The Judgments of God

We have been looking at the judgment of God, and we discovered that the word "judgment" is not a synonym for "punishment." Judgment is actually an evaluation process, where God looks at both behavior and heart attitudes. Then God will take some source of action, depending on what He finds during the examination process.

If our hearts and conduct are pleasing to God, judgment yields rewards and is a desirable thing. If we have yielded hearts but inappropriate behavior, then God will correct us and help us get back on the right path. (That correction probably won't feel like a punishment at first; it will be more like He is steering us in the right direction. But if we resist His correction, then it will get stronger and could start to feel like a spanking or worse.) If our hearts are hard and our actions are evil, then His judgment yields punishment designed to get us to repent from evil and start doing things God's way.

We also learned that God will be as gentle as possible in His correction or punishment, doing no more than is necessary to get us to repent and turn back to Him. If we yield to Him quickly, we will be restored quickly. But if we resist, His actions will get more and more severe until we finally give in to Him and embrace His way. Some resist more than others, but most people (no matter how wicked they may seem) will eventually repent when God judges them.

Unfortunately, there are some people who have hardened their hearts against God to the point that they will not repent, no matter what He does. The King James version of the bible uses the word "reprobate" to describe them. The word means that they have embraced evil to the point they truly believe it is good and right, and they only get angry at God when He tries to correct them. They appear to value their "right" to sin more than they value their lives, and they would rather die than repent.

Romans 1:28-32 describes them this way:

28And even as they did not like to retain God in their knowledge, God gave them over to a reprobate mind, to do those things which are not convenient; 29Being filled with all unrighteousness, fornication, wickedness, covetousness, maliciousness; full of envy, murder, debate, deceit, malignity; whisperers, 30Backbiters, haters of God, despiteful, proud, boasters, inventors of evil things, disobedient to parents, 31Without understanding, covenant breakers, without natural affection, implacable, unmerciful: 32Who knowing the judgment of God, that they which commit such things are worthy of death, not only do the same, but have pleasure in them that do them.

Once a people reach the place where there hearts are so hardened before God, they don't leave Him with any options to win them back to Himself. At that point, God does what I call "damage control"-- He decides that they are completely unredeemable, therefore He wipes them out before they can corrupt others and get them to that same reprobate place.

That is what happened to Sodom and Gomorrah.

God already knew that the people there were wicked, but He wanted to see if there was any chance that they would repent and turn back to Him. So He sent His angels. Now please understand that when God sends His angels as His representative, they don't make their own decisions and react on their own. They are in constant communion with God and He gives them instructions; they speak and act for Him and He is completely aware of all they are doing and experiencing. So when I talk about angel's in the following paragraphs as evaluating people's behavior and reactions, please be aware that God is actually the One making the decision and the angels are only implementing what He decides.

There is one more thing I want to emphasize, because it is very important. God wasn't having a temper tantrum, and He wasn't in a bad mood. He was very deliberate and systematic in His evaluation, and He hoped that the people could be spared. That is consistent with His nature/character, as described in 2 Peter 3:9, "[God] is longsuffering toward us, not willing that any should perish but that all should come to repentance."

That is why He talked to Abraham about what He was about to do with Sodom and Gomorrah--because He was looking for an intercessor to step in on their behalf. He wanted to give them a chance to be restored instead of destroyed. God shares His philosophy on this in Ezekiel 22:29-31, which says:

29 "The people of the land have used oppressions, committed robbery, and mistreated the poor and needy; and they wrongfully oppress the stranger. 30 So I sought for a man among them who would make a wall, and stand in the gap before Me on behalf of the land, that I should not destroy it; but I found no one. 31 Therefore I have poured out My indignation on them; I have consumed them with the fire of My wrath; and I have recompensed their deeds on their own heads," says the Lord God.

That is right--God looks for intercessors to stand in the gap for the ones He is judging, so that He doesn't have to destroy them. That is why God sought Abraham out on this in Genesis 18:20-32. God wanted to spare them, so He allowed Abraham to "negotiate" a "deal" where the city would be spared if there were just ten people there with hearts that could be turned after God.

If God was angry and just wanted to punish them and pour out His wrath, He would not have gone through that exercise with Abraham. He did not need to get permission from Abraham for what He was about to do. God was looking for an excuse to give them one more chance, because His heart towards the unrighteous has always been they way the bible describes it in 2 Peter 3:9. He really wanted them to repent instead of perishing in their sin.

Let's look at Genesis 19 with the understanding that judgment is an evaluation process that results in God taking an action. We can see how God actively evaluated these people before destroying them. I believe that He was looking for any sign that they could be redeemed, but He did not find one.

Let's start with the angel's arrival in Genesis 19:1-3. The angels did not come covertly, as if they were on a secret mission to spy out the land. They made no secret of who they were, and people were able to recognize them as angels. Lot recognized them immediately (verses 2 and 3), and his first reaction was to try and protect them from the wicked people there. I don't know if the angels just appeared out of thin air, like they did when they appeared to Abraham with God. If they walked up to the city gate like regular men, then there was sometime about their physical appearance that set them apart as divine. They radiated God's glory in some manner--who knows, maybe they glowed like the actors on the TV series "Touched By An Angel?"

However they did it, the angels made it obvious to the people in Sodom that they were Heavenly beings, and not regular men. This is why the men of the city gathered at Lot's house at nighttime and demanded that the angels be turned over to them for homosexual intercourse. These angels were not the only visitors to ever come to Sodom--it was a big city and people came there all the time. But there was something different and special about the angels, something that made the men of the city think that they would some type of extra carnal pleasure from intercourse with them.

There are many different ways that people might react to the presence of an angel, and the angels watched how they reacted to them as part of the evaluation process. The most common (and reasonable) reaction is to be afraid when confronted with God's glory and holiness, then to recognize God's power, repent and get right with Him. But the people of Sodom were so far gone that this possibility did not even occur to them. Instead of recognizing and submitting to God's authority, they looked for a way to use try to God for their carnal pleasure. And the angels watched and evaluated their reaction, because it revealed the condition of their heart.

Lot tried to protect the angels from the mob, but his efforts were unsuccessful, and he just made the mob so angry at him that they decided to kill him and then go after the angels. "But the men [e.g., angels] reached out their hands and pulled Lot into the house with them, and shut the door. And they struck the men who were at the doorway of the house with blindness, both small and great, so that they became weary trying to find the door" (Genesis 19:10-11).

The angels could have simply struck these men dead--after all, the whole city was probably going to be destroyed in the morning anyhow, so what difference would a few hours make? But they merely struck them blind to prevent them from finding the door. In short, the angels disabled them so they could not cause trouble, but did not destroy them. I believe that was because the evaluation process was still going on, and God has not yet fully decided on His course of action. It was almost cast in stone, but God was giving them one last chance, looking to see if He could find the ten righteous people needed to spare the city.

Here is another thought: maybe God hoped that that some of the ones who had been struck blind might repent, so they could be spared along with Lot. He may have been giving them that opportunity; but if so, their hearts were so hardened that no one took it.

Look at verses 12 to 14: "12 Then the men said to Lot, 'Have you anyone else here? Son-in-law, your sons, your daughters, and whomever you have in the city--take them out of this place! 13 For we will destroy this place, because the outcry against them has grown great before the face of the Lord, and the Lord has sent us to destroy it.' 14 So Lot went out and spoke to his sons-in-law, who had married his daughters, and said, 'Get up, get out of this place; for the Lord will destroy this city!' But to his sons-in-law, he seemed to be joking."

So Lot went running around town, trying to convince the people who he cared about that they needed to leave the city because God was about to destroy it. He had sons (plural, so at least 2 of them and they were probably married with families of their own), a married daughter and her husband, plus his wife and the two daughters still living at home. He probably had some close friends as well. But he could not find anyone who believed him or who honored God.

If Lot could have gotten 6 people more people who were willing to change their behavior and obey the angel's command to leave, I believe God would have spared the city. God would have honored His promise to Abraham to spare it for the sake of ten. So Lot's running around to his friends and relatives was actually a part of God's evaluation process. God was watching, looking to see if there were ten hearts that would respect and honor Him enough to heed His warning and leave the city. But He could not find ten people with enough regard for God to drop what they were doing and flee from His judgment.

God examined the hearts and actions of the people in Sodom and He found that they were indeed reprobate. So He decided to destroy them. Once the decision was final, the action was swift. Look at what the angels said to Lot in verses 15 and 16: "15 When the morning dawned, the angels urged Lot to hurry, saying, 'Arise, take your wife and your two daughters who are here, lest you be consumed in the punishment of the city.' 16 And while he lingered, the men took hold of his hand, his wife's hand, and the hands of his two daughters, the Lord being merciful to him, and they brought him out and set him outside the city."

Once the evaluation was ended and God made His decision, there was no time to dill-dally around. Lot and his family had to leave the city with great haste, because the judgment action was to start right away.

God would have preferred to spare the people of Sodom and draw them back to Himself, but they simply were not willing. He looked at their hearts and realized that they were so corrupted that they would never respond to Him, so He gave up on trying to win them back.

God could have let them live out the rest of their lives in depravity until they died naturally and faced the final judgment, but He was concerned that they might corrupt others, and make them reprobate as well. That is why He decided to eradicate them, so that they wouldn't "infect" anyone else with their hardened and evil hearts.

When God judges a person or people group to be reprobate, His course of action will be to destroy them before they have a chance to corrupt others.