Now, will you notice, the Lord said, Shall
I hide from Abraham that thing which I
do?
Now, up to this point, the Lord has
not revealed to Abraham what he's going to
do with Sodom and Gomorrah.
He's going to destroy them.
Shall he hide from Abraham that thing which
I do?
And will you notice the reason now God's
not going to hide it from Abraham.
Verse 18, Seeing that Abraham shall surely become
a great and mighty nation, and all the
nations of the earth shall be blessed in
him.
Now, Abraham's going to have a tremendous influence.
He's going to influence multitudes of people, and
succeeding generations will be influenced by him.
And that's true right here today on this
radio.
We're talking about Abraham.
He's influencing all of us, friends.
We can't avoid it.
Now, God says, I better not hide it
from him, because he'll get a wrong impression
of me.
Verse 19, For I know him, that he
will command his children and his household after
him, and they shall keep the way of
the Lord.
This man Abraham, by the way, had discipline
in his household to do justice and judgment
that the Lord may bring upon Abraham that
which he hath spoken of him.
Now, he said, I better tell Abraham.
And the Lord said, Because the cry of
Sodom and Gomorrah is great, and because their
sin is very grievous, I'll go down now
and see whether they've done altogether according to
the cry of it which is come unto
me, and if not, I will know.
In other words, God is saying now to
Abraham, Abraham, I know the situation there, but
I'm going down to investigate.
And God never does anything hurriedly or hastily,
and I'm going to destroy the city.
It's a good thing God told Abraham this,
because Abraham would have got a wrong impression
of God, and that is that God was
rather dictatorial than dictative, and that he was
one that apparently showed no mercy at all
or consideration of those that were his.
Abraham would have really had a distorted and
warped view of God.
And so what happened was that God lets
him know now what he's going to do,
and Abraham has the time now to turn
this over in his mind.
And it's a good thing God told him,
because he did have a wrong idea of
God and of Sodom and Gomorrah.
He was wrong about many things, and that's
one of the reasons that God is telling
us as much as he tells us.
A lot of things that he doesn't tell
us, but he's told us enough.
Though a man be a fool and a
wayfaring man, he needn't err therein.