The Lord appeared again to Abraham near the oak grove belonging to Mamre. One day Abraham was sitting at the entrance to his tent during the hottest part of the day. He looked up and noticed three men standing nearby. When he saw them, he ran to meet them and welcomed them, bowing low to the ground. “My lord,” he said, “if it pleases you, stop here for a while. Rest in the shade of this tree while water is brought to wash your feet. And since you’ve honored your servant with this visit, let me prepare some food to refresh you before you continue on your journey.” “All right,” they said. “Do as you have said.” So Abraham ran back to the tent and said to Sarah, “Hurry! Get three large measures of your best flour, knead it into dough, and bake some bread.” Then Abraham ran out to the herd and chose a tender calf and gave it to his servant, who quickly prepared it. When the food was ready, Abraham took some yogurt and milk and the roasted meat, and he served it to the men. As they ate, Abraham waited on them in the shade of the trees. “Where is Sarah, your wife?” the visitors asked. “She’s inside the tent,” Abraham replied. Then one of them said, “I will return to you about this time next year, and your wife, Sarah, will have a son!” Sarah was listening to this conversation from the tent. Abraham and Sarah were both very old by this time, and Sarah was long past the age of having children. So she laughed silently to herself and said, “How could a worn-out woman like me enjoy such pleasure, especially when my master—my husband—is also so old?” Then the Lord said to Abraham, “Why did Sarah laugh? Why did she say, ‘Can an old woman like me have a baby?’ Is anything too hard for the Lord? I will return about this time next year, and Sarah will have a son.” Sarah was afraid, so she denied it, saying, “I didn’t laugh.” But the Lord said, “No, you did laugh.” Then the men got up from their meal and looked out toward Sodom. As they left, Abraham went with them to send them on their way. “Should I hide my plan from Abraham?” the Lord asked. “For Abraham will certainly become a great and mighty nation, and all the nations of the earth will be blessed through him. I have singled him out so that he will direct his sons and their families to keep the way of the Lord by doing what is right and just. Then I will do for Abraham all that I have promised.” So the Lord told Abraham, “I have heard a great outcry from Sodom and Gomorrah, because their sin is so flagrant. I am going down to see if their actions are as wicked as I have heard. If not, I want to know.” The other men turned and headed toward Sodom, but the Lord remained with Abraham. Abraham approached him and said, “Will you sweep away both the righteous and the wicked? Suppose you find fifty righteous people living there in the city—will you still sweep it away and not spare it for their sakes? Surely you wouldn’t do such a thing, destroying the righteous along with the wicked. Why, you would be treating the righteous and the wicked exactly the same! Surely you wouldn’t do that! Should not the Judge of all the earth do what is right?” And the Lord replied, “If I find fifty righteous people in Sodom, I will spare the entire city for their sake.” Then Abraham spoke again. “Since I have begun, let me speak further to my Lord, even though I am but dust and ashes. Suppose there are only forty-five righteous people rather than fifty? Will you destroy the whole city for lack of five?” And the Lord said, “I will not destroy it if I find forty-five righteous people there.” Then Abraham pressed his request further. “Suppose there are only forty?” And the Lord replied, “I will not destroy it for the sake of the forty.” “Please don’t be angry, my Lord,” Abraham pleaded. “Let me speak—suppose only thirty righteous people are found?” And the Lord replied, “I will not destroy it if I find thirty.” Then Abraham said, “Since I have dared to speak to the Lord, let me continue—suppose there are only twenty?” And the Lord replied, “Then I will not destroy it for the sake of the twenty.” Finally, Abraham said, “Lord, please don’t be angry with me if I speak one more time. Suppose only ten are found there?” And the Lord replied, “Then I will not destroy it for the sake of the ten.” When the Lord had finished his conversation with Abraham, he went on his way, and Abraham returned to his tent.
Genesis 18:1-33
There’s a lot here to study so let’s start at the beginning. The chapter starts by telling us that “the Lord appeared again to Abraham”. Did you catch that? The Lord appeared to Abraham. It goes on to say that Abraham “noticed three men standing nearby”. We later learn that “The other men turned and headed toward Sodom, but the Lord remained with Abraham.” The Lord, the Creator of the Universe, actually appeared to Abraham in the form of a man! Think about this. We know that God is three persons in one God, the Holy Trinity, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, right? So, which of those persons of God is also a man? Yep. Jesus Christ. If you didn’t know before that Jesus is all over the Old Testament as well as the New Testament, this is one example where it is made crystal clear.
So back to Abraham. Not only did the Lord, God, appear before Abraham but then Abraham started questioning Him TO HIS FACE!!! Imagine that. What drove this otherwise faithful man to question the God of the Universe, the Creator of Heaven and Earth? Why did he care so much whether God destroyed those wicked cities and the people whose sins were so flagrant they had inspired an outcry to God? Did you notice that Abraham doesn’t seem concerned about Gomorrah? It is Sodom he asks about. What’s special about Sodom?
So Abram went up from Egypt to the Negev, with his wife and everything he had, and Lot went with him. Abram had become very wealthy in livestock and in silver and gold.
Genesis 13:1-12
From the Negev he went from place to place until he came to Bethel, to the place between Bethel and Ai where his tent had been earlier and where he had first built an altar. There Abram called on the name of the Lord.
Now Lot, who was moving about with Abram, also had flocks and herds and tents. But the land could not support them while they stayed together, for their possessions were so great that they were not able to stay together. And quarreling arose between Abram’s herders and Lot’s. The Canaanites and Perizzites were also living in the land at that time.
Lot was Abraham’s nephew. They’d been together for all their lives. Abraham loved Lot enough to unselfishly give Lot the pick of the best land when they had to separate. Lot chose what looked best to him and he pitched his tents near Sodom. Perhaps it was not just concern for hypothetical righteous people residing in Sodom that inspired Abraham’s concern for the fate of the city but I suspect it was concern for Lot. That Abraham was motivated by love, combined with the humility with which he asked his questions, may explain why God was so patient in His responses to Abraham’s challenges. God did not reply in the way that He did when Job questioned Him. He did not say “who are you to question Me?” Instead, God patiently agreed with Abraham that if He found 50 or 45 or 40 or 30 or 20 or even 10 righteous people in the city, He would not destroy it. Obviously, since God is omniscient, He already knew He would not find 50 or even 10 righteous people in Sodom. He knew already that the place was destined for destruction. But He doesn’t tell Abraham that. He merely agreed that if He found that many, He would withhold His wrath. In other words, God showed mercy toward Abraham, who was likely suffering anxiety and grief over the possibility that Lot and his family would die along with the wicked citizens of Sodom.
Is it an accident that Abraham starts with the hypothetical number of 50? Perhaps not. Let’s remember that Abraham and Lot were separated because each had grown very wealthy. In those days, that would have meant not only having a lot of money, likely silver and gold, and not just a lot of livestock, but also lots of people. Their households would have consisted of wives, children, servants and slaves. There would have been a large number of people in Lot’s entourage. Did Abraham assume that Lot and those in his company would all be counted as righteous? Could there have been 50 people in Lot’s clan? Definitely. So perhaps Abraham was thinking about that when he started at 50. As he discussed it with the Lord, though, perhaps he began to question whether all of those in Lot’s household were truly righteous. Did he remember past sins and bad behavior of some of them as he was asking his questions? Is that why he kept asking about smaller and smaller numbers? That could very well be. After all, the reason Abraham and Lot separated was because disputes were breaking out between Abraham’s people and Lot’s people. Did Abraham start to remember fights, arguments, dirty tricks, deception, or other bad behavior among some of Lot’s people? As he mentally ticked through the list of people who had moved to Sodom with Lot, did he start to remember flaws in more and more of them? Could be. One question I’ve heard asked before is this, “why did Abraham stop at 10?” He never asked God to spare the city if there was only one righteous man found. Why? What if he feared the answer? What if he wasn’t confident that even Lot himself would be considered righteous? That would certainly explain why he stopped. Or perhaps Abraham merely felt he had tested the patience of the One true God as far as he dared. To question God at all, particularly right to His face like that, seems awfully bold.
Ultimately, we learn that God did use the two angels to rescue Lot, his wife, and his two daughters. No other members of his family, no servants, slaves, sons, sons-in-law, nobody else was saved. So, were there 10 righteous in Sodom? Apparently not. Even Lot’s wife was disobedient and perished despite the angels’ attempt to save her.
And what about us? Do we question God? Should we? As we mature in our Christian faith, we come to understand that God is sovereign over all things. There are no accidents, no coincidences, no happenstance. There’s no such thing as luck or serendipity. Every single thing that happens is either caused or allowed by the Almighty, Sovereign God who created the Universe and all things in it. Most of us can point to examples from our own lives and the lives of those around us of times where God allowed or caused things that may have felt wrong or painful as they were happening, but that resulted in good. We have experienced times when God’s answers to our prayers weren’t what we asked for but ended up being what we needed or perhaps more than we asked for. That being the case, is it wise to question God?
Whether it is wise or not, is it respectful? Do we have any right to question God? After all, He created us, not the other way around. He created everything, thus everything is His to do with as He wishes. It’s a bit easier for us to think we can question God since we aren’t seeing Him face-to-face as Abraham was. It’s always easier to be confrontational or have difficult conversations from a distance. Nowadays, we use a phone call or an email or text messages to give us the distance that makes confrontations easier (perhaps too easy!). But God is still God. Our opinions about His choices do not dictate the course of human events. Yes, God loves us. Yes, He blesses us in many ways. Sometimes He generously shows us some of the reasons for things. But He really doesn’t owe us anything – not even an explanation because He is God and we are not.
That may sound callous but keep in mind that God knows everything, including how certain knowledge might be more than we can handle. Think of it this way, there are times when we hold back from giving an explanation to our children because they would not be able to understand. Because of their lack of understanding, the explanation might cause them anxiety or interfere in their emotional or social development in some way. Sometimes we refrain from explaining our choices to other people out of respect for someone else’s privacy or for some other moral reason. So if we sometimes choose not to provide an explanation or an answer to questions for good reasons, I think it is likely God does the same. We can ask for Him to help us understand and He may do so but He may choose to just leave us to trust Him. It’s important to remember that God is so much bigger than we are, so vast, so infinite, that even if He did explain His reasons, my tiny human mind would not be able to comprehend it. It would be like trying to explain advanced calculus to my dog.
“For as heaven is higher than earth,
Isaiah 55:9
so My ways are higher than your ways,
and My thoughts than your thoughts.”
Rather than question Him, we are much better off studying His Word. In the Bible we see countless examples of His faithfulness. The more I learn of Him through His Word, the deeper my trust for Him becomes. We’re free to question Him but is it helpful to do so?
a surrendered life 