The Pleading Man and the Burning City

Lunch under Abraham's tree was over. The three visitors stood up, brushed off the crumbs, and looked down the road toward Sodom.

Then the LORD said, "Shall I hide from Abraham what I am about to do?" And he told his friend. "The cry against Sodom and Gomorrah is very great, and their sin is very heavy. I am going down to see."

Sodom was proud and stuffed with food, and it still let the poor go hungry.

Two of the visitors went on, but Abraham stayed before the LORD and came closer.

"Will you sweep away the good along with the wicked?" he asked. "What if there are fifty good people there? Shall not the Judge of all the earth do what is right?"

"If I find fifty," said the LORD, "I will spare the whole place for their sake."

Abraham swallowed. "I am dust and ashes. But what if there are forty-five?"

"For forty-five, I will not destroy it."

"Forty?" "Thirty?" "Twenty?" (Abraham was haggling like a shopper at the goat market, except with God, and the goat was a whole city.)

"Please don't be angry," Abraham said. "Just once more. What if only ten are found there?"

"For the sake of ten," said the LORD, "I will not destroy it."

That evening the two visitors, who were angels, came to Sodom. Abraham's nephew Lot met them at the city gate and begged them to stay at his house.

Before bedtime, the men of Sodom, young and old, surrounded the house. BANG, BANG went their fists on the door. "Send those strangers out to us!" They meant to hurt them.

Lot stepped outside to beg them to stop, and they rushed at him to smash the door. The angels reached out, pulled Lot back inside, and shut the door. Then they struck the men outside blind.

"Get your family out," the angels told Lot. "The LORD has sent us to destroy this city."

Lot ran to warn the young men who were going to marry his daughters. They thought he was joking.

At dawn Lot dawdled. So the angels grabbed his hand, and his wife's, and his two daughters', because the LORD was merciful to them, and marched them outside the walls. "Run for your lives! Don't look back!"

Then the LORD rained burning sulfur and fire on Sodom and Gomorrah, and everyone in those cities died. Behind Lot, his wife looked back, and she died there and became a pillar of salt.

Early that same morning, Abraham went back to the spot where he had pleaded. Smoke rose off the plain like smoke from a giant oven. There had not been ten. But God remembered Abraham, and he had brought Lot out.

Abraham stopped at ten. He was dust and ashes. He could plead for the guilty. He could not take their place.

Years went by, and the cry of the world's wrongdoing kept going up. God's people waited for someone who would come as close as Abraham did, and closer.

At last another came down to see, and walked into a guilty city. On a cross outside that city, while people were hurting him, he prayed for them, "Father, forgive them." Then he took the place of the guilty. The punishment for sin fell on him the way the fire fell on Sodom, and he died. Now he takes people by the hand and leads them out. Jesus is still pleading for the guilty, and he has never once stopped at ten.