A Bible example

An early example of an intercessor in the Bible was Abraham.  Genesis 18:20-33 shows the interaction of God with Abraham when God told him He was about to destroy Sodom and Gomorrah.  Abraham asked God if He were going to destroy the righteous along with the wicked.  Abraham did not wait for God's answer.  He argued this is not a thing God should do since God must exhibit righteousness even as God judges.  So Abraham proceeds to ask God if He not would destroy Sodom and Gomorrah if there were a mix of 50 righteous people and the rest were unrighteous.  God agreed.  Abraham proceeded to successively lower the number of righteous people to 40, 30, 20, and lastly 10.  God agreed if there were only 10 righteous people in Sodom and Gomorrah, He would not destroy those cities.  

What's going on here?  Is Abraham more righteous and more loving than God?  Or does God tell Abraham, an intercessor, what judgment He plans to execute on Sodom and Gomorrah exactly so Abraham will intercede?  Did God bring it up exactly to elicit intercession for a more merciful outcome?  That's for you to decide but I think so! 

As it turns out there were not even 10 righteous persons in Sodom and Gomorrah.  It would seem that there was only Lot, Lot's wife, his two daughters each of whom had a husband for a total of 6 people.  6 is less than 10.  The angels warned Lot to leave town.  The 2 husbands thought Lot was joking so that left 4 people.  These 4 were told to escape for their lives.  When they did not get moving the angel explained that he couldn't do anything until the 4 of them were safe elsewhere.  They left and then towns were destroyed.

Legally, God could have destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah with Lot's family still there.  But Abraham's intercession was from the heart and God's answer was from the heart.  Lot was Abraham's nephew (Genesis 12:4) who maybe shouldn't even have been with Abraham.  You can see God did tell Abraham ahead of time exactly sp that Abraham could affect the outcome.  God did more than Abraham requested.  God did more!

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