Abraham: Called to Wrestle, Part 2

 

In our previous episode of God’s One Big Story, we watched as Abraham was visited by the Lord and two Angels, whom he received humbly, with grace and hospitality.  After enjoying the feast that Abraham had prepared for them, the Lord revealed two important things..

• • To Sarah, He revealed that she herself would bear a son for Abraham; and,
  • To Abraham, He revealed that He was about to destroy Sodom and Gomorrah.

While Sarah was prompted to laugh in disbelief at her revelation, Abraham was prompted by his to launch into an intercessory prayer negotiation with the Lord, in the hopes of sparing any righteous people living in those wicked cities.  As the first part of that episode ended, the Angels had left for Sodom, and Abraham and the Lord had parted company. Now, with the second part of the episode ready to begin, we find Lot sitting in the gate of Sodom…

 

Episode #6 of Biopic #1—Part 2
The Judgment of Sodom and Gomorrah
Cast: Narrator, Lot, the Angels, the Mob, Daughter #1

 

Narrator:  Now the two angels came to Sodom in the evening, and Lot was sitting in the gate of Sodom. When Lot saw them, he rose to meet them, and he bowed himself with his face toward the ground.  And he said…

Lot:  Here now, my lords, please turn in to your servant’s house and spend the night, and wash your feet; then you may rise early and go on your way.

Angel:  No, but we will spend the night in the open square.

Narrator:  But he insisted strongly; so they turned in to him and entered his house. Then he made them a feast, and baked unleavened bread, and they ate. Now before they lay down, the men of the city, the men of Sodom, both old and young, all the people from every quarter, surrounded the house.  And they called to Lot and said to him…

Mob:  Where are the men who came to you tonight? Bring them out to us that we may know them carnally.

Narrator:  So Lot went out to them through the doorway, shut the door behind him, and said…

Lot:  Please, my brethren, do not do so wickedly!  See now, I have two daughters who have not known a man; please, let me bring them out to you, and you may do to them as you wish; only do nothing to these men, since this is the reason they have come under the shadow of my roof.

Mob:  Stand back!  This one came in to stay here, and he keeps acting as a judge; now we will deal worse with you than with them.

Narrator:  So they pressed hard against the man Lot, and came near to break down the door.  But the men reached out their hands and pulled Lot into the house with them, and shut the door.  And they struck the men who were at the doorway of the house with blindness, both small and great, so that they became weary trying to find the door.

Angel:  Have you anyone else here? Son-in-law, your sons, your daughters, and whomever you have in the city—take them out of this place!  For we will destroy this place, because the outcry against them has grown great before the face of the LORD, and the LORD has sent us to destroy it.

Narrator:  So Lot went out and spoke to his sons-in-law, who had married his daughters, and said…

Lot:  Get up, get out of this place; for the LORD will destroy this city!

Narrator:  But to his sons-in-law he seemed to be joking.  When the morning dawned, the angels urged Lot to hurry, saying…

Angel:  Arise, take your wife and your two daughters who are here, lest you be consumed in the punishment of the city.

Narrator:  And while he lingered, the men took hold of his hand, his wife’s hand, and the hands of his two daughters, the LORD being merciful to him, and they brought him out and set him outside the city.   So it came to pass, when they had brought them outside, that he said…

Angel:  Escape for your life! Do not look behind you nor stay anywhere in the plain. Escape to the mountains, lest you be destroyed.

Lot:  Please, no, my lords!  Indeed now, your servant has found favor in your sight, and you have increased your mercy which you have shown me by saving my life; but I cannot escape to the mountains, lest some evil overtake me and I die.  See now, this city is near enough to flee to, and it is a little one; please let me escape there (is it not a little one?) and my soul shall live.

Angel:  See, I have favored you concerning this thing also, in that I will not overthrow this city for which you have spoken.  Hurry, escape there. For I cannot do anything until you arrive there.

Narrator:  Therefore the name of the city was called Zoar.  The sun had risen upon the earth when Lot entered Zoar.  Then the LORD rained brimstone and fire on Sodom and Gomorrah, from the LORD out of the heavens.  So He overthrew those cities, all the plain, all the inhabitants of the cities, and what grew on the ground.  But his wife looked back behind him, and she became a pillar of salt.

And Abraham went early in the morning to the place where he had stood before the LORD.  Then he looked toward Sodom and Gomorrah, and toward all the land of the plain; and he saw, and behold, the smoke of the land which went up like the smoke of a furnace.  And it came to pass, when God destroyed the cities of the plain, that God remembered Abraham, and sent Lot out of the midst of the overthrow, when He overthrew the cities in which Lot had dwelt.

Then Lot went up out of Zoar and dwelt in the mountains, and his two daughters were with him; for he was afraid to dwell in Zoar.  And he and his two daughters dwelt in a cave.  Now the firstborn said to the younger…

Daughter #1:  Our father is old, and there is no man on the earth to come in to us as is the custom of all the earth.  Come, let us make our father drink wine, and we will lie with him, that we may preserve the lineage of our father.

Narrator:  So they made their father drink wine that night. And the firstborn went in and lay with her father, and he did not know when she lay down or when she arose.  It happened on the next day that the firstborn said to the younger…

Daughter #1:  Indeed I lay with my father last night; let us make him drink wine tonight also, and you go in and lie with him, that we may preserve the lineage of our father.

Narrator:  Then they made their father drink wine that night also. And the younger arose and lay with him, and he did not know when she lay down or when she arose. Thus both the daughters of Lot were with child by their father.  The firstborn bore a son and called his name Moab; he is the father of the Moabites to this day.  And the younger, she also bore a son and called his name Ben-Ammi; he is the father of the people of Ammon to this day.

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A Review of…

 …The Most Important Points in this Episode

— Lot was sitting in the gate which was a position of authority in the city—the place where all legal matters and business were conducted. So, Lot was no longer living on the outskirts of the city but was living in it and heavily involved in its administration.

— Lot bowed and offered the strangers hospitality—which they rejected. Although offering hospitality to strangers was a courtesy which was expected to be extended to all travelers, given what takes place later, he must have also been worried about their safety.

— When he insisted and they followed him home, he prepared a “feast” for them. But, unlike the lavish feast that Abraham had prepared for them, Lot’s “feast” only consisted of unleavened bread.

— The mob, whom Lot called “his brethren,” was made up of every man in the city.

— The mob resented Lot and his judgment of their behavior as sin.

— To rescue Lot, the Angels struck the men in the mob with blindness, telling Lot that “because the outcry against them has been great,” the city was going to be destroyed. As for who might have been crying out against the inhabitants of the city, we can only surmise that they were others who had been victimized by the city’s inhabitants in the past.

— Lot’s family appears to have included his wife, two unmarried daughters, at least two married daughters, and two sons-in-law—eight—less than the ten that Abraham had believed to be righteous and deserving of mercy. However, when Lot tried to warn his family members, they did not take his warnings seriously.

— In spite of the Angel’s warning, Lot was reluctant to leave and had to be led out of town. Because God “remembered Abraham,” the Angels were not allowed to destroy the cities until Lot had been removed to safety.

— Even though Zoar was one of the cities of the plain that had been scheduled for destruction, Lot asked to go there instead of the mountains because he thought he would be safer there. But he found out differently when he got there, which is probably why it was also scheduled for judgment.

— Because Lot’s wife could not bear to leave her life in Sodom behind, she became a permanent fixture on the outskirts of it.

— Lot and his family had developed such a skewed sense of morality that…

•  He considered sacrificing his daughters to a mob of wicked men preferable to having his hospitality to strangers called into question; and,
•  His daughters thought that dying childless was more reprehensible than having sex with their father.

— Although not wanting to flee to the hills as the Angels had instructed, Lot ends up living in a cave in the mountains, his only legacy being the sons by his daughters who eventually become the Moabites and Ammonites—the perpetual enemies of Abraham’s descendants.

 

In Summary

As is our practice at this point, the time has come for us to once again determine what we can take away from this part of our story. To do that, let’s take a look at the…

Life Lessons this episode has to offer;
Contributions it makes to God’s One Big Story; and,
Revelations of God it has to share.

Life Lessons

1–Abraham & Lot:  A Study in Contrasts

Looking back over our experiences with Abraham, we can see that a real contrast has developed in the lives of Abraham and his nephew Lot. Even though they came from the same family and cultural background and experienced many of the same problems along the way, due to their different motivations and choices, we find Abraham, as the picture of a spiritual believer, being blessed; while Lot, as the picture of a carnal believer, being abased.

 

 

This study in contrasts provides us with proof that…

…those who honor Me [God] I will honor, and those who despise Me [God] shall be lightly esteemed. (1 Samuel 2:30)

He who follows righteousness and mercy finds life, righteousness, and honor. (Proverbs 21:21)

 

2-The Issue of Homosexuality

In order to come to the truth about the issue of homosexuality, the first thing we must do is come to an understanding of God’s Plan for Man, as presented in Genesis 1:28 and Genesis 9:1, 6-7. There we learn that Man, who was made in the Image and Likeness of God, was commanded to be fruitful, multiply, and fill the earth. In doing so, the earth would not only be filled with the Image of God but God’s Will would be carried out and His Kingdom of Righteousness would be established on the earth.

Of course, if God has a plan for Man, we can be sure that Satan has one of his own.  In order to prevent God’s plan from coming to pass, Satan’s plan involves…

• • Separating Man from God, leaving God’s Image Bearers as slaves to their fleshly nature and keeping them ignorant of God’s plan for them; and,
  • Distorting and destroying the Image of God on the earth, and then replacing it with his own perverted one.

Knowing now that God’s Purposes for Man have always been about his projection of a Godly Image throughout the World and that Satan, as the master counterfeiter, has a Corrupted Image that he wants Man to bear, how can we know what this Counterfeit Image looks like?  To discover that, all we have to do is invert God’s Image for Man to reveal the one determined for him by Satan…

 

 

As for how to go about achieving this, Satan has that all worked out. Even now, he is busy…

• • Eliminating human sexual distinctions and making society Gender-Neutral;
  • Tearing down traditional Authority structures and reducing everyone to the same base level;
  • Destroying the nuclear Family and replacing it with a Universal Brotherhood of Man, where everyone and everything is tolerated—with the exception of those holding to Biblical values; and,
  • Demoting Man from his divinely ordained status of Lord over Creation to that of a mere animal within creation (something that has been achieved through the teaching of Evolution).

 

Why Sodom and Gomorrah and the Cities of the Plain Were Destroyed

 

In this episode, we learn that in the eyes of God, Homosexuality is the blatant degeneration of His Holy Purposes for Man and will result in Man’s being given over to his sinful, godless choices and their consequences. And any society’s acceptance and endorsement of it will be viewed as an act of rebellion against God, and that it—like Sodom and Gomorrah—will be setting itself up for His righteous judgment.

 

 

3-Our Deliverance and Future Security

From 2 Peter 2:7-10, we learn that the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah, and Lot’s rescue from that judgment, should give us the reassurance that if and when we find ourselves in trouble, God will take care of us. For if God…

…delivered righteous Lot, who was oppressed by the filthy conduct of the wicked (for that righteous man, dwelling among them, tormented his righteous soul from day to day by seeing and hearing their lawless deeds)— then the Lord knows how to deliver the godly out of temptations and to reserve the unjust under punishment for the day of judgment, and especially those who walk according to the flesh in the lust of uncleanness and despise authority. 

 

Contributions to the Story

In Luke 17:28-32, Jesus told his disciples that the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah offers us a foreshadowing or prophetic picture of the conditions that will exist on the earth just before His Second Coming, and of the judgment that will take place on the earth following His Return…

Likewise as it was also in the days of Lot: They ate, they drank, they bought, they sold, they planted, they built; but on the day that Lot went out of Sodom it rained fire and brimstone from heaven and destroyed them all.  Even so will it be in the day when the Son of Man is revealed.

 

Revelations of God

Throughout this two-part episode in the life of Abraham, we have seen God revealed as…

• • The covenant-keeping God who keeps His promise to Abraham regarding a son;
  • The sovereign God who takes Abraham into His confidence and extends to him the privilege of interceding for the welfare of others;
  • The God who responds to the cries of the innocent who have been victimized by the wickedness of others;
  • The Righteous Judge who, even in judgment, is merciful.

In this episode, we have seen Abraham reach another high point in his walk with God. Unfortunately, in our next episode—taken from Genesis 20—we will find him taking a step backward when he encounters Abimelech, a neighboring king.