“I will go down to see.” This is the same metaphorical language used in the story of The Tower of Babel. “I will see if what they have done justifies the cry that has come up to Me. If not, I will find out.” We are to understand that God certainly already knows everything, but He wants us to know for certain that He will only punish when it is justly deserved, and it will be based on His knowledge of the indisputable facts of the matter. If what He has heard is proven true, there will be severe judgment. From the Garden of Eden to the present, the wages of sin is death. The Lord's judgments are appropriate for the offense, and Sodom and Gomorrah were guilty of unrepentant rebellion and gross sin. They had fully earned His judgment.
Genesis 18:22-25: “Abraham's Intercession”
Genesis 18:22-23:
The two men were two angels, and they were already moving forward towards Sodom in order to carry out God's decree. But Abraham “drew near to the Lord.” Some versions say that he “stepped forward” or “stood in front of” the Lord. But I like the idea that Abraham drew near to the Lord because it expresses what we do when we pray. We shut out other voices and come apart from all the other things around us. We get close up to the Lord and focus on the subject at hand.
God had opened up the subject and Abraham understood his position with God. Abraham clearly understood that he was the inferior party in the covenant relationship, but he also realized that he had been given the privilege of knowing certain special information and he had also had some unique responsibility in this situation.
As Abraham drew near, he was asking a question in order to gain understanding of God's mind on the matter at hand, “Will you indeed sweep away the righteous with the wicked?” Abraham knew God to be exceptionally merciful and certainly unwilling to punish those who were righteous. Abraham was surely thinking of his nephew Lot and his family, but he restrained himself to ask a more general question about the situation and how God would handle it. Abraham could not conceive of the entire population of Sodom being grossly wicked. Surely Lot had been able to influence a few inhabitants of the city. So he began to explore the possibility that there were quite a few who were still righteous.
Abraham had heard God say that He was going down to “find out for Himself” how bad the situation was; so he probably thought maybe there was a slight chance God would spare the city. He began by appealing to God to spare it if there were 50 righteous in it. Gradually Abraham brought the number down by increments of 5 and 10 to 10 righteous people.
In Abraham's willingness to venture boldly forward with appealing to the God of the Universe, we can see, I believe, an example of the need for us to be persistent in our intercession. Of course we always need to balance boldness with humility and know that if we understand the character and ways of God and the promises He has made to us, we have a responsibility to stand in the gap for others, and we also have opportunity to step forward and exercise our faith and see God respond powerfully. Read Ezek. 22:30.
It may seem that Abraham became excessively bold in saying to the Lord, “Far be it from you to do such a thing; shall not the judge of all the earth do justly?” But his question did not imply that he thought God could or would be capable of ruling unjustly. His question was a rhetorical one that showed he was struggling to reconcile his faith in God's justice with his perception of Sodom's punishment. He knew God was the absolute authority over everything that pertained to humankind, and He would do the right thing in the end.
But there may still have been a little something in Abraham that wanted to be completely sure that God's character was exactly what he knew it to be. And somehow he felt that God wanted him to reason with Him in that way. He understood that he had a certain amount of power with God and that God in fact wanted him to use it. As it turned out, Lot's deliverance from destruction was certainly due to Abraham's intercession.
Question: How would you describe how Abraham appealed to God? How did he balance humility and boldness in his approach? Note Genesis 18:27, 30, where Abraham appeals to the Lord to pardon him for his boldness as “dust and ashes” before Almighty God.
Genesis 19:12-16: “God's Grace”
Before this point in the narrative, we have seen that Lot was righteous in exercising every courtesy to strangers entering his city, and later seeking to protect those strangers who were guests in his house. He displayed a great deal of courage in going outside of his own door and closing it behind him in order to plead with his wicked neighbors to refrain from attacking his guests, especially when they threatened him with, “we will deal worse with you than with them!” (Genesis 19:9).
However, many deeper issues of righteousness had not been impressed upon Lot because of long association with the people of Sodom and an unwillingness to separate himself from their worldly lifestyle. It is inconceivable to us that he would have offered his virgin daughters to the wicked men of Sodom to do with as they pleased in order to protect two strangers under his roof, however important they may have been. And later he was very reluctant to leave Sodom, even after those very unusual men who had the power to pull him back into his house and to strike with blindness his attackers, were telling him that the city was about to be consumed in devastating judgment.
Still, as uncircumcised in heart as Lot was, God extended grace to him and his family.
Genesis 19:12-13:
In the midst of impending judgment, God demonstrated His unmerited grace. The angels who appeared as men, but surely by now had impressed Lot that they were messengers from God, spoke urgently to Lot to remember quickly all his family members within the city--sons-in-laws, sons, daughters, anyone else who belonged to him--and get them out of this place!
Over and over they told him they were just about to destroy the city. Nothing could stop it from happening. It was inevitable. The action of the men of the city had certainly verified to the angels, if not thoroughly to Lot, that judgment was deserved and was on the way. God is patient, yet He always judges sin when it gets to the point that it is virtually begging to be judged and can no longer be ignored.
Yet still the messengers were taking the necessary time to be thorough in their effort to spare every person whom God was counting as righteous through the covenant with Abraham and the intercession he had made.
God had instructed the angels not to destroy the place until Lot and his family were safely gotten out. (Later, at Genesis 19:22, the angels told Lot that they “could do nothing until he arrived at that place[Zoar].”)
Genesis 19:14:
Both of Lot's daughters were engaged to be married. Lot went to them and told them to get up and get out of the place because the Lord was about to destroy the city! Apparently this was the first time that such a prospect as the possibility of God bringing judgment upon the city because of its great sinfulness had ever been introduced in the to-be-family circle. The sons-in-law thought Lot was joking. Obviously they thought everything was pretty much okay in Sodom. . . stock market going up every day . . . new election on the horizon. . . no lack of plenty to eat and drink . . . marrying and giving in marriage. Surely Lot was not serious.
Well, sadly, he was not joking, and this offer of grace upon grace to his sons-in-law was tragically turned down.
Genesis 19:15:
At dawn the angels again urged Lot to hurry, for there was no time to spare. The number who had taken the warning seriously was down to only four, Lot, his wife, and his two daughters, who were there in the house with still barely enough time to escape before the judgment fell. The angels' pressure upon them to move out was a pure act of grace. They were telling them that even when God is extending grace, you have a choice to make. Flee!
Lot and his family had not thought ahead of time or prepared themselves at all as to how to respond at such a time as this. They were like many believers will be when the Rapture occurs, caught completely unaware and unprepared and hesitating to leave the familiar, no matter how troubling and perverse the world has become.
Genesis 19:16:
Lot's response seems unthinkable. He still hesitated. What he had witnessed of violence from his neighbors surely told him that what the angels were saying was true. Surely his fear for his wife and daughters would have caused him to act quickly. But either he was paralyzed by panic or still had lingering doubts that the message the angels spoke was really true, or his wife and daughters were trying to persuade him to stay. Something kept him from acting decisively. The men had to grab them by the hands and bring them out by physical force.