Clough Genesis Lesson 55

Abraham’s bargaining God; Abraham’s intercession – Genesis 18:16-33

With Abraham we’ve seen that there’s a new dispensation in history; a new dispensation in history means there’s a new age, that God’s working a little bit differently than He worked in the age before. It doesn’t mean the plan of salvation has changed; it just means that God has slowly led the human race one further step, and the further step that God has led the human race was the step of redemption. With Abraham we have the first instance of an individual body of people being called out from among the mass of the world’s population. We find that Abraham deals with a unique group of people. Before there had been people saved but after Abraham they were a group; before there were individuals, after Abraham comes there’s a group of people that will come and form a channel through which God will bless the world.

The question has been left unanswered up until this point is the nagging one, and that question is what happens to the world outside of Abraham? What about the world at large. If God has selected one group of people to work with, then what about those that are left behind? The Sodom and Gomorrah incident is one of a few in the early chapters of Genesis that teach us what happens to the world at large. When we go back in history and we look, prior to Abraham’s time we have such a thing as special revelation, and we have such a thing as general revelation. Special revelation is revelation of the Scripture, revelation that is given to us in words, explanations, explanation of the gospel, all this is special revelation. General revelation is revelation about God seen in the design of nature, seen in our own soul design. Special revelation, from this point forward, among the world at large degenerates.

There are four instances in Genesis where God shows that special revelation decays; that as special revelation decays and the world and further and further rejects the Scripture, then the world outside of God’s redemptive plan is judged. These four instances are: the flood, there’s a case where the world at large is being judged. The second incident is found in Genesis 11, the tower of Babel; there the world at large outside of God’s plan is being judged. Sodom and Gomorrah, the chapter here, the world at large, represented in Sodom and Gomorrah is being judged. And finally the fourth incident is the incident of the Canaanites in the land. These four instances, a form where populations are either damaged or eradicated, in fact there’s such a violence to God’s annihilation of these that the liberal critic has pointed these out time and again to say ah, the God of the Old Testament is a God of wrath and not a God of love. That’s because our liberal critic hates the idea of any form of justice. All these four attempts are are pictures looking ahead to eternal judgment, that’s all, temporal, physical, concrete historical judgments that are just pictures, just warnings of what it to come to pass on the world apart from God’s grace.

All through these events God teaches us very vital principles. We want to lift some of the principles that we are going to learn from Genesis 18-19 with this third of these four judgments. One of them is that the whole world is responsible for God’s moral laws. Now this is a little switch because we emphasize so heavily that the world is not pretty to the gospels in the sense unless a missionary takes it out. What about those who have never heard? What about those people who have never had anyone share any part of the Scripture with them, and there are millions of them, they still live on this earth; millions of people who have never heard. What about those who have never heard. Genesis 18 and 19 is giving us the answer; they, like anyone else, are held accountable to God’s general moral laws.

Turn to Romans 2 where Paul, dealing with a population that did not have the Bible, the population in the city of Rome, says it clearly. In Romans 2:14 he says that the Gentiles, “For when the Gentiles, who have not the law,” that means they don’t have the Bible, they don’t have the Mosaic Law, they don’t have the 613 do’s and don’ts, they don’t have any detailed exposition of the will of God in any part of their culture. He says when these people, who do not “have the law, do by nature the things contained in the law, [these having not the law] are a law unto themselves.” Now how would the Gentiles who don’t have the law do by nature the things that are in the law. The word “do by nature” means that in the soul of every man is God-consciousness. Every man is conscious of God. I don’t care where he is, I don’t care whether the missionary has gotten to him yet. He may be your unevangelized neighbor. Don’t think that all those who haven’t heard dwell outside of the United States. Well do I remember an incident that occurred while I was going to Dallas Seminary. My wife and I had an apartment and there was a woman there that had left her kids, I don’t know where the husband was, she was left there with these two or three children and I remember one time some of the wives had gotten together and they were trying to present Christ to these small children, and one of these children kept talking about Jesus as a “her.” Who is her, this child asked. In other words, in no part of his training, brought up in a metropolitan area of one of the outstanding cities of the state of Texas and that child had not yet basically heard about Jesus Christ. So we’re not talking about heathen thousands of miles away; we’re talking about the inhabitants of our own city.

What about these people. It says that even those people have a God-consciousness; that is, they know something about God and the something they know about God is His general moral laws. Now they don’t know all the details about sacrifice in the Old Testament; they didn’t know about the tabernacle. In the New Testament they don’t know about baptism and communion maybe. We’re not talking about that; we’re not talking about any way of how to be saved; all we are talking about is general moral laws, theft, murder, that sort of thing. Now the Bible insists and Genesis 18 and 19 will show us clearly that these people without the Bible are responsible for these general moral laws, and God will judge them on the basis of moral laws. Sodom and Gomorrah will be judged, and yet did Sodom and Gomorrah ever have the Torah of Moses? No; Moses was never read in any city, in any building, to any person in Sodom or Gomorrah or any of the other three cities that were there. So without the Bible they are held responsible for the sum of the content of the Bible, because the content of the Bible is available through special revelation passed on through moral laws. They are, after all, the sons of Noah and they are after heirs to at least some of the Scriptures.

Now another thing that comes in as we saw with Genesis 18 and 19; if it is so… if it is so that the person outside of the Church, that the non-Christian lives out there, he’s made in God’s image, he’s held accountable to God’s moral laws, if that’s the case then it logically follows that any Christian citizen must, as part of his Christianity, push for the legislation to promote general moral order in the community. I’m not saying reform the community, I’m not saying save the community, all I’m saying is that there are general moral principles that are tied in with God’s divine institutions that make these institutions, apart from this one, that makes these institutions function. The first institution is human responsibility; the second institution is marriage; the third institution is family; the fourth institution is the state, and particularly these four institutions have to function in an orderly manner in order for the human race to be preserved. And therefore anything that cuts across these institutions is to be legislated against, as a crime against society. So here we’re getting some guidelines to our role as Christian citizens.

Now some questions that you’ll want to just think about for the next two or three weeks because it will take us that long to really give a good account of Sodom and Gomorrah and the particular sins of that city. Here’s some questions that you want to ask yourself: (1) what about victimless crimes? That’s a slogan we read about in the newspapers now, the so-called victimless crimes; in this case homosexuality, prostitution, crimes that involve people who aren’t pushing their wares on other people but they just voluntarily consent among themselves, the so-called consenting adults of victimless crimes. Are victimless crimes victimless? And ought victimless crimes to be legislated against? The unanimous opinion of the world today is that victimless crimes ought not to be legislated against. We’ll see a different story in Genesis 18 and 19. The victimless crimes are crimes and ought to be legislated against will be our position and we’ll have to prove it as we go on.

Another question: how can general morality be legislated without giving men the impression they’re saved by works. That’s another question that has to be dealt with. Are we compromising our gospel by grace and by faith alone to argue that the Christian must see to it that general moral law is upheld? That’s a question and a good one; we’ll have to answer that one too.

Another question: when does God get to the breaking point when He destroys a civilization? What are the signs of the end of a social order; not the end of all history but the end of that particular group of people? When does God simply say I have had it, I eradicate it physically from history. We’ll learn about that in Genesis 18 and 19.

And finally, another valuable question: what is the role of the Christian prayer warrior? Ought he to pray for judgment or pray against judgment? What is the role of Christian intercessory prayer? That too is something that will be answered in Genesis 18 and 19.

Now for the incident itself; beginning in Genesis 18:16 we find the men who had been talking to Abraham and Sarah, announcing the birth of Isaac, announcing the fact that this couple who was childless, who couldn’t possibly have any children, are now in a position where God is going to miraculously intervene in both the father and the mother so both sperm and ovum are fertile and will be brought to full and healthy term. You have the supernaturally born Isaac. After all that, and that heavy, heavy doctrine of redemption, now in verse 16, “the men arose from there, and looked toward Sodom….”

To get a little background geographically on Sodom and on the area we want to look at some slides taken from that area and maybe this way we can better visualize the story. Here is a map of the south end of the Dead Sea. You’ll notice there’s a long green area here just south of the Dead Sea; this does not mean grass is growing there, this is physical release map and the green means very, very low. This is part of a great rift; it starts up in turkey, runs through Palestine, runs all the way down across the Middle East and into the eastern side of Africa, the so-called rift valley, the place where Leaky obtained many of his finds on early man. So this rift is an important one and apparently on the scale of the Bible was being rifted open, the earth was being cracked open along that line sometime in the time of the book of Job. Job was written over here, during Job’s period the Pleistocene epic, the ice age was there, he speaks of the frozen seas at the latitude of Arabia, and he speaks of great tectonic activity. So during this period of time we find this rift develop.

Well, the rift had instabilities in it, and one of those instabilities is located right there, you can see on the map of the Dead Sea there’s a protrusion of land on the southeast corner. Apparently prior to the days of Sodom and Gomorrah the Dead Sea stopped right at that protrusion and the smaller area of water was something that filled in after the destruction of the cities of the plain. The cities of the plain, the pentapolis, is located under this water today. The top part of that Dead Sea is about 1,000 to 1,500 feet deep. The bottom part of it or south of land protrusion is only 10 to 15 feet deep. So there’s a remarkable difference in depth, and from the way we can read historical writings, Josephus and other men who lived in the area and saw it, that the area in the south has filled in much since the time of Christ, for there’s a Roman road that leaves the west coast of the Red Sea there and picks up over here in the protrusion. Romans rode their chariots across there in the time of Christ. So that area, we know, must have been flooded in since the days of the New Testament. But nevertheless, that area was left as a monument.

Looking at it more closely we see the boundary here between Jordan on the east, Israel on the west, and we have this road, this highway, this red line that runs down and it runs around a place called Har Sedom, which means the mount of Sodom. And in this area we believe the cities are. There’s one ruin area located at the intersection of this highway running down and the highway that runs along the west side of the Dead Sea called Zohar and may be the site of one of the five cities that was not destroyed. Now looking as you drive along that road off into the area, this is beyond the south end of the Dead Sea, this all you see, this vast wilderness area; nothing grows there, it’s forever damned. It’s a land that is sown with salt so that things can’t grow there, and represents a tremendous picture of desolation. Spend time looking at that for a few minutes just to load your mind’s eye, your imagination with a scene because it’s that scene that plays such a heavy role in understanding Sodom and Gomorrah for thousands of years after the incident we’re studying. Going further along the highway there are these cliffs; cliffs rifted upward with the opening of this great crack and then later on apparently had a lot of salt and debris. Legend goes, and we believe that’s all it is in this case, legend goes that that pillar is Lot’s wife. But we do know that there’s a pillar that was there in Biblical times because Genesis 19 says so. But we can’t, obviously prove that unless you cut it open and see there’s a skeleton inside but that gives you an idea of the desolation that was wrought in this particular area of the world.

Now looking at the text: in Genesis 18:16 the men raised up and they start to leave Abram’s tent. Here’s the Dead Sea, here’s the protrusion of land; remember the Dead Sea probably stopped there at the time; here is Hebron and there is apparently some sort of a road that runs down there into this area of the plain. And the men begin to walk down that road, they begin to leave Abraham’s tent at Hebron. But then from the middle part of verse 16 on through the end of verse 19 there’s an interruption and in the Hebrew language the action is sequential from the top of verse 16 where it says, “And the men rose up from there, and looked toward Sodom,” and then skip with your eye all the way down to verse 20, “And the LROD said, Because the cry of Sodom and Gomorrah is very great,” and the Lord is talking. Now in between those two verses, from the “and Abraham went” clause in verse 16 to the “which He has spoken” clause at the end of verse 19 is a set of circumstantial clauses. That means the writer of the text is laying things that he wants you to see in your mental picture. You want to read the Bible with imagination; you’ve got to fill it in for yourself and so the author gives you all of this material. And so he wants you to see things and I’ll try to point these out.

In Genesis 18:16 it says Abraham literally “was walking with them to bring them on the way.” And it’s Hebrew participle. It doesn’t say he walked, it’s a Hebrew participle, it means he was walking, walking, walking, walking, walking, walking, walking. When the Hebrew participle is used it’s a motion picture tense; the eye of the reader doesn’t behold the start of the action or the end of the action, he just sees the action happening. And so here’s the picture: four men walk down that road as they walk out of the east side of Hebron; one is the Lord, two are angels, and one is Abraham. And they walk along the road.

Then a remarkable thing: Beginning at Genesis 18:17 on through the end of verse 19 is a soliloquy, that is, God is speaking to Himself; He’s speaking to Himself but it’s out loud. We know He’s speaking to Himself because he’s not addressing Abraham; notice in verse 17 and 18 He’s talking about Abraham; He amuses Himself, let’s see, should I let Abraham in on what I’m about to do or not. That’s the question. And so the picture is, perhaps, if you were filming this and imagining how you would shoot it with the camera, you’d have the Lord looking down, maybe at the path, and musing out loud to Himself with Abraham walking within a few feet from Him hears what this angel of the Lord is saying.

Now the remarkable thing is what the angel of the Lord is saying, for this soliloquy in verses 17-19 explains the whole Sodom and Gomorrah incident and it explains it so fully that we now know why Sodom and Gomorrah becomes an everlasting symbol to the last chapter of the last book of the Bible. So it will pay us to devote some attention, hard attention, to these three verses.

Let’s start [Genesis 18:17]; they’re walking down the road and Jehovah says, “Shall I hide from Abraham the thing that I am doing.” And these verbs are participles, “shall I be hiding,” “shall I really be hiding from Abraham what I am doing.” This is a future instance use of the participle; it means the action is already in progress. In Texan English he would say, shall I hide from Abraham the thing which I am fixing to do. And that would be an accurate translation because the judgment is about to take place and the fact that it’s a future instance participle sets us up for the whole intercessory prayer because what it says is that no matter what Abraham prays the prayer will fail; no intercession can be made for Sodom and Gomorrah at this point. The judgment, the wheels of judgment are already in motion and this civilization, this group of people are going to be erased from history. The question is not what’s going to happen to Sodom and Gomorrah, that’s clear. The question is will this have some affect on Abraham and his seed; that’s the question.

Now Genesis 18:18-19 zero in on the question more tightly. “Seeing that Abraham shall surely become a great and mighty nation, and all the nations of the earth shall be blessed in him,” the recitation of the Abrahamic Covenant. The main verb in verse 18 is “Abraham will surely become.” In the Hebrew when you have a main verb and you put the infinitive absolute on the main verb the infinitive absolute goes in to strengthen the mood of the verb. The mood of this verb is indicative which means it’s the mood of reality. “Abraham will surely become a great nation.” And what you have stated in verse 18 is God’s absolute, irresistible, sovereign will; nothing will stop Abraham from becoming a great nation.

Verses 18-19 are going to give us a beautiful picture of sovereignty and human responsibility. I’m going to draw a little graph up here, put verses 18-19 all together, all parts of those verses, and maybe this will kind of be a review for some of you to see how it is that God can be totally sovereign and yet at the same time work through the responsible creature. Verse 17 is saying this will surely come to pass, no doubt about it. It will surely come to pass. Abraham will be a mighty nation. And what will be the result of Abraham becoming a mighty nation; it says further in verse 18, “and all the earth will be blessed in and through him.”

“All the earth will be blessed,” who is “all the earth”? “All the earth” are non-Jews. And what does that mean? “All the earth” here refers to Gentiles; it refers to all outside the seed of Abraham. So verse 18 links all men to Abraham in a relationship and it says that all men, wherever they may be, on whatever continent, whatever race, all men will be blessed, not because of themselves, they’ll be blessed through Abraham.

Now included in the “all men,” men that exist on the earth, men of all different races, included in all these people are the people of Sodom and Gomorrah. So we could apply the principle at the end of verse 18 and paraphrase it this way: “And Sodom and Gomorrah shall be blessed in him.” If there is any spiritual blessing to accrue to Sodom and Gomorrah it will have to be by means of Abraham. We’ve seen that happen already; turn back to Genesis 14. Remember when Sodom and Gomorrah had been ripped off by a group of international terrorists, what did Abraham do? Abraham sent a private army of 318 trained Bible-believing killers and they handled the problem of terrorism the way it ought to be handled; they eliminated the terrorists, and as a result of this Sodom and Gomorrah obtained their freedom. So in Genesis 14:17, “And the king of Sodom went out to meet him after his return,” and the idea is that he went out to greet him; thank you Abraham, you’ve given my freedom, we were under bondage to these pirates and you’ve eliminated them, thank you very much. That’s Genesis 14; Sodom and Gomorrah are being blessed in Abraham.

But what is the moral state of Sodom and Gomorrah in chapter 14? The same as it is in chapter 13. Turn back to Genesis 13:13, there you’ll see what kind of a city Sodom and Gomorrah was even then. “But the men of Sodom were wicked and sinners before the LORD exceedingly.” So notice God blesses even though they are morally rebellious against him. So, is God blessing Sodom and Gomorrah through Abraham? You bet He is, in a very easy to see, clear, physical way.

Now in Genesis 18, that we’re seeing today, Abraham is going to go on to pray for Sodom and Gomorrah, once again showing that if Sodom and Gomorrah are to be saved from God’s judgment it will be by Abraham once again; blessings will flow to Sodom and Gomorrah because of Abraham. This sets you up for why Abraham is going to respond the way he’s going to respond. So Genesis 18:18 teaches the absolute success of Abraham in history.

Now let’s move to Genesis 18:19, “For I know him,” now if you just stop there in verse 19 you’ll think it reads… and this is why please pay careful attention to verse 19 or you’ll be wholly misreading it. In verse 19 it looks like it’s saying “for I know him,” and this is what I know about Abraham, that he’s a good guy and he’s going to command his children after him to keep the law. That’s what it looks like but that’s not what the original text says. “For I know him,” and then the “that” isn’t what he knows, “that” is the purpose of the knowledge. So we would translate it, “For I know him in order that he will command his children,” and it goes on if you read through, that “they shall keep the way of the LORD, to do justice and judgment,” and then you’ll see a second “that” about two-thirds of the way through verse 19. See where “that” is; “that” is another purpose clause, it’s the second purpose clause in this verse, “in order that the LORD may bring upon Abraham that which He has spoken of him.”

So now let’s look at our chart and chart this out, make sure we get the sense of verse 19. God says “I have known Abraham.” The word doesn’t mean omnisciently; of course He knew him omnisciently. The idea of knowing means take a special interest in. It’s like a teacher, he has a whole class of 30 or 40 kids but there are just 3 or 4 of them that occupies his attention, for better or worse reasons. But nevertheless, the teacher takes special interest, I have known him; the parent comes in for parent-teacher meeting and says do you know… I know him! Well now the teacher knows all of them but he has special knowledge of that one, he’s in a special relationship to him. The Bible calls this foreknowledge or election. And so he says I have foreknown him, or “I know him,” I’ve taken a special interest in him, in order that he will become obedient to the Word, he will respond, +V, positive volition, that he will respond to the words I am teaching. I initiate this relationship and I am training him in obedience.

Now that’s the first purpose clause of verse 19. What is the purpose again, of God’s work? To make Abraham obedient. That’s what we call the immediate purpose; that’s the immediate purpose or what we’ll call the near purpose. But that’s not the only reason, God has something else on His mind and that’s the last part of verse 19, “in order that Jehovah may bring upon Abraham that which He has spoken,” and that’s the final cause, the final purpose, or the far purpose.

So now notice the diagram. And here you have sovereignty and here you have human responsibility working perfectly hand in hand. You have on the one hand the sovereign purpose of God, verse 18, that it will surely come to pass, but verse 19 goes on to qualify it; in order for it to come to pass what must take place? An obedient response to Scripture; that’s what must take place. The elect people of God are not going to be automatically borne along to the land of blessing without a real historic response to the Scripture. There’s got to be that. We’re not talking shadow talk; there’s got to be real, physical behavior, lifestyle changes and that’s what he’s saying. Abraham is going to do it and he’s going to teach his children to do it.

Then notice in the midst of verse 19 two words labeling what it is their children are going to obey and those words are interesting. I wonder how many caught it, where it says, “they will keep the way of Jehovah to do” what? “justice and judgment.” Now that’s interesting, those are words usually reserved in the Old Testament for the Torah, Moses’ 613 do’s and don’ts. Did Abraham have those 613 do’s and don’ts? No. Abraham is 400 years before the Mosaic Law. Well, now you say, where are his children going to get the do’s and don’ts from? The Scriptures don’t really tell us. This is why we left back with the God-consciousness of man; there’s a general moral condition in the human heart and that’s where they’re going to learn the general morality of God and God said I’m going to train Abraham so he’ll be responsive to his conscience, so he will be responsive to this general moral order that I have.

Now can you see the link between what I’ve just said and this whole Sodom and Gomorrah incident, because I think most of you know what’s fixing to happen here? God, as He meditates, as he walks down this thing He’s saying this: I wonder whether I should tell Abraham about this, and He’s saying I should tell Abraham about this because if I do, then it will act as a motivation for his obedience. That’s the whole story of Sodom and Gomorrah—the story of Sodom and Gomorrah is not about the homosexuals that get it. The story of Sodom and Gomorrah is about the effect Sodom and Gomorrah has on the redeemed. Sodom and Gomorrah is forever pictured in Bible history as look at it baby, you look at that crud that I showed on the slide, that’s what God’s saying, just look at the desolation, take a long walk by there and see my wrath and be warned that that’s what backs up My Scripture. And the person who turns away from Me faces back. And so what did God do? What better location do you suppose God could have than locating Sodom and Gomorrah right on the edge of Israel, so they don’t have to travel far. All they have to do is take a walk; it’s only 20-25 miles away from the main north/south thoroughfare. You could walk that in a day easy, and so He produced a monument to His wrath and that’s the large picture of what’s happening here. Now let’s go into the fine details. Genesis 18:18-19 has shown God’s lesson; here’s the lesson plan, what He’s trying to do.

Genesis 19:20, the conversation, the soliloquy stops. The angel of the Lord or Jehovah turns around and he looks at Abraham and He begins to talk to him. “[And the LORD said] Because the cry of Sodom and Gomorrah is great, and because their sin is very grievous,” [21, “I will go down now and see whether they have done altogether according to the cry of it,”] I’m going to go down, I want to see it, and see if they’re really done what I think they’ve done. It’s very anthropomorphic, verses 20-21, very much like man. In verse 20 notice the word “send”, please notice that because it’s instrumental to what we’re going to conclude in two weeks from this whole passage. Sodom and Gomorrah, outside of Israel, outside of the Bible, outside of the Mosaic Law, is held accountable for violation of moral law. It doesn’t matter whether they are Christians or non-Christian, it doesn’t matter whether they are believers or not, it doesn’t matter whether they are under covenant obligation, it does not matter whether they’re in touch with the Christian church, it doesn’t matter, they are people made in God’s image as all men are and they are held to general moral law. That’s the power of this whole chapter. It ought to creep on you slowly as we work through this passage together, that Genesis 18 and 19 is hitting me in a place I’ve never been hit before. Here people are damned without the Bible; how can this be. Because they’re creatures made in God’s image and held accountable.

And God says I’m going to go down, I’m going to see, and then I’ll know in verse 21. What’s this all about? Is this is a denial that God who is omniscient, omnipresent, doesn’t know what’s really going on in the city, He’s going to go down and see it? No, it’s a way the Old Testament has of making things very vivid. This verse parallels that in the tower of Babylon incident, Genesis 11; I’ll go down and see this tower that they’ve made. For those of you who have never been in the military you can’t share this but for those who have been in the military know that when you are in charge of getting a unit ready for the IG, the inspector general, and you have to put all the shine everywhere and get all the equipment operational and functioning and all your maneuvers better be down pat, and then the big boys come. I don’t mean just your commanding officer; I mean the commanding of the commanding officer of his commanding officer shows up on scene. And it’s this kind of fellow that walks on the scene, when he walks through all I can say is if you’ve ever seen this happen, if you’ve ever been involved in this there’s all of a sudden aurora that develops; all of a sudden it’s just understood among everybody that this guy may not be part of the trinity but he’s very close and one had better watch what one does in his presence and whatever he says determines the destiny of your unit. It’s an on scene inspection by the chief.

Now that’s what you’ve got in Genesis 18:21, that’s what the Bible is picturing, an on scene inspection, that Jesus Christ in His preincarnate state is going to walk into that city; He’s going to send two of His officials, basically, into the city and they’re going to be homosexually assaulted, so that in the future when somebody says oh, You were unfair to judge Sodom and Gomorrah, God can say what they did to the people who cried out for justice they did to My own IG personnel; I sent them into that city and they received the same treatment everybody else did, and so therefore this is the height of it, it’s the height in the sense of contract. It’s not God judging from a billion miles away; it’s God getting His feet dirty with the dust of the city itself: I’m going to go down and I want to see if they’re really doing what I think they’re doing.

In Genesis 18:22, “And the men turned their faces from there, and went toward Sodom: but Abraham kept standing before Jehovah.” Now verse 22 is a vital lesson for all of us; the tremendous grace attitude this man has. It’s always nice to cheer when somebody else gets theirs, but again here’s the scene: the Dead Sea out here, the city of Hebron here, the road that moves eastward over to that ridge line and back down into the cities of the plain, and the two angels walk ahead. We know this because in Genesis 19:1 you see that when Lot opens his front door, and they knock, there are only two, not three. And so Jehovah, the angel of the Lord, Christ in His preincarnate form, has stopped and He and Abraham have held back on the path, everybody’s walking this way and the Hebrew uses a very picturesque thing. In verse 22 it says and “Abraham kept standing before the LORD.” Now I don’t know whether it’s legitimate to conclude this but it almost makes you think that as the two men walking, and they’d already announced plans to go and they were already in motion that Abraham suddenly planted his two feet in front of the Lord and said wait a minute, we want to talk. And if that’s the case and I’ve correctly inferred the force of the verb, it shows you the aggressiveness of this man’s faith; he is not going to let the Lord move unless he has some [not sure of word, sounds like: water].

And the fantastic words that Abraham has is grace and here is where we as Christians have to be very careful. Yes, like Lot we can become vexed with those that oppress; and we ought to oppose them. We ought never, never-never, to relish in God’s utter damnation. It’s not something even believers ought to relish in. And here you have Abraham’s, though his prayer of intercession will fail, it’s not because his attitude is wrong, it’s because of something else. Here you have the first intercessory prayer of Scripture… the first intercessory prayer of Scripture. What does the word “intercessory” mean? There are two words you want to know in connection with prayer: intercession and supplication. Supplication is like our prayer worksheet; it has requests on it, you pray Lord, we need this, we need this, we need this, we need this, for this reason, that reason and that reason. That’s supplication. Intercession is when you go before God and you pray that he would give another chance to someone else; that is intercessory prayer. And always when you associate intercessory prayer it’s always a withholding, God hold it, hold it, don’t judge them yet, we plead for more grace, for a few more hours, for a few more years of history so that we can respond to the Scripture. That is intercessory prayer. And here you find a perfect biblical model of that kind of praying.

And Abraham begins, and you’ll notice in Genesis 18:23 he begins his prayer, not on the basis of the covenant. These people aren’t under the covenant; he can’t plead his prayer on the basis that You have promised this to take place. That is impossible; God hasn’t made any promises about Sodom and Gomorrah so he can’t claim those. Well then, how is he going to pray? He’s going to pray back to God’s character; God is sovereign, God is righteous, God is just, God is loving, God is omniscient, omnipotent, omnipresent, immutable and eternal and you’ve got to go back to the character of God and say God, You are this kind of a God, please, on this basis. So watch.

He starts off in verse 23 and he says, “Will you also destroy the righteous with the wicked?” And he picks two interesting words. There are many words in the Old Testament for wicked; the word “wicked” here stands for that which is crocked and in chaotic state. It’s the same word used in Isaiah, “For the wicked are like the troubled sea that cannot rest.” In other words, this word looks at the person who rebels against God’s moral law from the standpoint of his lifestyle that results. This is looking at the behavioral lifestyle resulting from that rebellion, just one big pile of chaos. Now if you don’t think rebellion against the Scriptures causes this to take place in people’s lives you have never watched people.

I have seen people come in a situation for counseling that are literal basket cases, not because they’re ready to go off to the funny farm, not because of that, but these people are so chaotic in their life I don’t think they eat, get up, go to bed, any time at the same time; I don’t think they do anything in their life regularly. And it’s a common symptom of people in deep psychiatric and psychological trouble. It all began because they had no routine of anything in their life, literally nothing was regular. In the Old Testament what is it? Six days you will labor, one day you won’t; regularity in your behavior during the week. You will do this in the morning, you will do that in the evening; regularity in your life. It doesn’t mean you have to be an automaton but it means some place in your life you ought to be able to cruise; you ought to have habit patterns worked out where you don’t have to think through what am I going to do today, at this time this day I always do this and you do it and relax and enjoy it. So we find, then, that we have chaos resulting from rebellion against Scripture.

The word “righteous” here that he picks likewise means straight, and it too points to the lifestyle, the people that are obedient to the Scripture. This is just their character. Now he makes a plea, in Genesis 18:23 down to verse 25; you will probably have to make pleas like that for your own community, for your own nation. “[And Abraham drew near and said,] Will You destroy those who are straight from those who are crooked. [24] Perhaps there are fifty [righteous] within the city; will you also destroy and not spare…” them? [25] “That be far from thee,” You who are the judge of all the earth, you see what he appeals to? Incidentally, for those who believe in the evolution of religion, please notice verse 25; back in the early stages of Israel’s religion they believed that Jehovah was judge of all the earth, not just the earth inside Israel.

So we have the petition, casting himself completely on God and His mercy, and the petition isn’t directed so much that he doesn’t want to see God’s judgment. This is kind of hard so I’ll do my best to try to explain the spirit of this text. He’s not saying that it’s bad for God to judge. All he’s interested in is Lord, have you given those people enough of a chance; that’s what he’s interested in, give them another chance. They’ve had this chance; they’ve had this chance, but please give them another chance. So the concern of the intercessory prayer is that every man in the human race at least has a good chance to respond. It’s concern, and it’s love for people. And we’ve read the text.

[Genesis 18:25-32, “That be far from thee to do after this manner, to slay the righteous with the wicked: and that the righteous should be as the wicked, that be far from thee. Shall not the Judge of all the earth do right? [26] And the LORD said, If I find in Sodom fifty righteous within the city, then I will spare all the place for their sakes. [27] And Abraham answered and said, Behold now, I have taken upon me to speak unto the Lord, who am but dust and ashes: [28] Suppose there shall lack five of the fifty righteous: will Thou destroy all the city for lack of five? And He said, If I find there forty and five, I will not destroy it. [29] And he spoke unto Him yet again, and said, Suppose there shall be forty found there. And he said, I will not do it for forty’s sake. [30] And he said unto Him, O let not the Lord be angry, and I will speak: Suppose there shall be thirty found there. And he said, I will not do it, if I find thirty there. [31] And he said, Behold now, I have taken upon me to speak unto the Lord: Suppose there shall be twenty found there. And He said, I will not destroy it for twenty’s sake. [32] And he said, O, let not the Lord be angry, and I will speak yet but this once: Suppose ten shall be found there. And He said, I will not destroy it for ten’s sake.”]

You see from verse 26-32 there is this bargaining that goes on, and the bargaining consists of a set of numbers. He starts out with fifty, then forty-five, then forty, then thirty, then twenty, then ten. Six requests, incidentally, the number of man in the Scriptures; six intercessory requests. Why these numbers? Why these numbers? Why not seventy, a hundred? We can only guess but here’s the best guess that I could suggest. Ten is the number you get if you make all the plurals of Lot’s family into two, like if Lot had sons and you say the minimum amount of sons that he could have to justify the plural noun is two, you get ten; ten would be the minimum number in Lot’s own family. Fifty, there are five cities on that plain and perhaps what was going on, we can’t be dogmatic, perhaps what was going on in Abraham’s mind was he was saying okay, I think t here’s ten over here in Sodom, maybe there’s ten over here in Gomorrah, maybe there’s another family like that over in Zeboiim, and so on and so on, so let’s just try for fifty; Lord, will you stop it if there’s fifty people that are tying to get on and respond to Scripture and respond to the moral law that you’ve made known to them? And the answer in verse 26 is yes.

And God goes through this at point after point after point, yes, I’ll withhold it, until we get down to that very last one, verse 32. And Abraham, you can tell, is very timorous in coming before God like this, he’s saying oh, don’t be angry, but let me bargain once more. This is interesting, this intercessory prayer, here’s the Jew bargaining. We make fun of the Jewish ability to bargain; well look where they got their training. If you had bargained with God for 2,000 years I would rather suspect you too would have rather high skills in bargaining, and the very first prayer you find a Jew praying he’s bargaining over numbers. Fifty, forty-five, it sounds like an auction.

Now he comes down to the last time, this last level of ten, and this keys us as to why the prayer wasn’t answered and what was right about it. The prayer was not going to be answered because God could not find enough justification to keep this mess going forever. In other words, when a civilization gets to the point where the forces against the Word of God become so powerful against the few godly citizens that remain that those people cannot socially survive under the pressure and must be evacuated from the scene, when that point is reached damnation comes upon the people. Now exactly where that takes place, say the United States or any other country we don’t know. I tried in preparation for this lesson to find some good reliable figures on the second millennia population levels of these cities so I could give you a percent and I was unable to obtain that population figure but if you’re talking only ten people city and then finally at the end, only two people per city, it’s a very small percent. And it shows you that God will restrain judgment, restrain judgment, restrain judgment, restrain judgment until there’s only just a few believers left. But there will come that time when this configuration takes place and a social entity becomes so highly detrimental to the survival of moral law that it simply must be eliminated from history and this is going to be eliminated, complete with sound effects and all.

The final verse, Genesis 18:33, God leaves Abraham, goes his way, the intercession stops and the judgment begins. [“And the LORD went His way, as soon as He had ceased talking with Abraham: and Abraham returned unto his place.”]

Now we said that Sodom and Gomorrah was to teach a lesson, not to the people in Sodom and Gomorrah but to people and mankind at large all down during history. Let’s just take one further look at the area. Visualize this for just a few minutes in your mind and then I’ll conclude the lesson by taking you on a chain of references in the Scripture to show you that again and again this image is used by the writers of the Torah, Moses; by the writers of the Nabiim, the Prophets; by the writers of the New Testament Gospels, and finally by the apostle John himself in that great last book of the Bible, The Book of the Revelation. That scene of total desolation, nothing grows there, you can’t see trees, you can’t see shrubs, you see very little water. It’s the picture of death and wrath.

Now let’s watch the Scriptures and how they make use of that scene. This is just a sampling, we could take you on many more but we haven’t got time to do it so we’ll just hurriedly take you to a chain of references so you can get a feel for how later the sons of Abraham felt about this city. Deuteronomy 29:23, “The whole land is brimstone, and burning salt, it is not sown, it doesn’t bear, and no grass grows; like the overthrow of Sodom and Gomorrah, Admah and Zeboiim, which the LORD overthrew in His anger, and in His wrath.” That city and that valley of the plain becomes a metaphor that is used dozens of times in the Bible.

Turn to the prophet Isaiah, Isaiah 1:9, and how does this great prophet begin, talking to his own nation. “Except the LORD of hosts had left unto us a very small remnant we should have been as Sodom, and we should have been like Gomorrah.” The only thing that saved them was that they had a godly remnant, but if there hadn’t been they would have been overthrown. Isaiah 13:19, talking here not about Jerusalem but about Babylon, about a Gentile city, just to show you that the Sodom and Gomorrah imagery applies within the covenant and outside of the covenant. “And Babylon, the glory of the kingdoms, the beauty of the Chaldeans, shall be as when God overthrew Sodom and Gomorrah.”

Jeremiah 23:14, speaking here about the Jewish city of Jerusalem, “I have seen and the prophets of Jerusalem an horrible thing; they commit adultery, and they walk in lies; they strengthen also the hands of evildoers, that none does return form his wickedness; they are all of them unto me as Sodom, and the inhabitants thereof as Gomorrah.”

Ezekiel 16:48, this is a divine oath, “As I live, says the Lord God, Sodom, thy sister, has not done, she nor her daughters, as you have done, you and your daughters. [49] Behold, this was the iniquity of your sister, Sodom: pride, fullness of bread, and abundance of idleness were in her and in her daughters, neither did she strengthen the hand of the poor and needy. [50] And they were haughty, and committed abomination before Me; therefore, I took them away,” and you could go through the Minor Prophets, Amos 4:11, Zephaniah 2:9, but let’s go to Matthew.

Matthew 10:14, Jesus commissions the disciples to go through the villages 2 by 2 and of all the metaphors that Jesus could possibly have used out of the Old Testament, which one does He pick to commission His apostles? Which vision ought those apostles to have of the cities they went into to tell them that Christ had come? “And whosoever shall not receive you, nor her your words, when you depart out of that house or city, shake off the dust of your feet,” which means that the dust has no part, it’s a picture of separation. [15] “Verily I say unto you, It shall be more tolerable for the land of Sodom and Gomorrah in the day of judgment, than for that city.”

We could go on to Jude 1, 7, Revelation 11:8 but let’s go to Revelation 22:14, the last chapter of the last book. “Blessed are they that do His commandments, that they may have the right to the tree of life, and may enter in through the gates into the city. [15] For outside...” and the list here is a list of the same kind of things attributed elsewhere to Sodom and Gomorrah so we know that Sodom and Gomorrah, though not explicitly mentioned in verse 15 is behind the metaphor used. “For outside are dogs, and sorcerers, and whoremongers [fornicators] and murders, idolaters and whosoever loves and makes a lie.”

In the words of today, Sodom and Gomorrah, the event, was given to believer to remind us of God’s damnation, that in God’s plan there are not equal rights, there are unequal rights and there is eternal discrimination, not on the basis of your education, not on the basis of your color, not on the basis of your tribe; on the basis of whether or not you respond to Him. Those who accept are included; those who reject are simply excommunicated, simply removed. Now but for the grace of God verse 15 lists us; there’s not a person here, including myself, that doesn’t within his sin nature have the capacity for any one of the sins mentioned in verse 15. The only thing that makes a difference is God’s grace, and so after this sobering session in Sodom and Gomorrah maybe we can sing hymn 403, Great is Thy Faithfulness, with renewed vision.