Mar 10: Genesis 18

Back in the book of Genesis today, chapter 18.

1. There’s an interesting dialogue between Abraham and God in the first part of this chapter. You might be wondering who the other two men were that God was walking with? Honestly, we don’t know for sure. We find out that it’s two angels, who later visit Sodom, but we don’t know their names.
2. God recommits to Abraham that within a year he will have his promised son even though he and his wife were very old.
3. Then we see that Abraham was clearly a good man. God said he was going to “investigate” the wickedness of a nearby town to see if it should be destroyed and Abraham has the nerve to confront God and ask him to spare the city; Abraham asked God 6 times not to destroy the city. 
4. How God is acting might strike you as strange because it almost is like he’s walking around looking who’s messing up enough to wipe out. This is a stereo type people have of God and certainly not how we see Jesus acting in the New Testament. Honestly, we’re not sure why God is behaving this way. We do know from history that these cities were very wicked. But most often we see God in the Bible be patient with our sins. So we can only assume that God had been very patient with these cities but they refused to turn back to God. The other thing we can assume is that because of the depravity of these cities they were causing people a lot of pain. So, maybe that had something to do with why God intervened as well.

The bravery on Abraham’s part for people he didn’t live with shows his heart for other people. We can tell by Abraham’s “apologetic” requests that he feared God may kill him just for questioning him but Abraham couldn’t stand by and not speak out for the people of the city. How God responded to Abraham showed how Abraham had found favor in God’s eyes because God gave Abraham his requests. Maybe if Abraham would have asked once more God would have spared the city all together; we don’t know. But this should leave us with a question; Would we be willing to confront God to save the lives of people we don’t know? And maybe a more cutting question; Would our lives be righteousness enough to find favor in God’s eyes for him to listen to us? How close are you walking with God right now? Is there anything you need to talk to him about that you haven’t been?