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Abraham - Genesis 18+19
Sermons from Commons Church. Intellectually honest. Spiritually passionate. Jesus at the centre. Since 2014.
This morning, we are at part six in our series on the story of Abraham. And we have only today and then two more weeks with Abraham before we move into the season of Advent. And so if you have missed any of the conversations thus far and you wanna catch up, they're all available on Internet. Check commons.church for the links, and you can get caught up that way. Now today, we face into one of the more difficult stories in the Abrahamic tradition.
Speaker 1:And that is the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah. And so we have no time for jokes today because this is going to require some serious work to make sense of. And there's a lot I wanna cover. So I'm gonna dispense with the recap I normally do. You can catch up online.
Speaker 1:But let me start with this and just say, last week, the idea that God sees the fears that we are sometimes too afraid even to notice in ourselves. That seemed to resonate with a lot of people. And this idea that we all have fears that by any reasonable measure, nobody else would ever guess or imagine that we struggle with. And that not only is God aware of what strips you bare and stops you from moving forward, not only is he cognizant of what is going on inside of you, but that he is ready to be deeply present to you if you allow him. This is an important reminder for us.
Speaker 1:Because if you can even begin to open yourself up to the idea that God, the universe, the divine, a greater power, whatever language it is that makes sense to you today, would not only know about your fears, but would actually honestly deeply care about them, then perhaps the idea that the God most high creator of heaven and earth was put himself on a line for Abraham that might not seem so distant to you anymore. Because the fundamental basis for the Christian story is that all that is cares about you. So don't be afraid. Now, today, it is Sodom and Gomorrah, and that is something to be afraid of. So let's pray and ask for some help here before we jump in.
Speaker 1:God of our father Abraham, would you speak meaning and significance and purpose into every fear that we harbor this day? Would you remind us that the blessings that we have been given, the successes that we've experienced, the failures that we have gone through in our life could never replace the sense of significance that comes from being invested in your kingdom. May we see every opportunity to contribute to the good, no matter how small or great, as part of the deep assurance of our place in your story? Would you remind us that we are loved and valued and remembered by you, and that in every fear, are met by grace and peace. As we read today, of your righteousness and your justice, of the way that sin grieves you.
Speaker 1:May we see the heart of grace that drives your actions in history. That you have come to us as light shining in the dark, but at times, each of us has not always welcomed that light the way that we should. So forgive our doubt and renew our hope and invite us to experience the fullness of life and hospitality in you. In the strong name of the risen Christ, we pray. Amen.
Speaker 1:Okay. Today, we have reached one of the more infamous stories in the Abrahamic tradition, and that is the story of Sodom and Gomorrah. And probably, even if you have never read this passage in Genesis eighteen and nineteen, you have some cultural familiarity with this story. In fact, for years, the term sodomy from Sodom has been attached to practices like homosexuality in culture. However, I hope that as we take some time this morning, you will see here that this is a much bigger and more complex story with something to speak to all of us regardless of something like sexual orientation.
Speaker 1:Now, the truth is this story deserves a lot more than to simply be blamed on the gays because that is not an honest biblical reading of what's happening here. And so we need to look at some of the context and dig in a bit. Now, it's a big story, and so we're not gonna have time to read through it completely today. But the story begins in chapter 18 verse 20, goes all the way through to chapter 19 verse 29. So if you wanna write that down and go through and read it at your leisure this week, that would be great.
Speaker 1:However, before we jump in, we actually need to back up and start at the start of chapter 18 to get a little bit of context here first. And in verse one, this is what we read. The Lord appeared to Abraham near the great trees of Mamre while he was sitting at the entrance to his tent in the heat of the day. Abraham looked up and saw three men standing nearby. When he saw them, he hurried from the entrance of his tent to meet them and bowed low to the ground.
Speaker 1:Now, the story goes on to say that he gets them water and bread. He prepares a calf for them to eat and he brings them curds and milk. It's a sign of great generosity in that culture. And so basically, he just goes overboard welcoming these men who are these angels or these messengers of the Lord here. Now, there is a brief conversation about Abraham and Sarah and the expectation of a child.
Speaker 1:And that is part of the story that we will cover next week. But our story picks up again in verse 18 where we read that 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. And this should tell us right from the start that we are not dealing with just a straight word story about God here. Very clearly, this story has been stylized to make a point about God and humanity.
Speaker 1:Because of course, God doesn't need to go down to see anything. He doesn't need to see if things are as bad as people say they are. I mean, he's God. Right? He doesn't have to do this kind of stuff.
Speaker 1:And in fact, this kind of language has already been used for comedic effect earlier in the book of Genesis. There was a story about a city called Babel. And the people wanna make a tower that reaches to God so that they can prove how great they are. And in Genesis 11, it says, the people said, come, let us build ourselves a city with a tower that reaches to the gods. So that we may make a name for ourselves.
Speaker 1:But then the very next verse says, that the Lord came down to see the city and the tower the people were building. That's a joke. Now, the writer might not be Jerry Seinfeld here, but his point is that this impressive tower that is supposed to reach to the heavens isn't even tall enough for God to see it without coming down to take a look. Right? He has to stoop to see it, let alone be offended by it.
Speaker 1:That's the kind of setup that we get here in Genesis 18. Look, I've heard you guys are up to no good. Don't make me come down there, says the Lord. Do you remember your mom saying this to you on road trips as a kid. Right?
Speaker 1:You're fighting with your sister in the back seat and your mom says, don't make me come back there. I will turn this car around right now. She got that from God. Don't mess with her. Okay?
Speaker 1:That's what's going on in the story. And it clues us in to the kind of story that we're reading. This is a story that is more about us than it is about God. Right? Now, the next verse says this, the men turned away and went towards Sodom.
Speaker 1:But Abraham remained standing before the Lord. Now, back at the start of this chapter, the Lord appears to Abraham and he seems to be represented by these three men, messengers or angels. Well now, two of the men head off to Sodom to see if it's really as bad as they say. But the presence of the Lord, God, stays to talk to Abraham for a moment. The text here from the NIV says, that Abraham remained standing before the Lord.
Speaker 1:This is a Hebrew idiom, and it's a way of saying that Abraham is wanting to learn or listen to God. He stands before God to learn. Except that the very oldest Masoretic tradition of the Hebrew text actually says that the Lord remained standing before Abraham. Now, that tends to make bible translators a little bit uncomfortable because obviously God doesn't have anything to learn from Abraham. But considering the way the story has already anthropomorphized God in the introduction, I mean, he has to go down to see if things are really as bad as they say.
Speaker 1:I wonder if the point here isn't so much that God needs to learn a lesson from Abraham as much as God is here specifically to see how Abraham will respond to him. It's as if God stands before Abraham and says, your move. And that makes sense considering what happens next. And then Abraham approached him and said, will you sweep away the righteous with the wicked? What if there are 50 righteous people in the city?
Speaker 1:Will you really sweep it away and not spare the place for the sick sake of 50 righteous people? Far be it from you for to do such a thing. To kill the righteous with the wicked. Treating the righteous and the wicked alike. Far be it from you.
Speaker 1:Will not the judge of all the earth do right? Now, if you read the rest of the chapter, God says, okay. For 50 people, I will spare the city. To which Abraham says, yeah, but but what if there's only 45? I mean, really, it's only a difference of five people.
Speaker 1:Is that really worth wiping everyone out? God says, okay. Deal. 45. Abraham says, what about 40?
Speaker 1:Okay. What about 30? Okay. What about 20? Would 20 people be enough?
Speaker 1:And God says, yes. What if there's only 10 righteous people in the city? Would it not be worth sparing everyone just for the sake of 10? And God actually says, yes, it would. For 10 people, I would spare the city.
Speaker 1:Now, what is going on here? I mean, does God really negotiate? Does God really change his mind if we can out debate him? Does God really need a lesson in grace from Abraham? And I think by any reasonable theological measure, we would have to say no.
Speaker 1:The divine is not subject to the whims of rhetoric. And yet I wonder that if by allowing Abraham to make his point, is it possible that God is making his? Nahum Sarnah is probably one of the best Genesis scholars of the last century. He's a Jewish gentleman who wrote these incredible commentaries on both Genesis and Exodus. And he did a lot of work translating ancient Hebrew text for the Jewish Publication Society.
Speaker 1:But he writes of this dialogue between Abraham and Yahweh, and he says this, that because this God, Yahweh, is universal and omnipotent, Humankind needs assurance that his almighty power is not indiscriminately applied. That he is not capricious like the pagan gods. What Sarna is saying here is that in the pagan world of Abraham, they have never seen or heard of a god like Yahweh before. All of their gods, they were local, and they were petty, and they were not particularly caring. We talked about this a few weeks ago in the story of Melchizedek.
Speaker 1:The gods are local, and they are competition with each other all the time. And the only thing that didn't make this world utterly completely terrifying was the fact that these gods were somewhat limited. And you could always run away from the river god and climb the mountain. And if you were afraid of the valley god, you could avoid him by sticking to the hills. But if Abraham's god, Yahweh, was truly universal and omnipotent, if this God was actually honestly the creator of all things heaven and earth as Melchizedek said, then the scariest thing Abraham can possibly imagine is that this God would turn out to be evil.
Speaker 1:Where do you hide? Where do you run? How do you avoid a universal omnipotent nasty God? And so for Sarnah, the reason that God lets Abraham negotiate with him is not because the end game was ever up for grabs. It's precisely because God wants Abraham to know that he is just and gracious and holy and true.
Speaker 1:He's demonstrating his character. Have you ever experienced something like this, where someone has told you something a thousand times before and it just never clicked for you? Maybe you sat in a class with a professor for an entire semester and you listened to her teach. But it just never quite made sense. And then by chance, one day, you happened by her office and she was there, so you knocked on the door.
Speaker 1:And she invited you in and you sat down and you talked and you asked all of your questions and all of a sudden, it all just became clear. See, it seems to me that God is in the process of enlightening us, not lecturing us. And so sometimes, that means that God speaks to us. Sometimes that means that God reveals himself to us. Sometimes that means that God asks us the question.
Speaker 1:But then sometimes, God invites us to ask him the questions. Because what he's concerned about is that we would know who he is for ourselves. And so that God would stand before Abraham, that God would countenance Abraham's questions. This is not an obligation of God's greatness in the story. It's an indication of just how deeply God wants to be known.
Speaker 1:And I think that even while Abraham is respectfully negotiating in the story, I think what we see here is that God is carefully, graciously, slowly revealing himself in the conversation to Abraham. This is who God is. Now, are there questions that you need to ask God? Are there questions that you need to ask the church? Because no one here, including God in this story, is afraid of questions.
Speaker 1:In fact, he invites them. So the terms are now set. Abraham has negotiated him down. If 10 righteous people can be found, the city will be spared. And we should remember here that if this story is revealing the true nature of God, then it would seem that doing good for the righteous is far more important to God than punishing the wicked.
Speaker 1:But even with all that graciousness, in chapter 19 verse one, we read this. The two angels arrived at Sodom in the evening and Lot was sitting in the gateway of the city. When he saw them, he got up to meet them and he bowed down with his face to the ground. My lords, he said, please turn aside to your servant's house. You can wash your feet and spend the night there and then go on your way early in the morning.
Speaker 1:And this is very similar. It's a parallel in fact to the way that Abraham greeted these men in chapter 18. It's meant to show us a Lot's character in line with Abraham's. Things, however, go sideways fairly quickly here. Verse four.
Speaker 1:Before they had gone to bed, all the men from every part of the city of Sodom, both young and old, surrounded the house. They called to Lot, where are the men who came to you tonight? Bring them out to us so that we can have sex with them. Now literally, it's because we desire to know them, but we all know what that means in Hebrew. Lot went outside to meet them and shut the door behind them and said, no my friends.
Speaker 1:Do not do this wicked thing. Look, I have two daughters who have never slept with a man. Let me bring them out to you and you can do with them what you like. Don't do anything to these men for they have come under the protection of my roof and this is an awful story. And there is no getting around that.
Speaker 1:No one comes off looking good in this story. Nobody wins, and I am not for a second going to even try to defend any of this. Let's remember, however, and that this comes from a very different culture where fact is women were property and men were human beings. And thankfully, we have come a very, very long way with farther still to go. God has been gracious enough to continue moving society, culture, humanity forward one small step at a time, to the point where today we now gender parity in our new federal cabinet.
Speaker 1:And honestly, it should have been that way for a very long time. I am reminded this week of a quote from Ruth Bader Ginsburg, one of the first female supreme court justices in The United States. And when she was named to the bench, was asked, how many women would you like to see on the Supreme Court? She said, nine. All nine.
Speaker 1:And the person interviewing her who was a man respondent said, well, that's not fair. We can't have all women on the Supreme Court. And Ginsburg said, why not? Up until 1981, it was all men and no one seemed to care and she's got a point there. But that said, this is yet another example of patriarchy in the bible.
Speaker 1:It's just there. And as awkward as it is for us to read over time, I've actually come to appreciate the fact that our scriptures are not washed of our history as a species. They're real. These things happened. We had terrible cultural biases throughout most of human history.
Speaker 1:And you and I, we need to see what patriarchy does. How deeply it has caused us to devalue other human beings who are made in the image of God. We need to read that. And in fact, we do that so that we can celebrate how gracious and patient God has been with our brokenness, how far he has moved us forward, and it should motivate us to continue that story going. Now, back to the story here.
Speaker 1:The men of Sodom reject Lot's proposal, and they try to rape these two men. And Lot and his family and the angelic messengers have to flee out the back door and leave the city. We're then told verses 24, 25, 26, chapter 19, we read this, that the Lord rained down burning sulfur on Sodom and Gomorrah from out of the heavens. Thus, he overthrew those cities and the entire plain, destroying all those living in the city and also all the vegetation in the land. But Lot's wife looked back and she became a pillar of salt.
Speaker 1:Now, there's a lot of scholars that think, even in the world of this story, sulfur and salt here are symbolic. Salt is a way of preserving things. Salt spread on the soil though is also a way of ensuring that nothing ever grows again. In fact, the Romans salted the ground after they destroyed the Jewish temple after the time of Jesus. And so, this may be a way of saying that Lot's wife dies and her line dies with her.
Speaker 1:Nothing grows from her family again, possibly. There is however, very strong tradition that says her body actually became a block of salt. The ancient writer Josephus actually claims to have seen a salt formation near the Dead Sea that he swore was Lot's wife. Who knows? Burning sulfur, also called brimstone in old English.
Speaker 1:That's where we get that language from. This is an image of God's anger throughout the scriptures. In Isaiah 30, the writer says that the breath of God is like a stream of burning sulfur to the wicked. What's interesting though is that the breath of God is also life in the scriptures to those who are righteous. Remember God breathes life into Adam, for example.
Speaker 1:And so fire is this common image in the Hebrew scriptures both for God's judgment, but also his purification. And so there seems to be a sense that God's judgment can either burn away the impurities in us leaving us better or if all we have cultivated is greed and selfishness and wickedness, it can consume us completely leaving nothing behind. That's what appears to happen in this tale. Now, the question that still lingers is this. What exactly was this sin of Sodom that drove God to this action?
Speaker 1:And obviously, from the story, we can see the wickedness of Sodom come out when they try to rape these two angels. It's horrible. But truthfully, that's actually only the final straw in the story. Now remember, God has pretty much made up his mind before his messengers ever go down to visit Lot. And so it's important that we don't just jump to quick conclusions about what this story is about and assume it's not about us.
Speaker 1:Because one of the unfortunate tendencies has been to simply say that this is a story about homosexuality and be done with it. And if that doesn't relate to us, then this story isn't for us. The scriptures however actually say something very different about this story. Isaiah chapter one. Hear the word of the Lord you rulers of Sodom.
Speaker 1:Listen to the instruction of our God you people of Gomorrah. The multitude of your sacrifices, what are they to me? Says the Lord. I have more than enough burnt offerings of rams and the fat of fattened animals. I have no pleasure in the blood of bulls and lambs and goats.
Speaker 1:When you come to appear before me, who has asked this of you? This trampling of my courts. Stop bringing meaningless offerings. Your incense is detestable to me. New moons, Sabbath, and convocations, I cannot bear your worthless assemblies.
Speaker 1:The sin of Sodom was empty religion. Ezekiel chapter 16. 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 the needy.
Speaker 1:They were haughty and they did detestable things before me. Therefore, I did away with them as you've seen. The sin of Sodom was greed and carelessness for the poor. Jeremiah 23, and among the prophets of Jerusalem, I have seen something horrible. They commit adultery and live a lie.
Speaker 1:They strengthen the hands of evildoers so that not one of them turns from their wickedness. They are like Sodom to me. Sin of Sodom is adultery and the supporting of evildoers. Jesus, Matthew chapter 10. If anyone will not welcome you or listen to your words, leave that home or town and shake the dust off your feet.
Speaker 1:Truly, I tell you, it will be more bearable for Sodom and Gomorrah on the day of judgment than for that town. Sin of Sodom is not welcoming the stranger with hospitality. Then Jude seven, the last one that deals with Sodom says this, Sodom and Gomorrah and the surrounding towns gave themselves up to sexual immorality and perversion. Now, this is the one that sounds the closest to something like homosexuality. But instead, the writer here uses this phrase.
Speaker 1:He says, they pursued other flesh. That's literally what it says. And that's a more wooden translation of the Greek which says, heteros sarcos, which is actually where we get our term heterosexual from. And so it seems like the other flesh that Jude is talking about is the idea of people wanting to have sex with angels. And according to Jude, that is a big no no.
Speaker 1:Don't go there. Now, bottom line, the people in Sodom and Gomorrah are not nice people. They practice empty religion. They don't care for the needy and the poor. They are greedy and selfish.
Speaker 1:They are unfaithful to each other. They are inhospitable to strangers. And apparently, they want to sleep with angels. Point being, this is by no means a single issue story. In fact, if anything, the way this reads in Genesis, it seems to be intended as a caricature of the worst of humanity.
Speaker 1:Sexual immorality, lack of hospitality, empty religion, greed, and selfishness, and violence all rolled up into one steaming mess of human failure. And I don't wanna do anything to diminish the seriousness of this story. It is very obviously trying to communicate something to us about the significance of our choices and the seriousness of God's response. But if you have ever read these stories and come away with the haunting feeling that perhaps God is hiding behind every door waiting to pounce, Or that there are certain sins that anger God irrationally and trump his grace and peace. This is not that story.
Speaker 1:In fact, everything about this tale seems to be designed to show just how deeply evil and committed to that course you have to be to remove yourself from God's grace. Remember, in these ancient cultures, the gods were angry. They were vindictive and capricious. That's just how you thought about the gods. They were hard to please.
Speaker 1:And as Sarna told us, the scariest thing imaginable was a god that you couldn't run away from. And so strange that it is for us to imagine when we read a story about fire and brimstone, This was not a story the Hebrews told to scare their children at night. It was actually a story they repeated to remind them of how gracious and just and trustworthy their God was in comparison to every other religion. That's what the story is about. That you can't accidentally end up on the bad side of God.
Speaker 1:That you can't unintentionally stumble into a place where grace no longer reaches you, that you can't make one mistake and wake up and find yourself cut off from God's goodness. No. Sure. This story tells us that if we choose to, we can walk away from God. We can openly refuse the good.
Speaker 1:We can rebel against God. But it seems, according to the story, to do that takes a lot of effort. This is why the scriptures tell us over and over and over again That the Lord is compassionate and gracious, slow to anger and abounding in love. Psalm one zero three eight, Exodus thirty four six, Numbers fourteen eighteen, 18, Nehemiah nine seventeen, Psalm eighty six fifteen, Psalm one forty five eight, Joel two thirteen, Jonah four two, Nahum one three. Because this is the God who we are meant to see even in the story of Sodom.
Speaker 1:And perhaps, these tales of fire and brimstone have been read to you out of their larger context in the Hebrew story. In a way, from the context of what was happening in these worlds and how Yahweh is showing himself in comparison to these pagan gods. And they have given you the wrong impression of God. A God who wants you to slip up. And a God who wants to catch you.
Speaker 1:A God who wants nothing more than to punish you for your sins. And maybe you would see in this story today, instead, the God who would welcome a man to negotiate with him. The God who would invite our questions and our struggles about who he is into his presence. A god who would go to unreasonable lengths to show us that he is worthy of our trust. The God who would go even farther than this to the ungodly length of becoming human.
Speaker 1:Just so that we would know that the love and grace and peace of God transcends anything we would ever expect. And in that, maybe even the story of Sodom and Gomorrah would speak to you today through the spirit of God. The fact that you can walk away from him if you choose, but that he will always welcome those who would come. Let's pray. God, help us to deal with these stories.
Speaker 1:That to be perfectly honest are offensive to our sensibilities. The anger, the fire, everything that seems so distant from our experience of you now encapsulated in this tale. And yet, who would you help us to place ourselves into the context of what's happening? This milieu of false gods who are angry and vindictive, and the one true god who emerges from that story to show us how just and true, how trustworthy he is. That you are not capricious.
Speaker 1:You're not vindictive. You're not arbitrary. But instead, you are the God who welcomes all towards you. And, yes, you allow us to walk away from you if we choose. But God, by your spirit, would you speak to each of us today?
Speaker 1:Even if we have had our back to you for a very long time. And would you invite us to reimagine what grace and peace look like in our world. God, help us to take the story, to sink it deep into our bones, and then have it emerge in our lives as an experience of just how good you are. And may we carry that into every conversation that we enter. In the strong name of the risen Christ, we pray.
Speaker 1:Amen.