Major News Revealed Genesis 18:16-21

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As we have gone through Genesis since September, we have seen many major world events.
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We've seen the creation. We've seen the first sin of Adam and Eve. We've seen the global flood and the
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Tower of Babel that followed. All of these are major world events described in the opening pages of Scripture.
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And if you were to ask anybody on the street, they probably have heard of all of these events.
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Even if they don't have any Christian background or don't know the Bible. These events have left their mark that is still felt to this day.
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Over the next few weeks, we are going to see another major world event that the average person on the street may be familiar with, and that is the story of Sodom and Gomorrah.
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What we will see in our sermon today is that the Lord shares secret information about what
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He is going to do with these two cities. So I encourage you to open a Bible with me to Genesis 18.
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We'll be looking at verses 16 -21. If you don't have a Bible, it's on page 15 of the
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Red Bibles in the pews. This sermon is titled, Major News Revealed.
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And our proposition, our big idea, is the Lord chooses to reveal a divine decision to Abraham concerning Sodom and Gomorrah.
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And we're going to see two reasons why. The first reason is going to concern why Abraham, why does the
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Lord decide to tell Abraham this information that was before unknown. And the second reason, we'll see why
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Sodom and Gomorrah. What did they do that led the Lord to make this decision?
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So the first reason why the Lord chooses to reveal a divine decision to Abraham concerning Sodom and Gomorrah is
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His covenant relationship enables Him to be rewarded with this new knowledge. And we'll see this in verses 16 -19.
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But before we dig into this text, in last week's sermon, we saw a divine encounter where the
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Lord and two angels appeared to Abraham and Sarah. We saw two examples, one to follow and one not to follow.
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The example to follow was Abraham's. He showed hospitality to these mysterious visitors.
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The Lord and the angels let him show them hospitality because what he was doing was a godly act.
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And the application for us was that we too should show hospitality to the people in this church and the people in our community because that's the
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Lord's design for us. The example not to follow was Sarah's disbelief.
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She did not believe the Lord could cause her to conceive in her old age.
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And the Lord called her out on it. And the application for us is that we are to believe that the Lord is going to keep his promises and to fulfill his promises and not to disbelieve like Sarah.
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After this encounter between the Lord, the two angels, and Abraham and Sarah, the attention shifts toward the infamous cities of Sodom and Gomorrah.
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Let's read verse 16 to see the beginning of this transition. Then the men set out from there and they looked down toward Sodom.
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And Abraham went with them to set them on their way. You will notice it says the men set out from there.
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So who are the men? The men are Abraham and the three angels. Remember one of these angels is the
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Lord. He's appearing to them as an angel and two of them are just ordinary angels. And of course the angels have taken on a body so they look like men.
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Just like we would have a conversation with each other. Then it says that they looked down toward Sodom.
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Remember Abraham and these three important guests were just at the Oaks of Mamre in Hebron, which would be south of modern day
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Jerusalem. And that was Abraham's home, Hebron. Now they are going toward Sodom.
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And a while back, I showed you on the map on the screen up here, that Sodom and Gomorrah were located right next to the
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Dead Sea. The Dead Sea would have been about 20 miles southeast of Abraham's home,
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Hebron. In Jewish tradition, it is believed that Abraham and these three angels went three miles to the east to a spot in the hill country.
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At this high vantage point, the Dead Sea, and therefore Sodom and Gomorrah, could be seen on a clear day.
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As they are having this conversation, they are standing 18 miles to the northwest and looking out.
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Imagine, this might help you, when you are coming from Milltown to the west, and you get on top of that hill,
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I love that drive because you can see across to Minnesota. You can see the river valley. You can see miles and miles.
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That kind of gives you a picture. Abraham and these three angels, they are looking out and they are able to see
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Sodom and Gomorrah. And as they are standing there, the Lord asks himself a question out loud as Abraham and the two angels stand beside him in verse 17.
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This is the question he asked. The Lord said, shall I hide from Abraham what
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I am about to do? Sometimes you might talk like this out loud to someone.
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You might say, should I tell you this piece of information that I know that you don't know?
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And of course, you typically end up saying, now I have to tell you this information because I just told you. I know something.
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Talking out loud so that others can hear is known as a soliloquy. You see this in plays where in order to reveal the mind of the actor up there, he talks out loud.
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And that's what the Lord is doing here. This is a soliloquy. Specifically, the Lord is saying out loud, should I hide from Abraham what
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I am about to do to Sodom and Gomorrah? The Lord gives a few reasons why
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Abraham should be included in this knowledge. At the end of verse 17, when he asks the question, shall
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I hide from Abraham what I am about to do? Then he says why? Seeing that Abraham or he says why he would tell him.
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Seeing that Abraham shall surely become a great and mighty nation and all the nations of the earth shall be blessed in him.
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For I have chosen him that he may command his children and his household after him to keep the way of the
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Lord by doing righteousness and justice so that the Lord may bring to Abraham what he has promised him.
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So the reason that Abraham should know secret information about what God is going to do is because of who
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Abraham is. God has made a covenant with Abraham.
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We've seen this over the last couple months. This covenant is that a great and mighty nation will come from him, the nation of Israel and all the nations of the earth will be blessed through Abraham.
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Verse 19 says that the Lord has chosen Abraham. The Hebrew word means to know.
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The word chosen here actually means to know. So what this means is the Lord knows Abraham and this gives off the meaning that God knows him in a covenant way, in a committed and deep way, this tight relationship.
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The Lord is a friend of Abraham and Abraham is a friend of God. Abraham is a special man in God's plan.
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He functions like a prophet. In fact, he is a prophet. A prophet is someone who
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God reveals secret knowledge to and what we saw throughout the Old Testament or what you see throughout the
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Old Testament is that a prophet would then proclaim this knowledge from God to the people.
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In this case, what we will see in the coming weeks is that Abraham, with this knowledge about the future destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah, gets the opportunity to plead with God to spare the righteous from destruction so he is interceding for the righteous and what we will see in a few weeks is that his nephew,
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Lot, will be spared. And that is one of the ways that Abraham is rewarded with this knowledge.
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Knowing this enabled him to have a conversation with the Lord that we will see next week and good comes from it as someone is spared from these cities.
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What is interesting too is that Sodom and Gomorrah were considered Gentile peoples.
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A Gentile is a non -Jew. And Abraham, the man of blessing, would intercede on their behalf because the
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Gentiles were the nations and through Abraham all the nations of the earth are blessed. So it is interesting that the
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Lord gives him this opportunity to fight for the nations in Sodom and Gomorrah.
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As the Lord is speaking here, he also emphasizes the conditional nature of the Abrahamic covenant at the end of verse 19.
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The Lord says that he has known Abraham that he may command his children and his household after him to keep the way of the
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Lord by doing righteousness and justice so that the Lord may bring to Abraham what he has promised him.
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As a reminder, this covenant that the Lord made with Abraham is on the
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Lord to fulfill. This is his obligation. This is what we call a unilateral covenant. We talked about that several weeks back.
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A unilateral covenant, not a bilateral covenant. The Mosaic covenant would be considered a bilateral covenant because they had to keep, the obligation was on the
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Israelites. The unilateral, it's actually on the Lord because he says, I'm going to do all these things for you.
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I'm going to bless you in all of these ways. However, Abraham and his descendants still need to do something to share in these promises that the
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Lord is going to fulfill. And if they do not go along with him by following his ways, then they will not share in this covenant.
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We see here that the Lord is going to tell Abraham about what he is going to do to Sodom and Gomorrah because of this special relationship that God has with him.
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When God was about to do something major in biblical times, he would tell a prophet what he was about to do.
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In these times, God tells this news to Abraham. The coming destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah was an event that the whole world at this time would know about.
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To this day, the doom of these cities near the Dead Sea is still talked about. And this brings up an important application for us.
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Do you realize as a Christian, as a follower of Jesus Christ, that you know things that were once only in the mind of God?
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Think about that for a second. You know things that were once only in the mind of God.
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A secret to all humanity. But now, you know it. Have you ever wondered why don't we have prophets like Abraham and Moses and David and Isaiah or the apostles of the first century?
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Why don't we have these people in our day? It's because when the Lord revealed new information to humanity, in ancient times, they either did not have the written word, the
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Bible that you have right in front of you, like Abraham, or they did not have the full written word, like the later
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Old Testament period and New Testament times. There was still more revelation that God was giving the people of God.
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At the end of the first century A .D., about 2 ,000 years ago, the prophetic written word was completed.
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The Lord has given us everything that we need for this life. We know God's full plans as it is accomplished in Jesus Christ.
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We don't need to go out to a prophet to ask, what does God think about this? Or what should
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I do in this situation? Or what does he require of me? We already know that.
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Because it's in the Bible. The Bible is the best -selling book in the history of the world by far.
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Billions and billions and billions of copies have been printed. And think of how many of those copies of the
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Bible sit on people's shelves and collect dust. That's a tragedy. And now we can have it digitally.
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Right? What a blessing that is. It's like going...
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Actually, before I say this, the one who created all things has given us a book in order that we as creatures can know him and enjoy him forever.
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The sad thing is, people would rather watch television or read any other book except for the most important book of all.
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It's like going to the beautiful state of Alaska and watching movies the whole time you're there. You can do that anywhere, right?
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You probably shouldn't watch movies. My parents and I went to Alaska in 2003 on a family vacation. We went to a cabin and we noticed there wasn't a
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TV in the cabin. And we thought, okay, that's probably a good thing. We're not going to be tempted to watch TV while we're surrounded by all these mountains and lakes and animals and all the beauty.
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I mean, think about that. The Bible, this is the secret information of God.
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The secret knowledge of God that once people did not have. But we have it now. We should pursue the great reality that we have this.
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Now, bringing this back to Abraham. Remember, the Lord gave this knowledge about what he was going to do to Sodom and Gomorrah because he was special.
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He was God's man. He was God's prophet. He was known by God. And Abraham knew
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God. If you are a follower of Christ here today, the Lord has given this book for you.
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The offer to know God's revelation is for anyone in the world, but the Lord knows that humans with hard hearts, full of idolatry, will never believe unless God turns that light on in their darkened hearts so that they can see with their eyes.
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The mind. So they can see Jesus for who he is. See him as beautiful.
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See him as precious. People who do not have Christ cannot see him the way he truly is.
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Unbelievers who will always remain unbelievers will never understand that the Bible is God's revelation. When they look at this book, they see it as any other book.
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It's an ancient book. The author of life has made himself known in the Bible, and yet, those unbelievers who remain unbelievers to the end will never experience what it is like to know
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God's secret thoughts. But everyone here who is a follower of Jesus Christ is in a similar position as Abraham.
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Abraham was made known of God's secret thoughts. What we would call prophecy or revelation.
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And you too have this knowledge. Not because you are a prophet like Abraham was, but because you know
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God and are known by him, and you have the prophetic word. His word is for you.
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And when you read his word, you meet him. You learn who he is. You learn what he desires of you.
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And you learn of his great plans for the world. We know how the world is going to end. The Bible tells us.
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We know how things will end well for us. The Bible tells us. Now the
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Lord made known to Abraham, as verse 19 says, that they were going to practice righteousness and justice.
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God chose Abraham that he and his people would be these type of people. They would practice righteousness and justice.
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His design is calling them to do the very thing that Sodom and Gomorrah did not do.
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And we'll see that in our next point. The Lord revealed this path of holiness to Abraham and his descendants, and through his word he has revealed it to you also.
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This is God's knowledge. God is the one who decides what morality is.
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He's the author of morality. And he tells us, this is what is good. This is what is bad. You follow this.
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You don't follow this. The Lord told Abraham that by doing righteousness and justice, they would share in his promises.
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And as I mentioned earlier, they would only fully receive the blessing that the Lord promised in the
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Abrahamic covenant if they believed in the Lord and walked in his ways. And the same goes for you.
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You only receive the promised blessings of God if you have faith in him and practice righteousness and justice as he has revealed to you.
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The Lord's promised blessing to you is that you will live forever with him. The path to this is by believing and proving your belief by living it out.
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This is the same way Abraham and his descendants would experience this blessing in full. So be amazed that you get to enjoy the secret knowledge of God as one who knows
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God and is known by him. You too have a covenant relationship with God. This deep covenant relationship with him as Abraham did.
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So this is the first reason. We just have two points today. This is the first reason why the Lord chooses to reveal a divine decision to Abraham concerning Sodom and Gomorrah.
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His covenant relationship enables him to be rewarded with this new knowledge. And your relationship with God enables you to know what he thinks and what he wants you to know.
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The second reason why the Lord chooses to reveal a divine decision to Abraham concerning Sodom and Gomorrah is the injustice there had reached its limit.
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So the injustice of Sodom and Gomorrah had reached its limit. And we'll see this in verses 20 and 21.
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We just saw that the Lord explained why he was going to tell Abraham this secret information about the future destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah.
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Now we will see why the Lord plans to carry this out. What did they do that made them deserve what they got?
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So a reminder of where we are in the narrative. Abraham and these three men are standing together about 18 miles northwest of Sodom and Gomorrah.
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They're looking out into the distance. They can see it on this clear day. And we have already seen in Scripture what it is about these two cities of Sodom and Gomorrah.
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They were known for their sin. That's not good to be known for. They were known for their sin.
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Think about our world today. Las Vegas, sin city. They're known for their sin.
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That's not something good to be known for. The first time the word sinner is used to describe people in Genesis is in reference to Sodom and Gomorrah.
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In Genesis 13 -13. And this is what it says of them. The men of Sodom were wicked, great sinners against the
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Lord. Only Sodom is mentioned there. When only Sodom is mentioned, Gomorrah is also included in with them.
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And the Lord is talking out loud here as we just saw in the first point in the soliloquy.
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He's saying, should I tell this to Abraham? And now the text transitions from him talking out loud, sharing his thoughts to Abraham and the other two angels to talking directly to Abraham.
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When he says, should I tell Abraham? Now we see the answer in verses 20 and 21 to the question the
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Lord asked himself in verse 17. He said, should I tell him? We'll see the answer here. Then the
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Lord said, because the outcry against Sodom and Gomorrah is great, and their sin is very grave,
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I will go down to see whether they have done altogether according to the outcry that has come to me.
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And if not, I will know. The Lord told Abraham what he was going to do.
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And Abraham knew the outcome of the Lord's search. He would destroy these cities.
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I read an author this week, he said this was a search and destroy mission. He knew, Abraham knew what he was going to do by what he already said.
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Because we know that the Lord revealed this to Abraham because in verse 23,
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Abraham starts to intercede on behalf of these two cities. So we know that Abraham took the
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Lord as saying, I'm going to destroy these cities, even though he said it in kind of a roundabout way.
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The outcry against these two cities is so severe that something needs to be done about this. God is well aware of the great sins committed in Sodom and Gomorrah.
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And not only God, but also Abraham, and people in Hebron, which was his home, and the surrounding area, they all would have known about the sins of Sodom and Gomorrah.
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Remember, Genesis 13 .13 said they had a reputation. These were great sinners. I was talking to my sister this week, and she lives in San Jose, California, and she went to a movie premiere down in Los Angeles, and she was telling me, she said, a lot of good things are happening in Los Angeles, but she said you could just feel the darkness there, the sin that was present in that place.
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You think about cities all over our country, all over the world. Cities have a lot of good things to offer, but more times than not, it's overtaken by the bad, the sinfulness that is there.
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And we don't know about any of the good things of Sodom and Gomorrah, we just know about the bad. Because that overtook any good that might have been there.
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If there was anything positive about these cities, we don't know. Because their reputation was they were wicked cities.
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And you may ask the question again, what did they do that made this outcry against them so great? Verses 20 and 21 use the word outcry, and this could be a number of possibilities.
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I read one author that speculated this could be the cry of victims who suffer an injustice of some kind.
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Some may be describing grief over the distressful circumstances that are happening in these places.
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Some people may be crying for deliverance from oppressors or for help. So it looks like in some way here,
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Sodom and Gomorrah had lots of sins, but there was something about it that made the cry that much greater.
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There were weak people in these towns, and nobody was doing anything about it. And they were being taken advantage of, and God said, no more.
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The prophets in later Israel compared the injustices in Israel and Judah with injustices of Sodom and Gomorrah.
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One example, this is the prophet Isaiah. In Isaiah 1 -9, where he said on behalf of the Lord, If the
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Lord of hosts had not left us a few survivors, we should have been like Sodom and become like Gomorrah.
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In verse 16 and 17 of that chapter, Isaiah 1, the Lord said, wash yourselves.
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Make yourselves clean. Remove the evil of your deeds before my eyes. Cease to do evil.
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Learn to do good. Seek justice. Correct oppression. Bring justice to the fatherless.
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Plead the widow's cause. Sodom and Gomorrah did not do that.
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The people of these two cities were not taking care of the hurting. And it seems like it was far worse than that.
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It wasn't just that neglect was happening. It seems that they might have been actually praying on the weak.
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And I say that because the text here says that their sin is very grave. What might have been happening here is that the weak of this town were being put to death.
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It's not just neglect, but it's actually an intention that is taking place here. And the
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Lord was not going to let this continue. By the way, there's more than just these sins going on here, and we'll see that in a couple weeks, but let's just focus on this today.
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The outcry is because of the injustice that's happening in these cities. And the Lord is determined to do something about this, and he lets
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Abraham and the two angels who are standing with him know what his intentions are. And you may wonder, there are lots of awful things happening in the world today.
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Why doesn't the Lord bring complete and swift judgment? I mean, watch the news, right?
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You don't have to look very hard to see all the awful things that are happening in the world. What you have to understand is that the
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Lord will right every wrong. Judgment is coming on this world.
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Romans 2, 4, and 5 gives the reason why God is not bringing this swift judgment down.
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He said, Do you presume on the riches of his kindness and forbearance and patience, not knowing that God's kindness is meant to lead you to repentance?
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But because of your hard and impenitent heart, you are storing up wrath for yourself on the day of wrath when
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God's righteous judgment will be revealed. We get the indication here that Sodom and Gomorrah, they were beyond the point where they could repent.
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They had an opportunity to repent and they didn't do it. And the Lord said, No more. And in our world today, people can still repent.
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People can still turn to God. But if they don't, they will meet his swift judgment.
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God's patience is meant to lead us to repentance, not to give people a good life. There's people who are trying to live heaven on earth right now and they're living in rebellion against God and this is the best they'll ever have it.
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They need to repent and turn to him and truly go down the path of life. Not what they think is the path of life.
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And it's important to note here, you'll notice in verse 21, where the Lord says, I will go down to see whether they have done all together according to the outcry that has come to me, and if not,
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I will know. You may wonder, why does the Lord need to look into this if he already knows everything?
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Last week we saw the Lord's omniscience, which means the Lord knows everything. That's his attribute. When he was able to know exactly what
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Sarah was thinking. But here it seems to say that the Lord needed to go to Sodom and Gomorrah to find out if these outcries against these cities were indeed true.
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As if the Lord was going to learn some new information. What we have to understand is that the
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Lord does not learn. He already knows everything. What is taking place here is what is known as anthropomorphism.
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Maybe you've never heard of that. It's a big word. What this means is that human characteristics are attributed to God.
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Figuratively. A human investigates an outcry to see if the claims about an injustice are true.
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And God says it in this way for our understanding. So these are human characteristics applied to God.
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And the point in him saying this is he knows fully what has happened in Sodom and Gomorrah. And a good investigator looks into the tiniest details and this is what the
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Lord has done. And at the end of verse 17 the Lord planned to destroy Sodom and Gomorrah.
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And at the end of verse 20 the Lord already knew that the sins of these two cities was very grave.
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So the Lord already knew fully without even needing to investigate. But he says this to help us understand.
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To speak in human terms. Sadly though, there are theologians known as open theists.
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An open theist is one who believes that God does not know the future exhaustively.
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So he knows some things about the future, but not everything about the future. And that's a very destructive belief because the
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Bible does not support that at all. Now they look at verses like this and say, see,
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God doesn't know the future. But what they fail to do is to take scripture for what it says fully about God.
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Let me give you one verse. Psalm 139 verse 16 says, this is
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God's knowledge of us. It says, In your book were written every one of them the days that were formed for me when as yet there was none of them.
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In other words, God knows our lives even before we live one day on the earth. He knows every detail of our life.
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Including the people of Sodom and Gomorrah. At this time. He knew exactly what they were going to do. Down to the tiniest detail.
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So, either the Bible is contradicting itself or the open theist is wrong. And we know the answer to that.
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The open theist is wrong. Making God's mind sound like a human mind in passages such as these is used for, like I said, the sake of the narrative and the sake of our understanding.
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Here's a good quote by theologian Norman Geisler. He said, One would expect that a book, the
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Bible, written by humans and for humans would often speak to humans from a human perspective.
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So I think that really explains it well. So the point here again is the Lord knows fully what
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Sodom and Gomorrah have done and what they have done is awful. And it deserves punishment. It's reached a point where He's not going to let it go on any longer.
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The Lord makes it clear that He is going to bring this judgment. So this is the second reason why the
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Lord chooses to reveal a divine decision to Abraham concerning Sodom and Gomorrah. The injustice has reached its limit.
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So to summarize here, the Lord chooses to reveal a divine decision to Abraham concerning Sodom and Gomorrah and we've seen two reasons why this morning.
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His covenant relationship enables him to be rewarded with this new knowledge and the injustice has reached its limit.
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As a follower of Christ, God has given you His revelation. He has given you His full revelation for this life in the 66 books of the
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Bible. During Jesus' ministry, He told His disciples how blessed they were to have seen
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Him and His greatness that all of the Old Testament was pointing to. In Matthew 13, 16, and 17,
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Jesus actually said, He said, Blessed are your eyes, for they see, and your ears, for they hear.
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For truly, I say to you, many prophets and righteous people longed to see what you see and did not see it and to hear what you hear and did not hear it.
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The disciples here, they experienced the joy of new revelation. The prophets before them, the people of the
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Old Testament, did not experience the things that they were experiencing when Jesus came to the earth.
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And think about the position we are in. We have the full revelation of God that He's given us for this world.
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That He's given us for the life of faith. So we can never say, God didn't tell me what to do.
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We can never say that. We always say, He did tell me what to do, and I just need to find where it is in the Bible. Or know it by heart so that you don't have to look at where it is in the
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Bible. Memorization is always a great thing to do. And specifically in the context here, the
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Lord wants us to do righteousness and justice. He doesn't want us to do what Sodom and Gomorrah did that made them deserve judgment.
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You might say, well, what does He mean by righteousness and justice? I think righteousness, He's just referring to a general morality.
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A general morality that the path of holiness, holy character. Justice is specifically helping the weak.
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Helping those who don't have a voice. Today, it's fitting that they're talking about this because the bottles down there, that's what that's all about, right?
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We're helping babies in the womb who don't have a voice. They're the most helpless of all. And help people on the street who need help.
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And Sodom and Gomorrah not only neglected them, but apparently did a lot worse than that. And so we need to be people who do things
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God's way. And the world we live in is too much like Sodom and Gomorrah.
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And as followers of the one true God, we should stand out and follow what God has commanded as He told Abraham and all of us.
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This is His design for His people. And we are His people. If you belong to Christ, this is what
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He desires of you. This is what He requires of you. And this is the path of joy, which I always want to stress.
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This is the path of following God is always the path of joy. It's always the path of life. A couple days ago, we sent
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Roald off. Sharon and the family are here today. We sent him off.
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He's with the Lord now. And we have that confidence. And Paul says it's far better to be with the
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Lord than to be here on earth. And he finished the race. He practiced righteousness and justice because he was a true follower of Christ.
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And that's what we need to do as a church too. So next week, we will look at Abraham's famous intercession for Sodom and Gomorrah where he pleads with the
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Lord. If there are this many righteous people, will You spare these two cities? And we'll see what the
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Lord's answer is. Let's pray. Father in Heaven, we thank
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You, Lord, for Your clear instruction of the Bible. We thank You, Lord, that what happened to Sodom and Gomorrah has been given to us for an example.
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How You interact with Abraham has been given to us for an example.
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And may we pay close attention to what the text of Scripture says.
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May we live this out, Lord. May we live out righteousness and justice.
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May we not be like those wicked cities. May we move more and more towards godliness, towards holiness, realizing that one day when we enter
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Your presence, Lord, all who belong to Jesus will be perfect in righteousness.
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We will never sin. And we look forward to that. But in the meantime, Lord, may we grow to become more and more like You.