In Genesis 18:10, YHWH told Abraham, “I will surely return to you about this time next year, and Sarah your wife will have a son.” At the time that promise was made, Abraham was ninety-nine years old, and Sarah eighty-nine. 

Since Abraham died at 175 (25:7), and Sarah at 127 (23:1), we can shave almost a half off their ages to fit our ages today, so imagine having a child in your eighties as a father, and giving birth to a child just after you got your old age pension. 

Understandably, then, when YHWH first made that promise in Genesis 17:17, Abraham couldn’t help laughing to himself. How embarrassing, then, when YHWH told him that the name of the son would be Isaac, meaning “he laughs” (19). So every time Abraham looked at his son he’d be reminded of laughing to himself when YHWH made his promise, knowing that YHWH knew he was laughing too.

And the same for Sarah, because she’d had a good snicker behind a tent flap too on hearing YHWH tell her husband she’d have a son in a year’s time (18:10, 12). It was even more embarrassing for her, though, because she lied to YHWH about laughing, and he told her, “Ahem, my dear, yes you did laugh” (15).   

A year later, Genesis 21:1, God visited Sarah exactly as he said he would and “did for Sarah exactly what he’d promised.” Sarah’s reaction was priceless: “God has brought me laughter. And everyone who hears about this will laugh with me” (6). Actually, it’s maybe more like laughing at you, dear Sarah, because how could you have thought YHWH was joking? YHWH is YHWH. When he makes promises, he sticks to them. 

Like the promise he made to us to birth us into a new person, a new creation, transforming our old dead self into something resembling Jesus. But now it’s my turn to ask, “Are you kidding?” – because I know me, and I’m about as capable of producing anything remotely resembling Jesus as Sarah was having a child at age ninety. But that’s what YHWH promised, that he’ll “sanctify us through and through, keeping our whole spirit, soul and body blameless until the the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ,” 1 Thessalonians 5:23 – because, verse 24, “The one who calls you is faithful and he will do it.” He sticks to his promises. Which explains why he told Abraham, when upsets happened in his life: “Do not be so distressed”….(next blog) 

When Abraham found out what YHWH had in mind for Sodom and Gomorrah in Genesis 18, he “approached YHWH and said, ‘Will you sweep away the righteous with the wicked?.…Will you really sweep it away and not spare the place for the sake of fifty righteous people in it?’” (23-24).

He wasn’t being snippy with YHWH, he was being highly respectful (27, 30, 32), but he also deeply felt the need to put in a word for the good people, and for YHWH to spare the city for their sake. And to his surprise, perhaps, YHWH immediately responded favourably – that if there were just ten good people in Sodom, he would reverse his decision to blast the city to smithereens for its wickedness (32).

But why did YHWH respond so favourably? Well, back in Genesis 15:6, YHWH had credited Abraham with righteousness, so here we have an example of the “prayer of a righteous man being powerful and effective” (James 5:16). And according to James it has the power to save lives too (20), which is exactly what Abraham’s request to YHWH did on behalf of the good people in Sodom – it saved their lives. 

There’s another example of the same thing happening in Genesis 20, when YHWH told Abimelech king of Gerar in a dream that he was “as good as dead” if he took Abraham’s wife for his own (2-3). But, verse 7, Abraham “will pray for you and you will live.” And that’s despite Abraham being the one at fault, for calling his wife his sister and making Abimelech think she was available. 

But Abimelech was a good man, because on being threatened with destruction by YHWH, he too, just like Abraham on behalf of Sodom, appealed to YHWH, “Lord, will you destroy an innocent nation?” (4) And that’s when YHWH told him that Abraham “is a prophet and he will pray for you” (7). Which Abraham did in verse 17: “Abraham prayed to God, and God healed Abimelech, his wife and his slave girls so they could have children again” – and in so doing it would spare the nation too. 

And here we are now, descending into a Sodom-like society too, but there are many good people – also like prophets – exposing the growing evil at risk of their own lives. Without these people hounding the villains, how much further into what is “detestable” to God (Ezekiel 16:50) would we be? And how many lives, and livelihoods, and even whole nations, are these good people saving? I can’t do that, but I can pray for those who can, knowing too that “YHWH sticks to his promises”….(next blog)  

2 Peter 2:6 says that God “reduced the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah to ashes and condemned them to extinction, making them an example of what is coming to the ungodly.” Scripture, therefore, definitely has Sodom existing, as a true life example of what God does to societies that have gone too far down the evil route. 

But does Scripture also give us clues to Sodom being a real city in an actual location? Well, we know from Genesis 13:10 that Lot “saw that the whole plain of the Jordan was well watered, like the land of Egypt,” so he “set out toward the east” (11) and “lived among the cities of the plain and pitched his tents near Sodom” (12). 

That helps pinpoint a location, because Abraham and Lot were camped between Bethel and Ai at the time (13:3, 5), which are north and west of the Dead Sea. From that high vantage point, Lot could look east to “the whole plain of the Jordan,” a lush circular area of prime fertile land north of the Dead Sea, watered by the River Jordan down its middle, much like the Nile River in Egypt (10). Lot chose his spot well.

Genesis 14:2 identifies five cities in that area: Sodom, Gomorrah, Admah, Zeboiim and Zoar. All but Zoar would be burnt to a cinder according to Deuteronomy 29:23, so if they did exist then evidence of a catastrophic fiery end from “burning sulphur raining down out of the heavens” in sufficient quantity and power to “overthrow the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah and the entire plain, including the people and the vegetation,” leaving nothing but a smoking ruin (Genesis 19:24-28), should show up somewhere in the archaeology in that area. Which it has.

Digging into the largest site in that area has turned up evidence of an extinction event – similar in scale to a superheated cosmic airburst by a meteor – that melted pottery, created a layer of ash up to two metres deep, and blew down fortified walls up to six metres thick. The pottery, architecture and other items date the timing of the extinction to the Middle Bronze Age, 18th century BCE, when Abraham and Lot were alive. 

If it is Sodom, then take it from Jesus in Luke 17:26-30 that a similar event is coming and for the same reason, when a society is so proudly evil it has become detestable to God (Ezekiel 16:49-50). But we’ve also got Abraham’s example, that when he begged God to spare the good people, “he remembered Abraham” (19:29) and spared them. So next blog, “Praying for the good people”…. 

Sodom’s evil culture was so powerful it nearly got Lot killed. Angels had to drag him and his family out of the city to prevent them being destroyed along with everyone else (Genesis 19:16).

So God “brought Lot out of the catastrophe that overthrew the cities where Lot had lived” (29), but the power of Sodom’s culture remained. It’s like the saying, “You can take the boy out of the country, but you can’t take the country out of the boy,” because Lot and his family had been taken out of Sodom, but Sodom was still having its effect on them.  

Lot’s daughters’ solution, for instance, to preserving their family line when there were no men around, was to get themselves pregnant by their father (31-36). Lot had no idea what they’d done because his daughters had got him too drunk to know. Interesting that in their rush out of Sodom they still managed to bring enough wine with them to get their dear old Dad drunk out of his mind.

It’s also interesting that one of the telltale signs of Sodom’s descent into evil was the sexualizing of their culture, and look at the effect that then had on Lot’s daughters. How could they have excused such an obviously awful act with their father in their own minds? But that’s the power of an evil culture; it can twist one’s thinking into going along with it, and even believing it’s the right thing to do. 

Witness the sexualizing of our own western culture, treading the same downward track that Sodom took, and how it’s influencing our most hallowed Christian institutions into excusing and even celebrating same sex unions, ordaining practicing homosexuals and lesbians, condoning drag queen story times for children, and accepting gender fluidity – all in blatant contradiction to Scripture. 

But take a leaf out of Lot’s daughters’ book, who felt not the slightest twinge of guilt or even a question in their minds that what they were doing might not be what God would want them to do. The power of Sodom had clearly done a real number on them. So how scary is it to see that same power weaselling its way into our culture today – and especially into our most visible Christian institutions as well? 

Are they so haughty they don’t care? If so, take a leaf out of God’s book and his reaction to Sodom: “They were haughty…Therefore I did away with them.” Ezekiel 16:50. But – on the other hand – “Did Sodom really exist?”….(next blog)

Sodom was a city with no fear of God, which is odd because its king and all its people, along with all their possessions, had been recovered by Abraham in a daring night-time raid on the kings who had seized them (Genesis 14:11-16). 

So the king of Sodom knew Abraham well, and personally went out to meet Abraham on his victorious return (17). He may also have met Melchizedek, the “priest of God Most High” (18), so the king had been in close contact with godly men. Abraham had also refused any compensation for rescuing the king (23-24), so the king knew what a good man was. 

Good, because in the previous chapter “the men of Sodom were wicked and were sinning greatly against the Lord” (13:13), so hopefully this latest episode with Abraham in chapter 14 had created a change of heart, and especially toward God, because both Melchizedek and Abraham had credited the victory to “the Lord, God Most High, Creator of heaven and earth” (14:20, 22).  

But there’s no record of any change of heart toward God. Instead the “outcry against Sodom and Gomorrah” was “so great and their sin so grievous” (18:20) that God decided to see for himself if things were as bad as reported (21).  

It was bad all right, because when Lot, Abraham’s nephew, the one good man left in Sodom, cried out to the mob, “No, my friends. Don’t do this wicked thing” when they wanted to sexually assault his two male guests (19:7), they totally ignored him, and even refused the offer of his daughters instead. The only thing that stopped the mob from breaking into Lot’s house was being struck blind by the angels (9-11).  

How fitting, when they were so blind to their wickedness. But it’s how God reacted to their wickedness that sends a shudder through the ages, because when the “outcry against (Sodom) was so great the Lord sent angels to destroy it” (13). When the point was reached that no fear of God had created a culture so totally bent on evil, God destroyed it.

The scary part of that is Lot and his family having to be dragged out of Sodom by the two angels (15-16). A warning through the ages, therefore, about “The power of an evil culture”….(next blog) 

It’s not surprising that God wanted to wipe Sodom off the map, seeing what happened to two of his angels there. Men from all over the city, young and old, had gathered at Lot’s home where the angels were staying, demanding Lot push his visitors out the door so they could homosexually gang rape them (Genesis 19:4-5). 

One has to wonder how Lot got himself in this situation in the first place. We know he liked the look of that land (13:10), but somehow he’d ended up living in the city, and even “sitting in the gateway of the city” as one of its elders and judges (19:1) – probably because his uncle Abraham had done such a great favour to the king of Sodom back in Genesis 14:11-17.  

But why did Lot stay in the city, when 2 Peter 2:7 tells us he was “distressed by the filthy lives of the lawless men” in it? There’s a clue in Genesis 19:7, because when Lot steps outside his home to reason with the mob he addresses these filthy-minded men as “brothers.”  

Brothers? But according to Ezekiel 16:49-50, the people of Sodom were “arrogant, overfed, and unconcerned; they did not help the poor and needy. They were haughty and did detestable things before me.” Sodom sounds like the typical snobbish attitude of the urban elite today, that so easily sucks people into thinking they’re a superior breed of humans who are entitled to doing whatever they please, no matter how detestable it is, or how much their personal excesses and weird ideas about how the world should be run destroy the lives of others. For Lot to consider such an entitled, lust-filled, selfish mob as brothers suggests he may have become such a political animal as a city elder that he was afraid to make waves – a very dangerous situation for him to be in, because in verse 50 God says of Sodom, “Therefore I did away with them as you have seen.”

And here was Lot, about to be done away along with them – and deservedly so too, because when he finally did stand up against the mob in defence of the two angels in Genesis 19:7, he offered his two virgin daughters to the mob instead (8). 

Fortunately – very fortunately – God is both power and mercy, “for the Lord was merciful” to Lot and his family (19:16) and got them out of the city before he unleashed his power on it. Which made me hope, as our world descends into a Sodom-like hole too, that God will extend his mercy to the good people who are also distressed today, and he helps them rise above its suffocating influence and escape the catastrophe that comes to a society “When there’s no fear of God” in it….(next blog)  

There’s a simple and obvious answer to that question: God is revealing himself as both YHWH and Elohim in the New Testament in the person of Jesus. And the Holy Spirit made sure that was understood right off the bat in Acts 2:36 when Peter shouted to the crowd, “Therefore let all Israel be assured of this: God has made this Jesus, whom you crucified, both Lord and Christ.” 

The Greek for “Lord” in that verse comes from kyrios (or kurios) meaning “power” or “might.” Which fits Jesus perfectly, because as Jesus himself said in Matthew 28:18, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me.” And in Philippians 2:10-11, “at the name of Jesus every knee should bend….and every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord.” In Jesus, therefore, we see the mighty Elohim power of God, “far above all rule and authority, power and dominion,” Ephesians 1:21. And just as the mighty Elohim pronounced his divine justice and judgment on Sodom and Gomorrah, Jesus has been appointed to judge the whole world with divine justice too (Acts 17:31). So Jesus very much represents the mighty Elohim side of God that Abraham came to know. 

But Jesus is “both Lord and Christ,” the meaning of which is made clear in Acts 3:26, because “When God raised up his servant, he sent him to bless you by turning each of you from your wicked ways.” It’s in Christ that “we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins” (Ephesians 1:7). It’s in the life and death of Jesus as the Christ, therefore, that we see the deeply caring and loving YHWH side of God that Abraham also came to know. 

And it’s our belief in both these sides of God, as revealed in Jesus, that’s now credited to us as righteousness, Romans 4:24. It’s our belief, first of all, that “he was delivered over to death for our sins” as our Saviour (25), but also that he was “raised as Jesus our Lord from the dead for our justification” (24-25). He’s both our Lord and Saviour, and identified as both from the moment of his birth in Luke 2:11, as the “Saviour, who is Christ the Lord.” Which is why we refer to him as “Christ Jesus our Lord” or as “the Lord Jesus Christ,” in recognition that he’s our loving YHWH who saved us from our old life of death, but he’s also the mighty Elohim who’s transforming us into an entirely new creation. 

And what God did next in the city of Sodom in Genesis 19 showed Abraham both his YHWH and Elohim sides too, that “God is both power and mercy”….(next blog)

In Genesis 19:29, when “God remembered Abraham,” the Hebrew word for “God” in that verse is Elohim, because this is the mighty side of God about to dispense justice on Sodom and Gomorrah for their “grievous” behaviour (18:20).  

Which made YHWH, the relational side of God, wonder if he should “hide from Abraham what I am about to do” (17), because the severe justice side of God might not make sense to him. How, for instance, would Abraham take it, having to witness the massive destruction of two entire cities in the very land where he’d been told by God the blessing of all nations would begin (18)?

Add verse 19 to that too, because YHWH had chosen Abraham to “teach and direct his sons and their families to keep the way of the Lord by doing what is right and just,” so how would blasting two cities into oblivion sound “right and just” to Abraham? And, as YHWH expected, Abraham did not react well: “How could you (YHWH), the Judge of all the earth, kill all those people when some of them might be good?” 

Abraham had a point, which YHWH acknowledged by promising to spare the entire city of Sodom if there were just ten good people in it, despite reports pouring in about Sodom’s appalling descent into depravity. 

So, first of all, we have God pictured by YHWH, deeply concerned for Abraham and how he’s going to react, but into this same story comes Elohim, the mighty God of justice, who wants to wipe Sodom off the map. What we’ve got in the same story, then, is two very different “sides” to God in YHWH and Elohim.   

But in both these sides of God, Abraham is at the forefront of their thinking. YHWH was sensitive to Abraham’s reaction to the destruction, and Elohim remembers Abraham wanting to spare the good people (19:29). So in Genesis 18 and 19 we have God as both YHWH and Elohim, and both are concerned for Abraham. Which is quite different to the notion that the God of the Old Testament was ‘all Elohim, harsh and violent’, but the God of the New Testament was all YHWH, pictured by Jesus ‘meek and mild’.

Taking into account, then, that God revealed himself to Abraham as both YHWH and Elohim, is he doing the same for us today as Abraham’s offspring? In which case, “How is God both YHWH and Elohim today?”….(next blog)

Twice Abraham challenges YHWH: “Far be it from you,” he says to YHWH in Genesis 18:25 – twice too – because in Abraham’s mind what YHWH was about to do wasn’t in tune with the YHWH he’d come to know.   

YHWH was going to completely wipe out the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah, because “the outcry against them was so great and their sin so grievous” (20). But that didn’t make sense to Abraham, because what if there were good people living in Sodom too? So he “approached YHWH and said: ‘Will you sweep away the righteous with the wicked? (23).…Far be it from you to do such a thing, treating the righteous and the wicked alike….Will not the Judge of all the earth do right?’” (25). 

Strong words, but YHWH had grown Abraham’s relationship with him to the point that Abraham could express his upset – and make a proposition of his own too, because he asks YHWH in verse 24: “What if there are fifty righteous people in the city? Will you really sweep it away and not spare the place for their sake?” And YHWH listens – and agrees. If there are fifty good people, yes, he’ll spare the city (26). 

It was like going to the boss with an outrageous proposal after being really upset at one of his decisions, and the boss actually listens, and agrees. Oh dear, you think, maybe I shouldn’t have got so steamed up, so, like Abraham in verse 27, you settle things down a bit, remembering who you’re talking to. Abraham admits, therefore, that “as nothing but dust and ashes” he’s been speaking very boldly, but it doesn’t stop him pressing home his point in verse 28, when he asks YHWH: “Will you destroy the whole city if there are forty five good people in it?” And he keeps bargaining YHWH down to sparing the city if just ten good people exist in it, and at each bargaining point YHWH listens, and agrees.  

Can we take from YHWH’s ready agreement, therefore, that he really enjoyed listening to Abraham, and from the text we can see why too? Because Abraham did three things in his conversation with YHWH: first of all, he expressed very strongly (and respectfully) what he believed was right. Secondly, he appealed to YHWH’s own nature. And thirdly, he argued his case on behalf of other people. Moses did the same three things in Exodus 32:11-14, so did Daniel in Daniel 9, and how readily YHWH listened to them too.  

And he listened to Abraham all right, because in the destruction that divine justice was about to unleash on Sodom and Gomorrah “God remembered Abraham” (Genesis 19:29)….(next blog)    

By Genesis 18:8, Sarah is probably still recovering from her husband’s rather frantic cry to her in verse 6: “Quick get three seahs (large measures, possibly a whole sack full) of fine flour and knead it and bake some bread” for the three visitors who’d just arrived (2). 

That was surprise enough, but after the visitors had sat down and eaten, she heard one of them ask her husband where she was because, he said, “I’ll be back about this time next year, by which time Sarah will have a son” (9-10). “You must be kidding” (in our terms) she chuckled to herself, and not surprisingly, because at nearly ninety years old “I’m worn out and my husband is past it too, so how can such a pleasure be mine?” (12).  

That wasn’t the last of her surprises either, because she overheard the leader of the group asking her husband, “Why did Sarah laugh and say to herself, ‘What chance have I got of having a child at my age?’” (13). But she’d only been thinking it in her head (12), so how on earth did he know?

She soon found out, because he asks, “Is anything too hard for the Lord?” (14). Oh no, now she was in trouble, not only for chuckling but for doubting the Lord’s power too – especially when the whole point of the last twenty-five years was to build their trust in YHWH and his ability to pull off the impossible. On the other hand, Abraham had also laughed at the prospect of a son in his old age (17:17). 

But in her case she was only a few feet away from the one who knew exactly what she was thinking, so she “was afraid” (15), the same Hebrew word used for Adam when his fear led him to hide from God (3:10). And at this point, Sarah probably wished she could hide and never be found too. But being Sarah, with a tendency to resort to human solutions (like suggesting Abraham have a child by Hagar, and agreeing to be his sister), she went the human route again and lied, saying, “I did not laugh.” “Yes you did,” came the answer, and we can only imagine Sarah’s reaction, having been caught in this exquisitely embarrassing moment of her own making. 

But there’s no serious telling her off by YHWH. No repercussions. She doesn’t get away with lying, but there are no recriminations either. Imagine being Sarah, then, and what she might be learning about YHWH too. So that next time she’s in a tight spot and she’s tempted to resort to human means to get herself out of it, just be open about it with YHWH. Because “YHWH listens”….(next blog)