Discover the charming and humane aspects of divine interactions as we recount the visit of God and His messengers to Abraham. We gain insights into Abraham’s plea for Sodom and what it tells us about the nature of divine judgment. This episode invites listeners to reflect on the personable and relational nature of God, alongside thought-provoking discussions about justice, mercy, and the human experience.
00:00:03 Introduction to Ronald L. Dart and Born to Win
00:26:21 Final Reflections on God’s Nature and Human Relationships
SPEAKER 01 :
The CEM Network is pleased to present Ronald L. Dart and Born to Win.
SPEAKER 02 :
You know, there is such a thing as believing God and still having your doubts. I feel a little guilty about my doubts sometimes, and that’s the way it ought to be. But at the same time, the fact that a person doubts on a given point… doesn’t mean that he doesn’t trust God. A kid, for example, who’s about to launch himself into the air for his daddy to catch him has absolute trust in his dad, but that doesn’t mean that he’s not just a little bit afraid. In fact, the face of a kid who’s in that dilemma, that he knows he trusts dad and he knows dad’s going to catch him, but he can’t still deal with that fear of falling. The face is a real study. Now, people who read the Bible and try to get it right should know this. God is not offended by our doubts. In fact, it’s our willingness to place our trust in Him in spite of our doubts that constitutes faith. If there were no doubts, there could be no faith. Faith, in that sense, is trusting God and instead of trusting your doubts. It has to do with choices you make, not with the sensations in your belly. When you launch from the ladder, the very fact you’ve done it means you trust, you have faith, never mind the butterflies in your belly. Now we know that Abraham believed God, and we also know that God counted his faith for him for righteousness. But that did not mean that Abraham never doubted. It does not mean that Abraham had 100% certainty on everything that he had to deal with relative to God. In fact, some of the promises that God gave to Abraham could only be called outrageous. I would question the sanity of any man who heard the promises God gave to Abraham and didn’t have his doubts. For example, when Abram was 99 years old, God appeared to him, and he said, I am the Almighty God. Walk before me, and you be blameless. This is in Genesis, the 17th chapter. He says, I will make my covenant between me and you, and I will multiply you exceedingly. Well, Abraham fell on his face, and God talked with him there, saying, As for me, behold, my covenant is with you. You will be a father of many nations. Neither shall your name be called anymore Abram. From now on, you’ll be called Abraham. For a father of many nations have I made you. I’m going to make you fruitful. I’m going to make nations out of you. Kings are going to come out of you. And I’ll establish my covenant between me and all your children after you and their generations. This is an everlasting covenant. I’ll be a God to you and to your seed after you. And I will also give you and your seed after you all the land in which you’re a stranger, all the land of Canaan, for an everlasting possession, and I’ll be their God. Now, all this stuff is being said to a man that is 99 years old. And he’s got one kid, but that kid was born under questionable circumstances, and it wasn’t even clear to Abraham whether the boy was his heir or not. And you’re told you’re going to be the father of many nations. You’re going to be the father of kings to come. And also look around all this land from the north to the south to the east to the west. It’s all going to be yours and all going to belong to your seed. You know, it had to sound like a fairy tale to Abraham. But continuing, God went further than that. He said to Abraham, As for Sarah, your wife, you shall not call her name Sarai, but Sarah shall her name be. and I will bless her, and I will give you a son of her. Yes, I will bless her. She’ll be a mother of nations. Kings of people shall come out of her. Well, so much for thinking about Ishmael, the other son, because he was the son of Sarah’s handmaid, Hagar. And now God says, no, no, no, no. The promise has to be fulfilled through your wife, Sarah. Now, when he heard this, and this is what’s funny, Abraham fell on his face and laughed. I mean, he was so astonished by what God told him, he fell on the ground laughing. This wasn’t just a chuckle, folks. He was really struck by it. And he said in his heart, Shall a child be born to him that’s a hundred years old? And shall Sarah, who is ninety years old, bear children? You see what I mean about a man having his doubts? Abraham would have done anything God asked him to do, but he could not suspend his doubts about having children at age 100. So I learned from this passage of Scripture you can laugh at what God says and live. It’s remarkable to think about it. And I can understand how here’s a man, his wife is 90 years old. She’s long past menopause. And, you know, she’s been told she’s going to have a baby. You know, some people are pretty old now. I’ve had babies in recent years. I think in the 60s that some women have had children. And in this day of modern medicine, we’re doing some pretty fabulous things about saving people’s health. But, folks, this was a very long time ago. And this woman wasn’t 60 or 70. She was 90. And her husband was 100. And they have to start thinking about having a baby. And Abraham, after he told him this and after Abraham had his laugh, he said, Oh, God, that Ishmael might live before you. He says, Can’t we do all this through Ishmael? Ishmael’s already a teenage boy. He’s growing up. I think he’s more than that, actually. He’s a favorite of Abraham. Abraham loved him. After all, it’s his son. Abraham had helped him with his cattle. The boy had gone with him to buy cattle. He’d gone with him to sell cattle. He’d helped him breed cattle. They had done all kinds of things together, and Abraham thought the world of this boy. And he says, oh, can’t we just do this through Ishmael? You know, you’re 100 years old. Your wife is 90. And if you know what it’s like to have a baby in the house, a brand-new baby, squalling, waking up in the middle of the night, and all the trouble and headaches and so forth that go with children, I can see why you say, why don’t we just do this with Ishmael? with Ishmael. It’s really a poignant statement that he makes. And God said, Sarah, your wife shall bear you a son indeed, and you’ll call his name Isaac. And I will establish my covenant with him for an everlasting covenant and with his children after him. As for Ishmael, okay, I’ve heard you. I’ve blessed him. I’m going to make him fruitful. I’ll multiply him exceedingly. Twelve princes he’s going to beget. I’ll make him a great nation. But my covenant I’m going to establish with Isaac, which Sarah shall bear with you about this time next year. And he left off talking with him, and God went up from Abraham. Now, there’s something else I think very important in all this. One thing that comes to me in this is that God is very personable. He and Abraham were in the same place sitting and talking together. Abraham fell on his face before God in a gesture of total humility, but this was not a prayer from earth to heaven. When they were finished, God went up from Abraham. He had come down to Abraham. He was right down here in the dirt with Abraham, talking these things over. Now, I have always had misgivings about the movie, Oh God. But at the same time, I am forced to recognize that it is quite accurate in one way. And I don’t mean to say that God looks like George Burns. But the interactions between God and the leading character in the movie… are not that different from the kind of interactions that were going on between God and Abraham. And I’m going to show you what I mean by that when I come back after these words.
SPEAKER 01 :
Join us online at borntowin.net. That’s borntowin.net. Read essays by Ronald Dart. Listen to Born to Win radio programs every day, past weekend Bible studies, plus recent sermons, as well as sermons from the CEM Vault. Drop us an email and visit our online store for CDs, DVDs, literature, and books. That’s borntowin.net.
SPEAKER 02 :
So the Lord appeared to Abraham. Abraham was sitting at his tent door in the heat of the day, and he lifted up his eyes, and behold, three men stood by him. When he saw them, he ran to meet them from the tent door and bowed himself toward the ground. The subsequent story reveals that one of these three men is God. But if you had been watching all this from behind a bush, you would have seen three men and nothing else remarkable. No, no, Abraham’s greeting of them, of bowing down before them, was not remarkable. It was the customary greeting of strangers. One simply bowed himself down. In fact, in the Middle East and going back into Arab cultures, you can still see a lot of this, that the host is a servant to his guests and very much he would bow before them. He would do obeisance in a sense. It was a custom of hospitality. And Abram said, My Lord, if I have now found favor in your sight, don’t pass on. Stay a while. There’s nothing especially revealing in the my Lord statement or the your servant statement. The host always treated his guest as if he were the servant. That’s Middle East hospitality. Let a little water, I pray you, said Abraham, be fetched, and you wash your feet and rest yourselves under the tree, and I will fetch a morsel of bread and comfort you your hearts. After that, you can pass on, for therefore you have come to your servant. He realized that they were passing through, and they were just making a stop. And they said, Okay, do as you have said. Now, you heard that right. Abraham got them water, and they washed their feet. And then he prepared food for them. Abraham hastened into the tent to Sarah and said, Get ready some meal and knead it and make cakes. And he ran to the herd and fetched a calf tender and good and gave it to the young man, and he hasted to dress it. He took butter and milk and the calf, and he set it before them. And he stood by them under the tree while they ate. Now, by the way, who are these other two men? We’ve already guessed that the one is God, but who are the other two? Well, the later story suggests that they are messengers of God. Men like these turn up in the Old Testament from time to time. They’re not angels in the traditional sense with wings and halos and all that. They appear like men. You can shake hands with them. They eat food. Their feet get dirty. There’s one thing curious about this, though. Abraham didn’t eat with them. He stood to one side like a waiter. I don’t know. Maybe he had already eaten. Maybe it was the custom for a host to stand and serve his guests while they were eating. But there’s one thing that is truly fascinating about this. Remember, Abraham didn’t eat with them, so it wasn’t a shared meal in that sense. You’ve got three supernatural beings who ate food that they presumably didn’t need. Why? I can only think of three possible reasons. One, they ate for Abraham’s sake. They were going to be just friends with Abraham, but he wasn’t eating. Two, they enjoyed good food. And strange as it may sound, I think they did. After all, God made man and God made food. And I’m awfully glad that he made food good. So he must have had an idea of what he was doing. He must have had an idea of what it was like. And maybe, just maybe, he enjoys it himself. And the third alternative is that their flesh needed the food. Now, they might not be that long in the flesh, but they needed food while they were here, maybe. This stuff is a little bit out of our reach, but it is at least worth noticing. But that raises a truly interesting question. Why were they there in the flesh? Because they were. They had dirty feet, and they ate food. Well, I’ll come back to that question of the flesh before I’m finished. Well, they said to him, where’s Sarah, your wife? And he said, oh, she’s over in the tent. And God said, I will surely return to you according to the time of life. And lo, Sarah, your wife, shall have a son. Now Sarah was in the tent door behind them listening to every word. And Abraham and Sarah were old and well-stricken in age, and it ceased to be with Sarah after the manner of women, which means she was a long way past menopause. And the indication is that she and Abraham really had stopped having sexual relationships sometime before that. And what was interesting about the account is Sarah was sitting back there listening to all this going on, and when they said that, she laughed. She laughed. She said laughed within herself. I don’t guess she cackled out loud. And she said to herself, Am I waxing old? Am I going to have pleasure, my Lord being old also? As I said, it suggests that they had stopped having pleasure sometime before. And Jehovah said to Abraham, Notice, we now know precisely who we’re dealing with. We’re not just dealing with three angels. We have Jehovah and two men who have come to eat with Abraham on their way somewhere else. And Jehovah said to Abraham, Why did Sarah laugh, saying, I will surely bear a child when I am old? Is anything too hard for the Lord? At the time appointed I will return to you according to the time of life, and Sarah shall have a son. And Sarah denied it, saying, oh, I didn’t laugh, because she was afraid. He said, no, but you did laugh. Now, this whole thing is entirely charming. I don’t think God was mad at Sarah because she laughed. I think he chided her a little bit because she did so. But the whole story is so human. And God seems to be quite patient about the whole thing. I don’t know. I almost get the impression he’s enjoying himself. And I have come to the conclusion that God is an altogether charming person. I am awestruck by him, but I don’t find myself afraid of him. For Abraham laughed, and he didn’t get turned to toast. And Sarah laughed, and God challenged her on it. And she even fibbed and said, no, I didn’t laugh. And God said, oh, yes, you did. But he didn’t do anything to them. The fear I have… He is not at all unlike that of the little boy who’s about to jump from the ladder into his father’s arms. I’m not afraid of my father. I’m just afraid of falling, and I can’t help that. And more important, God knows I can’t help it. Does God really look like George Burns? Well, if you saw the movie, Oh God, you know that God told John Denver in the movie that he didn’t really look like that. He had chosen this manner of appearance because he wanted the character played by John Denver to be comfortable in his presence. From Genesis, I get the impression that this is probably right. God does not want to frighten people. And when he comes to talk, he wants Abraham to be comfortable in his presence. Now, I’ve told you all this to make the point that God is personal. and that he is personable and charming. He is likable. He is even lovable. He would make you a very good friend. But there’s a serious side to this visit. I mean, he stopped off to see Abraham, I think, because he wanted to. He enjoyed the man’s company. But the three men were just passing through on their way to a very unpleasant duty. And the men rose up from thence, and they looked toward Sodom. And Abraham went with them to walk with them on the way. And Jehovah said, Shall I hide from Abraham what I am about to do? I know Abraham. I have intended that he become a great and a mighty nation. I intend that all nations of the earth should be blessed in him. For I know him, that he will command his children and his household after him. They will keep the way of the Lord to do justice and judgment. that I can bring upon him everything that I have spoken concerning this man. Now, mind you, I inserted the word Jehovah because that’s the word that’s there in the text, and it means essentially that it is God who is talking to Abraham. And I think it was important to God that Abraham know what he was about to do. Otherwise, he just simply wouldn’t have bothered. But Abraham was his friend. And I think it’s important because I don’t think God wanted anyone to think that this was a natural disaster. He wanted the world to know that Sodom and Gomorrah were destroyed for cause. Justice and judgment, which are mentioned earlier in this thing, that God said he wanted Abraham and his household to do justice and judgment. These two things are extremely important to God. In truth, without judgment and justice, mercy has no meaning. And if men will think that God will never judge, if they think that he will never exact justice, then God will never be anything but a great grandfather in the sky to man. Abraham was a friend of God, and you share things with your friends. So God spoke to Abraham concerning Sodom and Gomorrah. And there’s one thing more. Abraham would tell his children what happened, and more important, why. So, letting the two other men walk ahead… Now this is curious. Doesn’t God know everything? Why does he have to go look at Sodom to see if what he heard was true?
SPEAKER 01 :
We’ll talk about that in about 30 seconds. If you would like to share this program with friends and others, write or call this week only and request your free copy of What Is God Doing? Number 12. Write to Born to Win, P.O. Box 560, White House, Texas 75791. Or call toll free 1-888-BIBLE44. And please tell us the call letters of this radio station.
SPEAKER 02 :
God said, I’m going to go down now to Sodom to see whether they have done altogether according to the cry which has come to me. And if not, I will know. So why did God have to go look? Didn’t he already know? Well, one thing seems evident to me. Even if God can see and know everything, apparently he chooses not to. Remember the little scene in the Garden of Eden when God created Adam and Eve and then left them alone together in the garden? He not only left them alone, he left them alone naked. Now, do you think that God went away and hid in the bushes and peeked? Or did he grant them some measure of privacy? When he came back in the garden later, after the serpent had deceived Eve, and seemed to have no idea what had happened, was he faking it? No, friends don’t fake things like that, and surely God is not a faker. He had simply isolated what happened from him, and he came back like a friend would come back. And can you imagine the God of the Bible sitting on his throne, high and lifted up with a TV clicker in his hand, going from one wretched event on the earth to another? I think some people just assume without thinking about it But in doing so, they make God nothing more than a voyeur, just peeking into people’s bedrooms and watching stuff in reality like you might watch on one of those sex channels on the satellite. But no, God does not spend His days looking at filth. Therefore, He had heard the report He had not seen. But still, why was he going? Couldn’t he have just checked into it or just trusted the messenger? Well, I think a truly great king is not going to pass judgment from afar off. And God will not in the judgment day hear from the men of Sodom, Well, God, you just zotted us from a way off. You just descended fire on us, and you never even came to check to see if it was true. You know, judgment requires the presence of the judge. So God did not shirk. He came down. And not only did he come down, he came down in the flesh to see, to feel, to smell the stink of Sodom. His judgment, in the end, was not based on hearsay. He was there. Now, you may have thought that God came to earth only once in the flesh in the form of Jesus Christ. You would have been wrong. But it’s not so hard to understand that if God really intended to experience Sodom and to know his judgment was true, he had to be in the flesh to do it. So, he and the men turned their faces from there and went towards Sodom. But Abraham stood yet before Jehovah. And he walked close and he said, Will you also destroy the righteous with the wicked? What if there are fifty righteous people in that city? Will you also destroy and not spare the place for the fifty righteous that are therein? It’s really far from you to do like that, to slay the righteous with the wicked, and that the righteous should just be as the wicked. That’d be far from you. Shall not the judge of all the earth do right? You know, I began to understand a little bit more about this relationship between God and Abraham. I have no question that Abraham was in awe of God, and that was exhibited by the fact that he fell on his face before God. But he was not afraid of him. He was not afraid of God because he knew what kind of a person he was dealing with. He knew that he had laughed at a promise of God and God had been patient with him. He knew Sarah had laughed and God had been patient with her. And so, boldly, he reminds God of who he is and says, shall not the judge of all the earth do right? Later on, another man will argue with God for the lives of other people. His name was Moses. And he’ll actually change history in the process. Well, the Lord said, if I find in Sodom 50 righteous within the city, I will spare the whole place for their sakes. And you know, that may give you a little bit of a clue as to why it is that God has tolerated some of the garbage that exists on this earth up to this time. That there are still a few righteous people here and there, enough to save the lives of the rest. And Abraham answered and said, well, now look, I’ve taken upon myself to speak to God, whom I’m but dust and ashes. What if five of that 50 righteous are missing? Are you going to destroy the city, the whole thing, for the lack of five? And God said, no, if I find 45 there, I will not destroy it. Some people’s God would slap Abraham down about this point and say, who do you think you are? But Abraham spoke to him again. He said, well, now, maybe there are 40 righteous. And God said, I’ll not do it for 40’s sake. And then he said, well, now, don’t let the Lord be angry, and I’ll speak. What if there are 30? And God said, I won’t do it if I find 30 there. And Abraham persisted. He said, now, I have taken it upon me to speak to the Lord. Peradventure, there should be 20. And he said, I’ll not destroy it for 20’s sake. And then Abraham tried one more time, and he said, oh, let not the Lord be angry. I will speak yet this one more time. What if there are 10? And God said, I will not destroy it for the ten’s sake. Poor Abraham, he bargained all the way down to ten and probably thought he had saved the city. But it turned out there was only one righteous man in the whole town. And the Lord went his way as soon as he had left communing with Abraham, and Abraham went home. Now, why would God allow such an exchange to take place? I think it reveals a lot about God. For one thing, God is a very social person. He likes friends and is willing to share himself with them. And for another thing, I don’t think God likes to punish people at all. I think he thinks the problems we bring on ourselves are really quite enough. The reason all this is important is that man was intended to have a relationship with God. We’re supposed to be his friends. God is a winner, and so are his friends. Until next time, this is Ronald Ard, and remember,
SPEAKER 01 :
You were born to win. The Born to Win radio program with Ronald L. Dart is sponsored by Christian Educational Ministries and made possible by donations from listeners like you. If you can help, please send your donation to Born to Win, Post Office Box 560, White House, Texas 75791. You may call us at 1-888-BIBLE44 and visit us online at borntowin.net.
