The Lord said…”But
Nineveh has more than 120,000 people living in spiritual darkness, not to
mention all the animals. Shouldn’t I feel sorry for such a great city?” Jonah
4:11
I am wrestling with
God’s destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah versus the sparing of Nineveh. The
first two infamous cities were destroyed without warning because of their depravity;
at least, no warning has been recorded in Scripture except for Lot and his family…
Smile. Once again it
would appear the Lord is taking me on a different track than the one I thought
I was on. While reading the story of Sodom, I came across this passage. It
leapt off the page. Lot is protecting God’s angels in his home from the crowd of
men lusting after them.
“See,
now I have two daughters who have not known a man; please, let me bring them
out to you and you may do to them as you wish; only do nothing to these men.”
Genesis 19:8
Maybe I am reading
this from a twenty-first century perspective but I was shocked by this father’s
offer to sacrifice his daughters to the mob. What sort of a father would do
that?
But…there is nothing
in Scripture that does not reflect the heart of God or point to Jesus.
Isn’t this exactly
what God did? Offered His Son as an innocent sacrifice to protect all that is good and holy?
Lot’s daughters were
spared because the men in the mob weren’t swayed from their original purpose. Because
of their violent determination to get to God’s angels, the mob made of both
small and great men, were blinded.
The angels took Lot, his wife and daughters by the hand and led them out of town.
Is this because Lot
was willing to offer anything to protect God’s messengers? Not that they actually
needed protecting, these messengers of God were well able to look after
themselves.
God destroyed the
two cities because there had been an outcry against them. Those who were
suffering had turned to God. What happened to those people? Did they live
there? Were they destroyed alongside the wicked?
When I was in
college, a group of us were walking up Yonge Street in Toronto after school. A young
man was on the sidewalk, weeping and pleading over and over again, “Won’t
somebody please help me?” I can still
hear him to this day.
Maybe it was the “please”.
Maybe it was the utter despair in his voice that made me stop and ask what was
wrong. (Having a group of friends nearby and the fact it was broad daylight on
the busiest street in Toronto was a deciding factor as well.)
“I just want to go
home.” The tears poured down his face.
Long story short, he
was from a small town up north. He and a friend had come to Toronto to explore
the big city. They had naively ended up in a bar that wasn’t the sort of place the average person would feel safe entering. I believe someone slipped something into their
drinks. He ended up separated from his friend and had been trying for hours to
get a passerby to help him.
The help he wanted
was to be told where the bus station was. So that’s what we did. My friends and
I led him to the station that was less than a couple blocks away. He couldn’t
thank us enough.
Afterwards, my
friends gave me heck for taking such a risk in talking to a stranger yet to
this day I do not regret my decision.
Did this same thing
sort of thing happen thousands of years ago in Sodom and Gomorrah? Minus the
bus station of course. Were these the people who cried out against these places and their people? Those
whose innocence and naivety was used to take advantage of them?
No wonder they cried
out.
I may have shared
that particular anecdote before but I feel it has helped me understand God’s
heart in this. If I can take pity on one
man, God’s pity, His compassion, is a gazillion times greater than my own. When we say please, when we humble ourselves, God listens. AMEN!
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