Can We Find 10 Righteous People?

28 February 2026  Deuteronomy 26:16-19

Saturday of the First Week in Lent

“You are to be a people peculiarly His own, as He promised you….” (Deuteronomy 26:18)

The cities of Sodom and Gomorrah were stupendously wicked, sensationally corrupt, so much so that God told Abraham to stand back while He burned their infamous depravity to the ground. Abraham, however, interceded for the wicked cities, and bargaining with God, he got God to agree to spare the cities if He could find just ten righteous people in them. Just ten. That’s all it would have taken to spare two entire cities (cf. Genesis 18:16-33).

Well, ten righteous people, and one Abraham.

If you have ever wondered whether prayers make a difference, just ask Abraham.

If there are at least ten righteous people in most Churches and Christian schools, that’s more than enough for the regeneration of our country. They are just waiting for that one Abraham to remind them to celebrate their peculiarity, to be conspicuously odd, to live in such a way that no one has to guess who they are, what they are, what they want, and where they are going.

God’s chosen people have always been odd. We are not just “God’s people” – in a sense all people are God’s people. But we are “peculiarly His own” (Deuteronomy 26:18). We are people who eat funny, and talk funny. We bow and pray before a crucified man; we wear the instrument of his torture around our necks, and hold it reverently in our hands.

The Roman statesman Cicero said of the cross, “Let the very word ‘cross’ be far removed not only from the bodies of Roman citizens, but even from their thoughts, their eyes, and their ears” (Pro Rabirio 16). But before this very cross we oddballs “pray without ceasing” (cf. I Thessalonians 5:17). A people who are “peculiarly God’s own” aren’t just odd, but obviously odd, conspicuously odd, unapologetically odd.

And just ten of us are enough to save entire cities.

Well, ten and one Abraham.

There weren’t ten righteous people in Sodom and Gomorrah, but there probably are in most Churches, and most Christian schools. It might take more than just ten righteous people to save an entire country like the U.S., but if there are already ten in most Churches and Christian schools, that’s more than enough for the regeneration of our country. They are just waiting for that one Abraham to remind them to celebrate their peculiarity, to be conspicuously odd, to live in such a way that no one has to guess who they are, what they are, what they want, and where they are going. They are waiting for that one Abraham to remind them that they are the people who, unlike Cicero, keep the cross on their minds, before their eyes, in their ears, and on their lips all the time. Just ten people like that can change a lot.

Well, ten and one Abraham.

May God raise up today many Abrahams to remind the ten, wherever they are, that they are, we are, already “peculiarly God’s own.”