This post is part of my ongoing series of writing down my thoughts on the Bible passages I read each day. Some days I hope to have great insight that the Lord gives me, and many days, I will likely struggle through the text and not know what to write down based on what I read. My hope and prayer is that as I make this a habit, just as I did daily writing for so long, that I will improve on my ability to read and understand the passages I’m reading. Please keep in mind that many of these posts may be published late at night or with little time studying and simply be my first thoughts after reading. This is in no way a commentary that one should use to discern the Bible, but my own personal thoughts.

I feel the title of these chapters should be “God does what he wants.”

There are some interesting contrasts in the chapters. You see in 15-17, God is obliged to give Abraham and Sarah a child, even though they were “advanced in years”. Both Abraham and Sarah laugh when God tells them that they will have a child. In fact, he tells them not only that they will have a child but that all the nations of the earth will be blessed through their offspring. That many kings will come “from Sarah”. At this point, when Abraham and Sarah are so old, I’m sure it was almost impossible to picture this happening. But, quite literally, God does whatever he wants.

I don’t say that in a flippant way. Like God is off just doing things on a whim. God has orchestrated everything together, past and present, and apparently part of his story was creating his chosen people from the most unlikely of candidates.

However, you also see a different side of God at the end of chapter 18 when Abraham intercedes for the sake of those in Sodom and starts by asking God to spare it if there are even 50 men in the city who are righteous. God accepts, and then Abraham goes on a reverse sales tactic and keeps asking God not to sweep it away if there are 40 righteous, then 30, then 20, then finally 10. After each of them, God accepts and tells him that he will not destroy it for the sake of those 10 righteous men…if he finds 10 righteous men in the city.

It’s interesting to see these instances in scripture because we know that God knows then end from the beginning. He knew when he created Abraham that he was going to have this conversation with him and that he was going to concede to not destroy the city if there were even 10 who were righteous.

Hew also knew about what we’ll read tomorrow (spoiler alert, Sodom doesn’t make it). So why even have this conversation with Abraham in the first place if he knew it was going to be destroyed anyway?

God knows everything, yet we often try and understand and relegate him to our own mind. We are not God, and if we understood everything that he did, would that not make us divine also?