God Judges His Own
We started to look at the judgment of Sodom and Gomorrah in our last lesson, and we were in Genesis 18. We got up to verse 21, which said, "I will go down now and see whether they have done altogether according to the outcry against it that has come to Me; and if not, I will know."
When we looked at that verse, we learned that there is a big difference between the word "judgment" and the words "punishment" or "destruction." Many people think they are all three words mean the same thing because they don't really understand what judgment is. They think that the word "judgment" means the punishment of God against sin. But "judgment" is not the punishment itself, it is the evaluation process that God uses to determine what type of action He will take. And God doesn't limit His judgment just to the wicked, He evaluates everyone's hearts and behavior. The action that He takes with each person depends on what He finds when He evaluates them.
We will look at that more in this lesson. Let's go back to Genesis 18, where God made His visit to Abraham. This might surprise you, but Sodom and Gomorrah were not the only ones that God evaluated on that trip, He also judged (or evaluated) both Abraham and Sarah.
Let me remind you of what happened at the beginning of the chapter, and put it in the context of the normal lifestyle of that period. Abraham was sitting on his porch, relaxing in the shade of his tent on a hot day, which was the usual practice in that part of the world. Suddenly God and his angels appeared out of thin air--one moment no one was there and the next moment Abraham saw them standing there, not far from his tent. He realized they were supernatural, and he immediately ran out to meet them (e.g., he pursued God). He asked them to come to his home and enjoy his hospitality. Then he hustled to get a meal started, which took hours to prepare in those days. Finally, the meal is ready and Abraham had them sit down to eat in the most comfortable place he could find--in the shade under a nearby tree, where they were protected from the hot sun.
Abraham knew his visitors were divine. So instead of sitting down to eat with them, and having his servants serve the meal like they usually do, Abraham choose to serve God himself. By doing that, Abraham was honoring God, demonstrating how important he felt God was. In other words, Abraham was showing God great respect. And, as was the culture at that time (and still is the culture in some parts of the world today), the one serving the food does not sit down to eat with the others. The server stands beside them, ready to serve them with whatever they want until they are completely done eating and fully satisfied.
Now this was significant and probably raised a few eyebrows, because Abraham was considered a very important man. He was master of his house, and it was a very large house because he was very wealthy. He was the kind of person that was used to being treated with a huge amount of honor and respect. In his culture, it was probably unheard of for someone with Abraham's status to behave like a servant instead of like the master. It probably made everyone in the household very curious about his guests.
Meal time in that culture was also a social time. So God probably talked and fellowshipped with Abraham as he stood there under the tree to serve them. At one point, God turned His attention to Sarah, who had not been invited to join them for the meal. (If you don't know mid-eastern culture, that may sound unfair to Sarah, but that was the normal way that they did things back then.) Sarah was nearby, listening at the tent door, and she could easily hear the conversation as they ate under the nearby shade tree. In fact, she was probably only 8 or 10 feet away from where they ate, and she was listening to everything they said through the tent door.
Let's look at God's interaction with Sarah in verses 9 to 15:
9 Then they said to him, "Where is Sarah your wife?" So he said, "Here, in the tent." 10 And He said, "I will certainly return to you according to the time of life, and behold, Sarah your wife shall have a son." (Sarah was listening in the tent door which was behind him.)11 Now Abraham and Sarah were old, well advanced in age; and Sarah had passed the age of childbearing. 12 Therefore Sarah laughed within herself, saying, 'After I have grown old, shall I have pleasure, my lord being old also?"
13 And the Lord said to Abraham, "Why did Sarah laugh, saying, 'Shall I surely bear a child, since I am old?' 14 Is anything too hard for the Lord? At the appointed time I will return to you, according to the time of life, and Sarah shall have a son."
15 But Sarah denied it, saying, 'I did not laugh,' for she was afraid. And He said, "No, but you did laugh!"
Basically, Sarah head God's promise that she would bare a son, and she scoffed at the idea. Her heart was filled with disbelief and ridicule, and she did not receive what God was saying.
[By the way, Abraham had that same reaction a year earlier, when God appeared to him in Genesis 17 to change their names from Abram and Sarai to Abraham and Sarah. In that same visit, God told Abraham that Sarah (who had already menopaused) would soon bare him a son. Abraham's reaction, in verses 17 and 18 was disbelief: "Then Abraham fell on his face and laughed, and said in his heart, 'Shall a child be born to a man who is one hundred years old? And shall Sarah, who is ninety years old, bear a child?' And Abraham said to God, 'Oh, that Ishmael might live before You [instead]!" Abraham didn't believe God either, and he even suggested an alternative plan.]
Apparently Abraham hadn't told Sarah about that, because she had the same initial reaction when she heard God promise her a son. She was probably a believer in that she worshipped the same God her husband did, but she did not know Him nearly as well as Abraham did. So when she overheard God's promise to her, she scoffed at it. Then she was dismayed to discover that God was aware of her reaction, and He called her on it.
God knew that she could hear Him when He made that promise to her. He had already asked where she was just before He said it, so she knew that He was aware that she could hear what He was saying. God had had not called her to come out of the tent so He could talk to her because that wasn't how they did things back them. But He wanted her to hear what He was saying.
God wasn't just talking to Sarah, He was also judging her, or examining her heart in regard response to what He said...He did not like what He found--disbelief--so He came up with a plan to address with that. He wanted Sarah to have a right heart attitude when she had the child, because she was part of a very important plan that He had for mankind and for the nation of Israel. God knew that she had to have faith in order to fulfill her role in God's important plan for His future people, and He wanted to foster that faith.
So God selected a "plan" to address Sarah's lack of faith. First, He called her on her reaction, e.g., He gently rebuked her for not believing that He said. Then he reminded her that nothing is too hard for Him to do.
Sarah became very frightened when God did that. It wasn't normal for male visitors in that culture to interact directly with the females in the family, so it caught her a bit off guard. Also, was also probably afraid that her husband would be angry with her for upsetting his important guests. So she denied that she laughed. The passage says that Sarah laughed "within herself" rather than out loud. So she probably did not make a loud enough noise for Abraham and his guests to hear. But God was examining her heart, and He saw (or "heard") her reaction.
We know she denied laughing, but we don't know if she did so by calling out to God from behind the tent door, or if she actually came outside of the tent. But she lied to God, and He called her on it.
God's confrontation forced Sarah to rethink her faith. At that point, something happened in Sarah's heart. She began to realize that He really is God (Who knows all things), and He really can do that. She had a change of attitude. Her faith grow to the point where she was able to miraculously conceive and bare a child, years after her body had already menopaused. E.g., it wasn't possible in the natural, but it happened when she responded in faith to God's promise, and His supernatural power was released in her life.
In that interaction, God judged her and He found her faith inadequate. Then He choose a course of action to deal with her disbelief, in order to convert it to faith. If Sarah had not undergone God's judgment, she would not have been able to have this child.
But even though God judged her, He never punished her. Some people might argue that she deserved to be punished because she lied to God. In her case, judgment and punishment were not the same thing. Yes, God did evaluate her heart and found her lacking. So He came up with a plan to deal with the disbelief that He found, and then executed His plan. But the action/strategy that He choose was to confront her disbelief and help her see Him as all-knowing and all powerful. It was to help her begin to develop the faith she needed.
God also judged (or evaluated) Abraham in this visit. I don't have time to develop this in detail, but God did pronounce his findings about Abraham in Genesis 18:17-20:
17 And the Lord said, "Shall I hide from Abraham what I am doing, 18 since Abraham shall surely become a great and mighty nation, and all the nations of the earth shall be blessed in him? 19 For I have known him, in order that he may command his children and his household after him, that they keep the way of the Lord, to do righteousness and justice, that the Lord may bring to Abraham what He has spoken to him.
If the part about how God evaluated Abraham doesn't jump out at you, then take a closer look at verse 18. "For I have know him, in order that he might" [be able to fulfill My plans for him]. In this case, God examined Abraham's heart and actions, and found that they lined up with what God wanted from him. Therefore, the result of His judgment was to reward Abraham. That reward included making him a great and mighty nation, and giving him a key leadership role in establishing God's ways on this earth.
So, what can we learn from all this?
If our hearts are after God, we don't have to be afraid of His judgment. He may need to correct us if we have gotten off base, but His corrections will be as gentle as possible. They will be designed to move us forward in our relationship with Him, to better empower us to walk out His will for our life. And if God likes what He finds when He judges us, then His judgment will yield rewards and the release of good things in our lives. Either way, we don't need to be afraid of when He evaluates (or judges) us.
God Judges The Unrighteous
So far we have learned that the "judgment" of God is an evaluation process, where God looks at both the heart of the person and their behavior. He comes up with a place of action based on what He finds; and then He implements that plan. If He likes what He finds, then His plan is to positively reinforce the desired behavior and attitudes. But if He doesn't like what He finds, His plan is a strategy to move them from where they are to where He wants them to be.
In our last lesson, we looked at how God judged Abraham and Sarah in Genesis 18. When God examined Abraham's heart and actions, He was very pleased with what He found, so the plan that He came up with was to promote Abraham. Among other things, Abraham got an increased revelation of God, was he given an important role in God's plans and purposes, and God even consulted Him before judging the city where Abraham's nephew lived (Genesis 18:17-20). Sarah did not do as well. When God looked at her, He found a lack of faith that displeased Him. So He came up with a plan of action to gently confront her disbelief, and to help her to embrace faith. In short, He corrected her but He did not punish her. And the correction empowered her to walk out her destiny and bare a child years after her body had already menopaused.
We discovered that God's judgments are a "good thing" for those who belong to Him and have a heart after Him. When we walk close to God and live to please Him, His judgment brings rewards and/or promotion.
If we love Him, but have gotten "messed up" in some area of behavior or attitude, then God's judgment will result in a correction designed to restore us, to move us back to that right place with Him. His corrections are usually pretty gentle, as long as we yield to Him. But if we resist or fight His correction, we will discover that He is very serious about requiring this change in our life. And He will apply as much pressure as He needs in order to get the job done. In other words, the more we resist Him, the more pressure He applies, until we finally submit to His will. If we resist Him a lot, we could end up with a relatively harsh correction. But if we submit right away, His correction might be so gentle that it doesn't even feel like a correction.
The same principle applies to the ungodly. God's desire in judgment is not to make them suffer or to punish them for their sin; it is to get them to repent, to change both their hearts and their behavior. The bible makes this clear in many places, and we will look at one of them: Joel 2:12-14.
But before we look at this passage, let's get a bit of background. God had examined (judged) those who were supposedly His people, but they had hardened their hearts to Him and embraced a lifestyle of sin and idolatry. So God announced that He was about to release a horrible judgment, one that would destroy many people. In chapter 1, He threatened to destroy their food sources and reserves, to dry up their water sources, and cause all of their livestock to waste away. He continued to describe the upcoming horrible judgment in chapter 2, verses 1 and 2, "...Let all the inhabitants of the land tremble; for the day of the Lord is coming, for it is at hand: a day of darkness and gloominess, a day of clouds and thick darkness..." In verse 3, God predicted horrible painful death by fire, and said that everything they have will be destroyed in those flames. In addition, God predicts horrible natural disasters in verse 10, including terrible earthquakes.
When you read all that, He sounds very angry at them, and it seems like His main agenda was to punish them and make them suffer because of all of their sin. But God said something totally different about His motives in verses 12 to 14:
12 "Now, therefore," says the Lord, "turn to Me with all your heart, with fasting, with weeping, and with mourning. 13 So rend your heart, and not your garments; return to the Lord your God, for He is gracious and merciful, slow to anger, and of great kindness; and He relents from doing harm.14 Who knows if He will turn and relent, and leave a blessing behind Him..."
In short, God said that He not looking for revenge, He was looking for repentance and restoration. He didn't want to destroy the people, He wanted to bring them into a right relationship with Himself. All the same, He is a holy God, and He couldn't allow them to continue going in the direction they had been going, nor could He allow them to keep doing the evil things they'd been doing. But He said that if they would repent, He would bless and restore them instead of destroying them.
This sounds counter-intuitive if you think of His judgment only as a punishment for sin. But it makes sense if you think of judgment as God's "plan of action" to correct the "bad" things He found when He evaluated people's attitude/behaviors. God's goal has always been the same, it hasn't changed. He wants the people to stop embracing sin/evil and start embracing Him and His ways. He wants them to come into a love relationship with Himself; He wants them to stop loving evil and start loving and serving Him.
We saw this with Nineveh in the book of Jonah. You know the story: God told Jonah to go to Nineveh to declare is upcoming judgment in hopes that the city would repent and be spared. Jonah knew what God wanted to do, but he hated Nineveh and wanted it to be destroyed. So instead of obeying God, he went the other direction, moving by boat as far away from Nineveh as possible. But God caused a great sea storm and prepared a "great fish" to carry Jonah back to Nineveh so he could proclaim God's judgment. And when he did, the people responded to God with genuine repentance, expressing a desire to change their ways.
We see God's response in Jonah 3:10, "Then God saw their works, that they turned from their evil way; and God relented from the disaster that He had said He would bring upon them, and He did not do it." Jonah was extremely unhappy with God's decision to spare the city, a lawless city that had done many horrible and wicked things. So God explained it to Jonah this way in the last verse of the book: "Should I not pity Nineveh, that great city, in which are more than one hundred and twenty thousand persons who cannot discern between their right hand and their left--and much livestock?"
Again, the goal of God's judgment is not to punish, but to restore; and God won't be any harsher than He needs to be in accomplishing His purpose. In Nineveh's case, all God had to do was to threaten to punish them, and they repented. Since He got the desired result, He did not actually punish them. To put it another way: even though they were completely unsaved and ungodly, He was no more severe with them than He had to be.
Now let's go back to the passage in Joel, because I want to point out one more thing. Chapter 1 and the first part of chapter 2 spell out a lot of horrible punishments. First we see destruction of their crops by locusts and drought in Joel 1:4-12. Then we see the destruction of their storehouses (reserve food supply) and of their livestock (an alternate food supply) in verses 15 to 18. Then we see destruction by fire in verses 19-20 and on into chapter 2. Then we see thick darkness (volcanic ash?) in Joel 2:1-2, and more fire destruction in verse 3. Then we have what might be an invading army in verses 4-9, followed by severe earthquakes in verse 10. God says this is going to be so horrible that "...the people writhe in pain, [and] all faces are drained of color" (Joel 2:6).
When most people read a judgment passage like that, they assume that this is all being unleashed on the people at the same time. But that is not actually what is happening here. God is describing phases of what He will do to try to get them to repent. First He will send the famine/drought. If that works, then He would be done with it. But if not, then the next step is destruction of their other food sources (livestock, storehouses). Again, if that achieves the desired effect and the people were to repent, then that would be the end of it. But if they continue to be hard hearted, sinful and rebellious, then He will proceed to the next phase...and so on. There could be some overlap between the phases, but the gist of it is that the more they resist God's correction, the more severe that correction gets.
We see the same thing (phases of judgment) described in the book of Revelation. The events in the book of Revelation don't all happen at the same time, but one after the other. In Revelation 5, God presents the scroll which is sealed with 7 seals, and He asks who is worthy to open it. At first it seems that no one is worthy to do so, but then Jesus comes forward as the lamb who was slain, and He is found worthy because of what He did to redeem humanity. Then in chapter 7, He begins to open the scroll. He doesn't just rip it open and read it, He undoes one seal at a time. And each time He opens a seal, a judgment is poured out on the earth, and it takes some time to complete. The judgments are not all poured out together, but one at a time, and it apparently a noticeable amount of time passes between when He opens the first scroll and when He opens the last one.
This makes sense when you understand what "judgment" really is and what God's motives are for releasing it. He wants to give people a chance to reconsider and repent instead of being forced to totally destroy them. In the end, it is up to them...if they keep resisting God, it will lead to their eventual destruction. But if they repent and get right with Him, then He will restore them and enter into a personal love relationship with them.
The thing that really astonishes me is that people don't immediately choose to repent and get right with God. It seems stupid to choose punishment over blessing and the outpouring of God's care. But in the end, each person has to choose how they will respond to God. God put it this way in Deuteronomy 30:19: "I have set before you life and death, blessing and cursing; therefore choose life, that both you and your descendants may live."
God Judges The Reprobate
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.
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