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For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish, but have eternal life. For God did not send the Son into the world to judge the world, but that the world might be saved through Him. He who believes in Him is not judged; he who does not believe has been judged already, because he has not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God. This is the judgment, that the Light has come into the world, and men loved the darkness rather than the Light, for their deeds were evil. For everyone who does evil hates the Light, and does not come to the Light for fear that his deeds will be exposed. But he who practices the truth comes to the Light, so that his deeds may be manifested as having been wrought in God.
John 3:16–21 NASB
The Torah reading וַיֵּרָא Vayera (“he appeared,” Genesis 18–22) includes the one of the most disturbing accounts in the entire Bible: the complete, violent destruction of the Sodom and Gomorrah metropolitan area with literal fire and brimstone. We can easily fixate on the images of Lot and his daughters fleeing in abject terror as Lot’s wife turns into a pillar of salt. We can wonder how Heaven could do such a thing to an entire group of people. This account seems quite at odds with the God Who sent Messiah Yeshua (Christ Jesus) because He “so loved the world” (John 3:16).
On the one hand, we also have in Vayera stories of compassion and trust, like a young son jumping happily into the arms of his father, expecting his father will catch him and not let him fall and get hurt. There isn’t a better example of complete trust than this.
The Sodom Metro firestorm of unbelievable violence and the Faithful Father of complete and utter trust seem like extremes. But across that spectrum we see that Vayera is aptly named, because God shows up, and wants to show up for us, stay with us so that we can live in His presence. He doesn’t want His children to be burned up, but to live with Him with complete love and trust.
Always choose the high ground
At this time in Abraham’s life, he was living in Hebron, which is in the hill country west of the Dead Sea. The valley of the Dead Sea is hundreds of feet below sea level, reaching negative 1,362 feet at the lake level. In our day, the area where Sodom and Gomorrah were is now a brackish wasteland due to salt deposits around the aptly named Salt Sea. The only economic value is in the harvesting of the salt that the sea produces and the tourism that accompanies the demand for that salt. But in Abraham’s day, this valley was prime real estate — a luscious garden — that was very wealthy.
Abraham chose the high ground, where the soil was not as giving. In the Bible, idioms of “going up” point to spiritually elevating experiences, particularly in going up in altitude and in spirit to the House of the LORD in Jerusalem. “Going down” can picture a spiritual descent, as when Yehudah (Judah) “went down” from his other brothers in the years-long parenthesis of Genesis 38.
Lot chose the lowest of the low ground, where the grass was greener, but the hearts were meaner. The consequences of this split were profound and eternal.
What could justify this destruction?
After this split, Abraham literally has lunch with the LORD and found himself interceding for Sodom (Genesis 18). God told Abraham that the victims of Sodom were crying out to Him and He came down to investigate. The LORD doesn’t send judgment without knowing the intricacies of what is going on (Amos 3:7).
When the angels came to rescue Lot and his family from the fire that God was going to rain down on Sodom, they not only rescued Lot and his daughters from death but they also saved Lot’s entire family line. That included Lot’s future granddaughter, Ruth, who became a paternal grandmother of the Messiah Yeshua. Lot separated himself from God’s people, but his descendant Ruth returned to God’s people.
Abraham prayed for mercy and deliverance for the righteous in the cities under Sodom’s influence. Although God knew they were a lost cause, Abraham did not know that and he prayed and interceded for them over and over again. We should follow his example.
When the people of Sodom were blinded, they did not give up their wicked plan, they still tried to attack Lot and his family. They were so mentally blinded by hatred for Lot that even when the Angel struck them with physical blindness, they did not self-reflect or repent.
‘The prayers of the righteous avails much’
Lot may not have understood the maxim of “Show me your friends, and I will show you who you are.” The “spiritual inertia” that plagued Lot had already taken hold of his wife and most of his family. So God, because of the prayers of Abraham, graciously pulled Lot and his family out of the say of the bunt of the conflagration raining down on the metro area.
In high school, I grew up with two extremely different groups of friends. On the one hand, I had a group of Mormon friends, who were quite straight and narrow. On the other hand, I had a group of musician friends, many of whom were deemed “stoners.” I walked a tightrope between these two groups for most of my time in high school, and I learned some hard lessons from that experience.
One key lesson came when I tried to bring these two disparate groups together on my 16th birthday. I learned that “light” and “darkness” do not like each other. The parents of the good kids wisely whisked them away from the event when they saw the group it was attracting. While one shouldn’t send unprepared children into dark environments as “missionaries,” believers who are prepared can illuminate places overtaken by the shadows of the Adversary. As Yeshua told Nicodemus, the more light comes in, the more the darkness recoils.
When God calls you, He also gives you the faith to latch on. At that point, you have to make the choice to leave your bondage or lingering. If you linger in the house of bondage too long, you might end up trapped in a house that will be burned up.
Lot was saved from death, not mainly because of his own righteousness, but because of Abraham’s fervent prayers for him.
Mercy for the righteous calls for justice on the wicked
Sometimes there’s a difference between the question we have about a text and the questions the text wants us to ask. Vayera is trying to tell us that God is not here to push the smite button. Rather, the LORD wants to exercise mercy whenever He can, yet He can’t ignore justice. At some point, justice and mercy have to meet somewhere in the middle. In Sodom, the justice came in the destruction of the wicked and the mercy came when He rescued Lot’s family from the flames.
At what point do we ask ourselves…
“And I will bless [בָּרַךְ barakh] those who bless [בָּרַךְ] you, And the one who curses [קָלַל qalal; “be slight, swift, trifling, of little account”1] you I will curse [אָרַר ’arar; “to bind (with a spell), hem in with obstacles, render powerless to resist”2]. And in you [Abraham] all the families of the earth will be blessed.”
Genesis 12:3 NASB
Those who belittle Abraham’s descendants will be marked for destruction by God, just as those who mocked Lot were not rescued but were utterly destroyed.
Abraham was prepared to offer his only son, the son that Heaven promised him and miraculously provided (Genesis 22). Centuries later, Channah, was also promised a son, and she gave her miracle son Samuel to God, just as Abraham gave his son. When Samuel was still a young man — while then-High Priest Eli was getting scolded through a prophet for his sons’ “lightly esteeming” (קָלַל qalal) the Tabernacle through their debauchery — Samuel said to God, “Here I am, Lord.” (1Samuel 1–3)
Both Issac and Samuel were shadows of the Messiah. God later sent His only Son, Yeshua to us. In the midst of distressing times, God wants to be with us. He not an “absentee landlord.” He is not out of touch with our suffering. Rather, the Son of God is our advocate, and He understands us. Yeshua was tempted as we are, in all ways, yet without sin. (Hebrews 4:15)
We should joyfully jump into the arms of God.
Summary: Tammy