Genesis 18:22-33--Abraham Intercedes for Sodom

READ:  https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Genesis+18%3A22-33&version=ESV
LISTEN:  https://www.biblegateway.com/audio/mclean/esv/Gen.18.22-Gen.18.33

​Abraham Intercedes for Sodom
22 So the men turned from there and went toward Sodom, but Abraham still stood before the Lord. 23 Then Abraham drew near and said, “Will you indeed sweep away the righteous with the wicked? 24 Suppose there are fifty righteous within the city. Will you then sweep away the place and not spare it for the fifty righteous who are in it? 25 Far be it from you to do such a thing, to put the righteous to death with the wicked, so that the righteous fare as the wicked! Far be that from you! Shall not the Judge of all the earth do what is just?” 26 And the Lord said, “If I find at Sodom fifty righteous in the city, I will spare the whole place for their sake.”

27 Abraham answered and said, “Behold, I have undertaken to speak to the Lord, I who am but dust and ashes. 28 Suppose five of the fifty righteous are lacking. Will you destroy the whole city for lack of five?” And he said, “I will not destroy it if I find forty-five there.” 29 Again he spoke to him and said, “Suppose forty are found there.” He answered, “For the sake of forty I will not do it.” 30 Then he said, “Oh let not the Lord be angry, and I will speak. Suppose thirty are found there.” He answered, “I will not do it, if I find thirty there.” 31 He said, “Behold, I have undertaken to speak to the Lord. Suppose twenty are found there.” He answered, “For the sake of twenty I will not destroy it.” 32 Then he said, “Oh let not the Lord be angry, and I will speak again but this once. Suppose ten are found there.” He answered, “For the sake of ten I will not destroy it.” 33 And the Lord went his way, when he had finished speaking to Abraham, and Abraham returned to his place.

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I touched on this passage briefly at the end of the last blog.  Today we'll essentially see Abraham praying to God, though he's doing it in a way that is out loud and recorded for everyone else (like us) to hear.  How Abraham prays gives us some important insight and they are traits shared by other men of the faith such as Moses and David.

God tells Abraham what His plan is.  Abraham has a conflict within himself that he knows a theological truth about God--that God would not sweep up the righteous in His wrath against the unrighteous, but he cannot balance this with the idea that God is going to destroy the entire city, including people that Abraham believes to be righteous.

The city of Sodom was large (many thousands of men) and Abraham thinks he's playing it safe by starting off with only 50 righteous people in the entire city.  Abraham argues, as Moses would later, that such an act would be used by others to smear the name of God because God was unable to save the righteous in pouring out His wrath on the wicked.  God doesn't argue the point and says that if He finds 50 righteous people when He inspects that city, He will save the entire city on behalf of them.

We then see the entire conversation repeat itself several times, but with Abraham lowering the number in case he perhaps had just missed the threshold.  He goes from 50 to 45 to 40, to 30 to 20 to 10, and each and every time, God says that for the sake of the few righteous, if they would be found, that God would spare the entire city on account of them.

Perhaps Abraham felt sure that were at least 10 righteous people in the city.  Perhaps he felt he had tried God's patience enough, or perhaps Abraham finally God it that the number itself wasn't important and that Abraham was correct about the principle of the matter, or maybe it finally "clicked" that God was going to provide a way of escape for his righteous in the same way that He did when He shut Noah and his family up inside of the ark and that Abraham didn't have to worry about Lot and his family because God was willing and able to save them if they were willing to take the way of escape proved by the Lord.

We'll see this and more next time when we look at the rescue of Lot and the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah and what lessons we can learn from this about the coming judgement that we know has to be coming as we see the wicked continue to go seemingly unpunished and the nature of God is impugned to ask "God are you not good enough or not strong enough to take care of the wickedness and pain and suffering in this world?"  The answer, as we see from this passage, is that God is extending grace and mercy for a season for the sake of the righteous until all of them are safe and until the wickedness of the unrighteous is so great that no one will assume that the righteous were swept up in the wrath of God, then the judgment will come.