This week at church we looked at one of the most adult rated stories in the entire bible. If this were made into a movie it would not be on television and it would likely not make it past your parental control settings. It was the story of Sodom and Gomorrah. Perhaps you know the story? Maybe not? Let me give you the PG-13 version.

So the story of Sodom and Gomorrah is simply the story of what we could call the original sin city. It was one of those places where evil and inappropriate acts seemed to lurk around every corner. Genesis even describes a scene where all the men of the city wanted to come to rape two male visitors to their town.

I know! It’s pretty awful isn’t it?!

Well that’s the more well known part of the story. That and the whole part about Lot (God fearing guy who happens to live there) escaping right before the city burns down. And his wife (Mrs. Lot) turns around to watch it burn and turns to a pillar of salt. But we’ll leave that for another time.

The part of the story we focused on this week was actually what a man named Abraham (really important person in the Old Testament) did to try to help the people of Sodom and Gomorrah.

There is a role in the church known as a priest. Well this role actually got its start in the first part of the Bible, the part we call the Old Testament. So the priest was the man who God called to stand between him and his people. The priest was something called an intercessor. An intercessor’s role was to make the case for the people before God. This is exactly what Abraham does.

He negotiates in a way to get God to lessen his sentence. God is going to wipe the city away because it’s totally evil. Abraham asks if he’d spare the city for 50 righteous people. God obliges so Abraham pushes his luck. He lowers the number of good guys to 45, 40, 30, 20, then finally all the way to 10. And God still goes along with it. But the scary part is that they can’t even find 10 righteous people in the entire city! Not even 10 out of tens of thousands!

This is where we hung our hats for the rest of the message. Where Abraham stopped, God kept going. Where Abraham couldn’t see hope, God made hope.

Check out this week’s message to find hope in a world that preaches despair.