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The three visitors got up to leave and looked toward Sodom, and Abraham walked with them a little way. Before anything was said to Abraham, God asked Himself a question. “Shall I hide from Abraham what I am doing?” (18:17). God does not owe anyone an explanation. He is God. But He chose not to keep His plan from Abraham. God gave two reasons. First, because of who Abraham was going to be: “a great and mighty nation,” through whom “all the nations of the earth shall be blessed” (18:18). That is the promise of 12:3 again. Second, because of what God had chosen him to do: “I have known him, in order that he may command his children and his household after him, that they keep the way of the Lord, to do righteousness and justice” (18:19). Righteousness and justice. Those two words mean doing what is right and fair. God was about to tell Abraham that two cities were facing judgment, and He told the very man He had chosen to teach his family about justice. In a few verses Abraham would be asking God, the Judge of all the earth, to do what is right. This is what it means to be God's friend. The Bible later calls him “Abraham My friend” (Isaiah 41:8), and James says “he was called the friend of God” (James 2:23). Friends share their plans with each other. Jesus says the same to His disciples: “I have called you friends, for all things that I heard from My Father I have made known to you” (John 15:15). If you belong to Jesus, you are His friend too, and He speaks to you through His Word.
Then God told Abraham what He had heard about two cities. “The outcry against Sodom and Gomorrah is great” (18:20). The word outcry means a cry for help — the cry of people who are being hurt. God used the same word about Israel in Egypt: “I have surely seen the oppression of My people… and have heard their cry” (Exodus 3:7). Something was happening in those cities that had people crying out, and God heard them. God always hears the cry of people who are being hurt. “Their sin is very grave.” Grave means very serious. The people of Sodom were doing terrible things, and in the next lesson we will see what the city was like. Here God tells Abraham two things: the sin was very serious, and the cry about it had reached heaven. “I will go down now and see” (18:21). God already knew everything — the cry had reached Him. But He came to see for Himself before He acted. The same words were used at Babel: “the Lord came down to see the city” (11:5). God is a fair Judge. He never judges without seeing the whole truth. Then the men left, but Abraham stayed. “The men turned away from there and went toward Sodom, but Abraham still stood before the Lord” (18:22). He knew what was coming. He could have walked back to his tent. Instead he stayed in front of the Lord, and he began to pray for the city. Abraham's nephew Lot lived in Sodom (14:12). In his prayer Abraham never says Lot's name. He prays for the whole city. And after the city falls, the Bible tells us that “God remembered Abraham, and sent Lot out” (19:29). God heard Abraham's prayer, and He showed mercy to Lot.
Abraham stepped closer to God and began to pray, and his first question was not about numbers at all. “Would You also destroy the righteous with the wicked?” (18:23). He “came near” to ask it, the way a person steps up to a judge to plead a case. He was not only asking God to be kind. He was asking God to be just. Abraham was afraid that good people would be swept away with the bad, as though there were no difference between them. Then he called God by His title. “Far be it from You to do such a thing as this… Shall not the Judge of all the earth do right?” (18:25). This is the memory verse. A man made of dust was reminding God of God's own character — and it was the very thing God had chosen Abraham to teach: righteousness and justice (18:19). Abraham asked for two things. First, that the righteous would not be treated like the wicked (18:23, 25). Second, and much bigger, that the whole place would be spared for their sake (18:24). He was asking God to let a few good people be the reason a whole city was shown mercy. And God agreed. “If I find in Sodom fifty righteous within the city, then I will spare all the place for their sakes” (18:26). God did not argue with Abraham or scold him for asking. Our lesson calls this Abraham bargaining with God, and it can look like haggling. But Abraham never offered God anything. He had nothing to trade. All he brought was God's own goodness and justice, and that is all any of us bring when we pray.
Abraham kept asking, from forty-five all the way down to ten, and his prayer teaches us three things. First, Abraham knew exactly who he was talking to. “Indeed now, I who am but dust and ashes have taken it upon myself to speak to the Lord” (18:27). People were made from dust (2:7), and Abraham never forgot it. Yet he kept praying. Knowing he was small did not keep him quiet. It made him humble when he spoke. Second, God never once said no. Forty-five (18:28), forty (18:29), thirty (18:30), twenty (18:31), ten (18:32). Twice Abraham said “Let not the Lord be angry” — but God was not angry with him at all. Every request got the same answer: I will not destroy it. Third, God was patient with every request. Abraham stopped at ten. The Bible does not tell us why, so we do not need to guess. What we do know is that God listened to every word and answered every request with mercy. Then the conversation ended: “So the Lord went His way as soon as He had finished speaking with Abraham; and Abraham returned to his place” (18:33). Did the prayer fail? In the next chapter the city is destroyed, so you might wonder. But Genesis tells us this: “God remembered Abraham, and sent Lot out of the midst of the overthrow” (19:29). Abraham never once asked for Lot by name. God brought him out anyway. God hears our prayers, and He often answers in ways bigger than we asked.
Abraham did something here that God's people would do again and again all through the Bible. He stood between God and people who were not his own, and asked for mercy.
He stood in the gap. Centuries later God says through Ezekiel, “I sought for a man among them who would make a wall, and stand in the gap before Me on behalf of the land, that I should not destroy it; but I found no one” (Ezekiel 22:30). Abraham is what that man looks like. So is Moses, who pleaded for Israel after the golden calf (Exodus 32:11-14).
Abraham stopped asking at ten. He asked God to spare the many for the sake of a few, and he did not ask for fewer than ten. Later, through Jeremiah, God Himself goes further: search the city “if you can find a man… and I will pardon her” (Jeremiah 5:1).
The New Testament says the One has come. “For as by one man's disobedience many were made sinners, so also by one Man's obedience many will be made righteous” (Romans 5:19). Abraham asked God to spare the many for the sake of the few. In Jesus, God saves the many through the One.
And He is still standing in the gap. Isaiah said the Servant would make “intercession for the transgressors” (53:12), and on the cross Jesus did exactly that: “Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they do” (Luke 23:34). Hebrews says He has never stopped: “He always lives to make intercession for them” (7:25).
Then Abraham's question gets its answer. “Shall not the Judge of all the earth do right?” At the cross God does right and shows mercy at the same time. Paul says the cross was there so “that He might be just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus” (Romans 3:26). Abraham could only ask the Judge to be fair. Jesus is how the Judge is fair and forgives.
Abraham spoke these ten words right to God, while he was praying for a city. The Judge of all the earth. God is not only the judge of Abraham's camp or of the land of Canaan. He is the Judge of the whole world. This is the first time anyone in the Bible calls God by this title, and Abraham used it while asking God to spare a city full of strangers. It is a question that expects the answer yes. Of course the Judge of all the earth will do right! Abraham was not doubting God's character; he was leaning on it. He had nothing else to lean on. “Right” means just. It is the same word God used a few verses earlier, when He said Abraham was chosen to teach his family “righteousness and justice” (18:19). Abraham takes the very thing God said He cares about and brings it back to Him as a prayer. You can pray this verse too. When something in the world looks unfair — and plenty does — this verse reminds you that God is always fair. You can bring it to Him and ask Him to do what is right, trusting that He always will.
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