Mary Fairchild
The following is based on the phonetic writing of the expository teaching tapes of Pastor Jim Mooberry.
This morning we are going to look at the story of the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah, the “cities of the valley.” We are looking back in Genesis at “reality”—why things are the way they are today. And this is a very important account and it is an historical account because it explains to us much about our current society and God’s attitude towards it. So as we look at this I want you to remember that Sodom and Gomorrah were the names of two cities that cease to exist from almost 4,000 years ago and yet there names live on to this day in infamy because it is associated with sin so heinous that God destroyed them from the face of the earth. And they have become as Peter the apostle says “an example to us.” Listen to what he writes, “He condemned the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah to destruction by reducing them to ashes having made them an example to those who would live ungodly there after.
Genesis 19 is not only the record of God’s judgment on this morally bankrupt civilization, but it is also the story of an individual named Lot. Lot is an example of a child of God who is living in compromise with the world and so it portrays the tragedy of carnality in the life of a child of God. Lot was a believer who was trying to have, as we would say, the best of both worlds. He wanted to live where it was “like Egypt” the Scriptures say. It was like the sophisticated areas of the world and he was living for the lust of the flesh and the lust of the eyes and pride of life and yet at the same time he wanted to have this relationship with God and he wanted to live in the blessing of salvation and it didn’t work out as he had planned. It never does and inevitably he lost everything. Not only did he lose everything, but the corruption of the world that he loved so much penetrated his own soul and also into the circle of his family as well. And so this is a very important passage for us as believers in Jesus Christ as well as a passage for those who do not believe in Him who will one day face a judgment similar to that of Sodom and Gomorrah.
Let’s look at the setting this morning. We have to go back to Genesis 14 to really understand the story and what has happened. In Genesis 14:1-3 we read, “And it came to pass in the days of Amraphel king of Shinar, Arioch king of Eliasar, Chedoriaomer king of Elam, and Tidal king of nations; that these made war with Bera king of Sodom, and with Birsha king of Gomorrah, Shinab king of Admah, and Shember king of Zeboiim, and the king of Bela, which is Zoar. All these were joined together in the vale of Siddim, which is the salt sea.”
There was at that time at the very bottom, as you look on a map of the Dead Sea—also known as the Salt Sea or the Valley of Siddim, five prominent cities. The most prominent were Sodom and Gomorrah but also there was Admah and Zeboiim and then a city that was not destroyed by the name of Bela or as it was known is Moses’ days Zoar. Now, these kings, these four northern kings raided the five cities of the valley. In verses 8-12 we see it—“…the king of Sodom, the king of Gomorrah, the king of Admah, the king of Zeboiim, and the king of Bela (that is Zoar) came out and they joined battle against them in
the valley of Siddim; with Chedorlaomer the king of Elam, and with Tidal king of nations, and Amraphel king of Shinar, and Arioch king of Ellasar; four kings with five. And the vale of Siddim was full of slime pits; and the kings of Sodom and Gomorrah fled, and fell there; and they that remained fled to the mountain. And they took all the goods of Sodom and Gomorrah, and all their victuals, and went their way. And they took Lot, Abram’s brother’s son, who dwelt in Sodom, and his goods, and departed.”
Now, when Abraham heard the news about what had happened he went after these kings and pursued them in verses 13-16 you will see the story. And God gave him a mighty victory. He was able to, by himself and his small company, defeat these four kings and they took back the spoils and possessions, but he was mainly interested in bringing back his nephew Lot. Little more is said about these cities except that Lot chose to live there as the Scriptures say because it was “like Egypt.” That is where Lot and his uncle Abraham had lived for some years and Lot really liked Egypt. He thought it was pretty cool there and he liked the worldly atmosphere, the sophistication, the urban type and urbane atmosphere. So, not much is said about this until years later.
Years later, the Lord visits Abraham by the Oaks of Marmre which is near Hebrum in Chapter 18:1-2, “And the Lord appeared unto him in the plains of Mamre: and he sat in the tent door in the heat of the day; and he lift up his eyes and looked, and, lo, three men stood by him; and when he saw them, he ran to meet them from the tent door, and bowed himself toward the ground.” You will see that one of those who appeared before him was the angel of Jehovah, or the preincarnate Jesus Christ. The other two were his angels that he sent them to Sodom and Gomorrah and those cities of the valley to destroy them. And so he makes it known to Lot what he is going to do. In verses 16-18 we see the men rose up from there and looked down toward Sodom and Abraham was walking with them to send them off and the Lord said, “Shall I hide from Abraham what I am about to do since Abraham will surely become a great and mighty nation and in him all of the nations of the earth will be blessed.” Then verses 20-21, the Lord said, “The outcry of Sodom and Gomorrah is indeed great and their sin is exceedingly grave. I will go down now and see if they have done entirely according to its outcry which is come to me, and if not I will know.” Well, he had evidently explained to Abraham that he was going to destroy them because what follows then is that famous prayer of Abraham were he began to negotiate with God. And he said, “Oh, surly you will not destroy these cities if there are 50 righteous there for how can you destroy the righteous with the evil that is not like you.” And so God agrees and says He will not destroy those cities if 50 righteous can be found. And then Abraham moves to 45, and then to 40, … it’s almost comical the way he negotiates with God down to 10 righteous men. Evidently 10 were not found because He does destroy Sodom and Gomorrah. But Abraham is hoping to spare his nephew’s life, Lot.
Now we pick up the story in chapter 19 as the two angels visit Sodom and this is were our story begins. First we see something about Lot’s hospitality in these verses. Look in verses 1-3, “Now the two angels came to Sodom in the evening as Lot was sitting in the gate of Sodom. When Lot saw them he rose to meet them and bowed down with his face to the ground and he said, ‘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 shall spend the night in the square.’ Yet he 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. Lot is called by Peter in the New Testament “a righteous man.”
It just proves again what the Scriptures say that the righteousness that we have is something that is given to us. We are declared righteous in God’s sight when we believe in Him for salvation. For as we will see in Lot’s life, he is just like you and I—he has weaknesses, he stumbles, gets entangled in sin, and yet he is declared righteous by Peter in 2 Peter. Evidently he was an upright citizen. He was hospitable and generous. He was a leader in this community because it says that he sat in the gate and the ones that sat in the gate were the judges—almost like the leading political people leading wisdom givers. People would come with their disputes and those who sat in the gates would decide them and give them relief or legal advice. Now, in spite of this upright character that he has in Sodom, yet he also likes the good life that is in Sodomite society. Again it seems that it was sophisticated and upscale, but it was also corrupt. You know that is always the lie that Satan is going to give us. Right from the very beginning, in the Garden of Eden, when he tempted Eve to sin he said “sin in effect,” that is what he’s saying, “will make you wise.” “You will have knowledge of something.” “Experiential knowledge and you will be like God knowing these things…. all these things that right now you unfortunately don’t know about.” And of course Eve bit into that and so did Adam and so they did sin and they did have experiential knowledge of sin but they also got with it experiential knowledge of death because of their disobedience. The majority of the theophomies (?) or the appearance of God in the Bible occur not in cities but in desolate areas and deserts. It seems that God is trying to tell us something about not necessarily cities, but it is the idea that it is the simple life of the pilgrim in which we will find God—not in the sophistication of the sin of our world.
Why did he urge them to strongly stay in his house? He knew what was coming. He unfortunately was living a dual life. He knew what the city stood for and what was involved and yet he tolerated it because of the good things he liked about it. And so he urged them to stay in his house. Now there is also something else that is involved here and that is this priority for hospitality. It is still present in the Mediterranean and in that area where the near eastern people live that hospitality is of a high priority—it’s almost a sacred rite to be hospitable to people. Having said that notice what happens… the men of Sodom come and their wickedness in verses 4 and 5, “Before they lay down 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 said to him, ‘Where are the men who came to you tonight? Bring them out to us that we may have relations with them.” The men of the city both young and old gather around Lot’s house and their intention is homosexual rape of these two visitors to their town. Think of the enormity of this sin. Not only are they trampling on their sacred code of hospitality, but they want to assault these strangers with the most vile form of lust. And so it’s a shocking display of the depravity of this city and of the depravity of the human heart.
I want to say just a few words about homosexuality today and what the Bible says about it. It does not mince words about this sin. The most graphic commentary is probably in Romans 1:21-32 where we have God’s estimate of sin and especially regard to this sin and what happens here is Paul traces the pathway of mankind downward into corruption in Romans 1 and there are three stages Paul says.
STAGE 1: The first stage in verses 19 and 20 is that “there is light from God that is available to all mankind.” When he says “light” he’s talking about truth. He says “When man looks at the creation he can see certain things about God and that in itself is light to mankind. LIGHT IS AVAILABLE.
STAGE 2: The second stage is that invariably all men reject this light. In verses 21-23 he speaks of that, “For even though they knew God they did not honor him as God or give thanks, but they became futile in their speculations and their foolish heart was darkened.” What does mankind do with this knowledge of God that God has planted in His creation? He does not fall at his feet and thank God for what he sees and honor him as God, but because he is a fallen man and depraved in heart he rejects that light and then God says he turns instead to HIS OWN SPECULATIONS ABOUT GOD THAT PROCEED FROM A DARKENED HEART. HIS LIGHT IS REJECTED.
STAGE 3: Then God delivers him over to this darkness in verses 24-32. But notice what the key sin that is pointed to as representative of this is in verses 24-27, “Therefore God gave them over in the lust of their heart to impurity that their bodies may be dishonored among them for they exchange the truth of God for a lie and worshipped and served the creature rather than the Creator who is blessed forever. Amen. For this reason God gave them over to degrading passions for their women exchanged their natural function for that which is unnatural and in the same way also men abandoned the natural function of the woman and burned in their desire towards one another. Men with men committing indecent acts and receiving in their own persons the due penalty of their err.” Homosexuality, the Bible says is three things:
1. UNNATURAL: It is abnormal. It is not an alternative lifestyle or an optional lifestyle. It is, in fact, an abandonment of the divinely instituted order and so when men abandon that it is another evidence of their rejection of the light of God—the truth of God. And so the claims to the contrary that we often hear today are simply another illustration of Romans 1 that men and women reject the truth of God and they say that this is not sin but this is good, it natural—the Scriptures say it is unnatural. In fact look at the creation there are no animals in the creation that participate in homosexuality. It is abnormal.
2. UNRIGHTEOUS: It is sin. It is not sickness. It is not a psychological problem. It proceeds from lust—verse 24. And so marriage is the normal outlet for mankind and the testimony of the Bible is that this is an abomination to God. Leviticus 18:22, “You shall not lie with a male as one lies with a female it is an abomination.”
3. UNSEEMLY: It is shameful. If you really want a profile of homosexuality it is in Romans 1. As you see some gay pride parade, and I understand there’s going to be another gay pride day at Disney World coming up next week, and you see the flaunting of homosexuality that goes on it is sickening and this is the Scriptures description of it, verse 24 it is dishonoring, verse 26 it is degrading, it is accompanied inevitably with a loss of self-respect, verse 27 it is perverting, it twists the soul and the thinking and the desires and it really involves a personality warp that will not be turned around unless it is by the grace of God. It is dishonoring , degrading, perverting, and it is “consuming”—verse 32, “Although they know the ordinance of God those who practice such things are worthy of death they not only do the same but also give hearty approval to those who practice them.” It is an obsessive lifestyle.
Let’s return to our account now in Genesis 18. It’s interesting, the record doesn’t say that this was Sodom’s only vice, but open homosexuality is SYMPTOMATIC OF A THOROUGHLY CORRUPTED SOCIETY. If you look at a society and see open homosexuality being promoted that is a society that has entered the thoroughly corrupt stage. What does that say about our society today? We may not be absolutely to the end of the road, but we are a lot closer to it then we were 30 years ago. We have Hollywood promoting this kind of activity, glorifying it, giving sentimentality to it—we know our society is in
deep, deep trouble.
A very revealing thing happens next in verses 6-8, “But Lot went out with them through the doorway and shut the door behind him and said, ‘Please my brothers do not act wickedly. Now behold I have two daughters who have not had relations with man please let me bring them out to you and do to them whatever you like only do nothing to these men as much as they have come under the shelter of my roof.” What was he thinking? This again is an example of how we can have a duality in our thinking if we compromise with the world pretty soon we’re doing and saying things the world does and says and we don’t even think twice about it. But this is really hard to understand. What he did not lack in courage he definitely lacked in sense. Now some have suggested that he had hoped that they would not want women and so they would not bother his daughters, or others have said that maybe their fiancés would intercede for them—but this is dangerous and callous thinking and it portrays that there’s a certain perversion in Lot’s values that has taken place because he’s lived in Sodom for so long. And that’s a lesson to us as believers in Jesus Christ.
Notice what happened. His suggestion only enrages them more. Look in verses 9-11, “But they said stand aside. Furthermore they said this one came in as an alien and already is acting like a judge now we will treat you worse then them so they pressed hard against Lot and came near to break the door.” Lot’s suggestion just enraged them all the more in fact they refer to him as the “moralizer.” “The one that’s always telling us what’s wrong.” And yet you see when you have the truth and yet you don’t live a separated life along with the truth it loses its power. And they looked at him, I believe as somewhat of a hypocrite. Now notice their restraint, “But the men (these are the angels) reached out their hands an brought 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 wearied themselves trying to find the doorway. Now I realize that in some ways this seems like almost an unbelievable occurrence here they are they can’t see anything and yet they are trying to find the door. But what the word means, it’s a rare word, it means “dazed or dazzled state.” And so what these angels did was struck them with a mental confusion and a mental blindness to where although they could see, they could never seem to find the goal of what they were trying to do and they couldn’t get to the door. And so they began to mill around and they were confused and dazed and eventually the crowd dissipated.
Now we’ve seen the sin of Sodom, now lets watch the judgment of Sodom in verses 12 and following. First there is the deliverance of Lot in verses 12-14, “Then the men said to Lot, ‘Whom else have you here?’ A son-in-law and your sons and your daughters and whoever you have in the city bring them out of the place for we are about to destroy this place because there outcry has become so great for the Lord that the Lord has sent us to destroy it. And Lot went out and spoke to his sons-in-laws who were to marry his daughters and said, “Up, get out of this place for the Lord will destroy the city. But he appeared to his sons-in-law to be jesting.” That again tells us something about the loss of credibility that he had because of his compromised life. He appeared to be jesting. You see when a Christian lives this way and says one thing out of their mouth but lives the other way along with all of the rest of the world and does not separate from that which they know to be sin then the world pretty soon recognizes that whatever they claim to have has no reality. That’s a sad situation. So here he risks losing his own daughters and their fiancés, in fact they did die in this holocaust because they did not accept his testimony.
You have got to be careful about that Christians. If you’re one who after work goes to the bar and sits and drinks with the rest of the men just to enjoy their fellowship and build business contacts or whatever and then you want to sit down and talk to them about salvation and holy living they’re going to look at you and they’re going to say, “What are you kidding?” Or if you’re one who enjoys all kinds of pornography and you want to sit down and talk to someone about a pure life you’ve lost all of your credibility believe me. Or if you’re a gossip and all you do is talk about other people and spread rumors and yet you want to sit down and tell them about the Savior of their soul you’ve lost your credibility. This is serious business in our life we need to live our faith not just talk about our faith. Now notice the hesitation of Lot in verses 15-20. “When the morning dawned and the angels urged Lot saying, ‘Up take your wife and your two daughters who are hear lest you be swept away in the punishment of the city but he hesitated.” Are you getting the picture? So the men seized his hand and he
hand of his wife and the hands of his daughter for the compassion of the Lord was upon him and they brought him out.” Literally dragged him out and put him outside the city. “And it came about when they had brought him outside that one said, ‘Escape for your life. Do not look behind you and do not stay anywhere in the valley. Escape to the mountains lest you be swept away.’ But Lot said to them, ‘Oh, no my lords no behold your servant has found favor in your sight and you have magnified your loving kindness which you have 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 it is small please let me escape there is it not small? That my life may be saved.” So he requests that Zoar might be saved and he might escape to it. How strong the grip of Sodom was on Lot’s soul. Notice in verse 16 he hesitated even in the face of divine judgment. They had to drag him out and then he begs for a safe haven in a little town that would perhaps still have some of the flavor of Sodom. He didn’t want to live up in those arid areas in a tent or something like that like Abraham.
The lesson here for the saint—the necessity of living a separated life from the world. You see Lot didn’t even realize his own precariousness here he was so blinded. He didn’t appreciate the grace that was being given to him. He said he did but by his attitude you can tell he was dragging his feet and his eyes had become earthbound. If you live a life as a believer that is in compromise all the time with the world the same three things are going to happen in your life.
First of all you’re not even going to realize the precariousness of your situation. I always like to share with believers—don’t walk close to the edge of the cliff when it comes to sin and compromise with the world. Get back away from it. And yet invariably we want to walk close to the edge—we want to flirt with it. And then we are astounded when we fall. He didn’t even realize his precariousness. He didn’t appreciate the grace God was giving him really and his eyes had become earthbound. Christian if your eyes are not heaven bound, if they aren’t looking on the horizon then your headed for a disaster as well in this life.
Here we see the escape in verses 21-22, “He said to him behold I grant you this request also not to overthrow the town for which you have spoken. Hurry escape there for I can do anything until you arrive there therefore the name of the town was called Zoar which means small.” Sort of a play on words and a sarcasm I think by the Holy Spirit. Then we see the destruction of the cities in verses 23-26, “The sun had risen over the earth when Lot came to Zoar and then 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. But his wife from behind him looked back and she became a pillar of salt.”
There’s two things here the catastrophe and then the incident of Lot’s wife. Brimstone was the word that was commonly used of sulfur until the last few hundred years and so when he is talking about it being rained down with sulfur and fire and flame—sulfur of course is usually crystalline in form it’s deposited by the gasses usually a volcanic origin and it’s often in the layers of salt especially were there is bitumen pits which it says there were here. And so this whole valley filled with this sulfur and bitumen and probably natural gas deposits was just a literal powder keg. And so God used a trigger whether it was and earthquake or a volcanic eruption or simply that conflagration from heaven. It ignited this valley, the explosions began, it erupted in flames and hot gases and became literally a furnace and obliterated Sodom, Gomorrah, Admah, Zeboiim, and Zoar and everything that grew on the ground in that valley. Raining debris ,and ash, and fire from the explosion on its inhabitants. And so those cities were destroyed by God and His judgment, but notice the sad case of Lot’s wife—she fell behind Lot’s daughters, perhaps quite a ways behind and they in obedience did not stop but kept going and it says she looked back. The word means that she watched. She gazed intently at what was going on. And I believe that she perhaps was even seated leaning against the baggage or whatever. Most likely she suffocated from the gasses and the ash as it overcame her and her lifeless body became incrusted in salt crystals and ash and so she became a pillar of salt. A sad situation where his own wife would not believe God and so was also destroyed in the holocaust.
Now we need to look at the aftermath and draw some lessons from this story. The aftermath is in verses 27-38. First with regard to the cities and the valley in verse 27 it says, “He arose early in the morning and went to the place where Abraham arose early in the morning and awoke and he went 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 saw and behold the smoke of the land ascended like a smoke of a furnace.” That’s what came about when God destroyed the cities of the valley—God remembered Abraham and sent Lot out of the midst of the overflow when he overthrew the cities in which Lot lived.
Now Abraham was about 30 miles away near Hebron which is about 4,000 feet higher than the Salt or Dead Sea is and so it would be similar to standing about 4,000 feet above Bartlett and looking down on Chicago about 30 miles away and Abraham saw the smoke of the sulfur of this furnace ascending and he knew that God had destroyed the cities. But then we see the end of Lot and this is a sad tale in verses 30-38, “Lot went up from Zoar and stayed in the mountains and his two daughters with him for he was afraid to stay in Zoar.”
We’re not sure why, perhaps people blamed him, perhaps he was afraid of another conflagration coming upon Zoar afterward. “And he stayed in a cave, he and his two daughters. Then the firstborn said to the younger, ‘Our father is old and there is not a man on earth to come into us in the manner of the earth. Come let us make our father drink wine and let us lie with him that we may preserve our family through our father. So they made their father drink wine that night and the firstborn went in and lay with her father and he did not know when she lay down or when she arose. And 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 then you go in and lie with him that we may preserve our family through our father.” You can see that the spirit of Sodom is still alive in his daughters. “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.”
This is a demoralized, debased, and morally decayed family. But notice the pitiful site of this, even the names speak of the shame of it all thus both daughters of Lot were with child by their father and the firstborn bore a son and called his name Moab. “Moav” means from father. He is the father of the Moabites to this day. And for the younger she also bore a son and called his name Bename. “Bename” means a son of my relative. He is the father of the sons of Amond to this day. The effects of the world of Sodom are still going on. How important it is the people you hang around with. How important it is the people that you make your close friends and associates. I’m not saying that we are to come away from all unbelieving, all that are sinners, for how can we win them to Christ if we do that, but those with whom your heart beats together—if they are not of the same value, if they don’t value the same things you do—the God of heaven and those things of salvation you lie precariously close to the influence of the world destroying your life.
I want to bring up 4 lessons from Sodom as we close:
1. SIN OF HOMOSEXUALITY: It is a sin. Don’t make any mistake about it. It is not genetic. It is not natural. It is a learned behavior, it is a choice to follow and give into lust. It perverts—it twists and contorts the personality. It produces bizarre behavior and obsessive results. It is an abomination to God. We live in such a hypersensitive age because of so called “political correctness” today many feel that condemning homosexuality or condemning those who practice it is harmful and even hurtful, in fact we have growing in our books of law today these hate laws and pretty soon it will be illegal for you to tell someone that homosexuality is a sin. That’s how bad our society is getting. But is it harmful? Is it hurtful? No. In fact, that’s absolutely the wrong thing to believe and we are doing persons involved in this no favor by concealing the truth from them. Because if we conceal the truth from them they will not also hear of their only hope and it is in Jesus Christ. We must be faithful and say sin is sin, but the Savior is there for sin. And so there is a lesson here about homosexuality.
2. THE DANGER OF COMPROMISE TO THE BELIEVER IN JESUS CHRIST: Listen to what the apostle John says in 1 John 2, “Do not love the world nor the things in the world. If anyone loves the world the love of the Father is not in him. For all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, the boastful pride of life is not from the Father but is from the world and the world is passing away and also its lusts but he one who does the will of God abides forever. The “world,” the word is “cosmos,” and means an “ordered arrangement.” It is the ordered arrangement of mankind in rejection of God’s truth and in rebellion against Him. And so its values are most likely and most often exactly the opposite the truth of God. And if we are going to live our lives in tune with the cosmos then the love of the Father is not even in us and it will destroy us. And so He says “do not love the world.” The Church needs to love sinners but not their sin. We need to love the world as God does to see that it is saved, but not love the practices of the world. How important are the decisions in life. Lot didn’t just jump into this in one big step. It was a series of decisions he made and some of them fairly, it seemed inconsequential, but it was a gradual process that sucked him into this. In chapter 13:10 it says “he simply chose the valley because it was like Egypt.” It was “cool” there. Then in verse 12 it says “he moved his tents next to Sodom.” Then in chapter 19 it says that “he moved into the city” and we find him as part of the society there sitting in the gates. How important are the decisions in life—even the small ones. Every decision we should submit to God in prayer and ask “Is this going to bring me closer to God? Or closer to the world?” We need to bathe those decisions in prayer and the study of God’s Word. Too often were making decisions because we are listening to what the world says day in and day out—bathe them brethren, bathe them in prayer.
3. THE EFFECTS OF COMPROMISE: The dangers of compromise and not only in Lot, but in his family. The record tells us it was difficult to get Lot out of Sodom but it seems like it was impossible to get Sodom out of Lot once he had gotten sucked in. He lost his possessions, he lost his testimony, he, for the most part lost his family. The only thing that really matters brethren is that which is eternal that which comes from fulfillment of God’s will that Jesus says is the abundant life. And if we look for the abundant life somewhere else in the world and we listen to all of those sophisticated come-ons and temptations the world will give us, we will miss the abundant life. It is a life lived in separation from the world in Jesus Christ. Look at the effects in his family and that’s what’s most frightening. Louis Johnson says this, “Nothing would seem to make the divine disapproval of Lot’s manner of life than the fact that after this time he was allowed to live an unrecorded life, never being heard of again, to die an unnoticed death, and to fall into an unknown grave. Such is the melancholy end
of a worldly life constructed on the foundation of a foolish and selfish series of choices. Although sent by God out of Sodom, he nevertheless took Sodom with him. And history draws a veil over the rest of his life except for the New Testament affirmation that Peter says he was a righteous man. You see the inconsistency? He had been declared righteous by God, he had believed in God’s salvation, he was a believer and yet he lived a life that denied that and that was the end of it. He is a great example to us brethren.
4. JUSTICE AND THE MERCY OF GOD: But finally there is this lesson, and that is about the justice and the mercy of God. Perhaps the greatest single lesson is the absolute necessity that God must judge sin and His ability to so. He will judge the ungodly. Let’s go to 2 Peter 2: 6,7 and listen to what the apostle tells us, “If he rescued righteous Lot, oppressed by the sensual conduct of unprincipled men for by what he saw and heard that righteous man while living among them felt hisrighteous soul tormented day after day with their lawless deeds.” But he never left it did he? He was tormented by it, but he liked the life there too. “Then the Lord knows how to rescue the godly from temptation and to keep the unrighteous under punishment for the day of judgment. THERE IS A DAY OF JUDGMENT THAT IS COMING AND THE JUDGMENT OF SODOM IS AN EXAMPLE TO ALL MANKIND. That God must judge unrighteousness, and He will judge unrighteousness. 2 Peter 3:7, “The present heavens and earth by his word are being reserved for fire kept for the day of judgment and the destruction of ungodly men.
Are you here today without Jesus Christ? If He is not your Savior and you are not certain of that I must tell you that you are in that verse. God considers you one of the ungodly and He has reserved wrath for you. That’s a frightening, sobering thing to think about. But the good news is that there is a Savior. 1 Peter 2:24, 25, “He himself, Jesus bore our sins in his body on the cross that we might die to sin and live to righteousness for by his wounds you were healed.” Do you see the exchange there? Do you see the substitution there? He was wounded, you are healed. He suffered the judgment of God that he did not deserve for your sin. And so if you are here today without Jesus Christ I have good news “Christ Jesus died for your sins.” Have you received that? Have you believed in that? Have you come to him and said thank you O Lord Jesus for dying for me? I take you as my Savior. That is the pardon that is available. If you haven’t done that why not? There is judgment coming.
WORKS CITED
- Revelation and Church History
- Church Age
- Old Testament Study
- Mooberry, Pastor Jim. The Faithful Word. GENESIS 18:6-19:38 “Sodom and Gomorrah Pt.5.”
- Receiving Jesus
- Heartland Baptist, Bellevue, Nebraska
- Broken Bow Berean Church, Broken Bow, Nebraska
