Middle Eastern people, who live in desert places, are famous for their hospitality. Travelers depend upon the kindness of strangers for food, water and a place to rest out of the sun. Offer hospitality to a stranger today and perhaps someone will offer it to you tomorrow when you need it.

Abraham was hospitable to three men he saw approaching his tent in the heat of the day, but he knew this was no ordinary group of travelers. Abraham recognized the LORD coming toward him and he hurried out to meet him and bowed low to the ground. This was the sixth time God appeared to Abraham.

Inside the tent Sarah went to work making bread while Abraham arranged a fine meal of tender veal, milk and curds, then he put the food in front of the visitors and stood off to the side. Abraham took the role of a servant, rather than head of the clan and host at this meal

Sarah Laughs at God

Visitors to nomad camps usually sat and talked with the men in the clan, but these visitors were interested in Sarah. Where was she? Just on the other side of the tent curtain? Ah, then she could hear when they mentioned she was going to be a mother in the coming year.

Sarah laughed at this ridiculous idea. She was nearly ninety years old! Maybe she didn’t expect God to notice her derisive laughter, she was so used to Abraham dealing with God on behalf of the family. We don’t know what her regular prayer life was like, but Sarah has only one recorded conversation with God in the Bible and this is it:

“I did not laugh.”

“Yes, you did laugh.”

God was right, of course, about Sarah’s laughter, and the baby.

Abraham Prays for Sodom and Gomorrah

The three visitors were ready to travel on to the Dead Sea and the plains beyond it where two cities stood. Grievous charges had been brought before God against Sodom and Gomorrah and he was going down to confront them personally. Two angels were going to test them, warn them and see if they would repent. If things were as bad as they seemed, God had a plan to stop the sin.

God took Abraham into his confidence because he wanted Abraham to pray for the people of Sodom and Gomorrah. Abraham, father of nations, was also the first Intercessor for the people of the world.

Abraham asked God not to destroy the cities if there were as few as ten righteous people there, but it turns out there weren’t. There was one righteous man, at most.

Lot Escapes From Sodom

Here is how the Apostle Peter described Lot in 2 Peter 2:7-8: “ . . . [God] rescued Lot, a righteous man, who was distressed by the filthy lives of lawless men, for that righteous man, living among them day after day, was tormented in his righteous soul by the lawless deeds he saw and heard.”

Lot may have been righteous, but he lived in an evil place and that seems to have warped his thinking. When the men of Sodom stormed his house, he kept the two angels safely under the protection of his roof, but contemplated throwing his two virgin daughters to the villains outside. In the end he got them safely out of town, but living in Sodom seems to have warped his daughters’ thinking, too. When they later found themselves without the prospect of husbands, they seduced their drunken father and had sons by him.

Lot disappears from the pages of the Old Testament after he fathers Ammon and Moab. The boys grow up and became two nations that we will encounter many more times as we read through the Bible.

The Bible doesn’t approve of this behavior, it simply reports what happened.

The Answer to Abraham’s Prayers

The morning after the three men visited his camp, Abraham returned to the place where he interceded with God for Sodom and Gomorrah. He looked across the Dead Sea to the plains beyond and saw “dense smoke, like smoke from a furnace” rising.  Both cities were destroyed and Abraham knew that God couldn’t find even ten good people there.

Abraham was God’s friend and confidante, and God personally invited him to pray that all those people would not die because of their sins. Abraham prayed and negotiated with God on their behalf, but the answer to his prayers appeared in the smoke the next morning.

God knew how this was going to turn out for Sodom and Gomorrah, but he still asked Abraham to pray. We also should pray for people, no matter how bad the situation seems. We don’t know how many sinners escape destruction, the way Lot did, if we just pray for them.

Abraham Returns to His Old Ways

When Abraham and Sarah started traveling in Canaan, Abraham asked his wife to lie from time to time and say she was his sister. If someone wanted Sarah in his harem, and he knew Abraham was her husband, he might kill him. But if he thought Abraham was Sarah’s brother, he might negotiate for her instead, or as in Abimelek’s case, simply take her home with him.

This way of gaining a wife was a common, but not a righteous concept, and Abimelek nearly lost his life when he got trapped in Abraham’s deception. He paid Abraham a handsome price for the offense of taking Sarah and Abraham had to intercede for Abimelek so his household could return to normal.

Sarah Laughs With God

Sarah may already have been pregnant when Abimelek took her into his harem because soon after she returned home she gave birth to Isaac. There was laughter again and this time it was the laughter of gratitude and joy.

God Sticks With Us

God put up with a lot from these people! Even the best of them failed in so many ways. But maybe that knowledge can comfort us when we fail. God understands us, he sticks with us, and  His covenant of love is ours forever.