Genesis 18:29-31

III. THE RIGHTEOUS THE SALT OF THE EARTH.

29.. will not do it for forty's sake.

The earnest old man keeps up his importunity. He cannot bear the thought that Sodom shall be destroyed, much less that the righteous shall be doomed with the guilty. He does not plead that the wicked shall be saved from their deserved doom on their own account, for he has already learned that the desert of sin is judgment; but he pleads the cause of the righteous, and holds them before the Lord, to intercept from even the wicked the bolts of his wrath. It will be noted in these responses of the Almighty to the appeal, "I will not do it for forty's sake, for thirty's sake, for twenty's sake, for ten's sake," that. few righteous, mingled with the wicked, are the safeguard that saves all from destruction. The eyes of the Lord are upon his saints. While there is any hope of them leavening the lump, they will be permitted to remain as examples of and to preach righteousness. When no hope remains they will be removed, and the place or nation that has become. sink of iniquity given over to destruction, ten righteous would have saved the whole city of Sodom; they could not be found, and the Lord sent Lot away before the bolts of the divine wrath fell. When it became necessary to destroy Jerusalem, the church was warned and fled to Perea, beyond the Jordan. It is still true that the righteous element is the salvation of. nation. If the church was destroyed, or to become hopelessly corrupt, the day of our national prosperity would pass away.