Sovereignty and Immorality Intersect || Genesis 18:16-22 || Session 32 || Verse by Verse Bible Study

In an era where justice and righteousness are hotly debated, our analysis of Sodom and Gomorrah's narrative brings to light God's intricate balance of mercy and judgment. We wade through ethical quandaries, considering if true fairness exists in divine decisions and how God’s personal interactions with humanity reveal His character. We piece together the message of God's righteousness threaded throughout Genesis, challenging and enriching our perspective on the ancient text. Tune in for a session of enlightenment that promises to transform your view of these timeless Biblical stories and their significance across the ages.

Transcript

Speaker 1 0:19

Hello and welcome to Reasoning Through the Bible. My name is Glenn and I'm here with Steve. Today we are in Genesis, chapter 18. If you have your copy of the Word of God, turn to Genesis 18, 16. Today we're going to just dive right in. Steve, if you could start at 18, 16 and read through verse 19.

Speaker 2 0:34

Then the man rose up from there and looked down toward Sodom, and Abraham was walking with them to send them off. The Lord said Shall I hide from Abraham what I am about to do, since Abraham will surely become a great and mighty nation and in him all the nations of the earth will be blessed? For I have chosen him so that he may command his children and his household after him to keep the way of the Lord by doing righteousness and justice, so that the Lord may bring upon Abraham what he has spoken about him.

Speaker 1 1:04

We learned last time that Abraham was speaking to these three visitors, and the text of the Word of God says that one of those visitors was indeed the Lord, god Yahweh. The others were angels, messengers that had come for a purpose. Well, abraham and Sarah were good hosts, so they fixed them a meal as they're talking. This conversation that we just read happened. It says in verse 16 that as Abraham and the three men get up, he follows them out to be a good host, to follow them on their journey. Then, in verse 17, it says there the Lord said so this is Yahweh. Whenever it's Lord, in all caps, that's Yahweh Elohim, it's the Lord, god.

Speaker 1 1:49

The Lord said shall I hide from Abraham what I am about to do? God knows what he's about to do, he knows what's going to happen. The reason I emphasize that is because in the next verse he's going to say well, I'm going to go down and see. Well, here, he already knows what he's going to do. God is in control and he's in control of cities, he's in control of nations and he's in control of people. So he's saying there, I know what I'm about to do. Shall I tell Abraham all of these things?

Speaker 2 2:23

As he's mentioning this to Abraham. The context or the feeling that you get here is is that this is going to be a teaching moment to Abraham. He says I've selected him so that the nations will be blessed. In the following verses, he not only goes into detail of what he's going to do, but also why he's going to do it. I think we have a little flavor here, glenn of God using this as a teaching moment to Abraham as associated with blessing the other nations.

Speaker 1 2:54

I think that's exactly it. It's a teaching moment for Abraham and for us to put into the word of God. Look at verse 18. Verse 18 says since Abraham will surely become a great and mighty nation, and in him all the nations of the earth will be blessed. That are two of the three parts of the Abrahamic covenant, the third part being the land promise. In previous sessions we spent quite a bit of time on that. He talks here about two of them. It's a prophecy that was literally fulfilled. Israel did indeed become a great and mighty nation.

Speaker 1 3:30

If these two parts of the prophecy were literally fulfilled, then the third part, the land promise, will indeed be literally fulfilled, makes no sense to have two-thirds of it be literally fulfilled and then one-third be some sort of figurative, symbolic way. No, no, they're all very literal. Since the blessing the earth through Jesus Christ is literal, then the land promise is going to be literal as well. But look at the next verse, verse 18. That's really the one to focus on for here in just a second. It says here I have chosen him, steve. What can we learn from that God here saying I have chosen him?

Speaker 2 4:13

We've mentioned before that God is working with the nations and he has created a nation from nothing, no other nation. This is what he's referring to. I have selected Abraham to build this new nation that's not a part of the other nations. This is what I've done. I have selected Abraham for that. So he has selected Abraham for a purpose to do something on behalf and be a blessing to the other nations.

Speaker 1 4:42

As we pointed out, as we've gone through Genesis, it's always God approaching Abraham, God approaching Isaac, God approaching Jacob saying here's what I am going to do. In chapter 17, God approached Abraham and said I will, I will, I will. A handful of times it's always here, God doing the choosing. He says it flat out I have chosen him. This is one of the places in the scriptures where God says directly I chose him to do a purpose. I have a plan and I'm working out the plan. And I chose Abraham to build the nation through. That's what he's saying here. Now, Steve, as we've gone through here, we've made it quite clear every time God unilaterally said I will do these things. There was a whole ceremony with the cut animals, the blood covenant, with the smoking oven and the flaming torch. It was very dramatic. In all the times, God says I'm going to bring these things about. Well, here it seems to, if you're not careful, that he's laying out a condition. Let's read it again, For I have chosen him.

Speaker 1 5:48

This is God speaking about Abraham so that he may command his children and his household after him to keep the way of the Lord by doing righteousness and justice, so that the Lord may bring upon Abraham. What he has spoken about him, the. What he has spoken about him is the covenant. The things he just mentioned build the nation. Through him, all the nations of the earth will be blessed. Well, of course, the through him, all the nations of the earth will be blessed is through Jesus Christ. The question arises, and it's a natural question is he laying out a condition that Abraham has to obey, something in order for God to continue working through him and God to continue making this nation, of which, ultimately, Jesus will come? Is that dependent on Abraham obeying and doing righteousness, so that if Israel does not do righteousness, then the promise is not going to go through that line anymore? Is that what he's saying here, Steve, or is there something else going on?

Speaker 2 6:51

I don't think so. If you look at this, there's a couple of things that are going on here In the first part, there, for I have chosen him. There is a comma of things that are going on here In the first part, there, for I have chosen him. There is a comma there before that, first, so that, and then that continues down to the second so that, to finish it out, that middle part there with the first. So that is a parenthetical pause of a little bit more detail explaining that sentence. So if you just read that sentence without the parenthetical part for I have chosen him so that the Lord may bring upon Abraham what he has spoken about him, that is the gist of what the sentence is himself.

Speaker 2 7:32

Now, if you go back into the detail, the parenthetical part as it talks about there, it says that he may command his children and his household after him to keep the way of the Lord.

Speaker 2 7:42

That word to keep there is samar. It's a verb meaning to watch, to keep, to preserve, to guard, to be careful, to watch over, to watch carefully over, to be on one's guard. It means all of that. And if you put that into all of those into it, let's go back and look at that so that he may command his children and his household after him to keep, to preserve, to guard, to be careful to watch over the way of the Lord by doing righteousness. The flavor there is more of Abraham preserving the things that God has told him to pass on to his descendants, more than it is than any type of a work type of mindset that he has to do in order to keep the covenant. The last thing is it's a unilateral covenant. It's not dependent on what Abraham does or doesn't do. That's the three things that are associated, I think, with this verse.

Speaker 1 8:48

I would agree 100%. Just to go back and emphasize this, as we've gone through Genesis, we've always made a big point about what God is saying in each section. Many times prior to this, god unilaterally says he's going to do these things. Genesis, chapter 12, chapter 13, chapter 15, chapter 17,. Over and over again, god says I will, I will, I will do these things. The whole blood covenant was God unilaterally going through these things. And even here, even in this section, look at again 17 through 19,. Three times in these three verses God's saying that either God or Abraham will do these things.

Speaker 1 9:32

The tone here is that I have chosen him so that this will come about. I have chosen him so that he may keep the way of the Lord. The emphasis here is on the success, not a condition. By contrast, if our listeners we won't do it here but go and read the conditions in the Mosaic covenant, you can find those in Deuteronomy, chapter 28, and again in chapter 30. And if you just read those two chapters, the tone there is very conditional. He's saying I've laid out all these blessings and I've laid out all these cursings based on your obedience. If you obey, you'll be blessed. If you disobey, you'll be cursed. He says again in chapter 30, I've set before you life and I've set before you death. Choose life.

Speaker 1 10:27

It's very clear in the Mosaic covenant that this is dependent on Israel's obedience. Here the tone is exactly the opposite. Look at what he's saying in verse 19 again I've chosen him so that he may command his children and so that he may keep the way and so that the Lord may bring about these things. It's not a condition simply because here the tone is I've chosen him so that it's going to happen. That's the emphasis here. God is building a nation and he chose Abraham to do that.

Speaker 2 11:02

The last comment I would make on this, glenn, is if it's agreed upon that it's a unilateral covenant that God has made with Abraham for those three items that we've talked about the great nation, blessing to the nations, a seed and the land promise If those are unilateral, then you can't come here another verse and put a condition on it on Abraham's side, because then the covenant's not unilateral anymore.

Speaker 1 11:27

One of the ways you'd say there's no. If here he's basically declaring something, I've chosen him so that he may walk in the way.

Speaker 2 11:34

That's what he's saying, yeah, you can't create a conditional covenant once the covenant has been established as being unilateral. Let's put it that way.

Speaker 1 11:42

Let's go ahead and move on. The next verse, starting in verse 20 and going down to 23, says this and the Lord said the outcry of Sodom and Gomorrah is indeed great and their sin is exceedingly grave. I will go down now and see if they have done entirely according to its outcry, which has come to me, and if not, I will know. Then the men turned away from there and went towards Sodom while Abraham was still standing before the Lord. Abraham came near and said Will you indeed sweep away the righteous with the wicked? In this passage, verse 20, the Lord said so again. That's all caps. That means God is appearing with these three men.

Speaker 1 12:26

God appeared as a man. God, of course, is in his essence, is not a body. He's not a man like we are, that is very clear. But he appeared here as a man. This happens many times and, steve, I've always been amazed at how many times God appears in the scripture, as it says the angel of the Lord will appear in a human form. Yet still, to this day, many Christians and for largely the Jewish nation, they don't see this. I remember hearing a Jewish rabbinical scholar not long ago saying there's not a case in the Old Testament where God ever appeared as a man. So they would then deny Jesus, because Jesus claimed to be God. Yet here we have clearly God appearing in a human form.

Speaker 2 13:19

There was some rabbinical teaching prior to Jesus' coming of the two Yahwehs of heaven or the two gods of heaven, and it was based upon these Old Testament appearances. That's clearly God coming and interacting with Abraham, with Moses and other figures in the Old Testament, and then, after Jesus came in death, burial and resurrection, they moved away from that particular teaching. It shows that this is a God that is personally involved with his creation. Back with Adam, it said that he walked with Adam, or Adam walked with him. In the cool of the day, and you think about it, Jesus shouldn't have been a surprise to anybody, meaning that him being here interacting with his creation, just the length of time that he was here.

God's Justice and Righteousness in Genesis

Speaker 1 14:09

I want to make sure our listeners don't misunderstand. God is omnipresent. He's present everywhere. He's not contained in a space. When David's son, solomon, was dedicating the temple, he said a prayer there. He said God can't be contained in a building because heaven and the heaven of heavens can't contain him. So Solomon was right there. God is not contained in a space. But yet he has the power, though, to appear as a man, and that's what's going on here. There's a theological word for that. I believe it's theophany, where God can appear in a physical form. He appeared in a physical form in the burning bush, to Moses and in other places.

Speaker 1 14:52

Then, in verse 20, you'll also notice here he says the outcry of Sodom and Gomorrah are great. This tells us that one God knows the sin of people groups. It also tells us that people can have greater and lesser amounts of sin, because he says here this is Sodom and Gomorrah great. So God knows our sin, and it's possible for people groups to build up sin, to have a great amount of sin or a less amount of sin. Psalm 139 tells us God knows all things, including our thoughts and actions. This passage reinforces that God never does anything rashly. He doesn't get upset and fly off the handle At this point. The sense here is that he's looking at Sodom and Gomorrah and measuring their sin, and there will come a point where the sin is so great he will deal with it. To me, that's a tremendous lesson that we can take from these passages here in Genesis.

Speaker 2 15:53

That's a tremendous lesson that we can take from these passages here in Genesis. In the next verse, there 21, when he says that the outcry has come to me, he says I'm going to go down to the cities. That means that he does a close inspection. He already knows what's going on. He knows from the outcry, but he's going down, he's making a close, intimate inspection of what's going on. He doesn't truly do anything rashly, glenn, as you pointed out. He's going in looking for himself so that the people will know, even Abraham. It's a teaching moment. Abraham will know. Yes, this is a just reason why God is going to destroy these cities.

Speaker 1 16:34

Everything God does is measured, planned and with level-headed purpose. He has a plan and he's working the plan. We can take comfort in that In verses 17 and again in 21,. God knew what he would do before he says he will go down to see what Sodom is doing. The phrasing here we've talked about this several times in the past, that God will say things in a way that makes sense to us, but he does not live in a sense of befores and afters and he doesn't learn things because then he would be finite and it creates all kinds of problems. So he's not going down to learn something that he doesn't already know. He already knows what he's going to do. He's explaining to Abraham that what's going on so that it makes sense to Abraham. Then in verse 23, abraham asks this question because again, sodom is fixing to get destroyed.

Speaker 1 17:31

In verse 23, abraham asks the same question that many modern skeptics and atheists and critics ask. I find this interesting. He asks questions will God kill the righteous people when he kills the wicked? Because God just told him I'm going to go wipe out this whole valley, these cities in this valley. Told him I'm going to go wipe out this whole valley, these cities in this valley. God, are you going to kill the righteous along with the wicked?

Speaker 1 18:00

And another question that the modern skeptics and critics ask why can't God punish the wicked and then reward the good? Why does he have to wipe out the whole city? Or the critics will also phrase it like this it seems like God is either allowing the wicked to roam free or punishes innocent people along with the wicked. How can that be? Why can't he discern and only punish the wicked and then reward the good? Two entire cities, sodom and Gomorrah? God is going to kill everyone and not discriminate between the wicked and the innocent. That's basically the question that Abraham's asking here. You're going to kill the wicked and the good, steve what's the answer?

Speaker 2 18:45

The answer is no. He doesn't. Later, in the following verses, abraham negotiates from 50 righteous people, and the cities won't be destroyed all the way down to 10. I think the motivation of Abraham asking this question is he's thinking about Lot and his family that is down there.

Speaker 1 19:06

First thing I think of here with this question is that Abraham is asking the same question thousands of years ago that modern critics are asking today how come God's not fair? And that's basically the question. Okay, I can kind of understand how people might ask that question. Then I get to thinking about it for a minute and you know, job had basically the same approach. Maybe not the exact same words, but most of the book of Job is God acting and then Job and his friends saying oh, there's got to be a reason here. I'm not understanding. God's not fair here. Job keeps saying if I could just get God down here across the conference room table we could have a meeting and we could work this thing out. Job asks that until God actually shows up. When God shows up at the end of the book, job is so overwhelmed by the person of God. God is immense and he's majestic and he's infinite. He is infinitely majestic and infinitely immense. And we can ask these questions God, how could you not be fair until God actually shows up? Job said Lord, I'm sorry, I even asked the question and he hides his face from God. We can say this because we think of God as a very small God. We can ask God are you going to do this? That's not fair because we have a very small view of God. If we knew how immense and majestic and wise God actually is, we wouldn't be asking this question. The only reason people ask these questions is because they have this view of God. That's very small. Once Job saw God face to face, he was so intimidated that he didn't ask the question anymore. That's the first one. Is my friend Mr and Ms Critic? If you were face to face to God, you wouldn't be asking these questions. But nevertheless, God is so gracious that he also answers the question in this passage.

Speaker 1 21:12

In this exchange, god says that he will not destroy Sodom and Gomorrah if there are 10 righteous people. He says if there's 10 righteous people, we won't kill them. But what happened? There wasn't 10 righteous people. He couldn't find 10 righteous people. You know what the Bible teaches? That none of us are righteous.

Speaker 1 21:33

In the book of Romans, chapter 3, it says that all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. God didn't destroy Nineveh when Jonah went in because there were some people that repented. God didn't destroy any nation when there were people there that repented. Because how do we find righteous people. We find righteous people that repent and turn to God and ask forgiveness. If there's nobody there that will repent and follow God, then there's no righteous people. Because why? What does the scripture say? All have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God.

Speaker 1 22:14

Romans 3 says there are none who seek after God, none who do good, none righteous, no, not one. It says that in Romans, chapter 3, verses 11 through 18. So were there any righteous people in Sodom? No, there were none. The question is moot, because God realizes there are no righteous people in the city of Sodom. Now we do know. Over in 2 Peter, it calls Lot righteous. It uses that righteous. Lot was bothered by the sin that was around him. If Romans 3 tells us there are no righteous people, but yet he calls Lot righteous, how in the world can he call Lot righteous, steve?

Speaker 2 22:57

The same way that he called Noah righteous that he reckons Abraham righteousness. It's through faith and worship of Yahweh, the one true God, the most high, the creator of everything. The righteousness comes through recognizing of God from them, worshiping God and having faith in God and what His promises are.

Speaker 1 23:22

How can Lot be declared righteous the same way that Abraham could be declared righteous in Genesis 15, 6? Abraham believed God and it was counted as righteousness. How could God call King David righteous when he committed adultery and committed murder to cover up the adultery? The reason was is because David, when he was confronted with his sin, fell on his face before God and repented, where his predecessor, king Saul, when he was confronted with his sin, denied it, dodged and weaved, tried to escape God. That's how Lot could be considered righteous is by faith. The question I have is not how could the people of Sodom, such as Lot, be declared righteous? Is, how could I be declared righteous after all the things I've done, and how could you be declared righteous after all the things you've done? Well, the only way is by faith. If we have faith in the Lord Jesus Christ, then he will consider us righteous.

Speaker 1 24:21

Nowhere in scripture does God destroy people that are repentant. Nowhere, he never does that. We mentioned Jonah going to Nineveh, and the Ninevites repented even though they were deserving of being destroyed, but God held his hand because they were repentants. 2 Peter 3.9 says quote God is not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance In 1 Timothy. God desires all men to be saved In chapter 2, verse 4. God would prefer quote that the wicked would turn from his way and live in Ezekiel 33, 11. So everywhere people repent, he doesn't destroy them. Sodom, no one repented except Lot, and Lot saved his family because of that. That's the answer. Next time we're going to get into this bargaining session where Abraham goes before God and says, well, how about if there's 50? And then how about if there's 45? And he goes down the list. We'll talk about that next time. But what we're going to find is that God pulls Lot out and then destroys the city. God never destroys those that are repentant.

Speaker 2 25:35

That's a great, great lesson and a great teaching for us to know that we can also be found righteous by God, looking at Jesus Christ, and we have our belief in Jesus Christ that gives us that salvation, amen.

Speaker 1 25:48

So to our listeners. We trust that you have done that, that there was a time where you have personally put your faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. If not, then right now is the time. We also trust that you'll be back here with us next time as we continue to reason through the book of Genesis.

Speaker 2 26:03

Thank you so much for watching and listening. May God bless you.