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.”
The men turned away and went toward Sodom, but Abraham remained standing before the Lord. Then Abraham approached him 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?”
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, what if the number of the righteous is five less than fifty? Will you destroy the whole city for lack of five people?” “If I find forty-five there,” he said, “I will not destroy it.”
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.”
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.”
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.”
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.” (Genesis 18:20-32 NIV)
You lie in bed. It’s late at night. You’d like to go to sleep, but there are so many things racing through your mind. Does this sound familiar? So what do you do? You start praying… As you pray, you feel peace. “God’s in control. This is all in God’s hands!” But then, in the middle of your prayer, another voice pops into your head: “What good is praying going to do?” it says. “You think God can really hear your thoughts? That’s crazy! Who are you to ask God for anything anyway?” Have you heard that voice too? I have. “Why would God listen to you?”
It’s right. That little voice is right. Why should God listen to us? He shouldn’t. We’ve sinned. That’s bad! Not convinced? Today we hear about one of the scariest events in history. Sodom and Gomorrah. Have you heard those names? God said to Abraham, “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.” The cities of Sodom and Gomorrah were so wicked that God almost couldn’t believe his ears. So do you know what God did? He destroyed them. What a warning for us! God rained down burning sulfur and destroyed them for their sin.
What sin? We better know, right? This is a hard lesson to talk about. In the next chapter, Genesis 19, God’s angels disguised themselves as men and visited the city of Sodom. Do you know what the men of Sodom did? They came as a mob and demanded to have sex with them. Men with men. Homosexuality. That was the sin of Sodom. At the end of the Bible, the book of Jude says, “Sodom and Gomorrah and the surrounding towns gave themselves up to sexual immorality and perversion. They serve as an example of those who suffer the punishment of eternal fire” (Jude 7). Here’s how bad it got in Sodom: It wasn’t just that people struggled with sinful desires. In the book of Isaiah, it says, “They parade their sin like Sodom; they do not hide it” (Isaiah 3:9). The people of Sodom paraded their sin around. They acted as if sin was something to be proud of. But God? The outcry went up to God in heaven. God destroyed them with fire. What a warning!
But there’s more. Too often we Christians talk and act as if the sin of homosexuality is worse than other sins. That’s not true! There’s another place in the Bible that also describes the sin of Sodom. The prophet Ezekiel says, “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. They were haughty and did detestable things before me” (Ezekiel 16:49-50). In God’s eyes, do you know what’s just as sinful as living a homosexual lifestyle? Being arrogant. Do you know what’s just as wicked as adultery? Being unconcerned about the poor and needy. Those sins were a big deal too. The outcry went up to God in heaven. God destroyed them with fire. What a warning!
Do you get the point? The story of Sodom and Gomorrah teaches this lesson: Sin is bad. Which sin? All sin. Every sin. Equally bad. If God were to walk around our city, what would he see? He will. If you’re content in your sins, God is going to judge you. If you are parading around your sinful lifestyle, whatever that sin is, God is going to judge you. Not just a little bit. There is fire and hell to pay for sin. Sin is that bad. Every sin is that bad. If you hear people saying that God is love and would never punish sin, they haven’t read about Sodom and Gomorrah. The outcry of our sins rises up to God. Our sin is so grievous that we deserve to have God sweep us away too!
So why didn’t God destroy Abraham? If you read the Bible, you quickly realize that Abraham wasn’t some “super believer.” He was just like us. Sinful. Abraham committed adultery. Abraham lied. Abraham doubted God. So why didn’t God destroy Abraham? Well, “Abram believed the Lord, and he credited it to him as righteousness” (Genesis 15:6). This is important! Abraham believed God’s promises, and God counted his faith as righteousness. Saved by faith. The Bible says, “This righteousness is given through faith in Jesus Christ to all who believe” (Romans 3:21). When people believe God’s promises, he declares them righteous. By faith!
What was God’s promise to Abraham? He told Abraham, “All peoples on earth will be blessed through you” (Genesis 12:3). How were all peoples on earth blessed through Abraham and his family? Jesus. 2,000 years after Abraham, Jesus came from Abraham’s family. And “he was pierced for our transgressions, he was crushed for our iniquities; the punishment that brought us peace was on him, and by his wounds we are healed” (Isaiah 53:5). We deserved to have God destroy us. But God punished Jesus for our sins. Whether our sin is homosexuality or arrogance or a lack of concern for the poor, Jesus died for us. For every single sin. By faith, we’re righteous. Not because of anything we’ve done. By faith. By faith, we’re forgiven and saved.
Here’s the result: “Let us then approach God’s throne of grace with confidence, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help us in our time of need” (Hebrews 4:16). Because of Jesus, God isn’t a Judge waiting to destroy you. He is our Father in heaven, full of grace, who loves you more than you can know. Because of Jesus, you get to go straight to God himself. You don’t need saints or angels to get to him. Because of Jesus, God doesn’t just hear our prayers, he wants us to pray. To bring our fears and burdens and sins to him. So, “let us then approach God’s throne of grace with confidence, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help us in our time of need!”
Like Abraham did. Abraham knew someone who lived in Sodom. Do you know whom? Lot—Abraham’s nephew. When God planned to destroy Sodom, Abraham thought of Lot. So what did he do? He prayed. “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…” “God, I can understand why you need to destroy Sodom. But what about the righteous people—the believers—there? There’s got to be 50! Will you save it for their sake?”
Now if I were God, I know what I would have said. “Who do you think you are? Why are you giving me advice?” But what did God say? “Sure! If I find fifty righteous people in the city of Sodom, I will spare the whole place for their sake.” Isn’t our God amazing? He’s all-powerful. He’s all-knowing. Yet, when we pray to him, he listens. Isn’t that amazing? That’s God’s grace.
God’s grace gave Abraham confidence. He kept praying! “Now that I have been so bold as to speak to the Lord, though I am nothing but dust and ashes,what if the number of the righteous is five less than fifty? Will you destroy the whole city because of five people?” What a bold, yet humble attitude—“even though I am but dust and ashes.” Dust. That’s what we are. Dust! But God loves dust and gives life to dust and listens to dust. So faithful Abraham, trusting in God’s promise, boldly and humbly goes back to God: “What if there’re only 45 believers…?”
What did God say? “Okay!” You can almost see Abraham’s faith grow as he has this conversation with God! This is how faith grows. Whenever you hear God’s Word, faith grows. So Abraham prayed again. “What if only forty are there?” “Okay. For the sake of the forty, I will not do it.” I can see Abraham’s eyes widening. “May the Lord not be angry, but let me speak. What if only thirty can be found there?” God’s answer? “Okay.” Four prayers. Four answers!
When would you have told him to stop? Parents, how often do you hear a continuous, “Dad, dad, dad…” How do you like that? Now imagine being God with a billion Christians saying, “Dad, dad, dad…” We parents get annoyed quickly, don’t we? We say, “Just say my name once and don’t ask again!” Not God. Not our Father. He’s much more patient than we are. God doesn’t get sick of you. I might. Your family might. But God doesn’t get sick of you! He wants you to pray again and again. Jesus gives us this invitation: “Always pray and never give up” (Luke 18:1).
So Abraham kept going! “Now that I have been so bold as to speak to the Lord, what if only twenty can be found there?” God said, “Okay.” So Abraham said, “May the Lord not be angry, but let me speak just once more. What if only ten can be found there?” And God said, “Sure! For the sake of ten, I will not destroy it.” Wow! Prayer works. God listened to Abraham—every time. God answered his prayer—every time. Doesn’t that make you want to pray? We can approach God’s throne of grace with confidence! Jesus invites us to always pray and never give up.
I have to admit that I don’t pray like that—boldly, persistently, humbly. Do you? Sometimes it’s because I don’t think I need to. “I’ve got this, right? Thanks, God, but I’m good!” How foolish! Other times, I don’t pray because I don’t think it will work. Remember that little voice? “Why would God listen to you?” Think of how we talk about prayer. We “throw up a prayer.” It’s like a hail Mary—probably not going to work. Really? It’s good to know that when Jesus died, he died for my arrogance and doubt too. I need God’s grace. I need God’s forgiveness. I need God’s promise: Always pray and never give up. What an invitation! Always pray and never give up.
I think of a woman in a different church I served. Suddenly, without any warning, she found out she had cancer. Actually, she had a tumor the size of a volleyball in her stomach. The doctors didn’t even have to test it. They knew it was cancer. So what did she do? She prayed. We prayed. She went in for major surgery. You know how it turned out? This huge tumor wasn’t cancer at all. She was back at home in two days, perfectly healthy. It sounds unbelievable! Except, Jesus says, “Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you” (Luke 11:9). Nothing is impossible with God. So always pray and never give up!
But what about all the other times when prayer doesn’t seem to work—at all? Well, do you know how Abraham’s prayer for Sodom turned out? Did God save Sodom? No! When Abraham got up the next morning, he saw smoke rising from Sodom. There weren’t ten righteous people there. Despite all of Abraham’s prayers, God destroyed Sodom for their sin. God didn’t do what Abraham expected, but he did better. God sent his angels to personally rescue Lot and his family, even as the city was destroyed. God punished and saved at the save time. Even if our prayers get it wrong, God always gets it right! Prayer works, it just doesn’t always work like we expect.
Just think about Jesus. Remember what Jesus did on the night before he died? He prayed. For so long that his disciples fell asleep! He had to wake them up three times. “Father, if you are willing, take this cup from me; yet not my will, but yours be done.” (Luke 22:42). Bold. Humble. Persistent. You’d expect God the Father to answer Jesus’ prayer by not having him die. But he didn’t, did he? Instead, he sent his angels to strengthen Jesus for his death. It wasn’t what we expected. But it was so much better! “God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God” (2 Corinthians 5:21). God’s way is better!
So always pray and never give up! Just like Abraham. “Just once more… Just once more…” Whether you’re lying in bed at night or driving on the road or sitting in church… Always pray and never give up! For that family member with cancer… For that loved one who has fallen away from God… For that relationship in conflict… Always pray and never give up! When life is going good… When you don’t know how to carry on… Always pray and never give up! That little voice in your head is wrong. God hears. Because of Jesus. Always pray and never give up!
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