Sermon Notes + Quotes:
Transcript:
We study through books of the Bible here at The Village Chapel, and today we’ll be in Genesis 19. I’m going to call our study today The Ugliness of Sin and the Beauty of Grace. We’re picking up after last week’s study with Pastor Scotty Smith in Genesis 18, where three angelic beings visit Abraham. They’re on their way to Sodom and Gomorrah. The outcry from the evil and wickedness of Sodom and Gomorrah has reached the ears of God and He’s going to Sodom and Gomorrah with the expression of His righteous judgment on those two very wicked cities. This story shows more than the ugliness of sin and how it’s tragic in so many ways. As we read through this text together, it will be sobering. There’s lots of adjectives I might use to describe it, but it’s a difficult passage.
And at the same time, in the middle of it all, there is this jewel of a story within a story of God’s grace at work in the life of Lot, somebody who really hadn’t paid much attention to his spiritual life, somebody who was always riding on the coattails of Abraham when it comes to his spiritual life. And I don’t know what kind of background you come from. I don’t know what kind of friends or family members you might have that might be more like Lot, people that sort of linger or are on the fringes of faith. But this story is powerful in so many ways, and I hope you’ll just take a look at it with me. Let’s pray and ask the Lord to open our eyes to see the timeless truths that He might have for us here:
Lord God, thank You for Your Word, that it’s living and active. Thank you for Your grace that You’ve lavished upon us, sinners though we are. And Lord, thank You that You have been in pursuit of the people You can call Your own. Even when we weren’t looking for You, Lord. You who chose us, You called to us, You drew us to Yourself, and we’re so grateful for Your grace at work in our lives, even in the darkened world in which we live, in our own day and time. What we know not, I pray that You would teach us. What we see not, I pray that You would show us. What we are not, I pray that You would make us. Make us new, in Jesus’ name we pray. Amen and amen.
All right let’s read this text then. These two angels, two of the three visitors to Abraham, have gone on now and they’ve come to Sodom in the evening. Lot was sitting in the gate of Sodom, and that’s where they would do business. That’s where the judges of the city would sit to pass judgment on different lawsuits and things like that. Now, Lot has not only fancied a look into the Jordan Valley and towards Sodom, and not only has he moved his tent in that direction and moved away from Abraham, who really was his connection with the Lord, but now Lot is comfortable living in the city. He has even become comfortable having been embraced by the city and is sitting in the gate as one of the leading men of the city.
When Lot saw these two men, these two angelic beings, they seemed to resemble human beings. Lot rose to meet them, and he bowed down with his face to the ground and he said, “Now behold, my lords, please turn aside into your servant’s house and spend the night and wash your feet. Then you may rise early and go on your way.”
They said, however, “No, we’ll spend the night in the square.” Yet he [meaning Lot] urged them strongly, so they turned aside to him and entered his house, and he prepared a feast for them and baked unleavened bread and they ate. Now, we don’t know the financial situation that Lot is in now. It doesn’t sound like he’s still quite as wealthy as he was when he first moved in that direction. The reason he had to separate from Abraham was because their flocks had increased so much, and they had so many servants in their households, all that sort of thing, they had to separate. And Abraham gave Lot the choice of which direction, and Lot chose what he thought would be the most advantageous for him.
He was enchanted by the financial opportunities and the materialistic opportunities that were before him in a land like Sodom. Perhaps he was also fascinated with the sort of loose living that was going on in Sodom and Gomorrah, as we’ll see. And as we’ve already been told in chapter 18 and chapter 13. Well, Lot urges these two men to stay in his house. He knows that there’s probably something bad going to happen to them if they stay in the square. Before they lay down though, the men of the city, the men of Sodom, surrounded the house, both young and old, all the people from every quarter, and they called to Lot and they said to him, “Where are the men who came to you tonight? Bring them out to us, that we may have relations with them.”
And I’m not going to soften it. That is exactly what it sounds like. It’s not the women coming after the two visitors, the two angelic beings that appear to be men. It’s the men of the city. In other words, this kind of idea about human sexuality has permeated their entire culture, and they’re literally storming Lot’s house, demanding that he turn these two visitors over to them so that they can engage in a homosexual gang rape of these two visitors. So, it’s really dark, but it’s going to get a little bit darker even now, watch what happens here. Lot went out to them at the doorway and then he shut the door behind him, and he said, “Please, my brothers, do not act wickedly.” And this at least tells us that Lot still understands some of God’s ways, some of what would have been right and what would have been wrong.
And I don’t think it’s merely his trying to be hospitable, that sort of thing. I think there’s still some vestige of an understanding of how wrong this would be, how wicked this would be. He even uses that word, “wicked.” Don’t act wickedly. Well, verse eight shows how Lot himself has been completely twisted in his own moral senses. He says, “Behold, I have two daughters who have not had relations with man.” In other words, they’re two virgin daughters of his. He probably had other sons and daughters as well, but he’s basically going to offer these two daughters to this mob outside. “Please let me bring them out to you and do to them whatever you like, only do nothing to these men in as much as they have come under the shelter of my roof.” And it’s just so heartbreaking to even read that, to even think that somebody could become that twisted in their understanding of what’s right and what’s wrong.
And that those people in that city would have been so caught up in selfishness of all kinds, it would manifest itself in this kind of mob mentality, and this depraved activity and violent activity that they want to engage in. And Lot just, you can see how he’s affected by all of this, by being in that context. And so, they said to him, “Stand aside.” Furthermore, they said, “This one came in as an alien.” They’re now talking amongst themselves, talking about Lot as, “He came in as an alien and already, he’s acting like a judge. Now, we’ll treat you worse than them.” And so, they pressed hard against Lot and they came near to break the door.
But the men, these are the two men inside the house, reached out their hands and brought Lot into the house with them and they shut the door. And then they struck the men who were at the doorway of the house with blindness, both small and great, so that they wearied themselves trying to find the doorway. And so again, these angelic beings have some kind of power to do this. They literally strike all of the mob outside with blindness. They rescue Lot from going out there, trying to reason with people who aren’t going to reason with him, as a matter of fact, are going to turn on him and do worse to him. And they’re bold enough to even say that to him. And that’s how depraved their minds have gotten. That’s how overrun their hearts are.
And it’s very tragic and very sad, and it’s sad to see Lot offering up his daughters like that as well. These men, these two angelic beings have saved Lot and he didn’t deserve it. For them to do that was an act of grace. This mob is, for the moment, set off because they’re wandering around in blindness. They can’t even find the doorway, we’re told. Verse 12 says that the two men said to Lot, “Whom else have you here? A son-in-law, your sons, your daughters, whomever you have in the city, bring them out of the place, for we are about to destroy this place because their outcry has become so great before the Lord that the Lord has sent us to destroy it.” Wow. And you see, as we’ve seen already, they’ve got special powers to do that.
They’ve struck all this mob, this violent, angry, demanding mob, they’ve struck it, everyone there with blindness, and now they’re going to destroy the rest of the city. And they’re telling Lot that it’s time to go. It’s time to get your family and to leave. Verse 14, Lot went out and spoke to his sons-in-law, who were to marry his daughters. And back then, they had that different phases of marriage as you walked toward it. And either these were sons-in-law, meaning engaged to marry his two daughters who were still virgins that he just offered up to the mob, or perhaps, as I said, he had other daughters and other sons. And we know he is going to leave with these two daughters, but we know because we’ve read the rest of the story, we don’t know how many other kids he may have had. But he goes and he looks for his sons-in-law who are to marry his daughters. And he says to them, “Up, get out of this place, for the Lord will destroy this city.” But he appeared to his sons-in-law to be jesting.
And so, the faith that Lot had never taken seriously himself, his sons-in-law could not take seriously. And that’s, again, a very sad thing to think about. I think about who’s watching me. Who’s watching you? And what do they see in us? Do we really trust this God of the Bible? Do we honor this God of the Bible? What are we doing with His name? How are we treating others? And here, Lot kind of pretends to be good to these angelic beings, these men that are visitors, and yet he’s willing to throw his two daughters completely under the bus here. And his sons-in-law, they, they’ve learned from him, and the faith that Lot won’t take seriously. They’re not going to take Lot seriously when he all of a sudden decides it’s time for them to be leaving. When morning dawned, the angels urged Lot, saying, “Up, take your wife and your two daughters who are here, lest you be swept away in the punishment of the city.”
But he, Lot, hesitated. Some of your translations will say, but Lot lingered. Oh man, let me not linger like Lot when it comes to obeying the Lord, when it comes to trusting and believing in the Lord. But here, he lingers, he hesitates. “So the men seized his hand and the hand of his wife and the hands of his daughters, for the compassion of the Lord was upon him, and they brought him out and put him outside the city.” Do you see, the angels have done for Lot what he can’t even do for himself? They’ve literally grabbed a hold of him and dragged him, he and his wife and his two daughters, out of the city, so that they wouldn’t undergo the same judgment that God’s going to bring upon Sodom and Gomorrah. All of this, a great answer to Abraham’s prayer from last week, as we studied chapter 18.
But what we’re told, the thing that drove it all right here, is verse 16, that the compassion of the Lord was upon him. What a great God this is! Oh, my goodness, this God of the Bible, who is compassionate toward those who hesitate and those who linger – those who have been enchanted by this world and all of its twisted thinking and all of its selfishness. And they brought him out and they put him outside the city. “It came about when they had brought him outside, that one said [one of the angels] said to him, ‘Escape for your life. Do not look behind you. Do not stay anywhere in the valley except to the mountains, escape to the mountains lest you be swept away.’” And there’s the four of them and they’re holding them, they’ve grabbed them by the hands.
But Lot said to them, verse 18, “Oh no, my Lords,” this just amazes me. “Now, behold, your servant has found favor in your sight. You’ve magnified your loving kindness, which you’ve shown me by saving my life, but I cannot escape to the mountains lest the disaster overtake me, and I die. Now behold, this town is near enough to flee to.” And he’s probably pointing to this town, Zoar, that they’re going to mention in a second. “It is small, please let me escape there. Is it not small that my life may be saved?” And here he is, lingering first, now he’s negotiating again, just trying to work everything out for his own advantage. He has just been saved from the greatest catastrophe, I mean losing his own life, the lives of his family, all of that. And he’s just thinking about himself and wanting to be in that city.
He’s saying, “Let me be the one to pick. I want to be the one to choose. Abraham, he gave me that, right? Maybe you, I’m entitled to that. Let me choose that my life may be saved.” In other words, I got a better idea on how to save my life than you do, God. And how many times do we do that? Oh, this is so telling. Verse 21, he said to him, so the angel’s going to reply. “Behold, I grant you this request also, not to overthrow the town of which you have spoken. Hurry, escape there, for I cannot do anything until you arrive there.” And therefore, the name of the town was called Zoar, which means small town.
Interesting. The sun had risen over the earth when Lot came to Zoar. So, it takes him a while to get there, and the sun has come up, he’s traveling overnight, he has got his wife and his daughters with him. And here’s what happens. “The Lord rained on Sodom and Gomorrah brimstone and fire from the Lord out of Heaven, and He overthrew those cities and all the valley and all the inhabitants of the cities and what grew on the ground.” Verse 26 is very, very sad. Lot’s wife, we don’t know her name, but his wife, from behind him, looked back, and she became a pillar of salt. And this will become kind of a metaphor for the longing of our hearts that so often distracts us from the Lord, that we look back to. Think about this. I think about my own life.
I think there was an old song by an old band called Fireworks that we used to sing, “I should be a pillar of salt, I’ve looked back so many times.” I remember the lyric line that way. And so, this action that happens here to her, she completely disobeys what the angels have instructed them as they’re saving them from this. She completely ignores it, and she’s so caught up in longing to be back in Sodom, as horrible as it was. How many of us look past all of the self-destructiveness of our habits, behaviors, and addictions, and look right past all of that and long for it yet again. And she became a pillar of salt. Now, Abraham arose early, and the lens of the camera now shifts all the way back up to Abraham’s camp, verse 27 here. And we don’t know what he knows about whether Lot has been saved or not, but here’s what happens.
“Abraham arose early in the morning and went to the place where he had stood before the Lord, and he looked down towards Sodom and Gomorrah, and towards all the land of the valley. And he saw and beheld the smoke of the land ascended like the smoke of a furnace, so he could see it in the distance. Thus, it came about that when God destroyed the cities of the valley, that God remembered Abraham, and He sent Lot out of the midst of the overthrow when He overthrew the cities in which Lot lived.”
God judged these two wicked cities, but as evil and as wicked as those cities had become, Abraham’s prayers for Lot were still effective. And God chose to set His compassion on Lot, and that’s God’s prerogative. I mean, if God were just being fair to Lot, He would’ve just let Lot make his own choices and lie in his own bed and be a part of this destruction. But God chose to set His compassion on Lot, and what a gracious God He is to have done that, because Lot did not deserve that. Here’s the beauty of grace in the middle of the ugliness of sin.
Well, the story ends in a kind of a dark way, and this is the last we really hear about Lot in terms of the narrative on him. He’s mentioned in other parts of the Bible, and I’ll put some of that up on the screen for you in a little bit, but Lot went up from Mount Zoar and he stayed in the mountains, and his two daughters were with him for he was afraid to stay in Zoar. And in other words, Zoar didn’t turn out to be the place that he thought it would be either. How easily we’re fooled into thinking the grass is greener over there, or that our way of saving ourselves that will cause us happiness, will cause us to flourish; we think we know better than God. And we’re all doing that all the time. This is just such an amazing example of that.
And he stayed in a cave, he and his two daughters, and this is so sad. The firstborn said to the younger, “Our father is old and there’s not a man on earth to come into us after the manner of the earth.” In other words, to have a husband or to have children or whatever. “Come, let us make our father drink wine and let us lie with him that we may preserve our family through our father.” And here’s their worldview, brought with them from Canaan, from this Canaanite city, Sodom, and now it’s going to lead them to an incestuous relationship. They made their father drink wine that night and the firstborn went in and lay with her father, and he didn’t even know when she laid down or when she arose, he was so drunk. And I personally can’t even imagine this. It came about on the morrow that the firstborn said to the younger, “Behold, I lay last night with my father. Let us make him drink wine tonight also, that you go in and lie with him, that we may preserve our family through our father.”
And again, such twisted moral logic here, just doesn’t make sense at all. And where did they get that? Who taught them that? And when they moved to Sodom, why didn’t they see what would happen in that context? So, they made their father drink wine that night also, and the younger arose and lay with him, and he did not know when she lay down or when she arose. Thus, both of the daughters of Lot were with child by their father. And the firstborn bore a son and called his name Moab, and he’s the father of the Moabites to this day. And as for the younger, she also bore a son and called his name Ben-Ammi. He is the father of the sons of Ammon, to this day. Sadly, Lot and his daughters had adapted to and accommodated the worldview of Sodom. And the result is going to be Moab and Ammon, who will be the fountainheads of the Moabites and the Ammonites, who become perennial enemies of Israel in the years to come.
And there is some redemption. We know through the Moabite line will come a woman named Ruth, and she will be in the line of Messiah. And so, God is always at work, and no matter how ugly the sin gets, there is the beauty of grace at work still. Let’s see what we have to learn here. Most of you, I’m sure, have heard of these two cities.
The scriptures have already, in Genesis 13:13 and Genesis 18:20, told us about these two cities and how famous they were for being wicked. Genesis 13:13,
“Now the men of Sodom were wicked exceedingly [not just normally] wicked. And there were sinners against the Lord. “
Genesis 13:13
“And the Lord said, ‘The outcry of Sodom and Gomorrah is indeed great, and their sin is exceedingly grave.’”
Genesis 18:20
And it, indeed, turned out to be the case that they went to their grave because of their sinfulness. What were the sins of Sodom? That’s a question that’s worth asking. And I know some preachers sometimes will focus in on just one particular aspect of their sin. But that’s yes, a visible manifestation of the darkness that was in their heart, but it’s not the only sin that was in their heart.
Look here, from Jeremiah 23:14,
“Among the prophets of Jerusalem I’ve seen a horrible thing, the committing of adultery and walking in falsehood. They strengthen the hands of evildoers so that no one has turned back from his wickedness. All of them have become, to me, like Sodom…”
In other words, these ones that Jeremiah is talking about have committed adultery and falsehood, strengthened the hands of evildoers, and no one has turned their back from his wickedness. So, they’re just like Sodom. In other words, Sodom was like that,
“…and her inhabitants, like Gomorrah.
Jeremiah 23:14
I ask us this question, like Sodom and Gomorrah, how are we strengthening the hand of evildoers in our own time? It’s a question worth asking. What are we spending our money on? How are we supporting acts of wickedness and evil in our world? How are we discouraging people from turning back from sin in our own time? How would we be discouraging? Is it that we join the crowd of those who deny it even exists? Do we remain silent when there’s an opportunity to speak up for justice or against evil in some way?
With all the moral confusion of our times, who defines what is or isn’t sin in our world? Have you asked yourself that question lately? How might we be encouraging wickedness in our own lives, in the lives of others, in our house or household or in our places of work? The prophet Ezekiel:
“Behold, this was the guilt of your sister, Sodom. She and her daughters had arrogance, abundant food and careless ease, but she did not help the poor and the needy.”
Ezekiel 16:49
So, like Sodom and Gomorrah obsessed, where are we obsessed with some things and indifferent to other things? How have we become preoccupied with our own luxury and ease, while at the same time abandoning our responsibility to the poor and the needy? It’s not wrong to have stuff. I say this all the time, it’s not wrong to get a big paycheck. Get the biggest one you can. Just don’t let it get you.
Don’t let it be the thing that undermines your ability to do right, to join God in His mission in this world. Jesus was talking about Capernaum and its unbelief in Matthew 11:23, Jesus saying, “
“You, Capernaum, will not be exalted to heaven, will you? You will descend to Hades, for if the miracles that occurred in Sodom which occurred in you…”
talking to Capernaum now,
“…it would’ve remained to this day.”
Matthew 11:23
In other words, Sodom would’ve repented if they had seen the miracles that Jesus did in Capernaum, and yet Capernaum would not repent. Now you see Sodom being used as sort of the measure of past wickedness in Israel’s history, and it’s clear, as Jesus uses it as that illustration, that everybody would have understood what he was talking about, and how wicked Sodom was and how it sprang from this unbelief, and Capernaum rejected Him. Capernaum, being represented by the religious leadership of its time, rejecting Jesus.
Then we see in Jude 7
“… as Sodom and Gomorrah and the cities around them indulged in gross immorality and went after strange flesh, then are exhibited as an example in undergoing the punishment of eternal fire. “
Jude 7
Let me summarize. As we’ve walked throughout the Scriptures, through the prophets on into the New Testament, the words of Jesus, the words of Jude, what were the sins of Sodom and Gomorrah? There were many, arrogance, autonomy, adultery, and they indulged in unbridled sexual immorality, willing to do violence for self-gratification, walked in falsehood, rampant lying, a culture that encouraged and celebrated all forms of evil, rebellion, violence, reckless indulgence, while at the same time showing indifference to the poor, the vulnerable and the needy.
What is Sodom and Gomorrah most famous for? Of course, Sodom gives us our word sodomy, and indeed the mob outside of Lot’s house were all males demanding to have a homosexual gang rape experience with the two visitors, and so that’s strange flesh they were going after. That’s the unnatural desires that had taken over their own minds and their own hearts and blinded them to what would have been right. Now, I realize the discussion of the subject of human sexuality is sensitive because of our culture. It has convinced people that they can’t have a meaningful life unless they’re sexually active with as many people as they want to be, or that they can’t have any understanding of their identity apart from whatever their sexual preferences may be.
But the Bible does not reduce the human person in the same way as our culture does, to what we desire, to our identity being wrapped up in our sexuality alone. Human beings are not merely animals, and we’re not defined by what we desire. And we know this from the Bible that every, single one of us are sinners and every, single one of us are sexual beings. And as a result of sin permeating every aspect of who we are, we are all sexual sinners, every, single one of us. No matter who you are or what context you’re in, we all have some struggle with this aspect of our lives, just as we do with every other aspect of our lives. Sin has an impact on all of who we are. We need, in the ugliness of our sin, we need the beauty of grace to break through, don’t we?
Now, this does not mean that having sexual desires is in and of itself a wrong thing. God designed and created human sexuality. God’s design clearly included physical pleasure, but also the possibility of procreation, as we go back to Genesis, in the early chapters in the Creation narrative. As our Creator, God has the right to regulate the proper context within which we get to enjoy that which God has created.
Having desires or being tempted by those desires is not, in and of itself, a sin. Jesus Himself was tempted. It’s what we do with those sinful impulses that turns a thing into a sin or not. And the same thing could be said, that is being said here about our sexual desires, could be said about greed or lying or arrogance or anger or indifference to the poor. The question is, are we willing to surrender all of who we are to all of who He is and recognize God? The sins of Sodom and Gomorrah were all founded upon the presumption of entitlement, to unbridled pleasure and unchecked autonomy. They were so depraved; they were dangerous to themselves and to others. Their conscience was so seared they could no longer hear the voice of reason. They didn’t want anyone telling them what was right or wrong. They wanted moral autonomy. They wanted to be their own little g gods.
What should our disposition be toward others who struggle with sexual impulses outside the context of a biblical sacred union, what we have called traditional marriage? What does the Bible have to say about homosexuality? Some people will point to this passage as one that does indeed speak to that issue. And I do think it does. That’s not all that it speaks to, because that’s not all that was wrong in Sodom and Gomorrah. But let me give you the passages that we find in the Bible that talk about acts of homosexuality. Genesis 19 here, that’s true. Leviticus 18:22, Leviticus 20:13, Judges 19, Romans 1, 1 Corinthians 6, 1 Timothy 1. And I want to encourage you to read those for yourself. As you do, ask yourself the question about human sexuality. Who has the right to regulate human sexuality? Or should we, like Sodom, just be living in an unbridled free-for-all? And what happens in that unbridled free-for-all is that people get abused and people get used, and people become victims in a horrible way. Injustice is unchecked.
For further reading on the subject of homosexuality, I would recommend a few books: Is God Anti-Gay? and Why Does God Care Who I Sleep With? by a good friend of ours, Sam Alberry, who has been at The Village Chapel and spoken. He himself a same-sex-attracted Anglican priest and a pastor here at a local church, now here in Nashville and a good friend of ours, with two great books on the subject. He speaks from inside of all those feelings, and yet remains celibate in honor and deference to God’s Word and God’s will and God’s ways in his life. Rosaria Butterfield has written The Secret Thoughts of an Unlikely Convert, and Openness Unhindered: Further Thoughts of an Unlikely Convert on Sexual Identity and Union with Christ. And then Rebecca McLaughlin has a chapter on this subject as well in Confronting Christianity, and I also recommend her new book, The Sacred Creed.
Let me just say this. If you struggle with sexual temptation of any kind, the temptation itself isn’t a sin. It’s what we do with it. And let me encourage all of us to go before the Lord, to lay ourselves before and present ourselves before Him, and invite Him to do what only He can do. You see, because we are in the same condition that Lot was in, we just can’t help ourselves. We need this beauty of grace to invade our hearts, to redirect our affections that have gone in the wrong direction, to surrender everything to God, to pray for strength, to surrender everything to God again, and to do it again and again. It’s a daily, it’s a moment-by-moment thing, especially for those folks who have chosen to live in the context of a sensual or a sensually oriented lifestyle like this.
The points I would like to draw from this that are general, and I think that apply to all of us, number one, humanity’s capacity for depravity. It exhibits itself in acts that are horrific, twisted, grim, ghastly and unspeakable. Whether you’re talking about the mob outside of Lot’s house or whether you’re talking about Lot wanting to literally throw his daughters away, or you’re talking about his daughters having incestuous relationship with their father, our capacity for depravity is great. One just has to walk through the Holocaust Museum to see what how dark the human heart can go. We need outside help. We need God to give us a new heart and new desires. I love what Dallas Willard said in Renovation of the Heart, “Desire and love are, of course, compatible when desire is ruled by love. But most people today would unfortunately not even know the difference between them. Hence, in our world, love constantly falls prey to lust. That is a major part of the deep sickness of contemporary life.”
And it was Jesus Himself, when He was talking to some of the folks around Him and just giving them a warning flag, He said these amazing three words. We’re going to talk about the way your heart’s longing for the wrong things all the time. Jesus simply said, in Luke 17:32,
“Remember Lot’s wife.”
–Jesus (Luke 17:32)
Wow. All that charms us in this world, all that that we would look back to even as God is pulling us to freedom, and we might look back to … No, remember Lot’s wife, remember our capacity for depravity.
Secondly, the consequences of spiritual compromise. Hey folks, the TV commercials by that insurance company, I think they have it right. Parent-a-morphosis is a problem. We may all, slowly but surely, be turning into our parents. More is caught than is taught. What will those who watch you catch from you? I mean, it’s one thing to morph into a person who brags about waking up super early, chats up every restaurant server and texts in complete sentences. It’s another thing to morph into a person who is spiritually lazy, like Lot, morally bankrupt, like the people of Sodom and Gomorrah, and indifferent to the needs of others, the real needs of others, like all of the people of Sodom and Gomorrah.
Have you adopted the values of this world? Have we gotten lazy, spiritually? Are we enchanted with the social acceptance of our context, so that that’s what really rules us each and every day? That’s where we find approval, and we’re now addicted to it. Oh, it only takes one generation really for us to slide back spiritually. And now, we’ve had a whole year of not being able to gather, at least in person, because of this pandemic, and what has it done to us?
I pray that we’ve not only survived this thing but been revived in and through it, that God is doing a work in your heart and in our hearts here at The Village Chapel. I know this, it doesn’t take much for us to slip and slide into moral declension. Tolerance of virtually anything leads to the destruction of virtually everything. If virtually anything goes, and that seems to be the way of our culture, if anything goes, then there goes virtue and justice as well. Is that the kind of world you want to live in? I ask you.
John Stott once said, and by the way, never married, never had sexual relations with anyone, virgin all his life until he died just a few years back. One of my very favorite pastors and Bible teachers of all time,
“The world may say that sexual experience is indispensable to being human; the Bible flatly disagrees.”
–John Stott
And I point to John Stott, and I point to the apostle Paul, and I point to Jesus himself. Yeah, you think about that.
Three, God’s patience with sin is for a while, but it is not forever. We learned that here in Genesis 19 for sure, the righteous wrath of God against sin. The wrath of God is neither impulsive nor capricious. It is His settled opposition against all of the destructive nature of sin at work in our lives and in our culture as well. Until we recognize the utter justice and justifiable wrath of God, we will continue to create a God in our own image: a sentimental God, a God who just happens to like what we like and not like what we don’t like, and not like the other people we don’t like, because they voted the other way and therefore, we condemn them.
Oh man, how quickly we slide into the way and the thinking of Sodom. When a culture declines, when their sin becomes exceedingly grave, the web of wickedness is pervasive, and God’s judgment may be at hand. And while some sins are more visible to the human eye than others, all sins are an offense to God. The sins of Sodom and Gomorrah had now passed the limits of God’s patience.
“In God’s case, God’s wrath flows from his love for his creation. He’s angry at injustice, greed, self-centeredness and evil because they are destructive. And God will not tolerate anything or anyone responsible for destroying the creation and the people that he loves,”
–Tim Keller, The Reason for God
so said Tim Keller. And I think Tim is really right on that.
You see, when the judgment of God seems harsh to us, it’s usually because we’ve lost sight of one of three things, the heights of God’s holiness, the depths of our own depravity, or the free offer of grace and redemption, just how beautiful that is. We’ve stopped being overwhelmed by the beauty of that. I want to call us to Genesis 19, the ugliness of sin and yet the beauty of grace. It’s such a stark contrast, and I hope we can learn from that.
Which is summarized in my fourth and final point: the beautiful Good News. Jesus Christ, He is our hope in life. Jesus is greater than Abraham, who prayed for Lot and his family. He’s greater than the angels that worship and serve His purposes, like those angels mentioned in Genesis 19. Jesus is greater than all of them. Those angels, they came for Lot, and they warned Lot. They finally grabbed Lot and his family by the hand and literally dragged them out of the city, away from the judgment that was coming on Sodom and Gomorrah.
But Jesus has broken into the world. God Himself has come and brought a complete redemption for us, forgiveness for past sins, for the penalty of our sin – all our sins. In the present, He’s giving us power over this temptation towards sin. And in the future, He’s going to free us from the presence of sin altogether. So that’s just the beautiful three tenses; past, present, and future. Now, this is the beautiful redemption on offer through Jesus. I’ll go back to Keller again, but from a different book, Making Sense of God.
“Christianity’s unsurpassed offers: a meaning that suffering cannot remove, satisfaction not based on circumstances, a freedom that does not hurt but rather enhances love, an identity that does not crush you or exclude others, and a moral compass that does not turn you into an oppressor…”
And finally,
“…A hope that can face anything, even death”
Tim Keller, Making Sense of God
itself.
Listen, in spite of how dark the days may seem in your life, in your context or in our world right now; look back at Genesis 19 and see that ugliness of sin, and yet see the beauty of God’s grace breaking into all of that. It points me forward to trust and hope in Jesus. I hope it encourages you in the same way. He came in this world to save sinners like me, like you, like the apostle Paul, like John Stott. How will you respond to Him? Don’t linger, like Lot. Don’t resist or hesitate. Fall into His arms of mercy and grace, as He lavishes you with His grace and His mercy and His love. Just respond to Him in faith believing and allow Him to turn all of the darkness in your heart into light, His glorious light. He is the light that has come into the world. And sadly, while some of the world will prefer the darkness to the light, you don’t have to and neither do I. Let’s turn to Jesus right now. He is our hope in life and in death.
(Edited for Reading)
