A Spurgeon Snapshot
One of my favorite study Bibles is The Spurgeon Study Bible, available from Lifeway, Christianbook.com, and Amazon. All of the study notes are quotes from Charles Spurgeon’s sermons and writing. For more on Charles Spurgeon, click here.
32 Then he said, “Oh let not the Lord be angry, and I will speak again but this once. Suppose ten are found there.” He answered, “For the sake of ten I will not destroy it.”
Genesis 18:32
In Genesis 18, we read the remarkable story of Abraham bargaining with God over the destruction of Sodom. God is determined to destroy the city. Abraham first asks God if God would still destroy the city if fifty righteous people could be found. God said He wouldn’t. “Well, what about forty-five? Will you still destroy the city?”
Again, God said He wouldn’t.
Forty? No.
Thirty? No.
Twenty? No.
What about ten, Lord? If you can find ten righteous people in Sodom, will you still destroy the city? For a final time, God says “No. For the sake of ten, I will not destroy the city.”
We know the rest of the story. God destroyed Sodom. There weren’t even ten righteous people in the entire city. Lot potentially could have come up with six– his wife, his daughters, and his future sons in law. But he couldn’t even save his sons in law.
Maybe the intended takeaway is to emphasize the complete wickedness of Sodom. That is true. Maybe the story is meant to highlight the graciousness of God. This is also true. This time when I read through the story, what struck me was the boldness of Abraham in interceding for lost people. Do I dare to be that bold when I am praying for the lost?
In Charles Spurgeon’s commentary on this passage, he deals with the question of why Abraham didn’t continue to talk God down. God has already demonstrated His patience. If Abraham had dared to go from ten to five, it wouldn’t surprise anyone if God had promised to spare the city for the sake of five.
What about one? We often talk about how Jesus loves each of us as though there were only one of us. Had Abraham persisted, could he have gotten God to promise that for the sake of one, God wouldn’t destroy the city? Why, then, didn’t Abraham persist?
Here is Spurgeon’s answer:
There are certain restraints in prayer which a man of God cannot explain to others but which he nevertheless feels. God moves His servants to pray in a certain case, and they pray with great liberty and manifest power. Another case may seem to be precisely like it, yet the mouth of the former supplicant is shut, and in his heart he does not feel that he can pray as he did before. Do I blame the men of God? Assuredly not! The Lord deals wisely with his servants, and he tells them, by gentle hints which they quickly understand, when and where to stop in their supplications.
Spurgeon argues that when you are a friend with God, as Abraham is described to be, then you grow in your prayer life. Just as a married couple learns over time how far to push a point with their spouse, we learn the same thing in our growing relationship with God. We know what pleases him. We intuit the difference between a God honoring prayer and a prayer that doesn’t honor him. The challenge for me is not to be so bold in prayer that I won’t stop until I move God to act in a certain way. Rather, it is to be so connected to the heart of God that I will know when to stop.
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