Our Sermons

Bible Passage: Genesis 18:20-32
Pastor: Pastor Schlicht
Sermon Date:  July 24, 2022

It may be ambitious, but if you listen carefully, a study of our first reading today will answer a lot of burning questions that Christians have today. Questions like: How should we think about God’s wrath and judgment in the Bible? How should we correctly understand the Bible’s condemnation of homosexuality? Is our God truly just with all that he allows to happen in this world? Does God hear our prayers for mercy, when we hear nothing from him but silence? If any of those questions piqued your interest pay close attention to this sermon. I’d like to walk you through this important text from Genesis 18 asking for the Holy Spirit’s guidance as we tackle some of these very real questions.

We start with verse 20: The Lord said, “Because the outcry against Sodom and Gomorrah is great, and because their sin is very flagrant. I will go down now and see if what they have done is as bad as the outcry that has come to me.” The account of Sodom and Gomorrah is often cited by modern critics to highlight God’s anger and ruthlessness. But that’s not what we actually read here. The word “outcry” is associated throughout the Old Testament with the cry of the oppressed in times of distress. It is the same word used for the cry of Abel’s blood which came to God after Cain’s murder. The point is that many people hear about Sodom and Gomorrah and think about God as spiteful. But God came to bring justice for the oppressed. The Lord came because no prayer for mercy goes unheard. 

Now the other thing I want to address before we move on is the Bible’s condemnation of the sin of homosexuality which has even become the namesake of Sodom. First off, certainly the sin of homosexuality is highlighted in the following chapter, in Genesis 19, as well as in multiple other places in the Bible. However, we need to be careful about making this into a chief sin that is more deserving of wrath, which has unfortunately been done in the past. For instance, in Ezekiel 16, the prophet says this of the sin of Sodom: Now this was the sin of your sister Sodom: She and her daughters were arrogant, overfed and unconcerned; they did not help the poor and needy. 50 They were haughty and did detestable things before me. Arrogance, indulgence, being unconcerned about sin, unwilling to help the poor and needy, haughty (that’s like thinking of yourself as better than others), and doing detestable things. All of these sins were incorporated into the just condemnation of Sodom and Gomorrah. The city had grown beyond human recognition of sin. My point is this, whether you struggle with arrogance or homosexuality, whether you struggle with being unconcerned about God or not helping the poor and needy, whether you sometimes think you’re better than others or you do detestable things, all our sins are crimson red. Psalm 130:1 “If you, oh Lord, kept a record of sins, who could stand?” Romans 3:23 “All have sinned and fallen short of the Glory of God.” Ecclesiastes 7:20 “Indeed, there is no one on earth who is righteous, no one who does what is right and never sins.” So while homosexuality may be the most well-known sin of Sodom, it is no more condemning than other sins. We all should realize that, without Christ, everyone should receive the fate of Sodom and Gomorrah. It is only because God has been gracious to us by sending Jesus to die in our place, that we can request mercy with confidence. Only if we take this to heart, can we understand Abraham’s conversation with the Lord correctly.

The next verse says that Abraham remained standing before the Lord. This account is unique in that the LORD appeared to Abraham in the form of a human. Abraham realizes that he is the LORD Almighty, but he is also allowed to speak with him man to man, another example of God’s mercy. God wants to give Abraham a chance to have this conversation. Abraham approached him and said, “Will you really sweep away the righteous along with the wicked? What if there are fifty righteous people in the city? Will you really sweep them away and not spare the place for the sake of the fifty righteous who are in it? You would never do such a thing, killing the righteous along with the wicked, treating the righteous the same as the wicked. (18:23-25)Abraham is under no illusions here. He knows how bad Sodom really is (13:13). He knows how truly wicked the city and its leaders are, evidenced by the fact that he refused to accept any gifts from the king of Sodom (14:21-24). He knows that when the Lord’s angels observe the sins of the city, he will be obligated by all that is right and holy to destroy it. But Abraham knows that the LORD is just and merciful. So Abraham maintains—on the basis of God’s own character—that God must not pour out his wrath on the righteous.

Here it is important to make two distinctions. Firstly, those who are righteous are those, like Abraham, who believe in God’s promises and are credited as righteous through faith. Abraham isn’t pleading for God to save morally superior people in Sodom, he is pleading for him not to pour out wrath for sin on those whose sins he has forgiven. And secondly, you might say “Well, God allows all sorts of bad things to happen to his believers all the time. The righteous perish right alongside those who hate God.” And this is certainly true in a sense. When tragedy strikes and people die, God does not spare all the Christians. However, he does not pour out his wrath on them. He may allow sin and its effects to end their lives and bring them to him in heaven, but he does not punish them for their sins. That’s what Jesus took in our place on the cross. So it is this specific punishment, this supernatural wrath over sin, that Abraham is concerned about when he says to God “You would never do such a thing. The Judge of all the earth should do right, shouldn’t he?”

And isn’t this the same question that so many people are asking today? If there is a God, shouldn’t the Judge of all the earth do right? Subtly, we all are tempted to wonder whether God is really doing a good job of running things. I look around and I see sin running wild, I see people oppressed, I see his Word disgraced, and the question pops up, “Shouldn’t the Judge of all the earth do what’s right?!” Perhaps you’ve wondered if God actually knows what’s going on down here…or if he really hears your cries for mercy…or if he is actually just at all…The truth is that in ignorance, we often consider ourselves more just and more merciful than God. From our short, limited, and incomplete perspective, we rashly doubt and question God’s character. And sometimes we are led to think that a prayer for mercy only falls on deaf ears. How quickly we forget the truth of 2 Peter 3:9 The Lord is not slow in keeping his promise, as some understand slowness. He is patient with you, not wanting anyone to perish, but everyone to come to repentance. God’s justice will ultimately come on sin and his mercy does rest on his people. It just usually doesn’t match our timeframe, because God is more patient than we are and more merciful than we are. And his sense of justice transcends our little brains. He doesn’t act for the immediate earthly happiness of his believers, but rather for the eternal good of all people. And finally, no prayer for mercy goes unheard, even if we can’t see the answer. In fact, that’s what this section of Scripture demonstrates very clearly.

Over the course of the next few verses, Abraham boldly bargains God down from 50 to just 10 righteous people for whose sake God would refrain from destroying Sodom—and God says “okay” each time. Then Abraham, not daring to go lower than 10, returns home. But I wonder what Abraham thought the next morning…when he looked down over the plain of Sodom and saw the dark clouds of soot, smoke billowing as if from a giant kiln…Sodom and Gomorrah was destroyed by God with fire and brimstone! After all he had pleaded for! Did he doubt if God had been true to his Word? Were there really not even 10 people in the cities who believed? And was his nephew Lot and his family also destroyed? The Bible doesn’t tell us what Abraham thought, just that he saw the destruction. But even though Abraham didn’t know it, God had saved the righteous in Sodom and Gomorrah. He brought out Lot and his family before the destruction. Listen to Genesis 19:29 And so when God destroyed the cities of the plain, God remembered Abraham and brought Lot out through the middle of the devastation, when he overthrew the cities… God remembered Abraham’s prayers for mercy and acted for him even though Abraham didn’t see it.

Do you know that we never actually hear anything more about Abraham and Lot reuniting after this? It’s possible, but it seems more likely that they never did because Lot lived in a town called Zoar and Abraham soon moved away to a region called the Negev. And isn’t it interesting that right after this account, Abraham falls into the sin of lying about his wife, failing to trust in God’s deliverance? I don’t want to speak where Scripture does not, but however Abraham trusted or failed to trust in God’s mercy and justice in the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah, we know the truth: God heard Abraham’s prayer and saved the righteous, even while justly destroying the wicked. And it stands as a reminder to all of us here! That you would trust that no matter what it looks like, no prayer for mercy goes unheard! That the Judge of all the earth is perfectly just, even when you can’t understand how. That as much as your longfor justice to be done and mercy to be granted, God desires it even more and will carry it out in his time. Rest in this.

When I think about Abraham interceding for sinful Sodom and Gomorrah, I think of Christ’s constant intercession for us before the Father. Jesus prays, “Father forgive them, for I have taken the punishment for their sin.” Jesus prays, “Father have mercy on these your children, and do not sweep the righteous away with the wicked for I have given them my perfect life, my robe of righteousness covers them.” Jesus prays, “Father, answer their prayers in my name, and give them what is best.” So may we too, like Abraham, pray boldly, humbly, and persistently for others with the confidence that in Christ no prayer for mercy goes unheard.

Amen.