Doubt and Confidence

 Genesis 18-19

            Abram’s 99th year must have been an exciting one: the Lord appeared to him twice! Yesterday we read about the Lord’s appearing to Abram and the covenant of circumcision. By that point, Abram had pretty well despaired of having a son with Sarah and asked the Lord to accept Ishmael. Abram’s laughter tells us something about the condition of his faith: it wasn’t good.

            Today it’s Sarah’s turn. Three visitors appear to Abraham (turns out it’s two angels and the Lord Himself!), and, after receiving extraordinary hospitality from Abraham, they repeat the promise, “Next year.” (It would be good to comment on hospitality in the ancient Near East, because it was a core virtue of that culture and carries over in some ways to the New Testament. Maybe another day…) This time, it’s Sarah who laughs, “Now that I’m old and worn out…”

            In Romans 4, the apostle Paul gives us an interesting insight into faith: “Without weakening in his faith, he faced the fact that his body was as good as dead—since he was about a hundred years old—and that Sarah’s womb was also dead” (Romans 4:19). Genesis shows us Abraham and Sarah wracked with doubt; Paul says, “He never lost faith.” The key insight here: doubt is not the opposite of faith. The opposite of faith is unbelief. Doubt can certainly grow into unbelief, especially if we aren’t regularly strengthened by hearing the promises of God repeated, but doubt, it seems to me, is really just a natural feature of faith, wondering how or when the Lord’s promises will come to fruition.

            That Abraham’s doubt isn’t unbelief is demonstrated in his remarkable confidence in asking the Lord to spare Sodom. For a man who just recently scoffed at the Lord’s ability to keep His promise, Abraham is pretty brazen to ask the Lord to reconsider His plans for Sodom. What’s interesting about Abraham’s negotiation is that he bases his request on the Lord’s own character, “Surely you won’t destroy the righteous with the unrighteous! That’s not like you!” That’s a lesson about our prayer: we pray on the basis of God’s character and His promises; every prayer should, at its core, be, “Lord God, here’s what you said. I’m only asking you to keep your promises.” Martin Luther once described prayer as “rubbing God’s promises in His ears.”

            Unfortunately for Sodom, only four righteous can be found: Lot, his wife, and his two daughters. Not even the sons-in-law accept the warning. Notice the contrast with the story of the Flood, where Noah, his wife, three sons, and three daughters-in-law escaped on the ark. How far gone in wickedness must Sodom have been! Even the four turn to three when Lot’s wife hesitates and looks back. It reminds me of Luke 9:62, “No one who puts a hand to the plow and looks back is fit for service in the kingdom of God.” The episode ends with a second call back to the Flood: a drunk father and sinful children, this time daughters who commit incest. Two final thoughts: first, this is the family that Abraham so earnestly prayer for, reminding us that no one is too far gone to be the object of our prayers. Second, the human race is every bit as sinful as it was before the Flood; this incident with Sodom and Lot points us back to why the Lord committed His promise to a single family, so that that family could be a sort of greenhouse, where the Lord could weed sin out and maintain better conditions for that promise to grow.