Grace Presbyterian Church, Montclair, New Jersey

This next section of Genesis focuses on a sharp contrast between God’s promises and human depravity. God reiterates his promise to Abraham and Sarah that they will have a son. Sarah follows Abraham’s example in laughing at the idea. These chapters also include God’s judgment on Sodom and Gomorrah as well as human attempts at solutions to pressing problems. The human attempts fail, often disastrously. God, however, continues to intervene to carry out his plan and purpose.

1. Promise and Judgment – Chapter 18
   1. Abraham encounters three visitors, one of whom is clearly God and the other two probably angels (there really is no support for the idea that the three men represent the Trinity).
   2. Abraham shows both respect in bowing down (Genesis 18:2) and hospitality in inviting them to a meal (Genesis 18:3-8).
   3. Abraham now receives the promise again that he will have a son. When he first heard the idea, he laughed (Genesis 17:17). This time, Sarah is listening outside the tent and she laughs (Genesis 18:12). The irony is that their son will be named Isaac, which means “one laughs.”
   4. The Lord, of course, knows that Sarah laughed. God himself makes the comment. “Is anything too wonderful for the Lord?” (Genesis 18:14). This refigures the statement of the angel Gabriel to the virgin Mary, “For nothing will be impossible with God” (Luke 1:37). Confronted with having laughed, Sarah does what most of us would do. She denies it. She is afraid (Genesis 18:15). God is not fooled, of course. However, Sarah’s lack of faith does not annul the promise, since the promise is not based on her. This is a fundamental lesson in Scripture. God’s promises are based on God alone (Hebrews 6:13-14). As Paul says in his Epistle to the Romans, “Will their faithlessness nullify the faithfulness of God? By no means!” (Romans 3:3-4). Paul later states, “for the gifts and calling of God are irrevocable” (Romans 11:29).
   5. Abraham’s special visitors now set out for Sodom (Genesis 18:22). The Lord, taking on a human perspective, asks himself whether or not he should tell Abraham of his plans to destroy Sodom and Gomorrah. In a telling phrase, God says he has chosen Abraham and his descendents to do “righteousness and justice” (Genesis 18:19). This phrase is repeated throughout the Old Testament referring to God’s standard of human conduct. It includes personal faithfulness as well as the care of the oppressed and the poor (II Samuel 8:15; Proverbs 21:3; Isaiah 1:17; Jeremiah 22:15-16; Ezekiel 18:19). The theme is certainly continued in the New Testament (Matthew 5:6; Galatians 2:10; James 1:27).
   6. Abraham responds to God’s standard with the critical question, “Shall not the Judge of all the earth do what is just?’ (Genesis 18:25). Abraham’s point is that the innocent should not perish with the guilty. God goes even further. He says that he will forgive the “whole place” for the sake of fifty righteous persons. Abraham evidently realizes that fifty is too unrealistic a number. He works God down to ten (Genesis 18:28-32). Yet without Abraham being told explicitly, the obvious point is that there is not even ten. There is only Lot and his family. This brings up the familiar point, is there such a thing as an innocent bystander? If you’re innocent and there is corruption and evil around you, you will not simply “stand by.” If you’re standing by in the face of evil or abuse, you’re not innocent. We are told later in Scripture that Lot was very distressed by the inhabitants of Sodom (II Peter 2:7).
2. God’s Grace and Human Perversion – Chapter 19
   1. The scene now shifts to within Sodom itself and the situation of Lot and his family. The angelic visitors come to Lot (Genesis 19:1). He implores them to come to his house, but they say the will spend the night in the town square. Lot realizes how dangerous this is and prevails upon them to come and stay in his house (Genesis 19:2-3). However, the men of Sodom, learning of the presence of the visitors, surround the house and demand that the two “men” be brought out so that they may “know” them. This reference is clearly sexual (cf. Genesis 4:1). Lot opposes the idea with horror and even offers to sacrifice his virgin daughters to the mob. This underscores the great priority of hospitality in the ancient world.
   2. The men have no interest in the women. They want the angels whom they think are men. This text has been understood as a definition of homosexuality throughout history. However it bears little upon contemporary discussions of the issue since it is really a picture of an attempted gang rape (other texts such as Romans 1:26-27 are more general). What is striking is that the men of Sodom clearly prefer males as their sexual victims.
   3. Note to reader: don’t mess with angels. The crowd is totally unaware of who their intended victims are. They learn quickly as the angels strike them with blindness (Genesis 19:9-11).
   4. The angels then inform Lot to take his family and get out of Sodom before the impending destruction. Lot’s future sons-in-law do not take him seriously. They therefore perish with everyone else in the city. Lot himself lingers and has to be forcibly removed. The family is told not even to look back (Genesis 19:17). Lot’s wife does look back and is turned to salt (Genesis 19:26).
   5. Sodom and Gomorrah throughout history have been the symbols of human sin and degradation. Their faults include:
      1. False religion
      2. Violence
      3. Injustice (Isaiah 1:10-17, 3:9)
      4. Adultery
      5. Deceit (Jeremiah 23:14)
      6. Pride
      7. Excess food and indulgence
      8. Neglect of the poor and needy (Ezekiel 16:49)
      9. Sexual immorality and perversion (Jude 1:7)
   6. What is striking is that, despite these enormous faults and the fact that Lot knew how perverted the people were, nonetheless, Lot and his whole family had difficulty leaving Sodom. Somehow they had accommodated themselves to the perversions around them. Did Lot’s wife look back because she was still attached to the city?
   7. The irony here is that Lot had chosen to live in the plain of Sodom and Gomorrah because the land had looked appealing to him (Genesis 13:10-13).
   8. The perversion continues in the sequel. Lot and his two daughters make their way to a cave in the hills. The daughters think the world has been destroyed and that they are the lone survivors. To continue the cycle of life, the older devises a plan to get their father drunk and then each of them will have sex with him so they can conceive. This is, in fact, what they do. Lot is unaware of the actions of his daughters at the time, but he certainly must have figured out what happened after they became pregnant (you probably didn’t hear this story in Sunday School).
   9. There is a certain perverted logic to their plan. It is a clear indication of human reasoning apart from God. They give birth to the ancestors of the Moabites and the Ammonites, respectively. These two groups will later cause great problems for Israel (Numbers 25:1-3; Judges 3:12-14).
   10. This story has echoes of the situation of Noah who, after being delivered from judgment on a sinful people, fell into drunkenness and sexual perversion at the hand of one of his sons.
3. “Some People Never Learn” – Chapter 20
   1. We now have another account of Sarah and Abraham. Abraham continues to pass Sarah off as his sister, which in some sense she is (Genesis 20:12). However, she is also his wife.
   2. The first account of this took place in Egypt. The second occurs in Gerar with King Abimelech.
   3. God intervenes to keep Abimelech from unintentionally taking a married woman.
   4. Abimelech is actually presented in this story as more a person of integrity than Abraham. He confronts Abraham with the statement, “You have done things to me which ought not to be done” (Genesis 20:10).
   5. Abraham has devised this scheme, as he did the last time, to protect himself (Genesis 12:10-13). Sarah does not seem to have been consulted on these arrangements.
   6. This account is strikingly similar to a situation with Isaac and Rebekah with apparently the same King Abimelech (Genesis 26:6-11). Some commentators therefore think these are just two versions of the same story. Yet they are not identical. If Isaac in fact had followed the example of his father years later, King Abimelech must have thought these patriarchs to be very strange. In a variation of his complaint to Abraham, Abimelech says to Isaac, “What is this you have done to us?” (Genesis 26:10). In other words, “What were you thinking of?” (Genesis 20:10).
   7. We cannot be sure of all the details of these events. Was it really the case that the older Sarah was so attractive that Abimelech took her into his (presumed) harem? Surely the spiritual point is the main emphasis. Human decisions apart from God’s Word lead one into bizarre and indeed very sinful situations. This is true of Abraham, Sarah, Lot and his family. People laugh at God and then go their own way with tragic results. This reality is as true today as it was in the days of Genesis (Proverbs 14:12).
4. Questions for Us –
   1. Sarah laughs at God’s promise. The fiancés of Lot’s daughters laugh at the impending judgment of Sodom. What are ways that people in our world laugh at God? How do we laugh at God? Why do you think Sarah is spared and the fiancés are destroyed?
   2. Many people associate Sodom and Gomorrah only with homosexuality. What does the full story of these doomed cities say to us about our own society and way of life in the twenty-first century?
   3. Throughout these chapters, people make their own decisions apart from God with tragic results. How do we do the same thing? What lessons can we learn from their negative example (cf. I Corinthians 10:6)?

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