“16 When the men got up to leave, they looked down toward Sodom, and Abraham walked along with them to see them on their way. 17 Then the Lord said, “Shall I hide from Abraham what I am about to do? 18 Abraham will surely become a great and powerful nation, and all nations on earth will be blessed through him. 19 For I have chosen him, so that he will direct his children and his household after him to keep the way of the Lord by doing what is right and just, so that the Lord will bring about for Abraham what He has promised him.”
20 Then the Lord said, “The outcry against Sodom and Gomorrah is so great and their sin so grievous 21 that I will go down and see if what they have done is as bad as the outcry that has reached me. If not, I will know.”
22 The men turned away and went toward Sodom, but Abraham remained standing before the Lord. 23 Then Abraham approached him and said: “Will you sweep away the righteous with the wicked? 24 What if there are fifty righteous people in the city? Will you really sweep it away and not spare the place for the sake of the fifty righteous people in it? 25 Far be it from you to do such a thing—to kill the righteous with the wicked, treating the righteous and the wicked alike. Far be it from you! Will not the Judge of all the earth do right?”
26 The Lord said, “If I find fifty righteous people in the city of Sodom, I will spare the whole place for their sake.” Then Abraham spoke up again: “Now that I have been so bold as to speak to the Lord, though I am nothing but dust and ashes, 28 what if the number of the righteous is five less than fifty? Will you destroy the whole city because of five people?” “If I find forty-five there,” He said, “I will not destroy it.”
29 Once again he spoke to him, “What if only forty are found there?” He said, “For the sake of forty, I will not do it.”
30 Then he said, “May the Lord not be angry, but let me speak. What if only thirty can be found there?” He answered, “I will not do it if I find thirty there.”
31 Abraham said, “Now that I have been so bold as to speak to the Lord, what if only twenty can be found there?” He said, “For the sake of twenty, I will not destroy it.”
32 Then he said, “May the Lord not be angry, but let me speak just once more. What if only ten can be found there?” He answered, “For the sake of ten, I will not destroy it.” 33 When the Lord had finished speaking with Abraham, he left, and Abraham returned home.”
Conversations can get sticky. Right now I’m reading a book about doing life with adult children. What do you do when your adult children make big decisions that are contrary to your values? What do you do when your adult children make big decisions that are contrary to God’s values? What’s the difference between helping and enabling an adult child? If you’ve ever found yourself in the middle of that, you know that is sticky and that the conversations you have with your children become sticky. They are sticky because there is a good deal at stake. Sometimes peace and harmony are at stake. Sometimes trust is at stake. Sometimes the question of how much you can or cannot impact your children is at stake.
What we have before us today is a very sticky conversation between God and Abraham. This conversation is sticky because something is at stake. A city is at stake. Abraham’s view of God’s justice is at stake. The impact and importance of the people of God are at stake.
Abraham didn’t start this sticky conversation. God did. He isn’t afraid of sticky conversations. He invites them. If you want to know God, you have to know that He deals in the real and He expects you to do the same with yourself and with Him. To truly know God is to be invited into some sticky conversations about God’s justice. That is the claim of this sermon: to truly know God is to be invited into some sticky conversations about God’s justice
We will study this in two points. First: confiding in Abraham. Second: will not the judge of all the earth do right? In verses 16-21, God confides in Abraham. In verses 22-33, Abraham asks God the question, “will not the judge of all earth do right?”
First: confiding in Abraham. God usually has multiple purposes for whatever He does. Last week we saw that God visited Abraham to correct him for not telling his wife about the promise. We saw that God visited to call Sarah out of her hopelessness and into faith in the promise. He also stopped at Abraham’s with Sodom in mind; verse 16, “When the men got up to leave, they looked down toward Sodom.”
Abraham didn’t know that God had anything else in mind. We, like Abraham in this moment, tend to think that we know what God is up to when, in fact, we only know part of the whole picture. You meet a new friend who invites you to a Bible study; you go. You know God better. Your life changes. That’s how it works when you hear from God and obey God. You are thankful and you think that you know why God brought that friend into your life. You know one reason why He did, but you don’t know the other twenty-two reasons that God brought that friend into your life. You don’t know that He plans to work through you to help she winds up in deep depression. You don’t know this friend will lovingly rebuke your apathy in five years. You don’t know God’s plan.
Abraham knew some of the reasons that God visited. He didn’t know them all. He didn’t know that he was about to be invited deeper into God’s plan. God was about to confide in Abraham; verse 17, ‘Then the Lord said, “Shall I hide from Abraham what I am about to do?”’ God spoke these words to the two angels. God knows all, but He obviously doesn’t share everything with everyone. He controls all, but He doesn’t explain all that He does to everyone. He only explains it to some and for particular purposes. You see this the role of the prophets throughout Scripture. They are the ones to whom God has revealed His plans. He reveals them beforehand so that anyone with ears to hear might revere Him and know His character. As Amos put it, “surely the Lord God does nothing without revealing His secrets to His servants the prophets.”
God told the prophets His plans so that His people might hear and know and fear Him. God invited Abraham to do so because Abraham was His people; verse 18, “Abraham will surely become a great and powerful nation, and all nations on earth will be blessed through him.” God was doing something substantial in world history by inviting this man into relationship with Him. God considered increased openness on His part was appropriate to this relationship. He was opening Himself up because He and Abraham had a covenant.
Think about it in terms of marriage, which is, of course, a parable of God and His people. When you commit yourself to marriage, you commit yourself to opening up. You also commit yourself to be the sort of person with whom your spouse can open up. Some spouses don’t open up because of their own issues, but some spouses don’t open up because—based on the track record—they don’t think their spouse will actually handle their opening up all that well; often spouses don’t open up because of dynamics on both sides. Maybe a marriage course could help with something that. God had committed Himself to Abraham by way of promises and He thought it was appropriate to open up.
God had chosen to open up to Abraham because He had chosen Abraham for this relationship; verse 19, “For I have chosen him.” God chose Abraham not because He thought Abraham might have the potential for a good relationship; God chose Abraham for no other reason than grace. He didn’t search high and low for good godly potential. He chose Abraham and made Abraham godly. We need to remember that lest we think that God chose us because of anything in us. He didn’t, which, of course, means that are no more worthy than anyone outside of grace.
God chose Abraham for this relationship and to share His confidence for a purpose; verse 19, “For I have chosen him, so that he will direct his children and his household after him to keep the way of the Lord by doing what is right and just, so that the Lord will bring about for Abraham what He has promised him.”
God chose Abraham to multiply faith like Abraham’s. God loves relationship and He chose Abraham not just for relationship Abraham but for relationship with anyone who would have faith like Abraham.
Now we crave relationships because we have relational needs. We get lonely. We are, in different ways, looking for completion. God craves relationships not for any of those reasons but simply because He loves to love. It’s hard to think of any plausible reasons for anything you read in the gospels of Jesus Christ other than the fact that God loves to love.
God chose Abraham to build a community for relationship and He was looking to build a particular kind of community. He wants, in the words of Gordon Wenham, “a God-fearing community.” You see that in verse 19, “I have chosen him, so that he will direct his children and his household after him to keep the way of the Lord by doing what is right and just.” That’s the best metric of the health of God’s people at any point throughout the Scripture—are they a God-fearing community? That’s the best metric of our health as congregation—are we a God-fearing community? If not, nothing will make up for that.
God had His purposes for choosing Abraham just like He has His purposes for choosing us. God considers a certain degree of openness to be appropriate to this relationship. He decided to open up to Abraham; that takes us to verse 20, ‘then the Lord said, “The outcry against Sodom and Gomorrah is so great and their sin so grievous that I will go down and see if what they have done is as bad as the outcry that has reached me. If not, I will know.”’
God was open with Abraham regarding His plans for Sodom. He planned to visit Sodom and, if necessary, execute judgment. Now, of course, God knew what was going on in Sodom. He knew that there was, in the words of Nahum Sarna, “heinous moral and social corruption… arrogant disregard of elementary human rights, [and] a cynical insensitivity to the suffering of others.” He knew the score—He is God—but He wanted Abraham to know that He was going to do due diligence because He knew that Abraham was going to question His justice in dealing with Sodom.
Part of opening yourself up is recognizing that others might not like what they see. God knew that Abraham, like all of us, was very prone to misunderstanding Him especially in the areas of justice. As Calvin puts it, “Although the Lord proclaims aloud that adversity is the rod of His anger, scarcely anyone [listens] to it because through the depraved imaginations of our flesh we ascribe the suffering to some other cause.”
How comfortable are you with consequences for sin? How comfortable are you with consequences for sin for those who do not, in the words of verse 19, do what is right and just? In many ways that’s what this is about. By inviting Abraham into His confidence regarding Sodom, God was telling Abraham what happens to communities who refuse to do what is right and just as God called Abraham’s descendants to do.
This was highly relevant for Abraham because when descendants refused to do what was right and just they would suffer consequences similar to those of Sodom. God told Jeremiah that Jerusalem would fall because God’s [prophets] had become like Sodom and the people of Jerusalem had become like Gomorrah.
God wasn’t simply inviting Abraham into a conversation dealing with sin out there in Sodom. He was inviting him into a conversation about sin much closer to home. We need to remember that because while there are indeed some people who deny that God ever gives Sodom and Gomorrah-like consequences out there today, there are also people who seem eager for God to give Sodom and Gomorrah-like consequences out there today. You don’t see any of that eagerness in Abraham.You don’t see any of that eagerness in Jeremiah who wished that his eyes were fountains so that he would never run out of tears. You don’t see any of that eagerness in Jesus. I do wonder if God would have invited Abraham into His confidence if he were the sort of man who was eager for wrath. We see that Abraham wasn’t that sort of man in our second point: will not the judge of all the earth do right?
As we enter this back and forth between God and Abraham, we must remember that God opened the door to this conversation. He wasn’t surprised that Abraham hung back to talk when the two angels left. He expected it. He had just told Abraham to instruct his children to do what is just and right. He expected that Abraham would expect Him to do to what was just and right; verse 23, ‘Abraham approached [God] and said: “Will you sweep away the righteous with the wicked? What if there are fifty righteous people in the city? Will you really sweep it away and not spare the place for the sake of the fifty righteous people in it? Far be it from you to do such a thing—to kill the righteous with the wicked, treating the righteous and the wicked alike. Far be it from You! Will not the Judge of all the earth do right?”
Now those of us who are familiar with Scripture tend to gloss over this exchange about Sodom because we know the results of the fact-finding mission and we know that Sodom was destroyed. However, we need to put ourselves in Abraham’s place when we read these words. We need to make this a little more personal to understand Abraham’s plea; so let’s make it a little more personal. What if God confided in you that He was on a fact-finding mission regarding America? What if God told you that He was considering doing to us what he did to Sodom? I imagine that you would be quite concerned about the fate of all the people who, in fact, do what is right and just in this nation. I imagine that you would be quite concerned about the fate of all the people in this nation who, in fact, do fear God. Now you find yourself standing much closer to Abraham.
Abraham didn’t want to see the righteous destroyed alongside the wicked any more than you would; “Far be it from you to do such a thing—to kill the righteous with the wicked, treating the righteous and the wicked alike.” Abraham didn’t want to see the whole destroyed because of one wicked part. He was interested in the very same question that so many American Christians are, in fact, interested in today—how large does a faithful remnant have to be to spare the whole?
Now God handles these matters differently throughout history. In this moment in question, Abraham thought it best to drop the size of the righteous part by fives—fifty, forty-five, forty—and then by tens—thirty, twenty; ‘“May the Lord not be angry but let me speak just once more. What if only ten can be found there?” God answered, “For the sake of ten, I will not destroy it.”’
As we read this exchange we need to remember that we are not reading how God learned a thing or two about compassion by way of His good friend Abraham. We are reading how the Judge of all the earth does and will continue to do right. We are reading about how God does and will distinguish the righteous from the wicked. We are reading about how God seems willing, at times, to spare the whole for the sake of one righteous part.
Abraham appealed to God to spare the whole for the sake of a righteous part. He didn’t do so merely for Sodom. He did so because God been clear that Abraham’s descendants would become the righteous part that would bless the whole world. “This is an important issue for Abraham to explore,” writes John Walton, “because his family is to be that righteous minority among the nations.”
Abraham wanted to know what so many believers want to know. He wanted to know whether a small number of godly people actually matter in a wicked world. God’s response makes clear that they do. That’s the good news of moving from fifty to forty-five to forty to thirty to twenty to ten.
You might think that what we do on Sundays and throughout the week as disciples of Jesus isn’t all that impressive. You might wonder what kind of impact we can actually have. We are often so wrong on the way we think about all of this. We tend to think in terms cultural and political influence. We should be thinking in terms of divine influence—as in what sort of influence we can have with God. You see with Sodom that a small number of godly people can have a big influence with God in the midst of an evil world. That’s what is going on with this move from fifty to forty-five to forty to thirty to twenty to ten.
When you come to the gospels, you see that the smallest number of righteous people can have a big influence with God. The gospels ask an even more profound question than Abraham—what if everyone was a hopeless sinner? Hypothetically, how many righteous people would it take for God to not only spare these sinners but also to turn them into God-fearing people? Fifty? Forty-five? Forty? Thirty? Twenty? Ten? The answer is one; that’s Romans 5:19, “through the obedience of the one man the many will be made righteous.”
That one man, Jesus of Nazareth, is the heir of Abraham. Abraham was wondering what sort of impact his descendants could have upon this wicked world. The genealogy of Jesus in the gospel of Matthew begins with Abraham to give you the answer.
I want to close with two acts of imagination and one question. First act of imagination: I want you to imagine that you lived in Sodom and that you lived like Sodom. I want you to imagine that there were ten righteous people and that God did, in fact, spare the city for the sake of those ten. Would you be grateful to those people? Would you make changes to become more like those people? If not, take that as a sign that you might not be grateful to Jesus; you might not make the changes necessary to become more like Jesus.
Second act of imagination: imagine that God spared Sodom for the sake of ten God-fearing people and that you were one of those God-fearing people. You would recognize that your righteousness matters. It matters today. You don’t know the impact that the righteous have with God.
Now the question: Abraham began this sticky conversation concerned that God’s plan regarding Sodom was neither just nor right. Now at the end of this sticky conversation I want you to ask yourself whether you share that concern. When you see His metric for judgment in Sodom, do you think He will do right with America? When you look at His willingness to spare the many sinners for the sake of His Son, do you think His judgment regarding you will prove right and just? What about His judgment regarding your children? What about His judgment regarding your grandchildren? When it comes to matters of justice, wrath, and mercy and the sticky conversations that you find yourself having with God, do you believe that the judge of all the earth will do right? Faith like Abraham’s does. Amen.