Genesis 18:16-33 Grace to the Righteous

Welcome to the podcast of Recast Church in Madawan, Michigan, where you can grow in faith, community, and service. This is a message from the series Beginning with God, Walking Through the Book of Genesis by Pastor of Teaching and Vision, Don Filcik.

If you'd like to learn more about Recast or access our sermon archive, please visit us at recastchurch .com. Here's Pastor Don.

Abraham’s Question About God’s Mercy

But kind of as a way of introducing the message this morning, Genesis 18 is where we're going.

To be.

Just to start off with a question, how many of you have God all figured out?

Okay. Okay.

Nobody raised their hand, so I was going to schedule lunch with the first person who raised their hand, because I really want to know from you. I've got some questions about God that I'd like answered.

So think about it.

There's another way to ask that same question, though, to ask, okay, in general, do you have God all figured out? But think about it this way. If you could meet with God, are there any questions that you would ask him about him?

Okay, now there might be some other questions that you have rolling around in your mind for God, but is there anything you would like to ask him about himself? Think in those terms. Anything you would like to know about the way that he rolls, the types of things he does, the reasons why he does the things that he does.

Certainly we might be tempted in a meeting with God to ask only questions about ourselves or about our personal situations, right? Like how many of you, maybe you would ask the question, how long am I going to live?

I mean, is that a question? Some of us wouldn't even want to know that. Some of you would want to know that. You'd want to know some questions about yourself. Will this particular difficult situation that I'm in right now, how's that going to be resolved?

How's that going to work out? Even like for me, a building situation, what's that going to look like a year from now? How is that going to go and how's that all going to roll? Where should I invest my money?

Or some of you might even just have the real honest question, what's the next six digits for the mega millions, right? I mean, could you just give me the lottery ticket numbers and we could roll on that.

But in our text, Abraham, Abraham is going to have a sit down meeting with God and he's going to ask the simple question, God, how merciful are you? He's meeting God and he's getting to know God in the text.

And what we have is Abraham actually coming in contact with God, God calling him. God's the one who started the relationship and he's kind of getting to know God over the course of chapters that we've been going through in the book of Genesis.

And he now comes to a point where he says, God, how merciful are you? How do you treat the righteous? How do you treat those who are wicked? What does that look like? And that's the question that he's asking.

And that question plays out as a central question in the text. And the entire text is driving toward answering that question, how merciful is God? But this text can become so convoluted that many have taught it as if it's primarily about prayer or primarily about the sovereignty of God.

As many of you know, I'm going to read the text here in just a second, but Abraham is going to have, he's going to basically bargain with God. Well, what if there's 50 righteous in the city? Well, what if there's only 45 righteous in the city?

What about 40? And it works them all the way down to 10. And so there's questions that you might have in the text that the text just isn't going to answer for you. And that's just reality. So is it primarily, is this a text about the sovereignty of God?

Well, I think all texts of scripture somewhat point to the sovereignty of God. But I would suggest to you that the further that we get away from seeing this passage about the mercy of God, the further we get away from the main point of the author.

And so the question that I ask all of you this morning is how merciful is your God? Everybody that's here, you're all sitting here and you all have a view. Would you admit that you have somewhat, in some way, maybe a skewed view of God?

Would you raise your hand to confess that there's something in there that's not quite theologically correct? And that'll be corrected when we meet him, right? In a lot of ways, that's the time when we're going to actually see him as he truly is, and that'll be glorious.

But I would say that we have, probably on this pendulum of mercy to harshness or quick anger or wrath, we tend towards error somewhere in that. Very few of us are in the center of the balance on that when we ask the question, how merciful is your God?

I think many in our culture view him as kind of like the pie and candy guy up in the sky who's just going to give us everything that we want. He's the big daddy and he's, you know, just curl up on his lap and he gives you everything that you want.

And then others of us were raised in an environment where the idea is that he's looking for you to fail. He's looking for opportunities to smoke you. You know what I'm saying? Some of you are nodding your head, you're like, I was raised that way.

I was raised in a church that was leaning in that direction. I can't be too critical. I mean, in one sense, I have a lot to owe in gratitude to the church. I did hear the gospel there, but certainly a lot of the things that I was taught growing up skewed my view of God towards wrath and quick anger.

And he's just looking for me to slip up just a little and boom, he's going to come in and get me. You guys can relate to probably one side or the other on that. But how merciful is your God? Scripture, I believe, wants to challenge our understanding of a God of wrath and quick capricious anger.

I've often heard people suggest that the God of the Old Testament is different than the God of the New Testament. Have any of you ever heard that before? God of the Old Testament, you know, judges Joshua going to come in and conquer the land and death and genocide and all kinds of wrath and judgment.

And we're going to see Sodom and Gomorrah next week. And the story today leading up into that and like all of this, you know, wrath in the Old.

Testament.

And then Jesus comes in the New Testament and he's kind and gentle and healing everybody and just super kind and just lets everybody have their way. Not really, but that's the mindset that a lot of people have about God.

But as I've been studying through the book of Genesis, I hope you found the same things that I have as we've been marching through this. That the God revealed in the Old Testament is a God of immense mercy towards those who have rebelled against him.

He is certainly a God more merciful than me. And I think probably all of us can say that to some degree as we look at the way that he interacts with people, the way that he gives patience to them, the way that he is long suffering with them and putting up with them.

I might not put up with people treating me the way that humanity has treated God. And yet he endures with us. So I want you to open your Bibles to Genesis chapter 18. And we'll read this text before the band comes to lead us in worship.

Genesis 18, verses 16 through the end of the chapter. That's page 11 in the Bible in the seat back in front of you. If you want to open it up and turn there, follow along as I read in the English Standard.

Version.

If you don't own a copy of the Bible or an English Standard Version copy of the Bible, you can take that one with you. We have a box in the back room back there waiting to fill in whatever's taken this morning.

But follow along as I read the very words of God to us this morning here at Recast Church. Then the men set out from there, and they looked down towards Sodom, and Abraham went with them and set them on their way.

The Lord said, shall I hide from Abraham what I am about to do, seeing that Abraham shall surely become a great and mighty nation, and all the nations of the earth shall be blessed in him? For I've chosen him that he may command his children and his household after him to keep the way of the Lord by doing righteousness and justice, so that the Lord may bring to Abraham what he has promised him.

Then the Lord said, because the outcry against Sodom and Gomorrah is great and their sin is very grave, I will go down to see whether they have done altogether according to the outcry that has come to me, and if not, I will know.

So the men turned from there and went down towards Sodom, but Abraham still stood before.

The Lord.

Then Abraham drew near and said, will you indeed sweep away the righteous with the wicked? Suppose there are fifty righteous within the city, will you then sweep away the place and not spare it for the fifty righteous who are in it?

Far be it from you to do such a thing, to put the righteous to death with the wicked, so that the righteous fare as the wicked. Far be that from you! Shall not the judge of all the earth do what is just?

And the Lord said, if I find at Sodom fifty righteous in the city, I will spare the whole place for their sake. Abraham answered and said, behold, I have undertaken to speak to the Lord, I who am but dust and ashes.

Suppose five of the fifty righteous are lacking, will you destroy the whole city for the lack of five? And he said, I will not destroy it if I find forty-five there. Again he spoke to him and said, suppose forty are found there.

He answered, for the sake of forty I will not do it. Then he said, oh, let not the Lord be angry, and I will speak. Suppose thirty are found there? He answered, I will not do it if I find thirty there.

He said, behold, I have undertaken to speak to the Lord. Suppose twenty are found there? He answered, for the sake of twenty I will not destroy it. Then he said, oh, let not the Lord be angry, and I will speak again, but this once.

Suppose ten are found there? He answered, for the sake of ten I will not destroy it. And the Lord went his way when he had finished speaking to Abraham, and Abraham returned to his place. Let's pray as the band comes to lead us in worship.

Father, as we look at this text, it's an ancient text. It was written centuries ago. Father, about events that took place centuries ago, and yet it has something for us to understand here today. And it is not just primarily moral lessons, not something, you know, three steps for us to have a better week.

But ultimately it offers us a vision of you, an image of who you are, high, exalted, lifted up, the ruler over all, the rightful judge of all the earth, and yet equally one who is lavish in your mercy, that those in the text who were declared to be wicked years before this is recorded are still there in their city, are still under your patient mercy.

Thank you that you are long-suffering with me, that you've been patient with me, and I pray that you would impact all of our hearts now as we have an opportunity to come to worship before you to recognize what mercy you have bestowed on us, that you have given us blessing upon blessing, but most importantly, you have blessed us in your Son, Jesus Christ, who is our righteousness, who is our hope, who is our peace.

The Promise to Abraham and the Meaning of Righteousness

I pray that you would help us to worship you with hearts completely recognizing what we deserve in contrast to what we have gained in you. I ask this in Jesus' name, amen. This morning we're diving back into the book of Genesis.

So as we kind of walk through that, I think it'd be important for us to kind of catch up to where we've been, because how many of you, you know, it's been a month since we were in this book, and so it's kind of easy to lose track of where we were, and we've heard some other messages along the way, so let's get back at this.

Remember that we saw at the very beginning, obviously God created it all, humanity broke it all through rebellion against their creator, then God promised to enact a plan to restore it all by bringing one, an offspring of the woman who would crush the head of the serpent, the one who had tempted them and brought them down.

Centuries down the road then, we saw that God comes to a specific man named Abram and makes a covenant in the form of three promises. This is all central to the book of Genesis. Those three promises that he would multiply his offspring and make him a great people into a great nation, that he would give that great people and that great nation a great land, and then lastly that he would make one of the offspring of that great people in that great land a blessing to all nations.

So he would bring an offspring, and we kind of figure on that being kind of tied together. I wonder, I would imagine that the promise to Eve had been passed down generation to generation to generation, that God had promised right at the get-go when they broke the world that one is going to be coming along who's going to restore it, and then now I wonder if people in Abraham's time didn't, or at least Abraham and his family didn't make the connection that one of our offspring is going to be a blessing to all nations, and one of the offspring of the woman is going to be the one who crushes the head of the serpent and restores all things.

I wonder if, I can only imagine that in their mind they connected those two together pretty closely and said we're looking forward to the same person, one who's going to take care of all of this and fix it.

Abraham and his wife, however, up to the point of our text, remain childless, okay? So there was an awful lot of offspring in the promises, right? Did you catch that every single one of the three parts of the promise had something to do with offspring?

And Abraham and Sarah do not have children as of our text. But as of last time together, the first part, the end of chapter 17 and the beginning of chapter 18, we saw two angels come to Abraham and the Lord himself come to Abraham for dinner and God promised Abraham and Sarah that they would have a child within the year.

So we're getting close to the fulfillment of the promise moving forward here. And so we pick up in what could potentially look like a side note, and I think it's going to be important for me to establish why are we reading all of a sudden about Sodom and Gomorrah in a couple of texts here in the middle of this promise to give offspring to Abraham and all of that.

But we pick up in verse 16 and we find out that the men who most scholars identify as angels, and we should too because if you were to just see what's coming down the pipe in chapter 19, go ahead and look there for just a second, the very first verse, the very first couple of words, the two angels came to Sodom in the evening.

And so we know that the Lord himself comes and appears in human form to Abraham and Sarah and then also two angels come along with him. It shouldn't freak us out too much that the text goes back and forth between calling them men and calling them angels, because think about from the perspective of Abraham, it's obvious that these appeared to be men, but what we find out is that they were indeed angels highlighting for us the fact that angels can indeed take on human form, which is also validated in the New Testament that you could be entertaining angels unaware.

So there's that concept of that notion carried over into the New Testament that angels can indeed take on human form. All four of them, Abraham, the Lord, and the two angels set out from Abraham's home in Hebron to a place that would give them a good overlook of the city of Sodom.

These angels and the Lord coming down to meet with Abraham, that's not the sole purpose of their coming down and appearing. There's something else that's going to happen here, and we kind of have an inkling, a notion probably, especially if you were raised in church at all or have heard the Sunday school stories or whatever, we kind of know where this is heading.

But Abraham has proved himself to be very hospitable, and he sees his guests off to the edge of his territory, according to the text. And while standing there looking down in the valley, God speaks out loud, and he's speaking some deliberations.

He's actually contemplating whether or not to tell Abraham to clue him in on what his plan is for judging Sodom and Gomorrah. So we actually get an opportunity here in the text to see the process of God's thinking as revealed in Scripture.

Don't you think it's kind of cool when you get a chance to actually see God's thought processes? Isn't that kind of interesting? How does God think? What kind of things is he processing as he's going?

And we actually see it revealed here. And God is deciding whether or not to make Abraham aware of these plans to destroy Sodom and Gomorrah. And the final decision is obviously, what's his final conclusion?

Yeah, I'm going to include him. So it's kind of valuable for us to understand the logic of God. Why is he going to include Abraham in this? Well, God, in essence, says, Abraham is my man. I have promised to bless him and to bless all the nations through him.

I have chosen him to be my follower, and he is to be a leader of a people that are called to righteousness and justice. And in that, we're going to begin to see the clues to why is this story even included in.

Scripture?

Abraham, who is called to do justice, who is called to do righteousness, according to the text, how many of you think that if you're called to do righteousness, you might want to have some understanding of righteousness, right?

You might... And then not only that, but if you're called to do justice, you might want to have an understanding of what justice looks like. And then also to understand the mercy and the patience of God in that.

So God is here speaking very highly of his chosen dude, Abraham. I want to point out that God need not ever include us in his plans. Do you agree with me on that? Does he owe you an explanation? Does he owe me an explanation of what's going on in life?

Or does he need to, what's the word, justify his own actions to us and let us know? Could he just destroy Sodom and Gomorrah and be okay? Does he need to explain himself? He does not need to explain himself.

He's justified as being God himself. He doesn't need Abraham. He doesn't need Abraham's opinion. It's not like he's sitting there deliberating, going, well, maybe I should just ask him what he thinks, okay?

That's not what we see going on here. He's not seeking counsel. But here's something that is important to understand then, then what is he doing? He is a God who has chosen to share a lot of information with his chosen people, including sharing about himself.

Just consider how much he has revealed to us as his children through the written revelation of his word. Has he chosen to reveal himself? Has he chosen to incorporate us in his plans to show us something of himself?

Isn't there something exciting? When we hold this, this is, some people feel guilt when they see this, right? You feel guilt that I didn't spend enough time reading it this past week, feel like I need to step up my game and get in the word and check off a list and boy, I'm behind in my reading plant.

How many of you are reading through the Bible in a year? A couple of you are willing to raise your hand and then the rest of you were afraid actually that I was going to use you as an illustration. You get behind in that plan and it's like, this is the living word of God.

It's not like something that I always want to beat you over the head with and go, well, you're not spending enough time in the word of God. I mean, it's a question of delight and joy and recognizing that this is God revealing himself to us.

It's there. Probably everyone here has a Bible on your shelf at home or it's on your lap right now and you're going to take it home with you and it's there and it's the very words of God showing us who he is, demonstrating his character that we might know him.

That's what this is. And so he's a God who reveals himself. He's a God who shares himself with his people and we see that in the text. He's willing to share even some of the plans and the future that he has to Abraham.

But verse 19 requires an extra focus because I think it's the key to understanding why this account is included in the life of Abraham in Genesis. God's final decision to include Abraham in this behind the scenes view of the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah is precisely because Abraham is the head of a people who are being called to walk with God in righteousness and justice.

Righteousness is a relationship word in the Old Testament, by the way. It has the notion of a properly ordered life in community. It's as if you cannot have righteousness in a vacuum. Do you understand what I mean?

Righteousness is in association and affiliation with other people. Righteousness is something that's practiced in community in relationships with others. Are you getting what I'm saying by that? And so when Jesus, think about it in these terms, when Jesus is asked, what are the two greatest laws?

Good teacher, what is the greatest law? What's the question? What is the greatest law? He doesn't answer with one. It's not that Jesus was bad with math and he gives two answers because I couldn't decide between which one was better or which one wasn't.

He says, love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength and love your neighbor as yourself. It's not that he was like kind of, I just couldn't make a decision so I'm just going.

To pick two.

Can I share the top two?

It's that the two are so tied together that you can't do the one without the other. You can't love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength without loving your neighbor as yourself.

That's righteousness. Are you getting what I'm saying? It's in association with others. We are created to be communal beings. Male and female, he created them. In relationship, he created them.

Why?

Because it would make sense that when we see a God who exists in Trinity, in relationship from eternity past, that he would create us with relationship at our core. So that righteousness is an outcropping of relationships and the way that we interact on this planet.

It is a rightly, properly ordered life in community. Rightly ordered to God, rightly ordered to others. It's a pretty significant word. How many of you have encountered the word righteousness before in the Bible?

You've encountered it before? It's a very important word for us to understand. A person who lives out this righteousness avoids murdering others, not merely because they would then go to jail, but they don't murder because they love God and are in a right relationship with him and they acknowledge what he has to say about murder.

They don't avoid lying merely out of fear of getting caught, but they avoid lying because they love God and value the truth because God values the truth. So that even on this level, these relationships flow out of our understanding of who God is and what he has done for us.

And Abraham is called to a very high standard of not just living this way himself, but also passing this along to his children. He's called to do righteousness, to do justice, but then also to pass that along, that lifestyle, to his children and to his grandchildren.

A follower of God, and in our time, a follower of Christ, does not have the ability to work on themselves in a vacuum. Have you noticed that? Do you ever feel like it would just be nice to be able to step outside of community and then work on yourself and get your heart right and then jump back into community?

But how many of you would acknowledge that maybe you have some people who are watching your lifestyle? Would you? Go ahead and raise your hand if you... Some of you are raising your hand, others of you are just too tired to raise your hand, or you don't recognize that people are watching your life, right?

Because the fact of the matter is, if you have children, are they watching your life?

Okay, yeah.

If you have a spouse, are they watching your life?

Yeah.

If you have coworkers, whatever category of life you're in, somebody is watching you. Somebody is observing your lifestyle, is observing what you value, and is thinking about that and is processing that.

In the New Covenant, the best way we can pass along this righteousness that we're talking about to others is by introducing them to the one who is our righteousness. It's not just merely saying, walk like me, act like me, dress like me, talk like me, stop swearing, stop doing this, don't do that.

It's introducing them to the one who is our righteousness, and we're going to get down to a history of righteousness here in just a few minutes. But there's a subtle difference between Old Testament righteousness, the understanding of Abraham when he uses the term, and the New Testament understanding of righteousness.

Now I want to point out, a righteous life in the Old Testament looks almost the same to a righteous life in the New Testament. So if you're walking in righteousness now, it looks very similar to walking in righteousness.

Then.

But in the Old Testament, the standard is given to be righteous without the means of obtaining it. I've said many times that the Old Testament is like one massive case study in human inability to achieve the righteousness of God.

It's one massive, centuries-long case study in bringing us to the place where we recognize we need a Savior. We cannot obtain the righteousness, we cannot be restored to the way we were in the Garden of Eden on our own effort.

But it is pointing towards our need for somebody to come in and save us, and that's the point of understanding the righteousness and the commands to be righteous in the Old Testament. That command is legitimately given in the Old Testament to be righteous here to Abraham and to others.

But now I'd encourage you to read through the Old Testament and show me anyone who achieved.

It.

Getting what I'm saying? Can you find a truly righteous individual in the Old Testament? Can you point to somebody and say they did not sin, they were completely achieved the righteous, holy standard of God?

None. And none of us. None of us have met that amazing, awesome, high calling of God to be completely without sin, to be righteous and holy. It's centuries of setup that prepares the human race for a Savior.

One who would come to be a blessing to all nations because He is the one who would become our righteousness. Now they point out the standard hasn't shifted one bit. Nobody in Matawan, nobody in Michigan, nobody in the United States, nobody in the Western Hemisphere, nobody in the world has a healed relationship with God without righteousness.

You must have righteousness to be restored with God. Are you getting what I'm saying? You must be blameless. Anybody kind of going, wait a minute, that word does not settle right on me. You see your own hearts?

Do you know, are you sensitive to your own heart? Are you paying attention? Have you come to the place where you're callous that you don't really contemplate or consider your own heart anymore? I encourage you to take some time if you're there this week or even if you are a little bit sensitive still, take some time this week to focus on where is my heart?

Because I think sometimes we can lose sight of that but if you know your own heart then you're kind of going righteous, holy, blameless, me? Those aren't words that I would readily just snap off and rattle to you about my lifestyle or what I know of my own heart.

Would you guys agree with me on that for yourself? Would you agree on that for me? So you would raise your hand on that too. So understanding our own heart but the standard has not shifted. And so there is a righteousness though by grace through faith in the sacrifice of God's Son.

He is the one who is the blessing to all nations and He is the one in whom we trust for our righteousness. And ultimately He is called the blessing to the nations because in Him all the nations have access to righteousness.

It's only in as much as you are associated and affiliated with the Son of God and His sacrifice on the cross that you can be declared righteous and blameless. That's one of the reasons we don't teach merely moral lessons to our children down in the children's ministry.

What's going on? A couple walls behind me here. A lot of curriculum that we've reviewed and we went through the process of reviewing tons and tons of curriculum when we first started as a church. We've even shifted a couple times along the way.

But a lot of the curriculum will teach little Johnny and little Susie down there that they need to just share with their brother and sister. They need to obey mommy and daddy. They need to do kind things for each other.

They need to be just good little people, right? And some of us were raised in that curriculum, right? That's a little different than what we want to communicate to our kids. We want to teach them the glory and majesty of God.

We want to teach His righteous and holy character. We want to teach our brokenness and our inability to rise to the standard of God's high calling. And then, wham, we bring in the good news that Jesus has saved us from our own unrighteousness and has given us His.

That's what we want to communicate. That's what I want to communicate to you as adults. That's what I want to communicate to our children. That's what we are about as a church is raising up and lifting up the glory of God and His supremacy, His majesty, His glory, that we might catch a glimpse of His holiness and then in turn recognize where we stand reasonably in light of that and be honest.

I think a lot of times in Christian circles we've been dishonest in that we know we're sinners and we act like we're not. It's the whole Christian masquerade thing, right? And we almost kind of have a tendency to trick ourselves and think, well, I'm pretty much good enough.

Do you know your own heart? Are you honest with yourself about what resides in here? And if you're honest, then you're going to be like me. You're going to throw your hands up and go, my only hope is Jesus Christ.

I bring nothing except crud and mess. And He brings His righteousness, the great exchange. My mess, my failures, my sin, my darkness for His light, for His glory, for His righteous life, for His sinless sacrifice, His righteous sacrifice.

You see, the old covenant was conditional and it looks like it in the text and it is. If Abraham does righteousness, if Abraham does justice, which, by the way, I've talked a lot about righteousness, but what is justice?

Justice is simply, okay, if righteousness is the correct ordering of relationships, then justice comes in when there's a break, a breach in our correctly ordered relationships. I mean, you know, there's no sin.

If there's no sin, there's no problem, there's no sin or evil, then there's no need for justice, right? The word justice is a word that requires something broken in order for it to be applied. Are you getting what I'm saying?

And so when things are not correctly ordered, then justice comes in. And so Abraham is being told to both do righteousness and to do justice, correctly restoring broken life. And he says, if you do those things, Abraham, then God would continue to bless His people.

Conditional, an old covenant. And that leads into the rest of the text, because now Abraham is going to have a front row seat to the fate of the unrighteous and the unjust. He's going to get a chance to see what that looks like.

And verses 20 through 21 shows another indicator of the grace and mercy of God. If you look at the text there, then the Lord said, because the outcry against Sodom and Gomorrah is great and their sin is very grave, I will go down to see whether they have done altogether according to the outcry that has come to me, and if not, I will know.

Okay, so he's heard the clamor of sin. It's as if God is sitting on His throne and hears this noise from Sodom and Gomorrah rising up to heaven. And the clamor and the outcry is so great that it warrants a personal visit from God Almighty Himself.

He's going to come down and check things out. Now, how many of you would just kind of like right away you identify something that I identify in this text? God need not physically visit the city in order to verify that they're sinners.

Did you see that right away? I mean, did that come to your mind just like it did mine? It's not like the old cheap seats at Tiger Stadium. Does anybody ever sit in the cheap seats at Tiger Stadium? You know, the ones behind the poles that hold up the upper deck.

Did anybody ever have one of those seats before? You sit back there, and all of a sudden everybody cheers, and you're craning your neck, and you're going, there's a clamor, there's a lot. What happened?

And you have to go up a couple seats or move over to actually see what just, what's everybody cheering about? What happened? It's not like God had an obscured, like our pole in the middle here. I'm trying to see people.