DUST AND ASHES

The heavenly visitors had brought the good news that the arrival of the promised son was imminent. Now that news is tempered by heavy tidings as the doom of Sodom is foretold. ‘The secret of the Lord is with them that fear him’, Ps. 25. 14, and, as a friend of God, Abraham becomes privy to the grim news.

The hope of a son now gives way to the anticipation of the loss of a nephew, for, after the emergency of chapter 14, Lot had re-established his links with Sodom and he was now in dan­ger of perishing with the ‘wicked sinners’ who were his fellow-citizens. Like him, there are times when we fail to learn from our mistakes, as Abraham did too, when the tragedy of his visit to Egypt was re-enacted at Gerar in chapter 20.

The thought of Lot’s peril detained Abraham in the presence of the Lord, v. 22. His burden drove him to ‘draw near’ and inter­cede with God, v. 23, and yet he was so aware that in the presence of a holy God, a God who had been outraged by the blatant evil of Sodom, he was frail and insignificant and unwor­thy: hence his reference to being but ‘dust and ashes’. Man had been created from ‘the dust of the ground’, Gen. 2. 7, and, with the advent of sin, was destined to revert to that, 3. 19. Apart from the spiritual dimension of the soul and spirit, we are composed of a few pounds worth of chemicals. It is an encouragement to us, then, just to know that God takes that fact into account, for ‘he remembereth that we are dust’, Ps. 103. 14. Here, Abraham is overwhelmed with the thought that such an insignificant crea­ture dare address the Almighty so boldly.

His tenacity was rewarded, for, when God destroyed Sodom, He ‘remembered Abraham, and sent Lot out of the midst of the overthrow’, 19. 29.

Like Abraham, we should always have an awareness of how fragile we are physically, and of how unworthy we are spiritually. However, the commands of scripture are, ‘Let us therefore come boldly unto the throne of grace’, Heb. 4. 16; ‘let us draw near … in full assurance of faith’, 10. 22. There is a divine ear that is ever open and a divine hand that is ever stretched forth to bless.