SPEAKER_01: Yeah, Genesis 19.
SPEAKER_01: The two angels came to Sodom in the evening, and Lot was sitting in the gate of Sodom.
SPEAKER_01: When Lot saw them, he rose to meet them and bowed himself with his face to the earth and said, My Lord, please turn aside to your servant's house and spend the night and wash your feet.
SPEAKER_01: Then you may rise up highly and go your way.
SPEAKER_01: They said, No, we will spend the night in the town square.
SPEAKER_01: But he pressed them strongly, so they turned aside to him and entered his house.
SPEAKER_01: And he made them a feast and bake unleavened bread and the head.
SPEAKER_01: But before they lay down, the men of the city, the men of Sodom, both young and old, all the people to the last man surrounded the house.
SPEAKER_01: And they called to Lot, Where are the men who came to you tonight?
SPEAKER_01: Bring them out to us that we may know them.
SPEAKER_01: Lot went out to the men at the entrance, shut the door after him, and said, I beg you, my brothers, do not act so wickedly.
SPEAKER_01: Behold, I have two daughters who have not known any man.
SPEAKER_01: Let me bring them out to you.
SPEAKER_01: And do to them as you please.
SPEAKER_01: Only do nothing to this man, for they have come under the shelter of my roof.
SPEAKER_01: But they said, Stand back.
SPEAKER_01: And they said, This fellow came to surgeon, and he has become the judge.
SPEAKER_01: Now we will do worse with you than with them.
SPEAKER_01: Then they pressed hard against the man Lot and drew near to the break to break the door down.
SPEAKER_01: But the man reached out, but the men reached out their hands and brought Lot into the house with them and shut the door.
SPEAKER_01: And they struck with blindness the men who were at the entrance of the house, both small and great, so that they wore themselves out, groping for the door.
SPEAKER_01: Then the men said to Lot, Have you anyone else here?
SPEAKER_01: Son-in-law, sons, daughters, or anyone you have in the city, bring them out of the place, for we are about to destroy this place.
SPEAKER_01: Because the outcry against its people has become great before the Lord, and the Lord has sent us to destroy it.
SPEAKER_01: So Lot went out and said to his sons-in-law, who were to marry his daughters, Hop, get out of this place, for the Lord is about to destroy the city.
SPEAKER_01: But it seems to his sons-in-law to be jesting.
SPEAKER_01: As morning dawned, the angels urged Lot, saying, Hop, take your wife and your two daughters who are here, lest you be swept away in the punishment of the city.
SPEAKER_01: But he lingered.
SPEAKER_01: So the men seized him and his wife and his two daughters by the hand.
SPEAKER_01: The Lord being merciful to him, and they brought him out and set him outside the city.
SPEAKER_01: And as they brought them out, one said, Escape for your life.
SPEAKER_01: Do not look back or stop anywhere in the valley.
SPEAKER_01: Escape to the hills, lest you be swept away.
SPEAKER_01: And Lord said to them, Oh no, my lord, behold, your servant has found favor in your side, and you have shown me great kindness in saving my life.
SPEAKER_01: But I cannot escape to the hills, lest the disaster overtake me and I die.
SPEAKER_01: Behold, this city is near enough to flee to, and it is a little one.
SPEAKER_01: Let me escape there.
SPEAKER_01: It is not a little one.
SPEAKER_01: Is it not a little one?
SPEAKER_01: And my life will be saved.
SPEAKER_01: He said to them.
SPEAKER_01: Escape there quickly, for I can do nothing till you arrive there.
SPEAKER_01: Therefore the name of the city is called Zoah.
SPEAKER_01: The sun has risen on the earth when Lot came to Zoah.
SPEAKER_01: Then the Lord reigned on Sodom, and Gomorrah saw for and fire from the Lord out of heaven, and he overthrew those cities, and all the valleys, and all the inhabitants of the city, and what grew on the land.
SPEAKER_01: But Lot's wife behind him looked back, and she became a pillar of salt.
SPEAKER_01: And Abram went early in the morning to the place where he had stood before the Lord, and he looked down toward Sodom and Gomorrah, and toward all the land of the valley, and he looked, and behold, the smoke of the land went up like the smoke of a furnace.
SPEAKER_01: So it was that when God destroyed the city of the valley, God remembered Abraham and sent Lot out of the midst of the overthrow when he overthrew the cities in which Lot had lived.
SPEAKER_01: Now Lot went up out of Zoah and lived in the east with his two daughters, for he was afraid to live in Zoah.
SPEAKER_01: So he lived in a cave with his two daughters.
SPEAKER_01: And the firstborn said to the younger, Her father is old, and there is not a man on her to come into her after the manner of all the hair.
SPEAKER_01: Come, let us make her father drink wine, and we will lie with him, that we may preserve our offspring from our father.
SPEAKER_01: So they made their father drink wine that night, and the firstborn went in and lay with her father.
SPEAKER_01: He did not know when she lay down or when she arose.
SPEAKER_01: The next day the first one said to the younger, Behold, I lay last night with my father.
SPEAKER_01: Let us make him drink wine tonight also.
SPEAKER_01: Then you go in and lie with him, that we may preserve us offspring from her father.
SPEAKER_01: So they made their father drink wine that night also, and the younger arose and lay with him.
SPEAKER_01: And he did not know when she lay down or when she arose.
SPEAKER_01: Thus both the daughter of Lord became pregnant by their father.
SPEAKER_01: The first one bore a son called his name Moab and called his name Moab.
SPEAKER_01: He is the father of the Moabites to this day.
SPEAKER_01: The younger also bore a son and called his name Ben Hamid.
SPEAKER_01: He is the father of the Ammonite to this day.
SPEAKER_01: And the Lord bless the reading of his word.
SPEAKER_01: Amen.
SPEAKER_02: Welcome to you if you joined us while we're singing.
SPEAKER_02: And uh thank you, G-Day, for reading that mammoth passage.
SPEAKER_02: Uh when we decided that we would do a series in the book of Genesis, uh, one of the things that was at the fore of my mind was that means that at some point or another we're gonna have to deal with Genesis 19 and the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah.
SPEAKER_02: It's probably one of the most infamous passages in the whole Bible, and you're probably wondering, well, what on earth is he gonna say about this?
SPEAKER_02: Uh Sodom and Gomorrah here in Genesis 19, it confronts us.
SPEAKER_02: Uh there's no escaping it, it's not an easy read.
SPEAKER_02: Nobody comes out of it particularly well, least of all Lot, and that's perhaps one of the most confronting and uneasy things about the whole passage, as we will see.
SPEAKER_02: Uh, but perhaps the hardest thing to grapple with is that actually Sodom is a myrrh.
SPEAKER_02: Uh it's a myrrh that reflects back to us the sinfulness of sin, the depth that a human, that human nature can sink to when it goes unchecked.
SPEAKER_02: And it's also a passage that shows us God's response in both judgment and salvation.
SPEAKER_02: I don't think that this passage needs much more introduction than that, and so we're simply going to get into it because we have a long way to go.
SPEAKER_02: I'm gonna uh structure this passage around four things: two questions and then two statements.
SPEAKER_02: Two questions and then two statements.
SPEAKER_02: And I would encourage you to have Genesis 19 uh in open in front of you, either in a Bible or on your phone.
SPEAKER_02: Uh you can throw it up on uh on Bible Gateway and follow along in the English Standard Version of the Bible.
SPEAKER_02: Two questions, two statements.
SPEAKER_02: Question one.
SPEAKER_02: What is the sin of Sodom?
SPEAKER_02: Obviously, this passage is notorious.
SPEAKER_02: And the sin of the men of Sodom has given rise to a very old word, uh, the word sodomy, uh, the act of male homosexual sex.
SPEAKER_02: Welcome to you if you're joining us.
SPEAKER_02: Uh, what a moment uh to come in.
SPEAKER_02: And to our modern ears, to talk of sodomy uh jars with us, probably it's making you feel a little bit uneasy already.
SPEAKER_02: Uh, some people have tried to make the case that the sin of Sodom is uh is not something sexual, uh, but rather that it's something social.
SPEAKER_02: So if you uh read more revisionist interpreters who want to uh who want to downplay the sexual element, they'll tell you that actually the judgment that comes on Sodom is not because of what they're doing sexually, but because of how they are conducting themselves socially.
SPEAKER_02: That the issue of Sodom is not about gay rape, but rather it's about a lack of hospitality.
SPEAKER_02: This passage, they reason, is uh a passage that stands in contrast with Abraham's treatment of the Lord and the two angels that we saw right back at the start of Genesis 18.
SPEAKER_02: If you remember, uh, the three visitors, uh, a uh a preincarnate uh version of the second person of the Trinity, it seems, and two angels arrive at Abraham's tent and he runs and he bows down to them, he says, Come in and eat, and he prepares this lavish feast for them, and he is commended there for uh for adhering to all of the good social norms of the ancient Near East.
SPEAKER_02: Whereas what happens here is that the men of Sodom disregard all of that.
SPEAKER_02: So the reason it seems, or they argue, is that God judges uh Sodom not because of their sexual desires or actions, but because they're rude and dishonoring and inhospitable.
SPEAKER_02: Now, there is definitely a hospitality aspect to what is going on in Sodom.
SPEAKER_02: It is an inhospitable thing when you have somebody round for dinner to want to have sex with them.
SPEAKER_02: Right?
SPEAKER_02: It's okay, you can laugh, it's like it's gonna be intense, so we need to have a little moment, okay?
SPEAKER_02: That is inhospitable, not something that's recommended for your next dinner party, okay?
SPEAKER_02: And Lot is shown as responding in a similar way to Abraham.
SPEAKER_02: So you'll have noticed that he he does, he runs similarly, he bows low like Abraham did, he bids them to come and say, he prepares a feast for them.
SPEAKER_02: And so he is set in contrast to the men of Sodom.
SPEAKER_02: But to say that there is nothing sexual going on here, or that the condemnation of Sodom and what is proposed sexually simply doesn't make sense of the passage.
SPEAKER_02: It is clear from the passage that there is a sexual dimension to what is happening in Sodom and to why Sodom is being judged.
SPEAKER_02: Let me give you two reasons for why that's the case.
SPEAKER_02: First is the use of the language to know.
SPEAKER_02: If you've uh uh ever grown up with the Bible, you'll you'll know that that's the euphemistic term for sexual intercourse.
SPEAKER_02: Uh Adam knew his wife.
SPEAKER_02: It wasn't that they uh that they shook hands and had afternoon tea together or anything like that.
SPEAKER_02: No, no, it's it's that they had sex with one another.
SPEAKER_02: Adam knew his wife and she gave birth to a son.
SPEAKER_02: This idea of to know, used all over the Old Testament, refers to sexual intercourse.
SPEAKER_02: And so when the men of Sodom says, Bring out these men that have arrived in your house that we may know them, they're not proposing that they take the two angels for a beer.
SPEAKER_02: They're proposing something else.
SPEAKER_02: They're proposing that they have sex with them.
SPEAKER_02: The second reason why there is definitely something sexual going on is because of Lot's response.
SPEAKER_02: Now we're gonna deal a lot with Lot's response.
SPEAKER_02: Lot's response is wicked, and I'm gonna say that a number of times.
SPEAKER_02: Lot's response is absolutely reprehensible because Lot's response is that he goes out the door and they're all saying, Let's have sex with these men, and he says, No, don't do this wicked thing, don't have sex with these men, have my virginal daughters and have sex with them instead.
SPEAKER_02: That is awful, right?
SPEAKER_02: Don't miss like there's nothing in this passage that condones that, and we will come back and explore that first of all, or in a few minutes' time.
SPEAKER_02: But if the issue is hospitality, if the men of Sodom are coming out and saying, Let's take these guys for a beer, it's strange for all for Lot to respond saying, Don't take these guys for a beer, have sex with my daughters instead.
SPEAKER_02: Right?
SPEAKER_02: It doesn't flow with the passage.
SPEAKER_02: It is that they are proposing something sexual and Lot is responding in in similar kind.
SPEAKER_02: Okay?
SPEAKER_02: And so it is impossible to avoid that it's just pure hospitality norms of the ancient Near East.
SPEAKER_02: There is absolutely a sexual aspect to what is going on in Sodom and Gomorrah.
SPEAKER_02: However, to say that God judged Sodom simply because of homosexual sex is an overly simplistic reading and is too easy for us and for our modern ears to reject.
SPEAKER_02: We go, oh well, like we'll we've moved on, right, haven't we?
SPEAKER_02: It's too easy to dismiss it if it's just to do with homosexual sex.
SPEAKER_02: I think what is going on, and I think I can make this case uh from the passage and from the rest of the Bible, is that the issue in Sodom is that Sodom is rotten to the core.
SPEAKER_02: The values of its people were totally corrupted, their desires were distorted, their loves were perverted, and as a result of what is going on in the heart of the people of Sodom, they do wicked things.
SPEAKER_02: Like want to uh to homosexually rape two men who are visiting the city.
SPEAKER_02: Listen to what Ezekiel, a prophet later on in the Bible, says about Sodom.
SPEAKER_02: This is uh the Lord speaking through the prophet.
SPEAKER_02: He says, Now, this was the sin of your sister Sodom.
SPEAKER_02: She and her arrogant daughters were arrogant, sorry, she and her daughters were arrogant, greedy, and unconcerned for the poor and the needy.
SPEAKER_02: They were proud and did wicked things before me, says the Lord.
SPEAKER_02: See that verse?
SPEAKER_02: They were proud.
SPEAKER_02: It's a heart issue, something going on in their heart.
SPEAKER_02: They were proud and unconcerned for the needy, and therefore they did wicked things.
SPEAKER_02: The wicked things are evidence of something that is going on in the heart.
SPEAKER_02: That there is a distortion that has happened internally.
SPEAKER_02: Sodom was proud, selfish, and self-loving, and as a result they did wicked things.
SPEAKER_02: I think one of the best ways to think about it is that Sodom is Sodom is a dystopian city in uh those uh novels and movies like that we like to read.
SPEAKER_02: It is the city in Aldous Huxley's Brave New World, where uh where sex is uh is just the currency of the day.
SPEAKER_02: It's just what you it's just what you do, and to refuse sex with someone is the ultimate taboo in a brave new world.
SPEAKER_02: Or perhaps uh rather than showing my uh my age, it it's more like the capital in the Hunger Games.
SPEAKER_02: Sodom's like the capital, full of decadence and pride, controlling and using others uh to serve their needs.
SPEAKER_02: And the capital, because of um this pride and decadence, what does they what do they do?
SPEAKER_02: Well, they also subvert the natural order of things.
SPEAKER_02: And how do they do that?
SPEAKER_02: Well, they kill their children for entertainment.
SPEAKER_02: It's because of something that's going on in the culture, in the hearts of the people, that gives rise to sinful actions.
SPEAKER_02: Sodom was proud and did wicked things before me, says the Lord.
SPEAKER_02: In the Hunger Games, the killing of uh of young people, of children for entertainment is a profound expression that a society has lost any moral clarity.
SPEAKER_02: And it is the same here in Sodom, that the men coming and saying, Let's have sex with these angels, is a sign that Sodom itself had lost all moral clarity.
SPEAKER_02: So here in Sodom, the homosexual rape of the angels is an indicator of the wickedness that lies at the heart of Sodom, in the hearts of the people of Sodom.
SPEAKER_02: The sin of Sodom should be a sobering warning to us all.
SPEAKER_02: That when we prioritize our individual desires over our duties and responsibilities to others, that when we become greedy and decadent, blind to the needs of those around us, when we use others to satisfy our own desires, when we use power to control, threaten, or manipulate the vulnerable, when we become sexually narcissistic in all of those moments, we find that Sodom is not a thing at the past to be studied, but rather we find ourselves residing within its walls.
SPEAKER_02: And it itself is taken up root in our hearts.
SPEAKER_02: Therefore, you cannot simply dismiss Sodom.
SPEAKER_02: Sodom is a problem for all of us.
SPEAKER_02: What is it then to be a witness in Sodom?
SPEAKER_02: Lot here is the only person who displays any sort of moral difference, and even he fails miserably.
SPEAKER_02: Why?
SPEAKER_02: I think the answer is because he hasn't understood the effect that Sodom has on him and on his family.
SPEAKER_02: And so that's the second question, folks.
SPEAKER_02: The second question is this What is the effect of Sodom?
SPEAKER_02: So what is the sin of Sodom?
SPEAKER_02: What is the effect of Sodom?
SPEAKER_02: We meet Lot at the start of the passage, and he's sitting at the city gates.
SPEAKER_02: And this is an important little moment because it's not just telling us about the geographical location of where Lot was at that moment, it's talking about now his status within the city.
SPEAKER_02: To sit at the city gates is an indication that Lot has become an elder, he's a leader.
SPEAKER_02: The men that say this sojourner has become a judge.
SPEAKER_02: So he's got some sort of civic responsibility over the city, and that's why he's sitting at the gates.
SPEAKER_02: And so if you've been tracking with us over the course of the Abraham story from Genesis chapter 12, one of the things that you might remember is that when Lot and Abraham separate, where does Lot go?
SPEAKER_02: Lot goes and he lives in the valley beside Sodom.
SPEAKER_02: That's Genesis 13.
SPEAKER_02: And then a chapter later in Genesis 14, when he's captured, why is he captured?
SPEAKER_02: He's captured because he's living now within the city.
SPEAKER_02: So he's moved from outside to in its walls.
SPEAKER_02: And now here in Genesis 19, he's not just in its walls, he's a leader.
SPEAKER_02: He's an elder.
SPEAKER_02: He's got civic responsibility, magisterial duty there in the city.
SPEAKER_02: He's a person of influence.
SPEAKER_02: And throughout the narrative, there are points of difference between him and the men of Sodom.
SPEAKER_02: Let me spell out exactly what these points of difference are.
SPEAKER_02: He greets the angels in the same way that Abraham does.
SPEAKER_02: When Lot saw, this is the second half of verse 1, when Lot saw them, he rose to meet them, bowed himself with his face to the earth, and said, My lords, please turn aside to your servant's house, spend the night, and wash your feet.
SPEAKER_02: So very similar response to Abraham.
SPEAKER_02: He offers them hospitality.
SPEAKER_02: That's the second difference.
SPEAKER_02: And then there's a curious little uh moment when the angels respond and they say, Say, uh no, we'll um we'll spend the night in the town square.
SPEAKER_02: And then Lot responds, verse 3, but he pressed them strongly so that they turned aside and entered his house.
SPEAKER_02: What does that mean?
SPEAKER_02: Lot's a leader of the city.
SPEAKER_02: Lot is showing some differences to the men of the city, some similarities with his uncle Abraham, and yet he knows exactly what Sodom's like.
SPEAKER_02: They say, we're gonna go and sleep in the town square, we're gonna find a park bench.
SPEAKER_02: Uh it's a warm night, we'll just sleep outside, and he knows that that's not a good idea.
SPEAKER_02: He knows that Sodom has past form.
SPEAKER_02: That's why he goes, nope, uh, don't do that.
SPEAKER_02: Won't be a particularly restful night for you.
SPEAKER_02: Why don't you come back to my house?
SPEAKER_02: He presses them strongly because he knows exactly why the angels shouldn't sleep in the town square.
SPEAKER_02: And then another difference between him and the men of Sodom is that when the men of Sodom surround the house and he goes out to them, he knows that what they are proposing is wicked.
SPEAKER_02: So in verse 8, he starts verse 8 by saying, Do not do this wicked thing.
SPEAKER_02: Now, we'll come back to what he does propose.
SPEAKER_02: He says, Do not do this wicked thing.
SPEAKER_02: So he is different, he has a he is he is a more acute, still terrible, but a more acute moral conscience than the man of Sodom.
SPEAKER_02: And so there are some clear points of distinction between him and the culture.
SPEAKER_02: Why is he at the city gates?
SPEAKER_02: Why is he an elder?
SPEAKER_02: I wonder if so, I wonder if Lot was just naive, do you know?
SPEAKER_02: Did he think that living inside the city was good for business, it was good for his prosperity and security, and he could guard his family.
SPEAKER_02: It's like he knew that there was stuff rotten in the city, but like I'm spiritually strong enough that I can guide my family through this without the surrounding culture tainting and corrupting my family.
SPEAKER_02: It's pretty naive, if that's what he's thinking.
SPEAKER_02: Or was he kind of morally misguided?
SPEAKER_02: Was he the kind of person that thought, if I if I kind of keep my head down and if I climb the social ladder, I could change Sodom?
SPEAKER_02: If I only get to these positions of influence, and and yes, I'll need to kind of keep quiet about what I believe until I get there, then I'll be able to change the place.
SPEAKER_02: Again, just woefully misguided.
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, we see lots of people thinking those sorts of ways, don't you?
SPEAKER_02: Maybe you have thought that sort of way.
SPEAKER_02: And people think, well, I'll keep quiet about what I believe about Christianity and my faith and uh and biblical ethics and all of those things.
SPEAKER_02: I'll keep quiet about all of those, all of those things until I reach this point of influence, and then I'm going to be courageous and brave and change the whole system around you.
SPEAKER_02: But the problem is that cowardice at all of those little moments does not lead to bravery when you reach the influence.
SPEAKER_02: Why is Lord of the City his?
SPEAKER_02: We're not told, but whatever the motivation, we know that the culture and the values of Sodom have had a profound effect both on him and on his family.
SPEAKER_02: As I have alluded to, the aspect of this passage that is most difficult to stomach is perhaps Lot's response to the men.
SPEAKER_02: That despite all of the points of difference that I've articulated, that when they come to the door, he offers his daughters up to them.
SPEAKER_02: There's no sense at all that the Bible approves of this move.
SPEAKER_02: In fact, the angels intervene to get him out of the conversation.
SPEAKER_02: You can imagine the angelic hand coming from behind the door and pulling this idiot in.
SPEAKER_02: Lot has failed utterly.
SPEAKER_02: When the chips are down and moral clarity is needed, he blows it.
SPEAKER_02: We must beware of the spiritual foolishness and naivety that says, I am strong enough, my conscience is strong enough not to be corrupted or tainted or uh to drift.
SPEAKER_02: It's a misplaced pride that says, I can withstand the demands, the demands to reflect the cultural values and norms around me.
SPEAKER_02: I can withstand that torrent.
SPEAKER_02: I can withstand the cultural values of the mob, and I will be the lone, brave Clarion voice.
SPEAKER_02: That is a very tall order.
SPEAKER_02: And Lot here fails miserably.
SPEAKER_02: Lot all the way through these chapters has chosen peace and prosperity over the life of a pilgrim like his uncle.
SPEAKER_02: Folks, it is better to be a pilgrim at the margins of the culture, to be a pilgrim at the margins of society, than to think that you can reign in Sodom and not be tainted by it.
SPEAKER_02: To think that you can reign in Sodom when in fact it is reigning over you.
SPEAKER_02: Beware, as Christians, the strange new respect that you might get from those in our culture.
SPEAKER_02: Beware when people are congratulating you or thinking that you are cool.
SPEAKER_02: Because what have you given up?
SPEAKER_02: What have you hidden?
SPEAKER_02: In order for them to speak well of you.
SPEAKER_02: Success in the Christian life is not getting to the positions of influence.
SPEAKER_02: Success in the Christian life is to be crucified.
SPEAKER_02: Take up your cross and follow me.
SPEAKER_02: Beware of the naivety that Lot has.
SPEAKER_02: And tragically, the effects are not limited to him.
SPEAKER_02: The effects of Sodom and life within the walls of Sodom profoundly affect his family.
SPEAKER_02: That even as judgment is raining down on Sodom and Gomorrah, and the angels have told them to flee without hesitation, even then.
SPEAKER_02: Lot's wife looks back and she's turned into a pillar of salt.
SPEAKER_02: It's unclear as to whether or not the uh the turning into a pillar of salt is a um is a miraculous um action insofar as she uh she actually just becomes salt, you just imagine like some sort of horror movie, like a statue like that, right?
SPEAKER_02: Or that actually she's swept up in the kind of pyroclastic flow of the uh of the sulfur and the brimstone and the lava that's coming down.
SPEAKER_02: It's unclear.
SPEAKER_02: But the point is that even as judgment is raining down on Sodom and the angels are saying, get out of here.
SPEAKER_02: Lot's wife loved Sodom.
SPEAKER_02: She didn't want to give it up.
SPEAKER_02: Her heart was there.
SPEAKER_02: Her heart was inside those city walls, and that even as judgment was falling, she longed to be back there.
SPEAKER_02: Did she want to go and get more of her stuff?
SPEAKER_02: She didn't want to flee.
SPEAKER_02: She loved her life, she loved her home, and she loved Sodom.
SPEAKER_02: Her heart was inside those walls.
SPEAKER_02: You know, Jesus refers to this in Luke chapter 17.
SPEAKER_02: And he says, Remember Lot's wife.
SPEAKER_02: Remember Lot's wife.
SPEAKER_02: It's a warning from Jesus against having our heart so attached to something in this world that we just can't leave it behind in order to follow him.
SPEAKER_02: He says, beware Lot's wife.
SPEAKER_02: Beware having your heart so attached to something in this world that you're not willing to leave it behind.
SPEAKER_02: But if Lot's wife had her heart in Sodom, Sodom was in the heart of Lot's daughters.
SPEAKER_02: This passage just kind of goes from bad to worse, doesn't it?
SPEAKER_02: The passage ends with a deeply disturbing incident where the daughters get him drunk and they become pregnant by him.
SPEAKER_02: The daughters in that section make this terrible determination that there are no men left.
SPEAKER_02: Is that right?
SPEAKER_02: No, of course it's not right.
SPEAKER_02: What they're saying is, there's no men left in Sodom.
SPEAKER_02: Why didn't they think if only we if only we fled to the to the tents of of our great uncle, Abraham, there'd be there'd be men there who fear the Lord, who who who love him, who would do well and do right by us, but they they don't.
SPEAKER_02: Why?
SPEAKER_02: Because Sodom is in their hearts.
SPEAKER_02: The values and norms of Sodom had seeped so deeply into their hearts, into their cultural worldview that this wicked thing thing seemed like the best option for them.
SPEAKER_02: Brothers and sisters, our world, our culture, is not a neutral space.
SPEAKER_02: Each one of us is drinking in every day the values and norms of the world around us.
SPEAKER_02: In all of the things that we consume, in all of the social media, in all of the the reading, in all of the training that we imbibe, we're imbibing a worldview.
SPEAKER_02: And I'm not saying that it's all going to hell in a handbasket, right?
SPEAKER_02: I'm not saying that it's all sodom, but I am giving a plea to not be naive and to think that there is a neutral objective space, Monday to Friday, that you enter into as a Christian, and everybody else is kind of this kind of blank sheet of paper.
SPEAKER_02: No, no.
SPEAKER_02: You're constantly imbibing a moral narrative of what is right and wrong, of what is true and false, of what is good and bad.
SPEAKER_02: You need to be aware that you're stepping into those spaces and act with discernment.
SPEAKER_02: Now, that's a whole other sermon series in itself, but my plea is don't be naive like Lot and think, I'm going to enter in these spaces, and none of it's going to have an effect on me.
SPEAKER_02: Because it will and it does.
SPEAKER_02: We need to process these things together as a as a community.
SPEAKER_02: And what does it mean to uh to live as a Christian who's uh who's a doctor or who's an accountant or who's uh or who works in uh you know a big blue chip multinational company or who's a teacher, and and to think, what does it mean to enter into these non-neutral spaces?
SPEAKER_02: And to be an effective witness, not a naive one, not a morally blinded one.
SPEAKER_02: You know, this is not a call that we should all become monastic hermits, nor is it a call to legalism, but it is a call to wisdom, to our own maturity, to our own clarity, to be proactive into to be proactive with those whom we love, to pray for this city, to seek its to seek its good.
SPEAKER_02: And what's the good of the city?
SPEAKER_02: Folks, Dublin will not be changed simply by one of you becoming Lord Mayor.
SPEAKER_02: Dublin will be changed one heart at a time.
SPEAKER_02: It's in all of the little things, in all of the little moments and conversations that we have.
SPEAKER_02: That's how we'll change the city.
SPEAKER_02: We must not be passive about what we consume or about what we allow our children to consume.
SPEAKER_02: And Lot is a warning to that.
SPEAKER_02: Those are our two questions.
SPEAKER_02: What is the sin of Sodom?
SPEAKER_02: What's the effect of Sodom?
SPEAKER_02: Two statements.
SPEAKER_02: First statement: look with sober sadness at the judgment of God.
SPEAKER_02: We cannot escape the reality that this passage is about judgment.
SPEAKER_02: As uncomfortable as it makes us feel.
SPEAKER_02: God did not just say to Abraham that he would bless those who blessed him, God also promised that he would curse those who dishonored him.
SPEAKER_02: To speak only of blessing, to speak only of the good aspects of the gospel of Jesus.
SPEAKER_02: And not to speak of judgment would be to distort a story that is ultimately God's and not ours.
SPEAKER_02: It's one of the things that we were just saying as we were praying upstairs, is that we don't shrink away from the hard passages at city.
SPEAKER_02: We try to set them in their context and show what we can learn from them, maybe even show glimmers of how and why they're good, but we don't just skip over them.
SPEAKER_02: It'd be so easy to do that.
SPEAKER_02: Many a time this week preparing this passage when I was like, I wish that we'd just got 18, 20.
SPEAKER_02: But we don't do that.
SPEAKER_02: Because why?
SPEAKER_02: Because it's not my story to tell.
SPEAKER_02: It's God's story.
SPEAKER_02: To ignore the reality of judgment is to minimize the sinfulness of human nature.
SPEAKER_02: It's to minimize the sinfulness of sin.
SPEAKER_02: In a few weeks we'll celebrate Christmas.
SPEAKER_02: And why did Jesus come?
SPEAKER_02: To make us feel better about ourselves and to give us all warm fuzzies inside?
SPEAKER_02: No.
SPEAKER_02: What does the angel say to Joseph?
SPEAKER_02: You will call him Jesus because he will save his people from their sins.
SPEAKER_02: Jesus was born in Bethlehem to save us from the judgment of God.
SPEAKER_02: That is not a reality that we can ignore.
SPEAKER_02: The judgment on Sodom was patient and then it was sudden.
SPEAKER_02: The judgment on Sodom was patient and then sudden.
SPEAKER_02: It was patient because we know all the way back in chapter 13 that the writer Moses tells us that the people of Sodom did wicked things.
SPEAKER_02: God already knew all the way back there that the men of Sodom were wicked.
SPEAKER_02: And yet he was slow in executing his judgment.
SPEAKER_02: Friends, do not mistake God's slowness with you and with our world as a sign that he is not there.
SPEAKER_02: Again, this might actually betray my age, but I don't know if you've ever watched an Eddie Izzard comedy special.
SPEAKER_02: But one of the things that uh that he used to do when he came out on stage as an atheist is he would step out and he said, God, if you're there, strike me down.
SPEAKER_02: And he'd wait a moment, and then everybody would laugh because he'd still be standing.
SPEAKER_02: Uh, and that was his proof.
SPEAKER_02: He was like, Well, clearly there's no God.
SPEAKER_02: Do not mistake God's slowness, his patience with you and with the world as a sign that he is not there.
SPEAKER_02: His judgment with Sodom was patient, and then it was sudden, and there was no time to delay that night.
SPEAKER_02: Lot's sons-in-law scoffed at the imminent danger, and Lot himself seemed, he needed to be dragged out, kicking and screaming, just in the nick of time.
SPEAKER_02: But in the end, the judgment was not just sudden, it was severe.
SPEAKER_02: The land itself was obliterated.
SPEAKER_02: Even the vegetation is scorched.
SPEAKER_02: And that land, the land of the valley, where is that now?
SPEAKER_02: It's the Dead Sea, where nothing lives.
SPEAKER_02: Perhaps most sobering for us all is not the words of this passage, but the words of Jesus.
SPEAKER_02: Because that's the this is one of the false things that you can have in your mind is you can be thinking, okay, this is Old Testament, and God's a bit grumpy in the Old Testament, but then Jesus comes, and Jesus is a lot nicer.
SPEAKER_02: He's got like long kind of Timothy hair, and you know, he hugs lambs and uh and makes nice wine and things like that, right?
SPEAKER_02: And so we think, God of the Old Testament, bad, God of the New Testament, great.
SPEAKER_02: Uh, but no, we need to reckon with the words of Jesus.
SPEAKER_02: And what Jesus says to the people in his own day, who are hearing him and seeing his ministry, God in the flesh, God with us.
SPEAKER_02: And what does he say to them?
SPEAKER_02: He says, if you reject me, if you reject what I'm saying to you now, if you reject what you're seeing from me now, it'll be easier on the man of Sodom than it will be for you.
SPEAKER_02: Wow.
SPEAKER_02: It'll be easier on the man of Sodom.
SPEAKER_02: Be very careful.
SPEAKER_02: Be careful of dismissing the judgment of God.
SPEAKER_02: Our need of him is complete because our condition before him is desperate.
SPEAKER_02: Sodom lives in each of us.
SPEAKER_02: We're all called, like Lot, to flee, to flee for our life without delay.
SPEAKER_02: To the one who shelters us under his life-giving wings.
SPEAKER_02: Final and second statement, final point.
SPEAKER_02: Embrace the strange and wonderful grace of God.
SPEAKER_02: Embrace the strange and wonderful, maybe even unsettling, grace of God.
SPEAKER_02: I know that we've come a long way.
SPEAKER_02: And we've heard things that are difficult to process, but there's one more thing to wrestle with.
SPEAKER_02: And this is the thing that I've been wrestling with all week.
SPEAKER_02: This is arguably the most unsettling thing.
SPEAKER_02: In the New Testament, in the letter of 2 Peter, Peter says that Lot was a righteous man.
SPEAKER_02: Lot was a righteous man in Sodom, a man who saw what was going on in Sodom and was disturbed by it.
SPEAKER_02: And yet, as we have seen, yes, there are differences between him and the men of Sodom.
SPEAKER_02: But verse 8, offering his daughters?
SPEAKER_02: It seems so despicable.
SPEAKER_02: It's hard to see him as a righteous man.
SPEAKER_02: Our default position as human beings is to want good things to happen to good people and bad things to happen to bad people.
SPEAKER_02: And where the next step from that is, is we spend the rest of our lives convincing ourselves that we're in the good people category.
SPEAKER_02: Or at least in the, yeah, we're all right.
SPEAKER_02: And so we come to and go, well, did Lot deserve to be rescued?
SPEAKER_02: No.
SPEAKER_02: And yet he was.
SPEAKER_02: Why?
SPEAKER_02: One answer within the passage is given to us in verse 29.
SPEAKER_02: Let me remind you of it.
SPEAKER_02: So it was when God destroyed the cities of the valley, God remembered Abraham and sent Lot out of the midst of the overthrow when he overthrew the cities in which Lot had lived.
SPEAKER_02: God remembered Abraham, and so he rescued Lot.
SPEAKER_02: Abraham, if you remember, the passage that Ben preached last week, Abraham had been pleading with God for Sodom and Gomorrah.
SPEAKER_02: He'd been interceding, praying for these people.
SPEAKER_02: And he believed in that passage that God would not sweep away the righteous with the guilty.
SPEAKER_02: And so God rescues Lot, not because Lot deserves it, but being Any more moral than anyone else in Sodom, but because of Abram's pleading and because of the gracious character of God, Lot is spared, though he doesn't deserve it, because of the prayers of another who intercedes for him.
SPEAKER_02: But Peter, we still haven't answered the question, but Peter says that he was righteous.
SPEAKER_02: How is Lot righteous?
SPEAKER_02: Answer.
SPEAKER_02: The same way that you and I can be.
SPEAKER_02: The same way that you and I are.
SPEAKER_02: There's an old hymn written by a lady called Fanny Crosby, and it's a hymn called To God Be the Glory.
SPEAKER_02: He may not do God be the glory, great things he has done.
SPEAKER_02: Let me read to you, I'm not going to sing it.
SPEAKER_02: Let me read to you the second verse, because the second verse is confronting to us.
SPEAKER_02: This is the second verse.
SPEAKER_02: Oh, perfect redemption, the purchase of blood to every believer, the promise of God, the vilest offender who truly believes that moment from Jesus a pardon receives.
SPEAKER_02: Those words jar, don't they?
SPEAKER_02: The vilest offender?
SPEAKER_02: The worst possible person?
SPEAKER_02: The moment from Jesus a pardon receives?
SPEAKER_02: The grace that exists behind these words may make many of us feel uneasy.
SPEAKER_02: How can those who are so vile be truly forgiven?
SPEAKER_02: Because salvation is never about what we do.
SPEAKER_02: It's never about what we do or have done.
SPEAKER_02: Christians like to sing that grace is amazing.
SPEAKER_02: But it's also deeply unnerving.
SPEAKER_02: Grace means that salvation is never about what I deserve.
SPEAKER_02: That being made righteous is never about my moral strength or my clarity.
SPEAKER_02: And if I have never earned God's favor, is there anything that I could do to unearn it?
SPEAKER_02: You need to look at Lot through those eyes.
SPEAKER_02: Of course, this does not mean that you can declare your faith in God and go on to live however you please.
SPEAKER_02: There's nothing in this passage that condones the actions of Lot, as I've said repeatedly before.
SPEAKER_02: Yes, righteousness should lead to life change, a life of obedience.
SPEAKER_02: But from here, Lot bows out of the story.
SPEAKER_02: And it leaves us wondering, did his life begin to align a little bit more with his faith?
SPEAKER_02: Those signs that he's different to the men of Sodom are signs that there is some sort of faith going on in Lot, and it is not where it should be.
SPEAKER_02: Perhaps Lot fades away from here in order that we might reflect ourselves.
SPEAKER_02: That we might reflect on our need of that grace.
SPEAKER_02: That we might reflect on that strange grace that we call amazing.
SPEAKER_02: For those of us for whom the idea that God would call law righteous, for those for whom that makes us feel uneasy, perhaps what is needed is for us to reflect more deeply on the needs within our own heart and the sinfulness of our own desires, and how little that we deserve, how little we deserve from God, and yet how gracious He has been to us and continues to be.
SPEAKER_02: But maybe, just maybe there are some of you here this morning.
SPEAKER_02: And the idea that God would be gracious to Lot is a comfort to you.
SPEAKER_02: Because if God can save Lot, if Lot is not beyond God's love, then maybe, just maybe, you're not either.
SPEAKER_02: The story of Lot comes in a sense to comfort us in a strange way.
SPEAKER_02: Because if the grace of God can extend even to him, then perhaps there's hope for us all.
SPEAKER_02: Abraham prayed for that city, and God answered him.
SPEAKER_02: He spared righteous Lot, even though he did not deserve it, and even though the city was in the end destroyed.
SPEAKER_02: And you know what?
SPEAKER_02: And with this I'll finish.
SPEAKER_02: We have one who prays for us, who's better than Abraham.
SPEAKER_02: Jesus lived a life urging us, inviting us, warning and wooing us to leave the pride of Sodom behind and to follow him.
SPEAKER_02: Who on that cross took the severe and full portion of God's judgment.
SPEAKER_02: It rained down on him that we might flee and be saved.
SPEAKER_02: And that he prays for us now in heaven.
SPEAKER_02: He prays for us all.
SPEAKER_02: Even the vilest offender.